All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Strange happenings at a place that many people think of as one of Britain’s National Treasures: the National Trust. As we point out in our leading article this week, the Trust and their director-general, Dame Helen Ghosh, seem to have done a 360 on fracking. Last year, Dame Helen had an ‘open mind’ when it came
In recent weeks, I have found myself defending Ed Miliband as much as attacking him. I do believe that his election would be a calamity for Britain, but that doesn’t mean I think he is an idiot pursuing a stupid strategy. On the contrary, I think what he is doing is bold, coherent, radical and
Coalition relations are growing more fractious and sour. Even departments where the rapport between the Conservatives and the Lib Dems had been respectful, such as Justice, are starting to bicker publicly. Today the Mail splashes on a row between the two parties over knife crime, in the week of the stabbing of teacher Ann Maguire.
On location for The Sunday Times in the exciting by-election town of Newark-upon-Trent, I asked a nice local woman about her voting intentions. What way do you think you’ll be voting, I asked. This is what she said. “Um, yes, the poll. Well, I will turn right out of my house and walk down the
The pattern of the global pharmaceutical industry has long been towards cross-border mergers that combine research strength, market access and the capital needed to sustain new drugs through multinational approval processes.The UK has done well in this game, with excellent laboratory work and two giants still headquartered here, GlaxoSmithKline and AstraZeneca. The latter is part-Swedish
The graph below shows one of the most unsettling trends I’ve come across. It’s the female and male suicide rates, and while the former has halved since the 1980s, the latter has fallen by just 8 per cent. Men account for 77 per cent of all suicides, and the group now most likely to take
Picture the scene. Skinheads march through Trafalgar Square wearing SS uniforms and holding aloft portraits of the Fuhrer. They bring along a few right-wing Members of parliament who deliver comradely speeches and swear, arms raised in a sieg heil, to stay faithful to the party and the ‘race’. Thankfully, there would be universal outrage at
In a blog for the IEA the other day Kristian Niemietz looked at the economics of holding politically correct views. Disagreeing with the idea proposed by Spiked magazine that PC is motivated by a loathing for ordinary people, he argues that such views are in fact a ‘positional good’. A positional good is a good that
Ed Miliband has got the reaction he wanted to his speech on the private rented sector, which he used today to launch Labour’s local election campaign. Landlords and nasty right-wingers hate this latest stage in his ‘cost-of-living contract’. The Residential Landlords Association said rent controls ‘would critically undermine investment in new homes to rent and
Nigel Farage has been ‘egged’ while on the campaign trail. He was pelted by a protestor as he left his car. The protestor was dragged away by police. Mr S can’t help but notice that Farage has joined a list of political greats, including such lights as John Prescott and Ed Miliband, who have been
Well some of them are anyway. Consider the tweet above. It’s since been deleted and you can see why. Gerry Adams’ arrest might not be an obvious element of the Pan-Unionist Conspiracy but if you think that you lack the imagination necessary to be the wilder kind of Scottish nationalist. Then again paranoia is a
So far, I am disinclined to vote for Ukip in the forthcoming Euro-elections. Our area has been represented for many years by the great Daniel Hannan, the leading practising Eurosceptic of our times, so I have resisted the Faragiste temptation. But I felt a bit wobbly after reading an interview with Nigel Farage in the Guardian.
To impress prospective homeowners most estate agents usually draw the line at getting their teeth whitened and buying the second cheapest suit Top Man has to offer. The people flogging flats and houses on the site of Battersea Power Station made a bit of extra effort last night by putting on a lavish bash, with a
Labour’s decision to impose rent controls will do little to solve our housing problems. Rent controls are at best misguided and at worst could be counterproductive, longer term. Misguided because rents have not actually been rising that fast in recent years. ONS figures show that rents rose by only 1 per cent in England in the
Mr Steerpike was last night invited to the launch of Esme Kerr’s debut novel at Daunt’s in Holland Park. The author herself was nowhere to be seen. The organisers of the launch, journalists Emily Bearn and Claudia Fitzherbert, were as uncertain as Mr S as to Kerr’s whereabouts. ‘She’s definitely here somewhere. Look there she
In one sense the arrest of Gerry Adams for questioning in relation to the murder of Jean McConville is not a surprise. On the other hand it is astonishing. I cannot think how many times over the years the connection between Adams and the McConville case – appalling even by the standards trawled during the
Is the British male in serious trouble? On this week’s View from 22 podcast, the Labour MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington Diane Abbott discusses the topic of this week’s Spectator cover feature with Isabel Hardman. Why are boys written off more frequently than girls? Are males in trouble because females are doing better?
Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams presented himself to police this evening and was arrested in connection with the murder of Jean McConville. McConville was abducted from her home in Belfast by the IRA in 1972. Her body was discovered on a beach in County Louth in 2003. Adams has always denied any involvement in Mrs McConville’s
After 25 years in the hot seat, Jeremy Paxman is finally stepping down from Newsnight. Following months years of will-he-won’t-he speculation, Newsnight’s star draw has finally had enough. According to the BBC press release: ‘He informed Tony Hall, the Director General, and James Harding, the Director of News and Current Affairs, of his decision last summer, but
As the economy bounces back it keeps smacking Ed Miliband in the face. At PMQs today he tried to pose as the people’s champion fighting fat-cat capitalism. He started with Royal Mail, which is now worth a billion more than when it was floated. In hindsight, any privatisation can look like a Westminster mega-blunder or
So Theresa May has won her battle with Number 10 on stop-and-search reform, sort of. She announced a number of changes this afternoon to the power for police – but they’re all voluntary. That the Home Secretary has managed to get any of these changes into a state where she can announce them is a
What a very long PMQs today, presided over by a very bumptious John Bercow. The Speaker let the exchanges run into what he called ‘injury time’, made a rather poisonous jibe at Labour MP Fiona Mactaggart over her private schooling, and told the Prime Minister that as far as he was concerned, he had finished
I always thought that it was unlikely that Nigel Farage would stand in Newark. When I discussed the prospect of a by-election there with him on Monday, he seemed drawn to the idea of a local candidate; pointing out how the Canadian Reform Party had secured their key by-election breakthrough with ‘a completely unknown geography
Much relief in Downing Street this morning as Nigel Farage announces that he’s not standing in the Newark by-election. Coffee House readers had the best insight into the Ukip leader’s thinking when James posted the details of a conversation he’d had with Farage about the constituency. And his prediction that Farage may well decide to
Patrick Mercer has gone out in style. One Tory MP, hearing that the whips had tried to dissuade him from triggering a by-election fight with Ukip at an extremely inconvenient time for David Cameron, told me: ‘It’s a waste of time. He’s determined to damage Dave. He’s Colonel Nicholson in Bridge on the River Kwai!’
The latest series of Andrew Rawnsley’s ‘Leader Conference’ on Radio 4 starts tonight…keenly awaited obviously. But having been on the programme a couple of times – though not, funnily, since I did a piece for this magazine about the difficulty a woman has in getting her oar in across the masculine timbre of Danny Finkelstein
Yes, yes, yes, some young ‘uns support UKIP. Just as a few black people do too. But come on. We all know – because the polling tells us so – that UKIP supporters are likely to be older and whiter than the average voter and, most importantly, also more certain that the whole bleedin’ country
The following blog from a Catholic commentator about the Pope’s controversial tweet suggesting that “inequality is the root of social evil” puts the row about it on Twitter into context. But the real question is the language in which Pope Francis first tweeted: Spanish or Latin? In Latin, as the author of this blog observes,
Nigel Farage told me on Monday how closely he was watching the situation in Newark. He introduced the subject by saying, “there’s one other thing that could change everything”. But Farage’s comments to me yesterday make me think that he’s unlikely to stand in Newark. He said that he’d ‘been looking at candidates’ and mused
Who stands the best chance of winning the Newark by-election after Patrick Mercer’s resignation? It is a safe Conservative seat, which Mercer has held since 2001. At the last general election, Mercer was reelected to Newark with a 32 per cent majority: [datawrapper chart=”http://static.spectator.co.uk/xnER5/index.html”] The Tories announced when Mercer resigned the party whip that Robert
Patrick Mercer has quit as an MP. The Sun has the story, with the former Conservative saying: ‘It is clear to me that the constituency of Newark needs to be represented properly. I will not argue will the findings of the committee and I can only humbly apologise. “My military background has taught me that
Patrick Mercer has been banned from Parliament for six months, the Standards Committee has confirmed, following revelations by the Telegraph and BBC Panorama that he agreed to table questions in return for cash. He had already resigned the Conservative whip. The question now is whether Mercer resigns as an MP, triggering a by-election in Newark
High Speed 2 moved another step closer to actually happening last night, as the Hybrid Bill passed its second reading and vote in the Commons. 41 MPs voted against the bill, including 26 Conservatives who rebelled against the party’s three-line whip. The rebellious MPs fall into three categories: those whose constituencies will be affected by
Treasury Questions today was rather formulaic. George Osborne spent a little while congratulating himself on today’s growth figures (only to be cut off by Bercow, who complained his answer was ‘far too long’), and loyal Tory MPs congratulated him too. Many of them chanted the phrase ‘long-term economic plan’. Some Labour MPs helped out by