Politics

Read about the latest UK political news, views and analysis.

Tuesday

The Spectator

Why Cameron is right on families

For all my misgivings about the Cameron project, he is in exactly the right place on the family. His speech today was authentic, strong, thought-provoking and laid out clear blue water between him and Gordon Brown. As the rather pitiful performance of Ed Miliband on Today this morning showed us, Brown is uninterested in the family agenda. He looks as this only in terms of children, whips his calculator out and declares them “lifted out of poverty” having crossed some weird threshold. Cameron talks about broken homes – language everyone understands. The Broken Society topic is the most urgent issue in Britain today, and Cameron is firmly on the right side

The Spectator

I haven’t thrown in the towel

I would like to reach across cyberspace to reassure the great Anne Applebaum. She says in Slate that “the Spectator magazine—the Conservatives’ once-faithful house organ—was ready to throw in the towel” with my cover story a fortnight ago ‘All bets are off.’ Yes, we did indeed declare that Brown is surprising the Conservatives (and us) but our principles haven’t changed one iota. We remain a cheerleader for conservatism and common sense in general, which is why I feel under no compulsion to cheer Cameron as he moves so far to the left that he actually overtakes Brown. On several issues: flag waving, private equity, the environment, house building and tax

James Forsyth James Forsyth

How Brown views the world

The always astute Irwin Stelzer has an interesting op-ed in today’s Telegraph on Gordon Brown’s foreign policy. Stelzer reveals that Brown has been angered by reports that he has banned the use of the phrase ‘war on terror’—which doesn’t explain why so many of his ministers are running from the phrase.  But Stelzer’s key point is about Brown’s view of what causes Islamist terrorism:   “the PM believes economic development will prove an attractive alternative to self-immolation. He holds to that view despite the fact that the perpetrators of 9/11 were mostly rich Saudis, that the doctors allegedly involved in attempts to blow up central London and Glasgow airport were hardly

Monday

The Spectator

If you’re looking for…

The Spectator’s thoughts on Boris running for Mayor see Mary Wakefield’s ten point plan and the magazine’s official endorsement. We also have comprehensive coverage of the Alastair Campbell diaries. Anthony Browne, head of the think tank Policy Exchange and the former chief political correspondent of The Times, flags up and explains the key passages below; Reading the Campbell Diaries Parts  I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X and XI. Our political editor Fraser Nelson previews the coming three-part BBC documentary on the diaries here and Toby Young explains why Campbell is, in reality, more like Adrian Mole than Nicolas Machiavelli. Everything else, continues below.

The Spectator

Boris for Mayor: A ten-step program

1) Do you remember in Peter Pan when poor Tinkerbell fades away because no-one believes in fairies, and how miraculously she perks up when the children begin to clap? Well, it’s the same with Boris.  I’m not saying that he responds to applause like fairy, just that the first step is faith. Exorcise your doubts right now: Believe in Boris! 2) Prepare a retort for the naysayers. Insecure and ambitious men will cry ‘buffoon!’ But Boris has done a good job as higher education minister, written serious books and made ancient history accessible. If he’s an idiot, what does that make the rest of us? 3) Then get online. There

The Spectator

Downing Street wives

July 25th, 2003 On Cherie Blair firing Alastair Campbell’s wife Fiona Millar as her adviser, accusing her of briefing against her. ”I told TB about CB’s call and said that it was unforgivable that she spoke to Fiona like that after all she’d done for her. He said people were too fraught at the moment and Cherie was feeling under pressure. I said she needed to apologise, otherwise there would be badness between them that helped nobody. He said that the problem at the moment is that the public will begin to wonder whether we are governing the country. All they hear is all this stuff about personalities, process and

The Spectator

The Mandelson-Brown relationship

May 9th 1996, on Peter Mandelson’s row with Gordon Brown over political strategy: “They started talking very loudly at each other, just a few decibels short of shouting. TB, who for once was sitting in the chair by the TV…said for heaven’s sake keep this under control. Peter then stood up, said no, I won’t, I’m not taking this any of this crap any longer, and stormed out. TB just shook his head, while GB stared at his papers then started scribbling.” Comment: in case there were any doubters left in Britain, the diaries make crystal clear the appalling relationship between two of the godfathers of New Labour – Brown

The Spectator

Reading the Campbell diaries, Part III

August 11th, 1994: on Blair telling him about his plans to ditch Clause 4, while trying to persuade Campbell to work as his press secretary: “By now, he had also let me know, and sworn me to secrecy, that he was minded to have a review of the constitution and scrap Clause 4. I have never felt any great ideological attachment to Clause 4 one way or the other. If it made people happy, fine, but it didn’t actually set out what the party was about today. It wasn’t the politics or the ideology that appealed. It was the boldness. People had talked about it for years. Here was a

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Advice for Cameron’s Campbell

Amidst all the publicity surrounding the publication of Alastair Campbell’s diaries, it is easy to forget that David Cameron’s new spin doctor, former News of the World editor Andy Coulson, starts work today. Conservative Home, complete with sleek re-design, has some good advice for him. 

Sunday

The Spectator

What’s missing from the Blair years?

A “gold mine”: that is how the Tories would regard Alastair Campbell’s unexpurgated diaries, according to Campbell himself. In an interview with Andrew Marr, the great spin doctor admitted that his relationship with the press went “horribly wrong” and that Bill Clinton urged him to look in the mirror and ask if that had something to do with his own methods as well as the feral beasts of the media. Campbell came as close as he ever has to admitting a degree of complicity in the death of Dr David Kelly, describing himself as “a player in a series of events” that led to the scientist’s suicide. When Tony Blair

Saturday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Politics | 7 July 2007

Don’t mention the war on terror — even if we’re winning it The war on terror is over — or at least has been purged from the vocabulary of Gordon Brown’s government. The phrase, he has decided, will never be mentioned by any of his ministers. The men who attempted to attack a London nightclub and Glasgow Airport are ‘criminals’ and not warriors. It is only a matter of terminology, of course, but Mr Brown knows the power of semantics. With no formal announcement, British policy towards global terror has changed fundamentally. Jack Straw has longed for such a day. He may have been Tony Blair’s foreign secretary during the

Margareta Pagano

Global championship heads for a ladies’ final

On 20 July, one of America’s most influential businesswomen, Cathy Kinney, will swap Wall Street for the boulevards of Paris. Kinney is one of the New York Stock Exchange’s big chiefs — president and co-chief operating officer of the newly merged $20 billion NYSE–Euronext group — and she’s moving to the French bourse’s headquarters at 39 rue Cambon, where she has been charged with setting up the nerve-centre of the NYSE’s global offensive. Her boss, the ambitious NYSE chief executive John Thain, has already tucked Euronext (the pan-European bourse which encompasses Paris, Amsterdam, Lisbon and Brussels) under his formidable belt. Now he wants to make that merger sweat by conquering

Friday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Another Mayoral twist

The latest development in the saga of who will be the Tory candidate to take on Red Ken is the Tory claim that Digby Jones wanted to be their candidate, something that Jones denies. Anyway, we’re backing Boris.

The Spectator

Brown takes a page from the Clinton playbook

Gordon Brown told the BBC this morning that he’ll be holidaying in Britain this year. Dick Morris will be proud! With all his Middle Britain pleasing micro-initiatives–flying the flag over Number 10 and the like–the strategy of the early weeks of the Brown premiership bear an uncanny resemblance to Clinton’s between his drubbing in the mid-terms in 1994 and his re-election in 1996. All we need now is for Brown to endorse school uniforms and the v-chip.

The Spectator

Where Cherie goes wrong

Fiona Millar has a piece in The Guardian today defending herself from some of the implicit criticisms made of her in the Cherie Blair documentary. Much of the criticism Cherie received might have been excessively harsh, but Millar is surely right in this criticism of Blair: “her famed intelligence clearly deserts her if she still can’t see that the primary job of anyone employed at No 10 is to protect the interests of the prime minister and his office. If his spouse wants to do things that might bring that office into disrepute, the job of those who work for him is to intervene. Sometimes that means giving uncomfortable advice.”

Matthew Dancona

A swell party

Last night, The Spectator celebrated its (modern) birthday, July 5, 1828, and its move to the heart of Westminster with the magazine’s annual summer party. It isn’t for me to speak for others but, as host, I had a fantastic time. Inclement weather meant the elevation of a marquee in the garden of 22 Old Queen Street – or, rather, a Big Tent, which was able to accommodate the Prime Minister and other members of the Cabinet, as well as an A-team of top Tories led by George Osborne. Gordon walked over from Number Ten and revealed that he is still finding rooms in the building he did not know

Thursday

The Spectator

From Rousseau to Blears

“The English people believes itself to be free; it is gravely mistaken; it is free only during election of members of parliament; as soon as the members are elected, the people is enslaved; it is nothing.” So wrote Rousseau of our system of parliamentary representation. It is to address this sense of absolute disenfranchisement in the years between elections that Hazel Blears will today announce plans to give local people a say over local budgets. Democracy, the new Communities Secretary will tell the Local Government Association, “should be a daily activity, not an abstract theory”. Three cheers to that sentiment. The plan is apparently for a series of pilot pojects

Wednesday

The Spectator

Official: Spectator backs Boris

   No more than a formality, of course, and the least I can do as the great man’s successor in the Editor’s chair. As a Londoner, I know he would do a brilliant job, and the awesome city state that is 21st Century London needs a man of his stature at the helm, not a newt-loving, Mullah-appeasing, nasally-challenged whiner like Red Ken. I hereby declare Boris to be the official candidate of The Spectator for the position of London Mayor. To adapt the greatest of all city statesmen, Pericles: Boris does not imitate, but he is a model to others.