Politics

Sydney – Mr Cameron resisted the calls to boycott the [Commonwealth Heads of Government] summit and will therefore have a chance to meet and have talks with Tony Abbott, who also said this week that he would not ‘trash’ the institution by joining in a boycott, and nor would he give lectures to other countries, especially those that had endured a civil war with atrocities on both sides. This can only be a good thing from Mr Cameron’s point of view, for he seems to go out of his way to avoid meeting genuine conservatives when at home, and he may learn something. Mr Abbott should use the opportunity to lobby Mr

Coming next month to a courtroom near you: a bewildered young man, freshly convicted, trembles in the dock while awaiting his fate. But just before sentencing, a weeping widow stands, turns welling blue eyes to the bench and beseeches His Honour: ‘I cannot forgive him for his part in my husband’s death. My life is ruined. I beg you to punish him to the maximum.’ Murmurs of assent are shushed in the public gallery. ‘Well,’ says the judge, ‘I had planned leniency, in light of the coercion from older bullies and his mental age of six. However, since you ask so nicely — Officer! Take him down and throw away

John Bercow could go down as a great reforming Speaker of the House of Commons. It’s thanks to him, in large part, that the Commons chamber once again seems like the cockpit of the nation. But he now risks becoming the second successive Speaker to be ousted from his job. Even his friends admit that his inability to conceal his dislike for David Cameron and various Tory backbenchers has put his position in jeopardy. Bercow is a contrast to his predecessor Michael Martin. He is razor sharp and confident in his own judgment. No one doubts his intellectual ability. But Bercow has a large number of detractors. He’s gone from

Nick Clegg’s blast at Labour today is just the opening salvo of a Lib Dem offensive against Labour on the economy. It is another reminder that coalition unity is strongest on the economy. Clegg’s jibe ‘Do you know why Ed Miliband suddenly wants to talk about the cost of living? Because they’ve lost the bigger economic argument’ could easily have been said by Cameron. While his argument that ‘healthy household budgets flow directly from a healthy economy. The two go hand in hand’ echoed George Osborne’s response to the GDP figures. At the top of the coalition, they are immensely frustrated that Labour has managed to change the conversation from

What is wrong with the now almost daily apologies about mass immigration? Today it is the turn of Jack Straw.  The former Home Secretary has just admitted that opening Britain’s borders to Eastern European migrants was a ‘spectacular mistake.’  He acknowledges that his party’s 2004 decision to allow migrants from Poland and Hungary to work in Britain was a ‘well-intentioned policy we messed up‘.  The Labour government famously predicted that a few thousand people would come, while the actual figure ended up being closer to a million. Of course apologies are normally intended to draw a line under a matter.  But how could that possibly occur when all three main parties

Sydney Kevin Rudd had spent so much time out of the limelight since his electoral thrashing two months ago that Australians were beginning to wonder what he was up to. The latest joke about our former two-time prime minister is that his only public appearance recently was at a suburban Brisbane retirement home, where he asked an elderly woman if she knew who he was. ‘No, but if you check at the front desk, I’m sure the nurses can help you,’ she replied. But Rudd’s decision to retire from the Australian parliament after 15 years as an MP and two years and nine months as PM (December 2007-June 2010, June-September

For a moment I thought someone had spiked my tea with LSD. With escalating levels of disbelief, I read Melanie McDonagh’s bizarre account of last Thursday’s protest at the Barbican against the pro-Putin Russian conductor Valery Gergiev. Then, as her article became ever-more divorced from reality, I wondered if perhaps she had been the victim of an acid prankster. Melanie is usually a fine writer. What prompted her to scribble such tosh? She lambasts the ‘barracking’ and ‘bullying’ of Gergiev, describing him as a ‘Russian composer’. Actually, he’s a conductor and he was nowhere in sight that evening. We were on the pavement outside, not in the ‘concert hall’. It was

David Cameron’s speech at the Lord Mayor’s banquet yesterday evening rehearsed some basic political arguments that will be honed between now and 2015. Cameron made a decent assault on Labour over the cost of living: ‘There are some people who seem to think that the way you reduce the cost of living in this country is for the state to spend more and more taxpayers’ money….At a time when family budgets are tight, it is really worth remembering that this spending comes out of the pockets of the same taxpayers whose living standards we want to see improve.’ The logical corollary of that statement is pretty obvious: smaller government and

The government is trying to pick up steam on High Speed 2 (again) by wheeling out Michael Heseltine to make the case for the project. Tonight at the Royal Town Planning Institute, the former Transport Secretary will argue that the new line is about spreading prosperity and doing ‘the right thing’ for our country: ‘HS2 is about our country’s competitiveness for a half century or more. It is about so many more people sharing growth that has, for too long, been concentrated on London and the South East. It’s all about drawing together our economy as a whole as well as improving our access to the enlarged, and enlarging, home