All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
The Tories may have watched Douglas Carswell’s re-entry into the House of Commons in silence, but he seems to be getting a reasonably warm reception from his old colleagues behind the scenes. He has already exchanged jokes and arranged to dine and drink with a number of them. For a few weeks this will send
The Synod on the Family in Rome today caused an ‘earthquake’ – the word is being used on Catholic blogs everywhere – when it appeared to tweak the Church’s line on homosexuality and second marriages. ‘Line’, please note, not its teaching on the sinfulness of all sexual acts outside marriage, which it does not have the authority to change
Today in Parliament, MPs are voting on a backbench motion (supported by a one-line whip from the Labour party) proposing that Britain recognises Palestine as a state. The motion attempts push a new status quo on Israel-Palestine, without the agreement of the partners on the ground. This is not just an arrogant move, it is a pointless
Douglas Carswell has just re-entered the House of Commons as a Ukip MP. Nigel Farage was in the peers’ gallery to watch his first elected MP take his seat. So were many Tory MPs, who watched Carswell walk through the Chamber in deadly silence. If Mark Reckless does win the Rochester by-election, how to receive
In this week’s magazine, Justin Marozzi writes about a vicious dog attack on a beach in Norfolk, which left his mongrel Maisie close to death and his own fingers ‘redesigned’ by a bull terrier’s teeth. What of the owners? Well, they slunk off, and were last seen ‘kicking and whipping’ the dogs in punishment. The
Kevin Pietersen’s autobiography is the saddest book of its type I’ve ever read. By its end you begin to think that KP and the ECB deserved each other and realise that, a) no-one deserves that and, b) there’s no way this marriage of convenience – for such it was – could ever have ended happily
The broadcasters’ proposals for the TV debates have not gone down particularly well in many quarters of Westminster. David Cameron, who has been trying to avoid the issue for as long as possible, claimed today that he has ‘always been in favour of TV debates’, even though he’s not really in favour of any debates
When I finally reached the hospital, my grandma had already lost consciousness. As soon as I saw her, I could tell she wouldn’t wake up again. We all stood around and waited, and hoped it wouldn’t take too long. I sat on the bed and held her hand. Thankfully, it only took an hour or
It has been clear for several years now that the Tories would not agree to a repeat of 2010 when there were three debates in three weeks featuring the Tory, Labour and Lib Dem leaders. The Tories complain that these debates sucked the life out of the campaign—but the fact that they didn’t benefit from
Boris is at it again this morning. Revealing, that is, why he cannot be trusted with office. To be charitable, I wouldn’t trust many newspaper columnists with the keys to power. But, of course, most Grub Street residents have no interest in being crowned Emperor. Boris does. Which is why his columns for the Daily Telegraph are
Jonathan Powell seems to be unavoidable at the moment. Having read his first two books a couple of times I felt a weary sense of resignation on news of the third. It wasn’t until I saw and heard him on channel 4 news that I felt serious irritation. We, whoever ‘we’ may be, should talk
Sometimes I read things that really get on my wick, and last week was one of those times. A new, ‘definitive’ 20-year study has ‘demolished the argument that the drug [cannabis] is safe’, according to the Daily Mail. Has it, though? There are various things wrong with that claim. One, no study is ‘definitive’; two,
Nigel Farage – an apology. My suspicion had been that Ukip would not frighten the horses terribly in Heywood and Middleton. It is not great territory for them, after all. Yet they came within a few hundred votes of ousting Labour – a remarkable result, far more indicative than that in Clacton. And a calamitous
From The Spectator, 17 October 1914: To all British people here and overseas by far the most delightful news of the week is that of the landing of the Canadian contingent at Plymouth on Wednesday afternoon. As may be imagined, the reception given to the Canadian troops was of the heartiest, and the Canadians will
Tory MP Brooks Newmark quits politics after sexting photograph comes to light; talks of depression, needing help, checks into clinic. To which the response of many people will be: Yeah, right. He’s playing the depression card. I hope Spectator readers will think again, however horrified they are by his crazy actions and the pain he has inflicted on
Ever the insurgent, Nigel Farage decided to give his post-Clacton interview to BBC Sunday Politics today rather than Andrew Marr show. He would have regretted fairly soon: the line of questioning was all about Ukip policies, which are notoriously flimsy. What about Patrick O’Flynn’s idea for a SamCam tax on luxury goods? Farage dropped it,
So it now seems pretty clear to me that we can no longer send women photographs of our genitals without worrying that we might be the subject of some horrible sting operation and consequently suffer public humiliation and possibly lose our jobs. One by one, the harmless little pleasures in life are being withdrawn from
The Tory party reacted with striking calm to Douglas Carswell and Ukip’s thumping victory in the Clacton by-election. But this calm will not hold if Ukip and the other Tory defector Mark Reckless win in Rochester and Strood. This seat is far less favourable terrain for Ukip than Clacton and Reckless is a far less
In the few days since Conservative defector Douglas Carswell gave Ukip its first Westminster MP and John Bickley scared the pants off Ed Miliband by almost snatching Heywood and Middleton from Labour, there has been much talk of a broken mould and a new age in British politics. listen to ‘John Bickley: ‘If there was
From The Spectator, 10 October 1914: [TO THE EDITOR OF THE “SPECTATOR.”] SIR,—It is a self-evident proposition that an army recruited by voluntary enlistment is, caeteris paribus, more efficient than one compulsorily obtained. It is also true, though not so self-evident, that voluntaryism must in the end deleteriously affect national character far more than compulsory
Why are the Conservatives so serene after losing the Clacton by-election and seeing their vote collapse in Heywood and Middleton? It is not that the party has finally decided endless fighting is no longer a good idea, but that it is holding its breath for the Rochester and Strood by-election. If Mark Reckless, the second
Talking to people in Clacton-on-Sea this week, there was a sense that, as much as they thought there were too many people in Britain, they felt politicians had it too easy. Over and over again people told me that MPs in Westminster didn’t understand working people. Politics is becoming less about policy and more about empathy; voters
The United States faces a very difficult task in Syria. It is trying to use air raids to contain and weaken ISIl. But, at the same time, it is trying to prevent the Assad regime from turning this intervention to its advantage. However, as the Washington Post reports today, the Assad regime have taken advantage
Jonathan Powell is a British diplomat who served as Tony Blair’s chief of staff from 1997 to 2007. During this period, he was also Britain’s chief negotiator for Northern Ireland. These days, Powell runs a charity called Inter Mediate, which works as a go-between among terrorist organizations and governments around the globe. David Cameron appointed
Since the death of Gabriel Garcia Marquez earlier this year, I have been meaning to set a comp with a magical realist twist and I finally got around to it with this latest challenge — to take something mundane (a parish council meeting or the weather forecast, for example) and filter it through the lens
From The Spectator, 10 October 1914: AN old explanation of the phrase “at loggerheads”—whether true or not we do not attempt to say—runs as follows: When two armies met in what we should now call entrenched positions, those positions were spoken of as leaguers. The leaguers were pushed on, from both sides just as the
The Tory whips are busy today, but not necessarily with fallout from the Clacton by-election. They have sent a message round to MPs saying the following: ‘There is a possibility that there will be a business statement on Monday which will also affect whipping next week.’ Some MPs have read this as a suggestion that
Al Gore is an unlikely source of inspiration for Ukip – in fact the party once pledged to ban the former Vice President’s controversial climate change documentary from schools, calling it dangerous global warming ‘propaganda’. But might they have more in common than either of them would care to admit? During the count for the
It turns out the house really does always win. The BBC reports: ‘Professional poker player Phil Ivey has lost a High Court battle against the owners of a London casino over his £7.7m winnings. Crockfords casino in Mayfair accused Phil Ivey of cheating by using the “edge-sorting technique” in card game punto banco. Edge-sorting involves
listen to ‘Podcast: Ukip’s Clacton victory’ on audioBoom Labour are doing their absolute best to put a positive spin on their result in the Heywood and Middleton by-election, despite coming within a whisker of losing their once-safe seat to Ukip. With Ed Miliband duty-bound to congratulate his new MP Liz McInnes in person, a hurried
How are the two parties reacting to their bruising night in the two by-elections? David Cameron – after telling us, helpfully, that ‘there were two by-elections last night’ – went on to say repeatedly that the results spoke to a ‘wider truth’, that if you vote Ukip, you’re in danger of getting a government led by Ed
The successful transplantation of a uterus represents the last major surgical goal in the field of reproductive gynaecology. This feat has recently been achieved by a team at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. The 36-year-old patient was born with a condition called Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser (MRKH) Syndrome. The condition occurs in one out of every 4,000
Spare a thought for the authors in the running for the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction: the announcement of its shortlist yesterday was somewhat overshadowed by the award of the Nobel Prize for Literature, with the nation’s literati stampeding as one to frantically Google ‘Patrick Mondiano novelist’. The clash is rather a shame, as this
Chest x-rays have been around for 100 years and are still widely used in health care. According to the government’s ongoing National Awareness and Early Diagnosis Initiative (NAEDI) a chest X-ray might be suggested for individuals with possible symptoms of lung cancer. The NAEDI website also states: `This is a standard procedure and nothing to