All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
I will start by publicly apologising to Professor Meirion Thomas; in a moment of folly, I erroneously signed a petition decrying his alleged ‘disrespect’ of colleagues, in the wake of one of his articles in the Daily Mail. In my defence, my newborn was crying at the time and I was sleep deprived. Now, however,
Have you renounced alcohol for the first month of the year after a festive binge? Maybe you’re doing it for charity or for the sake of your liver. But is it worth the sacrifice? Bear in mind: 1. You’ll probably drink more at the end of it. Doctors agree that there’s no point in going
From News of the Week, The Spectator, 9 January 1914: It is with deep regret that we record the loss of this battleship, which was sunk in the Channel by a submarine on the morning of Friday week. The ‘Formidable’ was a vessel of 15,000 tons, and was completed in 1901. She carried a company
Unsurprisingly, David Cameron has this afternoon said he won’t take part in the TV election debates if the Greens are no included in one of the line-ups. Currently the proposal is for Cameron vs Miliband, then Cameron vs Miliband vs Clegg, then Cameron vs Miliband vs Clegg vs Farage. The Greens have been excluded, as
What’s the most important political development this year? The falling oil price. As of 2.30pm, Brent Crude was trading at $50.80 dollars a barrel—massively down on the $115 dollars a barrel it was trading at back in the middle of June. If the plunging price of crude is passed on to consumers, it’ll be the
After Nick Hewer announced last month that he will not return for the eleventh series of The Apprentice, Lord Sugar ought to take care that he doesn’t end up having to recruit two new sidekicks. When Steerpike last caught up with Karren Brady, the recently appointed Baroness Brady of Knightsbridge would not confirm her return for the next series. Instead, she suggested that her seat in the House
Defeat in May would be dire for either Cameron or Miliband. It would end their political career in ignominious failure. But winning would not be much better: they would be the weakest PM in living memory. Here’s why it won’t be easy for either of them: Miliband would be a prisoner of his own MPs:
Who benefits from Ofcom’s daft draft ruling that the Greens not be listed as a ‘major party’ for the General Election? Well, though the Greens are cross and have warned about the ‘damage it risks doing to British democracy’, they must know that this will help cement their credentials as an anti-establishment party. Nothing quite like
Will the next Parliament be impossible to handle? On this week’s View from 22 podcast, James Forsyth and Compass’ Neal Lawson discuss the latest Spectator cover feature on the challenges facing Ed Miliband or David Cameron if either manage to secure a majority on 7 May 2015. Will the Labour left or Tory right prove too troublesome for
The French liberal-left and George W Bush are not natural bedfellows, but today the former are sounding just a little bit like the latter. The ‘Je suis Charlie’ banners they are carrying in reaction to yesterday’s murders at the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo are effectively saying, to borrow the former US president’s
Have you ever wondered what illness you would prefer to die of? Cheerful of me, I know. But I’ve been thinking about this since a leading medical writer, Dr Richard Smith said we should stop wasting billions trying to cure cancer because it is the best way to go. His intervention last week was met
From News of the Week, The Spectator, 9 January 1915: The Report of the French Commission appointed to investigate the acts committed in violation of international law by Germany appears in the Journal Officiel of Friday. The Commission declares that “the terrible sufferings witnessed surpass in horror all that the imagination can conceive.” Not only
2015 is the year of Waterloo and Wellington. The 200th anniversary will be celebrated with grand commemorations on the battlefield and in London. But today, January 8th, 2015, is also the 200th anniversary of the Battle of New Orleans – the last time Britain fought America, and the beginning of the special relationship. How smoothly
I’m not one of those purists who shun Twitter. I often find it depressingly vacuous – but hey, I’m a journalist and a tart. So I tweet. From now on, though, I’ll avoid it in the hours following a terrorist attack. Facebook, too. Just look at what is now flooding the Internet, following the attack in
listen to ‘Douglas Murray discusses the attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine’ on audioBoom
Here is the leading article from the new Spectator magazine, out tomorrow, which went to press as news of the attack on Charlie Hebdo broke. listen to ‘Douglas Murray discusses the attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine’ on audioBoom
Gunmen have attacked the Paris office of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. Current reports suggest that up to 12 people have been killed. One eyewitness told French TV channel Itele: ‘Two black-hooded men entered the building with Kalashnikovs. A few minutes later we heard lots of shots.’ Ils ont tiré à deux reprises les balles ont
There were very few smiles at Downing Street this afternoon as a mustard clad Angela Merkel spoke of a ‘moving moment’. Yet that steely resolve had to crack eventually and with the final question at her joint press conference with David Cameron, the German Chancellor’s perma-frown turned into an impish grin for just a split
If you hear any government officials talking about blue rivers in the coming days, it’s down to Google. Steve Vaughan, the head of media monitoring at the Home Office, has just spent a week with Google to develop his digital skills. The reason we know this, is that he has written a government blog about it. In it,
Angela Merkel is in London officially to talk about the G7 and unofficially to discuss David Cameron’s hopes for a reformed European Union that Britain can stay in. But while she’s here, she might want to ask after one of Cameron’s colleagues, Iain Duncan Smith. Duncan Smith likes to tell Tory constituency parties the tale
Before today’s awful events in Paris, the meeting between David Cameron and Angela Merkel was going to be the big news of the day. The German Chancellor does not always observe the usual rules of neutrality when it comes to foreign elections. In 2012, she endorsed Nicolas Sarkozy in a joint TV interview, declaring that
As one of the oldest Conservative think tanks, the Bow Group has a prestigious roll call of former chairmen who include Michael Howard, Norman Lamont and Peter Lilley. Now, Mr S hears that times are a-changing at the organisation, with the group’s president Sir John Major stepping down. His departure comes after an eventful few years for the think tank and its colourful
Last year, I watched the British brouhaha over my friend Maajid Nawaz, the prospective Liberal Democrat candidate for Kilburn and co-founder of the counter-extremism outfit Quilliam. Nawaz had tweeted a cartoon called Jesus and Mo. Jesus to Mo: ‘Hey!’ Mo: ‘How ya doing?’ The end. That was it. Two top-tier prophets swapping props. The problem for
Politicians and commentators of all varieties agree: the next election is nigh-on impossible to predict. Even the grand Tory pollster Lord Ashcroft has refused to publicly say what he thinks, stating today only that he reckons ‘it’s going to be quite exciting’. Instead of offering us his thoughts on who will win, Ashcroft has posted
Andy Burnham has put in a request for an urgent question on the A&E crisis, I have learned. The question, which the Speaker has yet to decide whether or not to grant, is as follows: URGENT QUESTION Rt Hon Andy Burnham MP To ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will make a
Towards the end of 2014, David Cameron was finding PMQs ‘boring’. He knew that it was turning into a session where each week both he and Ed Miliband basically said the same thing over and over again, usually with a long string of statistics that the other couldn’t quibble while in the Chamber. He would
Religious murderers gunned down European freedom in Paris today. Tonight everyone is defiant. I am just back from a ‘Je suis Charlie’ vigil in Trafalgar Square, and the solidarity was good to see. I fear it won’t last. I may be wrong. Perhaps tomorrow’s papers and news programmes will prove their commitment to freedom by
Everyone predicted a sombre PMQs. It was anything but. A mood of opportunistic and lacerating silliness dominated today’s exchanges. The NHS – poor thing – was fought over like a bunny rabbit caught by two packs of ravening hounds. Miliband’s aim was to take the word ‘crisis’ and gum it to the health service with
As Mr S revealed yesterday, The Guardian has vetoed brown sauce for their palatable readers, confining it to be fit only for lowly members of the establishment. Champagne, on the other hand, is still okay. The paper are running a bubbly tasting session tonight which will allow their readers to ‘break down the barriers of this
We were lucky. The ambulance came in half an hour. By then my teenage son Edward was unconscious. He’d had a headache the day before, but by the evening he seemed to be getting better – sitting on the sofa, watching telly, annoying his little sister. We’d been through the meningitis checklist on the NHS
Today’s PMQs was, predictably, about the NHS. But the Punch and Judy nature of the session seemed particularly small in the light of events in Paris. After expressions of solidarity with the French, normal business was resumed. Ed Miliband was enjoying himself, confident that he was on his party’s chosen turf. He piled into Cameron
The Muslim Council of France, and of Britain, have denounced today’s attack on the offices of Charlie Hebdo. The imam of the mosque of Paris, Dalil Boubakeur, has said: “This is a thunderous declaration of war. The times have changed. We’re entering a new phase of this confrontation… we are horrified by the brutality and the
It is important, today especially, to remember that this is nothing new. We have been here before. On the 11th of July, 1991, Hitoshi Igarachi was murdered in his office at the University of Tsukuba. His crime? He had translated The Satanic Verses into Japanese. That was all. Eight days previously Ettore Capriola, the novel’s Italian translator, had
A preview of Hugo Rifkind’s column in this week’s Spectator, out tomorrow… Oh, I see. So it’s my fault. There I was, thinking that the general swamping and near collapse of accident and emergency services in hospitals across Britain might be the result of, you know, some sort of systemic problem within the NHS. With