Politics

Here are some of the posts made over the past week on Spectator.co.uk: Fraser Nelson reveals Ed Balls’ lies, and outlines the scale of the debt crisis. James Forsyth says a shadow Cabinet member needs to call Brown on his lies, and sets out the Tories’ higher goal for education. Peter Hoskin looks at how cuts can be advertised, and tracks the Government’s approach on a spending review. Martin Bright reveals how New Labour policy making works. Clive Davis gives his take on the death of Michael Jackson. Alex Massie has a few simple questions for Alan Johnson. And Melanie Phillips says that the Schools Secretary has forgotten where he

It strikes me as being in both bad taste and politically foolish for Alan Duncan to suggest that Gordon Brown is “vandalising” the despatch box when he uses a thick pen to take notes during PMQs. It is bad taste because the reason Brown uses a thick, black felt-tip because he is blind in one eye and has poor sight in the other. Whatever one’s opinion of Brown, his eye problem is not something that should be mocked. It is politically foolish because one of the themes that Labour is trying to get into the national conversation is that the Tories are a bunch of posh bullies. This kind of

Last night’s edition of BBC2’s The Conspiracy Files was a fine piece of television. It examined the conspiracy theories surrounding the bombings of July 7 2005 and if you haven’t seen it, watch it again right now. At first I thought it was going to be another piece of gratuitous “what if?” television. But it was so much better than that. By taking the conspiracy theories surrounding the atrocities at face value, the programme makers gave the loons enough rope with which to hang themeslves. The theory that Israelis were somehow warned of the attacks in advance was forensically dismantled and the idea that the bombs were planted under the

The best New Labour policies have always been designed for sale to liberals and reactionaries at the same time. When I was on The Observer I always made a point of asking for the Mail on Sunday half of the story whenever I was pitched a Sunday trail for a policy launch during the week ahead. Of course this briefing of journalists in advance of a government launch will no longer happen in the new era of parliamentary propriety (until the next time). But its worth applying this to the latest Gordon Brown policy document: Building Britain’s Future. Some of this policy fits the model perfectly. The  employment “guarantee” for under 25s

Does it matter if immigrants have taken (or created) all the new jobs in the British private sector? I reveal this in my News of the World column today, as the key fact from a data request I made from the ONS. It’s a divisive topic, and even exploring it make ministers feel uncomfortable. But this ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ approach to immigration has not just given the BNP the political space needed for its electoral breakthrough three weeks ago, but left ministers ignorant about what’s going on in our labour market. Between Q1 of 1997 and Q1 of 2009, immigrants account for 106% of new jobs in the private sector – ie, there are more new workers

This may seem a peculiar thing to say after weeks of anger from the public and self-laceration among MPs, but I’m not talking about the fall-out from the expenses scandal. I was in Westminster for the first time in ages the other day to attend a meeting about Bangladesh in the Lords. I can’t remember the number of the committee room now and I could certainly never locate it again. The Commons (or was it Lords?) staff were very helpful in helping me find it, although stricltly speaking they allowed me down a stretch of corrridor and down a staircase that was out-of-bounds. At the end of it I felt