All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
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
From ‘The Threat of Grand Admiral von Tirpitz’, The Spectator, 9 January 1915: THE Manchester Guardian of Tuesday published the text of the interview with Grand Admiral von Tirpitz which appear last week in the New York Sun. This was the interview in which Admiral von Tirpitz seriously proposed that German submarines might declare war on all enemy
As oil prices continue to plummet, the rather sterile debate over Saudi intentions drags on. Some believe the Saudis are locked into a secret conspiracy with Washington to stiff Russia and Iran. Others prefer to take the Saudi oil minister at his word and believe that it’s all about market share. The truth is that
Anyone listening to Grant Shapps on LBC this afternoon will have noticed he was given a fairly easy ride from a number of the callers phoning-in. Rather than the typical angry voter with an axe to grind, the Tory chairman faced questions of a more old-fashioned, deferential nature. Tony, from Parsons Green, appeared to want
Vince Cable will tomorrow lose his job as Liberal Democrat economy spokesman for the election, Coffee House understands. The party is set to announce its team of leading spokespeople for the General Election and I have obtained names in advance. Cable’s demotion in favour of Danny Alexander has been expected for a few months now. The
Ed Miliband’s office has complained that no-one told them about Angela Merkel’s visit to London, which takes place tomorrow. They are apparently very irritated about no-one telling them, even though the Foreign Office isn’t required to flag up visits like this anyway. But worse than that, they were given warning: in the newspapers. Here are the
Has one Ukip defection become less likely? Before Christmas, top Tories were falling over themselves to tell Basildon and Billericay MP John Baron how much they valued him and how seriously they were taking his demands for proper compensation for nuclear test veterans. Baron was very high on the list of MPs likely to defect
Mr S is inclined to believe this is a piss-take, lest it be clear the Guardian completely disappeared up its own bottom. Apparently enjoying HP Sauce basically makes you some sort of quasi-racist, Ukip-voting, little-England philistine: ‘Created in the late 1800s, brown sauce reads, tastes and smells like the idle creation of some Phileas Fogg-type,
Today Angela Merkel will meet David Cameron in Downing Street. She will tell him what she can do – and what she cannot do – to help keep Britain in the EU. Yet she might like to begin by telling him what she plans to do to keep her own people behind the EU project, for
If social media is going to play a deciding role in the general election, the brains at Conservative HQ ought to take a closer look at who they promote on their Twitter account. The official Conservative Twitter feed has a Tweetminster list of Tory MPs on it which allows their 131,000 followers to catch up with the ramblings
How far will Jim Murphy be allowed to go? Yesterday, the Scottish Labour leader proposed funding extra nurses through the Mansion Tax — something his colleagues south of the border aren’t particularly happy with. On the World at One today, the Hackney MP and potential London Mayoral candidate Diane Abbott attacked Murphy, and at first
Michael Gove pitched up on Newsnight yesterday to give one of his typically confident performances to the programme. Apparently CCHQ don’t believe any floating voters watch the BBC’s flagging current affairs show. The Chief Whip was removed from his previous role as Education Secretary because of poor poll ratings with floating voters, and senior Tories involved in
Things are getting heated in Rochester after Conservative HQ announced that the lacklustre Kelly Tolhurst will return as their candidate for the general election. The businesswoman put on a dismal display when she represented the Tories in the recent by-election against Mark Reckless. Reckless won then, and judging by his recent retweets, the Ukip MP is confident he