Politics

[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_16_April_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”James Forsyth and Fraser Nelson discuss politics and religion” startat=636] Listen [/audioplayer]If Ed Miliband wins the next election, he’ll be Britain’s first atheist Prime Minister. It is a sign of how social attitudes have changed that Miliband feels comfortable wearing his atheism on his sleeve. He has not received the kind of criticism that Michael Foot and Neil Kinnock did when they professed that they did not believe in God. Atheism doesn’t seem as dangerously counter-cultural as it did in the 1980s. Nick Clegg is also a self-declared atheist. This leaves David Cameron as the only major party leader who believes in God. But Cameron has never come

Does it make you feel better about yourself, girls, ladies, to know that if Labour’s elected, Ed Miliband will have a Secretary of State for Women, and Equalities, with Cabinet rank? Or do you find yourself asking what a Minister for Women has ever done for anyone, beyond guaranteeing that at least one member of the Cabinet will be a paid up woman? It was a bit like that when Sajid Javid was appointed Culture Secretary and everyone started asking what he’d ever done to qualify in the way of going to the opera, reading books etc. When Kitty Morgan was appointed Minister for Women, it was a different matter.

I am taken to task by the Guardian’s Media Monkey for celebrating Sajid Javid’s elevation (as per the poster above) a little too much – and not caring very much that the new Culture Secretary is no expert in the arts. It argues the following:- Javid’s lack of cultural hinterland – his Who’s Who entry lists no recreations – was acknowledged but relegated to the 14th paragraph of Fraser Nelson’s Telegraph profile (“he will stuggle to talk about his great love of the performing arts … It is certainly an odd casting – Javid’s expertise is in finance”) and the 23rd of Andrew Pierce’s huzzah in the Mail: “His knowledge of sport

There are only five months to go to the Scottish referendum and the Cabinet is becoming increasingly agitated about the state of the Unionist campaign. At Tuesday’s meeting there was a frank and realistic discussion about its problems. The government’s concern is prompted by the fact that it has fired its biggest gun, telling the Scots there’ll be no currency union after independence, but the Nationalists are still standing. Indeed, they appear to have strengthened their position. The coalition now thinks that part of the problem is that there are not enough purely Scottish voices making the case for the Union. They fear that even Scots with Westminster seats are,

When is a conference not a conference? When it’s a rally. Sitting in the hall listening to Alex Salmond this afternoon, it was hard to ignore the feeling that this SNP Spring Conference was about as far away from a party conference as it was possible to get. It really was a political rally – and quite a scary one too. The warm-up acts for the Scottish First Minister consisted of folk singers from the Hebrides singing ‘it’s our country’ and a group of shouty actors putting on extracts from a pro-independence play which will premiere in Edinburgh this summer. Then, when one of the actors had a clear go

Well, those who get themselves worked up about the presence of Martin McGuinness around the Royal Family would not have enjoyed last night’s musical extravaganza, Ceiliuradh, for the Irish president at the Albert Hall. They’d have been on their own, mind you. Everyone else had a ball; it was a packed house for Elvis Costello plus Fiona Shaw and Dermot O’Leary, but the knockout element was the combined band of the Irish Guards and the Irish Defence Force doing the Minstrel Boy, which made me cry. That was a nice touch: Tom Moore, its author, was lionised in London as much as in Ireland. And there in the Royal Box,