All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Last night’s summer party was only the warm-up. Today, we invited some of our subscribers over for a cup of tea in the garden here at 22 Old Queen St. It’s a chance for us to meet the people we work for – the best-read, best-humoured cohort of people in Britain (and beyond). Andrew Neil, Taki,
Labour’s ‘media grid’ for this week had Miliband’s millionaire spinner Tom Baldwin pencilled in to brief Times journalist Rachel Sylvester and give her an exclusive story for Tuesday’s paper. When the paper landed it was actually lots of Labour figures slagging off the leader, and saying how Ed had lots of policies but not the
Is the housing market really starting to cool, or is the heat moving to unexpected places? The number of mortgage approvals in May was down almost a fifth from a peak at the beginning of the year — reflecting tougher affordability tests and slower processing as a result of the Mortgage Market Review in April,
There is a fair bit of excitement in Westminster today that Boris Johnson could take over the Hertsmere seat of James Clappison now that the Tory MP has announced he is standing down at the 2015 election. But one thing that this announcement misses is that Clappison has not voluntarily stood aside. MPs are being
Last night The Spectator held their annual summer party at what the Mail Online have now christened ‘Spectator House’ (aka our Old Queen Street offices). Here is a selection of photos from the bash, courtesy of Alan Davidson.
Andy Coulson has this morning been jailed for 18 months for conspiracy to hack phones. He was sentenced at the Old Bailey along with four colleagues: Greg Miskiw and Neville Thurlberk were given 6 months, James Weatherup was jailed for four months, suspended for 12 months, and ordered to do 200 hours unpaid community work, and
I see that Tony Blair is to advise Egypt’s president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi on economic reform. El-Sisi has incarcerated 20,000 protestors, a bunch of journalists and murdered 2,500 opponents. Is there anyone who Mr Blair would not advise? Does the man not have even the slenderest shred of shame? Incredible. Incidentally, some unnamed former colleague
‘A culture changes by example and a licentious old man being found guilty will help do that,’ says a leader in the Times. Perhaps, but I would be much more impressed if it were a licentious younger man. We can all moralise away in retrospect about what the BBC and others allowed Rolf Harris CBE or Sir
In some countries, infrastructure planning can be exciting. Two years ago, I was watching a group of Dutch civil servants gleefully manoeuvring a DeLorean sports car around a conference hall, its wheels squealing on the polished floor. Why? Because the Ministry of Infrastructure and Environment was holding a summit, and the theme was, you’ve guessed
If Scotland did leave, it would be a disaster for the rump UK that would be left behind, I argue in the magazine this week. We would go from Great Britain to little Britain. Every time the Prime Minister of the rUK raised his voice on the world stage, he would be met by a
How radical is the coalition’s Modern Slavery Bill? On this week’s View from 22 podcast, the Labour MP Frank Field discusses the government’s efforts to clamp down on slavery and human trafficking with Isabel Hardman. Will the result be a Tory victory, a coalition win or a cross-party effort? Is Theresa May lacking the gumption
After 9/11 the Western world’s response fell between two poles; on the one hand lots of people agreed with General Norman Schwarzkopf that it was not our job to forgive the terrorists, it was God’s job; ours was simply to arrange the meeting. On the other hand some on the American Left asked the question:
Mr S wandered down to Ed Miliband’s big business speech at the ‘Inclusive Prosperity’ conference at the Science Museum today, and it has to be said: it was all a bit weird. While the space age theme of the ‘breakout’ coffee room was rather funky, it was so dark that you could not actually see
With Britain’s housing crisis worsening by the day, and Londoners facing a housing catastrophe, we urgently need to maximise the construction of new homes. It is crucial that this includes new council housing. In 1979 councils were building around a third of all new homes in the country. But by the end of the 1980s
How would the rest of the United Kingdom cope without Scotland? On this week’s View from 22 podcast, James Forsyth discusses his Spectator cover feature with Fraser Nelson and Eddie Bone from the Campaign for an English Parliament. Would England be left a lesser country without Scotland? Why has no one looked into how dramatic
I’m not a great believer in the ‘special relationship’, a concept that exists almost entirely in the mind of British journalists, especially during those occasional moments when the English-speaking nations have to bomb some awful former colony. Americans and Brits have a generally positive view of each other—speaking the same language will do that—but American
It was damn close. And it scored top marks for effort. Miliband’s plan today was to prove that Cameron’s NHS policy is a disaster. And to prove it with Cameron’s own admissions. Or omissions. ‘It’s four years since his top-down re-organisation of the NHS,’ began Miliband in that quiet, meticulous manner that always foretells a
David Cameron may have got away with his failure to block Jean-Claude Juncker as president of the European Commission, but that doesn’t mean that his MPs aren’t agitated about the way things are going in Europe. One aspect of last week’s European Council meeting that most people missed was a document setting out what appears
What has Labour got against people who work in McDonald’s? Last week we had Liam Byrne’s burger flip, where he slammed the same fast food employer for which he used to sizzle with praise. Now Andy Burnham has told the Unite conference in Liverpool: ‘What sort of message are we sending out when we say social
PMQs taught us a number of things about Labour and the Conservatives. The first is that while Labour has a bumper economy week underway, it does not feel sufficiently confident to attack the Conservatives on this issue in an aggressive forum like PMQs. This is probably quite sensible, given the attack that Cameron launched towards
David Cameron has announced a review into why so few antimicrobials have been introduced over recent years. This seems to be too little too late. The impending car crash in healthcare of death from minor surgeries and incidental infections looms over us all. I have seen patients in critical care die of infections because we
Today’s PMQs will not live long in the memory. Ed Miliband led on the NHS and the debate quickly turned into a statistical stalemate. Indeed, at the end Andy Burnham tried via a point of order—with little success—to get Cameron to admit that one of his numbers was wrong. listen to ‘PMQs: ‘Cheer up folks,
What with his victory parade to celebrate a failure in Europe and Labour’s continuing muttering and complaining, David Cameron must be feeling pretty positive about Prime Minister’s Questions today. He’s managed to annoy some of his MPs with a Downing Street hint that it will not oppose Michael Moore’s bill to enshrine the 0.7 per
There’s been a bit of a fuss over the claim in Lord Adonis’s growth report—repeated in a draft of Ed Miliband’s localism speech—that four-fifths of the private-sector jobs growth in the UK since 2010 has happened in London. The Prime Minister tweeted: Labour get their facts wrong on jobs – again. How can they ever
How much common ground do the political parties have on localism? As Isabel pointed out this morning, Labour and the Conservatives are engaged in an arms race to see who can out do the other on plans to devolve powers from central government. All politicians love to talk up localism — particularly in opposition, where
Mr Steerpike’s suggestion that things could be getting so bad for Labour that they may have to call on the services of Damian McBride, based on the disgraced former spin doctor’s helpful recent interventions, has ruffled a few feathers in Westminster. A Labour source pours an ice bucket on the idea: ‘I think it’s an
The Tories are very keen to sabotage Ed Miliband’s big speech about rebalancing the British economy, which is probably a compliment to the Labour leader as it suggests that they think he might be onto something. Both parties are certainly engaged in a localism arms race at the moment, arguing that they’re the party that
Who on earth would argue for a regime which hangs homosexuals, stones rape victims and sponsors terrorism across three continents? Who would act as a spokesperson or advocate of such a dictatorship? Well one answer appears to be ‘certain British Parliamentarians.’ In particular Labour MP Jack Straw, Conservative MP Ben Wallace and former Conservative Chancellor
How can politicians encourage this country’s economy to grow more evenly? Do you build a nice big railway line? Or try – and largely fail – to devolve greater power to cities using directly-elected city mayors? Today Labour sets out its answer in Lord Adonis’ growth review. Ed Miliband has already said that he will
Columnists like the Guardian’s Owen Jones have perpetuated a myth that harms rather than eases access to truly affordable homes for the impoverished on whose behalf they campaign. Taken in by the rhetoric of special interest groups, they recycle claims that house building is stymied by Treasury restrictions on council borrowing. Abolishing this ‘cap’ would
President Obama said recently that the United States cannot simply play ‘whack-a-mole’ in the Middle East. The only appropriate response to which is to say, ‘Yes you can.’ We can all understand why the President might be feeling a little tired over all this. For nearly six gruelling years he has been calling the troops
Will investigators ever get to the bottom of what’s going on in Tower Hamlets? London’s most dubious borough has several ongoing inquiries into the alleged misuse of funds, electoral malpractice and voter intimidation. The first of these appears to be encountering some issues. Following a Panorama programme on the borough’s mayor Lutfur Rahman, the Department
Is Damian McBride auditioning for a job as the saviour of the Labour Party spin operation? His re-energised blogging would certainly indicate as much. In the last few weeks the Brownite bad boy has left his job with Catholic aid charity Cafod, and returned to writing full time. He’s also managed to make a compelling
Normally when Speaker Bercow drags out a statement from the Prime Minister to over an hour and a half, the PM starts to look a bit pained. Today David Cameron looked as though he’d quite like a bit more: he’d spent most of the afternoon listening to Conservatives telling him how great he is and
