All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
The brilliant Matthew Parris writes in his Times column today about Margaret Thatcher using the word ‘swamped’ in relation to immigration in 1978. We had been averaging 500-700 letters a week when, discussing immigration in a TV interview, Mrs Thatcher used the word “swamped”. In the following week she received about 5,000 letters, almost all
Before the by-election battle with Ukip in Rochester that Westminster is rather obsessed with, there’s another chance for Nigel Farage’s party to cause a political earthquake. Tomorrow, voters in South Yorkshire will go to the polls to elect a new police and crime commissioner to replace Shaun Wright, who eventually resigned after the Rotherham child
The below is an edited version of a speech given yesterday by Paul Dacre to the NewstrAid Benevolent Fund, a charity for those who sell and distribute newspapers and magazines. Newspapers are all only too painfully aware of how we are having to adapt to survive in today’s modern, fast-paced, ever-changing digital media world. But the
Last week’s public-finance statistics were truly dreadful. They showed that despite a year of fairly robust economic growth, UK government borrowing since the start of the financial year 2014 to 2015 was actually 10 per cent higher than in the same period in 2013 to 2014. Once again, it seems, our public finances will be
From The Spectator, 31 October 1914: We do not ask for help of any material kind from the United States; we recognize that a strict neutrality is not only her proper course, but represents her true interests. All we desire is the sympathy of comprehension, the sympathy of a clear understanding of the principles on
Downton Abbey fans are on high alert that something drastic might be about to happen to the loyal labrador of the house, ‘Isis’. On this week’s episode she was pointed out as looking ‘terribly listless’, with Lord Grantham subsequently agreeing to have the vet check her out. Surely this can’t have anything to do with
Liam Fox has launched a series of ‘One Minute Fox’ videos in which he sets out his position on various hot issues from the threat of fundamentalism to welfare reform. He unveiled the series – which he says will become more controversial as the election approaches – to a group of Conservative MPs this evening. Intriguingly, none
The main business of the day in the House of Commons is Labour’s debate on Lord Freud, a row that blew up nearly a fortnight ago. The party’s motion, entitled ‘Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Welfare Reform and disabled people’, finishes with ‘. . . this House has no confidence in the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for
What’s next for David Cameron’s tussle with Brussels? The Prime Minister made clear yesterday that ‘we are not paying a sum anything like’ the £1.7 billion demanded by the European Commission last week, and now the focus is on how much he can get the bill reduced by. He will have to pay a bill,
Tunis A bloody two-day siege at a house in the outskirts of the capital last week didn’t augur well for Tunisia’s landmark elections. Six suspected jihadists, including five women, and a policeman were killed in the standoff in Tunis. A small child was also critically injured in the crossfire, which came amid repeated warnings by
Today’s Independent explains why the Tory party is starting to get rather jitter again. Sure, Labour has fallen five points to level-peg with the party in a ComRes poll for the paper, with both on 30 per cent, but as Mike Smithson points out, the party could still be losing seats to the Opposition even if
Nick Boles has a habit of making explosive interventions and then disappearing from political debate for a little while after an almighty telling off from Number 10. Tonight he may be planning to lay low for a while, because he’s probably wanted for causing another big row. The Skills Minister has told Total Politics magazine
The UK Land Registry today released its latest report on house prises, showing the ticket-cost of an average home in England and Wales down 2.2 per cent to £177,299 in September from a peak of £181,324 in November 2007. No, that still doesn’t mean that underpaid Westminster interns can afford to buy a home in
Given how close the phone-hacking scandal got to the heart of Downing Street, the Tories will be hoping nothing will provoke more questions this side of the election about Cameron’s hiring of Andy Coulson. So there will be some worries about an intriguing book deal done late last night. Neville Thurlbeck – the jailed News of the
[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_21_August_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Damian Thompson joins Fraser Nelson to discuss the Pope v the Vatican.” startat=928] Listen [/audioplayer] Is it sinful to be not so keen on the whole immigration thing? I suppose Justin Welby thinks so, according to his recent comments. ‘We have to be careful and you can’t over-burden the community, you have to
The most curious thing of all is that the sailor should become so much a part of his peculiar element that his detachment from the land is even more marked than the landsman’s imperfect acquaintance with the sea. The sailor comes on shore like a man penetrating doubtfully into an unknown hinterland; he has the air
Turkey and the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (Isis) are engaged in a cold war. Although they despise each other, they will avoid direct engagement, for fear of the massive damage that could result. A little known Turkish exclave that lies inside Syria, known as the Tomb of Suleyman Shah and currently under siege
Anyone who is trying vaguely to control their weight and still eats tasty, nasty processed foods — me, for instance — gets used to playing the game of ‘guess how many calories there are in the packet’. Today I bought the bag of sweets pictured above, and discovered a new difficulty level. The rules of
The threat from Daish, the Arabic acronym for the so-called Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, has gone from a side issue to a central imperative, judging by discussions with Kurdish leaders on my four fact-finding trips to the Kurdistan region in the last year. Last November, I was told how Daish operatives were assiduously
MPs have a free vote tonight on Zac Goldsmith’s amendment to the Recall Bill. But I have learned that instead of voting with their Tory colleague, the Prime Minister and chief whip are to abstain in the vote. Michael Gove and David Cameron have agreed to do so, not because they oppose Goldsmith’s proposals, which
Tory MPs might have appeared keen to support the PM after his surprise EU bill when they spoke in the Commons this afternoon. But behind the scenes the party is in a pretty precarious situation. Open unrest is being held back by two things: a realisation among backbenchers that they do need to hunker down
At the risk of intruding into someone else’s calamity, if you can’t enjoy this what can you enjoy? By this I mean, of course, Scottish Labour’s meltdown. (Suggestions the party is not actually an iced lollipop should not be taken too seriously.) The thing to remember about Labour in Scotland is they’ve never been as
WANTED: a fall guy to oversee the Scottish Labour Party’s greatest Westminster electoral setback in May 2015 – and be blamed for it afterwards. Seven-month fixed contract. It seems that Hutchie boy Anas Sarwar doesn’t fancy the job, having ruled himself out this afternoon. But Jim Murphy hasn’t (yet), which has made him the bookies’ favourite. I’m not tempted
The House of Commons is in a febrile, nervy mood this afternoon. No-one is quite happy with anyone else. David Cameron raised a cheer when he told MPs that he will not pay the €2bn bill apparently sprung on him by the European Commission, but he had very little to say when pressed by Labour
Washington, D.C. David Cameron, Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg – the obvious targets to blame for the disillusionment engulfing British politics. But let’s not forget the role of the Americans. Thanks to the main Westminster parties’ increasing use of technologies and personalities from Washington, the traditional British forms of electioneering have been gradually abandoned for
On 1 December, The Spectator will be hosting a conference on the geopolitics of energy, featuring MP David Lidington, the UK’s minister of state for Europe, and Price Waterhouse Cooper’s chief UK economist John Hawksworth. Tickets are still available and can be purchased online. The UK is quite windy. We need to reduce our carbon emissions.
It’s been a while since David Cameron had to give such a difficult feedback statement to the House of Commons after a European summit. Even his last tricky address, on his failure to block Jean-Claude Juncker as president of the European Commission, could at least be spun as the Prime Minister valiantly standing up for
When Justin Welby spoke to the Parliamentary press gallery today, he took great care to emphasise a number of points. One was about the influence the Church of England has in public debate, and the other was about the church’s influence in local communities and the strength of its connections in those communities. He didn’t
From The Spectator, 31 October 1914: The Germans are doing rapidly and effectively what we ought to be doing, and what we must do if we are to win. They are raising new armies and training the remaining portion of their adult male population to arms. When the war began we all thought that about
Britain has ended combat operations in Afghanistan. The war did topple the Taleban, but it hasn’t got rid of them. It has improved some things in Afghanistan – better roads, better education, better newspapers – but the country is still corrupt, bankrupt and dangerous. When Britain and America decided to go into Afghanistan in 2001,
If the European Commission had come to Britain demanding another £90 million because this country’s economy had performed better than expected, it would have been a political headache for David Cameron. The money would have been handed over and Ukip would have slapped it on to its election leaflets. But the Commission’s demand for £1.7
Stephen Fry is a fan of the villanelle — it was what inspired him to write his how-to book for poets, The Ode Less Travelled. And so are you, if the response to a recent call for autumn villanelles is anything to go by. Here is the poet Stanley J Sharpless on the demands of
From The Spectator, 24 October 1914: It is alleged that in London there are something like a hundred thousand people, and as many more in the rest of the country—probably the figures are twice too high—of German and Austrian nationality. These aliens are for the most part at present earning their living in various trades.
The issue is not that Russell Brand seems to believe that 9/11 was some sort of joint effort between George W Bush and the bin Laden family – that’s sort of a given, no? The man is a drug-addled idiot with the geopolitical knowledge and awareness of a tub of ‘I Can’t Believe It’s Not
