All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Last night politicians and celebrities dined with the super-rich at the annual Tory Black and White ball. While press are banned from the event, Mr S managed to infiltrate the lavish do and bring readers a live-blog of the event. Alas the evening saw a downturn in David Cameron’s fortunes as his donors failed to dig as deep at
The Shadow Cabinet has its session with Emily Thornberry on Trident today. At least there are fewer people so she cannot be shouted down, as she was at points in last night’s parliamentary Labour party meeting. But there are a number of MPs at the table who only joined Jeremy Corbyn’s frontbench on the understanding
A few weeks ago, James Forsyth revealed David Cameron’s strategy for fighting the EU referendum: to campaign on the theme on security, rather than an economic argument. This is already backfiring badly. Britain’s security does not depend upon the EU, and the Prime Minister’s attempts to suggest otherwise are inflicting grave damage to his chances of
David Cameron’s mum has joined the battle against Conservative cuts, it has emerged this morning. Mary Cameron’s intervention after signing a petition to save childrens’ centres has been splashed over the front page of the Daily Mirror. The headline: ‘Cameron’s mum fights Tory cuts’ looks deeply embarrassing for her son. Is this a family rift?
‘And if you look to your left you will see a house once linked to Rakhat Aliyev, Kazakhstan’s former intelligence chief, who died in police custody in Austria while awaiting charges of corruption, torture and murder.’ These apartments form the final stop in London’s new unmissable attraction, the London Kleptocracy Tour. The tour is a Beverley Hills-type
Emily Thornberry, the new Shadow Defence Secretary, held a meeting with her fellow Labour MPs this evening. It either went ‘swimmingly’ or was ‘worse than I thought’, depending on which MPs you listen to. Based on the accounts of the meeting from MPs who’ve spoken to Coffee House this evening, it was less the Ian Thorpe sort
The Conservatives have their black-tie billionaire-laden black-and-white ball tonight – an event shrouded in secrecy. So your spy, Mr Steerpike, is live-blogging it. I’ve already noticed a porn baron or two amongst the guests. But for all of the jolity, where is the cash? The commodity/emerging market crash seems to have hit the pockets of the bidders
Reader Tom Dulake suggested that I invite competitors to submit a blurb for a misery memoir, which struck me as a good idea. Who knows what drives the reading public’s appetite for other people’s suffering, but they seem to lap it up. The ‘Painful Lives’ sections of bookshops heave with mis lit, harrowing accounts of
Emily Thornberry will tonight address Labour MPs at the weekly meeting of the Parliamentary Labour on her Trident policy review. It is the first discussion the party has had on the matter this year. As I reported last week, the Shadow Cabinet briefing on Trident ran out of time, and will take place tomorrow. I
Is it really wise for David Cameron to threaten us with migrants? That is what he has done today with his warning that if we ‘leave’ the EU then the migrant camp in Calais could have to be moved to Folkestone, Dover, or our own back gardens. Not only is the claim wrong (our Calais
Despite all the fighting over which faction is working with who that’s taken place over the past few days, MP members of the Vote Leave campaign are actually rather upbeat. In private conversations that I’ve had over the past few days, a number of MPs who had been worried about the campaign have told me
When Samantha Cameron appeared on the BBC’s Sport Relief bake-off last month, she managed to charm the nation — with even the Daily Mail‘s Jan Moir singing her praises: ‘Yes, she bakes like a dream and went on to beat the three other celebrity contestants to win her heat — but what was really important was that
I recently attended a talk for aspiring young journalists where the two female speakers were both senior news editors at a national publication. One of the speakers said quite bluntly to the audience, ‘If you want to have a big family, this is not the job for you. Not with the hours we work.’ Some
Liam Fox, speaking on the World at One, denounced No 10’s suggestions that leaving the EU would mean Britain could see a Sangatte-style ‘Jungle’ emerge in the UK. He said it was a ‘complete red herring’: https://soundcloud.com/spectator1828/liam-fox-on-migrant-camps David Cameron said his prison reform plans were a ‘bold and radical second term agenda’: But there was scepticism
Last month I wrote that everyone loves Ruth Davidson but no-one will vote for her. Now a new YouGov poll reports that the Tories are ahead, if only just, of Labour in the race to lose the forthcoming Holyrood election least badly. Twenty percent of Scots say they intend to vote for Davidson’s Scottish Conservatives
Communities Secretary Greg Clark is giving a statement this afternoon in the Commons on local government finance. This sounds like something rather lacking in drama, but I understand it is part of an attempt to ward off a rebellion threatened by MPs on Wednesday. MPs will vote on a local government finance settlement motion on
Spare a thought for Ed Vaizey. Although he is now the longest serving arts minister in British history, the Conservative politician still struggles to blend in with the luvvies at arts events. At last night’s Evening Standard Film Awards, Mr S hears that Vaizey attracted the attention of the night’s host Simon Amstell. Introducing the arts minister, Amstell said
Christian columnists of left (Giles Fraser) and right (Charles Moore, Peter Hitchens) agree: Bishop Bell has been most sorely wronged. The Church should not have compensated the person he allegedly abused about seventy years ago. It has damaged the reputation of one of its major figures, without any sort of trial taking place. I disagree.
[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/fightingovercrumbs-euroscepticsandtheeudeal/media.mp3″ title=”James Forsyth and Vote Leave’s Stephen Parkinson discuss Euroscepticsm”] They may not be allowed to speak out yet, but everyone is trying to find out what senior eurosceptic Tories really think about David Cameron’s EU renegotiation deal and whether they’ll vote to leave. For some Cabinet ministers like Michael Gove, this decision is
David Cameron has outlined his plans for prison reform today. But does he genuinely care about prisons or is he only concerned with shaping his own legacy? The Prime Minister labelled the number of prisoners reoffending as ‘scandalous’. He also pledged to protect the £130m prison education budget. His motives may seem worthy but it’s
[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/fightingovercrumbs-euroscepticsandtheeudeal/media.mp3″ title=”James Forsyth and Vote Leave’s Stephen Parkinson discuss Euroscepticsm”] To be quite so desperate, quite so early, in the pre-referendum campaign as the In campaigners must be to wheel out Lord Powell of Bayswater with his proxy, post-humous Thatcher endorsement is not a good sign for them. Charles Powell even suggests of David
This morning Jeremy Hunt appeared on The Andrew Marr Show to defend his growing feud with the junior doctors. While Marr took the health secretary to task over the junior doctors’ strike — reading out a number of hostile letters from those affected, Hunt responded with an interesting form of defence. Discussing his health reforms, Hunt argued that the hostile
[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/fightingovercrumbs-euroscepticsandtheeudeal/media.mp3″ title=”James Forsyth and Vote Leave’s Stephen Parkinson discuss Euroscepticsm”] Margaret Thatcher would have voted to stay in the European Union, her former foreign policy adviser Lord Powell writes in the Sunday Times today. Here, in an extract from his Spectator’s Notes, Charles Moore, Lady Thatcher’s official biographer, says she would have voted to Leave: On Tuesday night,
Poor Marco Rubio. At the vital moment, he seems to fluff his lines. In the final months of 2015, America’s lumpencommentariat kept predicting ‘Marco’s moment’. For months, such talk sounded like nothing but hype. Then the Iowa caucuses happened, and Rubio finished a much-stronger-expected third. Finally, his time seemed to have come. Rubio emerged as the pragmatic choice; the man to prick
[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/fightingovercrumbs-euroscepticsandtheeudeal/media.mp3″ title=”James Forsyth and Vote Leave’s Stephen Parkinson discuss Euroscepticsm”] It should, by now, be clear to David Cameron that he is in some degree of trouble with his referendum. The latest YouGov poll shows the ‘out’ side with a four-point lead: those who were waiting for his renegotiation to yield results have been
An Oxford College has done something really offensive, and it doesn’t involve a statue of a white supremacist. Lady Margaret Hall has appointed Benedict Cumberbatch as a visiting fellow. It gets worse. It has elected Neil Tennant of the Pet Shop Boys and Emma Watson from the Harry Potter films to the same post. Why
[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/fightingovercrumbs-euroscepticsandtheeudeal/media.mp3″ title=”James Forsyth and Vote Leave’s Stephen Parkinson discuss Euroscepticsm”] The Leave campaigns continue to bicker with each other in increasingly absurd fashion, but it would be wrong to think that everything is going the In campaign’s way. Number 10, as I write in The Sun today, have been taken aback by the sheer
Last week, I was in the United States, where the media are even more subject to groupthink than their British equivalents. Fox News, supposedly the conservative voice, is really much more conformist than it pretends, and specialises in noisy opinion more than real news. The only person I met who got the Republican caucuses absolutely
Since Jeremy Corbyn was elected Labour leader, the party have had a fair few run-ins with dictators of the past. After John McDonnell quoted Chairman Mao during the budget, Corbyn then cited Enver Hoxha at the Labour Christmas party — while his director of comms Seumas Milne has questioned just how many deaths Stalin actually brought about.
‘Do you really not like Hillary Clinton, or are you just sexist?’ Cosmopolitan actually asked that question last week. Claiming that much anti-Clinton commentary is ‘gender-specific’, with Hillary frequently described as ‘dishonest’ or ‘shrill’, the mag asked Clinton’s critics to search their souls to see if they really do oppose Clinton the politician or just hate
A freedom-of-information request by Sikhs has turned up some curious statistics from the Metropolitan Police. They show that of the more than 400 ‘Islamophobic hate crimes’ recorded in the first half of last year, 28 per cent were not attacks on Muslims at all. They were either attacks on people thought to be Muslims (often
I love Twitter. Just like the historian Dan Snow, I find the social media site to be an overwhelmingly positive experience, and a great place to make friends and acquaintances and share ideas. Sure, most of the friends I’ve made are as politically insane as I am, but that’s the inevitable result of any service
[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/fightingovercrumbs-euroscepticsandtheeudeal/media.mp3″ title=”James Forsyth and Vote Leave’s Stephen Parkinson discuss Euroscepticsm”] This might seem impossible, but the row between Vote Leave and Labour leave has become even more complicated. This afternoon, Labour donor John Mills, who remains on the Vote Leave campaign, has put out this statement: ‘I am the founder and co-owner of Labour
Haven’t had a chance to follow the day’s political events and interviews? Then don’t worry: here, The Spectator, brings you the best of today’s audio clips in one place for you to listen to. Philip Hammond hit out at the UN after a panel ruled that Wikileaks founder Julian Assange was being ‘arbitrarily detained’ and