Politics

Boris Johnson has set an excellent precedent. The mayor of London has banned an advert from appearing on London buses because it is both offensive to some people and its claims are of dubious provenance. The ad in question is the poster from a mentalist Christian group who believe people can be cured of homosexuality. ‘Post-Gay and Proud – Get Over It!’ the advert proclaims. I cannot think, offhand, of any advert which isn’t a)offensive and b)lies, especially car adverts and those ones which tell women they’ll never be constipated again if only they’ll drink some awful French dairy product once a day. Are homosexuals the only people who have

It took the Tory party 15 years to recover from the bad blood created by Margaret Thatcher’s forced resignation. So it is, perhaps, unsurprising that five years on, the bitterness from Tony Blair’s being pushed out of office has not yet subsided. Phil Collins, who was a speechwriter to Blair, has today written a scathing piece about Tom Watson, the leader of the so-called curry house coup against Blair. Collins accuses Watson of putting the ‘occupation of internal power’ in the party by his faction above the interests of the Labour party. Watson, who is Labour’s election campaigns coordinator, exerts a huge influence over Labour’s internal processes and candidate selection,

In his cover piece for this week’s magazine, Neil O’Brien describes the great divide between London and the rest of the UK. One of the main differences he highlights is in their economies. He says: ‘In inner west London, economic output per head is £110,000 a year. In an important sense, these people are not living in the same country as the inhabitants of Gwent or the Wirral, whose output is just a tenth of this.’ In fact, London is set apart not just from those two poorest areas, but every other area in the country. You see, the second richest area — Edinburgh — has an output per head

The big question in British politics right now is what happens when the voters are dissatisfied with all the three main parties and their leaders. According to a recent opinion poll, David Cameron’s approval rating is now down to minus 27. According to the invaluable Anthony Wells, this is the lowest it has been since Cameron became Tory leader. But the PM’s numbers look positively healthy compared to Miliband’s (minus 41) and Clegg’s (minus 53). Dissatisfaction with political leaders isn’t the only indicator that people aren’t happy. As I report in the column this week, senior Downing Street aides have been much struck by polling showing that more than 40

It seems David Cameron’s found a neat way of needling his coalition partners over their resistance to the so-called ‘snooper’s charter’. Last week, Nick Clegg insisted on proper pre-legislative scrutiny before any expansion of surveillance powers goes ahead, while a group of Lib Dem MPs wrote a letter in the Guardian declaring that: ‘It continues to be essential that our civil liberties are safeguarded, and that the state is not given the powers to snoop on its citizens at will.’ And Lib Dem president Tim Farron told the BBC that his party is ‘prepared to kill’ the proposals ‘if it comes down to it’. ‘If we think this is a