Politics

Instead of white smoke, Iowa is belching thick fog. Mitt Romney has won by, erm, eight votes. At least so we think, the Republicans say that it has to wait until ‘Certified Form E’ will be returned by all the Iowa counties, which will take two weeks, so this gossamer majority may well vanish. Already some votes have been lost, others miscounted, so I doubt Romney will be doing much of a victory dance today. Iowa’s indecision is final. He has won by a majority of 0.0065 percentage points. It’s pretty good for the man who almost beat him, Rick Santorum, who won 30,007 votes to Romney’s 30,015. And Santorum

A happy new year to all of you; I hope it is more pleasant than 2011. My resolution is to kick anyone who uses the word ‘chill’ to me in any context other than that referring directly to inclement weather or a touch of ague. Anyone who uses ‘chill’ in combination with the suffix ‘pill’ or ‘out’ will be kicked repeatedly. Gloom, there may be around. But those dwindling few of us who support the Labour Party will have been heartened by Lord Glasman’s comments that the party is too elitist and must reconnect with its working class support. For sure, many of us have been arguing this for years,

It’s the New Year — a time when politicians all over the globe get on their soapboxes and preach to their people. From Merkel’s pledge to do everything for the euro, to North Korea’s vow to defend their new leader unto death, to Putin’s speech laden with sexual innuendo, here’s a selection of this year’s messages from world leaders: Barack Obama: ‘I promise to do everything I can to make America a place where hard work and responsibility are rewarded, one where everyone has a fair shot and everyone does their fair share. That’s the America I believe in.’ Angela Merkel: ‘Today, you can trust that I will do everything

Director Phyllida Lloyd on Meryl Streep’s eerily accurate portrayal of the Iron Lady Maybe she’s lost interest. Perhaps she’s just knackered. Almost certainly she’s had a bellyful of listening to herself talking about her film, The Iron Lady. When I meet Phyllida Lloyd, who also directed the 2008 smash hit, Mamma Mia, I’m expecting to find the sparkling quintessence of Hellenic romance and frivolity. But she’s all in black, and all on her own, in the sort of under-lit room where freed hostages are debriefed. On the table sits a bit of half-finished lunch in a cardboard box. Next to it there’s a litre bottle of diet lemonade. As soon

Whenever politicians talk about social care, they tend to promise ‘cross-party talks’. It’s their little euphemism for ‘we don’t want to commit to a policy by ourselves.’ Don’t get them wrong, it’s not that they don’t have ideas for fixing a system that is straining under the weight of an ageing population; the Dilnot report, released earlier this year, gave them plenty of recommendations to work with. It’s just that they don’t want to be the ones to implement the tax hikes or spending cuts that will be necessary to fund it. If they can talk it through with the other parties — the thinking goes — then this crucial

The Christmas double issue of The Spectator has now been retired from newsstands, and today our New Year edition emerges in its place. Among its articles casting forward into 2012 is a list of ten predictions by James Delingpole. Here’s just one of them, as a taster: ‘Ukip will become Britain’s third largest party. This will go almost completely unreported in the media. Other headlines you won’t read: “Climategate scientists: ‘Oh all right. We confess. We’ve just been making it up as we go along’”; “Vince Cable: ‘Only the free market can save us now’”; “Archbishop of Canterbury: ‘If water cannons don’t shift ’em then we should try napalm. It’s

The Christmas weekend was, I’m sure you noticed, rich with political incident. And yet, from continued turbulence in the Middle East to continued turbulence in Chris Huhne’s career, few things stood out as much as the protests against Vladimir Putin in Russia. They were, by most reasonable estimates, the largest in that country since the fall of the Soviet Union. And they add to the wave of disgruntlement that has been swelling since even before this month’s disputed parliamentary elections. The wave, of course, hasn’t broken yet. But few seem sure about how far it will travel and how much change it will wreak. The best article I’ve read on

 It is an eternal and reassuring fact of human nature that when an editor announces that he is stepping down from a great publication, there is not the slightest interest in what he plans to do with his life, or even who he was. I have received many phone calls from friends and colleagues since announcing last Friday that this would be my last edition, and they only want to know one thing. ‘Who is taking over?’ I wish I knew myself. But since the white smoke has yet to go up, I thought I had better write a general welcome to whoever you are out there. I propose to open

Officially, of course, the answer to that question is William Hague – who has put in some decent work since assuming office, particularly during the Arab Spring. But, still, I ask it because, following the European Council, Nick Clegg seems to have usurped the Foreign Secretary’s role in a number of key areas. It was the Deputy Prime Minister who engaged the newly-elected Spanish leader, for example. It was also Clegg, not Hague, who was instrumental in bringing German foreign minister Guido Westerwelle to Britain on a ‘we still love you’ visit yesterday. And when it comes to phoning European leaders to press a UK position, it is the Deputy