All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
It won’t take long for the US decision to allow women in combat roles to travel here according to The Times today, on the basis of, it must be said, unnamed sources. And the paper’s leader is duly supportive of the idea: ‘The number of women who want the risk and pass the tests will
‘Cameron’s speech on Europe is badly timed; we must stop this endless European bickering when facing such huge worldwide political challenges’. That’s the view of Neil Selby, the London-based Director of Executive Education for the Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business but who at the moment is, like me, here in Davos. ‘Let’s think instead
Claire Perry, the determined MP for Devizes, is very, very determined not to be set up as a 21st century Mary Whitehouse. Her job title, as the Prime Minister’s adviser on preventing the sexualisation and commercialisation of childhood, might suggest the Tory MP is yearning for a more innocent bygone era. But she’s insistent that
Normally, it is really rather tiresome when a politician is pilloried in the media for choosing to send their children to a private school above the local state schools. There’s even an argument that if you can afford to send your kid to a fee-paying school, then at least it is one less pressure in
What would George Orwell write about today? asked the Guardian. Here’s our nomination: an EU report that recommends giving the EU more powers to sack hacks, regulate the press and dole out subsidies to ‘good’ journalists, a pan-European press and failing newspapers. The report is called ‘A free and pluralistic media to sustain European democracy’.
Nick Clegg was apparently just being self-critical in his House magazine interview when he said the Coalition hadn’t got it right from the beginning on infrastructure. Those close to the Deputy Prime Minister are insisting that though speaking out on economic policy remains unusual in the Coalition, he was simply pointing out what has actually
Reihan Salam highlights the latest pro-immigration move by Stephen Harper’s Canadian government: Canada is looking to poach Silicon Valley’s intrepid foreign up-and-comers as it launches a “first of its kind in the world” program that will grant immediate permanent residency to qualifying entrepreneurs starting April 1. Immigration Minister Jason Kenney said Thursday he will head
Now we know why David Cameron delivered his Europe speech on Wednesday. It’s time for bad headlines again: the GDP figures just announced show that the British economy is contracting yet again — by 0.3 per cent in the final three months of last year (see above graph). Now, you’ll hear a lot of people
In the Jewish joke a matchmaker calls on a poor tailor living in a Tsarist shtetl in the middle of nowhere. He tells the old guy that he wants to arrange the marriage of his middle daughter to the heir to the Rothschild fortune, no less. The tailor isn’t impressed. He cannot marry off his
The government’s gay marriage bill is published later today, after receiving its first reading in the Commons yesterday. How it’s received by the Tory party will be an interesting indication of just how powerful David Cameron’s EU speech was this week. When Maria Miller unveiled the ‘quadruple lock’ to protect the Church of England from
The GDP figures for the final quarter of 2013 are out tomorrow morning, and with them will come the usual round of commentary from government and opposition. They’re not expected to be good: Citi predicts that the ONS’s first estimate will show a contraction of 0.1 per cent in Q4. So perhaps that’s why Nick
Can science and technology become the backbone of the British economy? David Willetts thinks so — he’s set out eight great technologies he believes will ‘play a vital role in delivering economic growth’. The Universities and Science minister explained today why British scientific research needs beefing up, albeit in a very free market manner: ‘The
Shadow Defra minister Mary Creagh told MPs today about her fears that a carcinogenic drug commonly used as an anti-inflammatory in horses could have entered the human food chain. Speaking in the Commons, she said: ‘I am in receipt of evidence showing that several horses slaughtered in UK abattoirs last year tested positive for phenylbutazone,
Angela Merkel’s statement yesterday was a big fillip to David Cameron’s European strategy as it suggested renegotiation was possible. One senior government source called it ‘as good as we could have hoped for’. I understand that Merkel and her officials have indicated to the Cameron circle that they want Britain to stay in the EU
Keep an eye on Jordan next week where King Abdullah is set to announce further subsidy cuts to water and electricity to ease the country’s economic crisis. The last time he was forced to cut subsidies was in November, prompting widespread protests across the country. It is likely similar unrest will follow if he now
Finally: Number 10 admits that far from ‘dealing with debt’, the government is seeing it rise. This morning the Prime Minister’s spokesman was grilled on the party political broadcast that horrified Fraser last night in which the Prime Minister said ‘we are making progress. We’re paying down Britain’s debts.’ Fraser has explained the reality –
Since revealing that the Shard’s ‘loos with a view’ give punters more than they bargained for, I’ve been inundated with even saucier tales emanating from western Europe’s tallest building. I hear that a new exclusive club has been formed at the top of the 1,016ft glass spire: the almost mile high club. Staff became aware that the
It did not, in the end, take very much to outfox Ed Miliband. You wonder what he had been expecting the Prime Minister to say about a referendum on withdrawing, or otherwise, from the EU. As it was, Ed floundered, and felt obliged to say that Labour would not be promising a referendum – that
How broken is the British criminal justice system? In this week’s View from 22 podcast, Fraser Nelson and Rory Geoghegan, research fellow at Policy Exchange, explain the rehabilitation game and the cover up masterminded by our political class to hide the truth about how we dole out justice. Why is the government so keen on using electronic tagging?
And then David Cameron has to go and spoil it all by telling porkies about what his government is doing to our national debt. The party election broadcast the Conservatives have just released is so astonishingly dishonest that it really would have disgraced Gordon Brown. In it, the Prime Minister tells an outright – how
Just for Coffee House readers, here is a sneak preview of the leading article from this week’s Spectator. Download our iPad and iPhone app to read the rest of the magazine first thing tomorrow. It was almost worth the wait. The substance of David Cameron’s speech on Europe was disclosed in this magazine a fortnight
Today’s midday press briefing at the European Commission was of course dominated by questions about the Cameron speech. This was despite efforts by Pia Ahrenkilde Hansen, Barroso’s spokesman-in-chief. First she tried to downplay the implications of the speech by making an anodyne statement welcoming democratic debate in member states. Then she announced that questions on
David Cameron’s entrance to the Commons at noon was cheered so ecstatically by his backbenchers that broadcasters decided to run the footage again, straight after PMQs. The Tory cheers redoubled when Ed Miliband rose to quiz the PM. Miliband, however, had discovered a flaw in the prime minister’s position. He probed him on his voting
Six months ago, the word ‘referendum’ had not even passed David Cameron’s lips. The issue was not on the table. I would, therefore, like to thank the 100 Conservative Parliamentary colleagues who co-signed my letter in June, urging the Prime Minister to commit to a referendum. In a small way, I like to think our
While David Cameron’s EU speech today made all the front pages, it is far from fresh news. Two weeks ago, James Forsyth revealed to Spectator readers what the Prime Minister would say in his speech. But as far back as last May, we revealed that a referendum on EU membership was almost certain: A referendum
Tory MPs have fallen for David Cameron’s cast-iron pledges to hold a referendum before. So are they right in buying into his latest promise? Labour is trying to expose cracks in the pledge to re-negotiate our relationship with the EU, then hold a plebiscite mid-way through the next Parliament, if the Tories win the election.
The private rented sector is no longer fit for the people it now serves. Almost half of those renting are over 35, and the proportion of privately rented homes has rocketed by 69 per cent. As MPs debate standards in the sector this afternoon, we’ll have to recognise that it isn’t just Neil and the
The Tory spinners were in an exceptionally good mood after PMQs today. The general feeling was that Ed Miliband had messed up, and this wasn’t helped by his aides having to clarify that when he told the Prime Minister that ‘my position is no – we don’t want an In/Out referendum’, he actually meant that
Conservatives will, no doubt, welcome the government’s announcement about A-levels today. Modules will be abolished. We will return to one tough exam at the end of the two years of study. Life will go back to the golden era of the 1970s when the top people got As and Bs and everybody else got a
Last week at PMQs, Ed Miliband had great fun, mocking the wait for David Cameron’s Europe speech. He lampooned the Prime Minister as the weak leader of a divided party. It was a performance that disturbed even some normally calm Number 10 aides. But this week, it was Cameron who was relishing PMQs. By the
At the risk of seeming parochial, I’d suggest that David Cameron’s long-awaited Europe speech and his endorsement of an In or Out referendum has implications and consequences for another referendum campaign closer to home. I suspect he has bought himself some time on the Europe question but this comes at a price. He has made
One of the more intriguing lines in David Cameron’s speech this morning was his declaration that ‘when the referendum comes let me say now that if we can negotiate such an arrangement, I will campaign for it with all my heart and soul.’ This begs the question of what Cameron will do if we can’t
This was no tantric anti-climax. This was a seismic moment in British politics. David Cameron breezed into a London press conference this morning and proceeded to reshape Europe. The wooden lectern he stood at was pale and municipal. He wore a dark suit and a nice purple tie, and his affable pink chops glowed with
David Cameron should savour today as the moment he finally satisfied Mrs Bone. I’ve been calling round Tory MPs, and Peter Bone, often a thorn in the flesh of the Prime Minister with his probing questions that his wife wants clearing up, is happy with the speech. He says: ‘I could hear Mrs Bone singing