All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Iain Duncan Smith is up before the Work and Pensions Committee this afternoon to talk about his department’s annual report. Doubtless the latest bad news on universal credit will crop up, which is a line in the OBR’s Economic and Fiscal Outlook which says there will only be a handful of claimants on universal credit
Generally when someone says they ‘couldn’t give a toss’ about something, you can safely bet more than 50p and a cake that it’s the most important thing ever to them. So when Ed Balls told Sky’s Murnaghan programme today that he ‘couldn’t give a toss’ about speculation that Ed Miliband might move him, it meant
At the beginning of the autumn, strategists from all three parties assumed that the theme of the season would be Labour’s poll lead narrowing as the economic recovery picked up pace. But that hasn’t happened. Instead, Labour’s lead has remained and its own poll numbers have actually ticked up. This is, largely, thanks to Ed
Rod Liddle’s observation about the death of Nelson Mandela, cut off, alas, at the age of 95, hardly needs supplementing but I was struck by one aspect of the blanket coverage, viz, its quasi-religious character. The Mirror, the day after the sad event, observed that Mr Mandela was as near as we get in this
In Whitehall, there is a phrase for the entity which would be left if Scotland were to vote Yes to independence next year. The acronym is rUK, which stands for ‘the rest of the United Kingdom’. This device of referring to a country’s altered state in its name has a precedent. After Macedonia broke away
Vince Cable is surely right in his comments yesterday that the most likely scenario for Britain leaving the EU is if Ed Miliband is Prime Minister after the next election. The theory, that you hear a lot in Westminster, goes like this: Miliband is forced by public opinion into promising a referendum on EU membership,
Spectator literary competition No. 2829 Peter Porter called Hull ‘the most poetic city in England’ but would Philip Larkin have agreed? What would he have made of his adopted home city being named 2017’s City of Culture? Answers, please, in verse of up to 16 lines, to be emailed to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 1
Like Winston Churchill, Nelson Mandela had one shining hour that eclipsed everything else and made the world better. Nelson Mandela belongs to a very rare class of great men. Such men are remembered not only for their great deeds, not only for making our world better, but for bearing a special grace that transcends the
Adopting a boxing pose in 1950. Speaking in the early 1960s. After being sentenced to life imprisonment in the Rivonia trial, Mandela and seven other men leave the Palace of Justice in Pretoria 16 June 1964 with their fists raised in defiance through the barred windows of the prison car. Mandela and his wife Winnie
Mr Steerpike was among the throng that gathered at the East India Club on Thursday night to hear about the development of the Margaret Thatcher Centre, the project to perpetuate the legacy of Britain’s greatest post-war leader. Donal Blaney, the Thatcher Centre’s CEO, and Conor Burns MP invited the Lady’s ‘most fervent supporters’ to pledge
Boris Johnson’s Margaret Thatcher Lecture to the Centre for Policy Studies attracted attention for its remarks about IQ, but the media ignored its central thesis. The speech is against equality, eloquently so. I date the mental collapse of the Conservatives from the moment in 1995 when Labour’s newish leader, Tony Blair, jumped up in Parliament
What with Britain’s dreadful performance in the PISA educational rankings, there has been comparatively little attention given to another international league table– Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index. The good news is that Bulgaria and Romania, with whom we will become much more intimate next month, are already in the EU’s top 5 for corruption, placed
Chris Leslie popped up on the Daily Politics today to complain about the way Ed Balls was received in the Chamber when he responded to the Autumn Statement. Asked why Balls made such a horlicks of yesterday’s performance, Leslie said: ‘Well, there are plenty of Conservatives who would like to say that, in fact there
Ed Balls didn’t have a good day yesterday with his poor Autumn Statement performance, but he’s had a slightly better day today, with an analysis from the Institute for Fiscal Studies that confirms families will be ‘substantially’ worse off in 2015/16 than they were in 2009/10. Balls wants to keep talking about the cost of
Yesterday’s autumn statement included the results of the Treasury’s study of the dynamic impacts of the cuts to Corporation Tax, which George Osborne is down from 28 per cent to 20 per cent. This study used the new HMRC Computable General Equilibrium model – as Fraser reported on Wednesday – and the results are impressive.
Sometimes when a significant public figure dies, even, perhaps especially, when that death comes as no surprise and may, indeed, be considered some form of release there is a natural tendency to wonder if the blanket media coverage that invariably follows is altogether appropriate or even seemly. Is it not all too much? A man
listen to ‘Ed Balls’ response to the Autumn Statement’ on Audioboo
Director of BBC News James Harding made a fascinating speech on Wednesday, setting out his mission statement for the Corporation’s newsroom: ‘Let’s start with holding people to account. In the offices of our local radio stations and regional TV operations – the places where the BBC does so much of its best work – we should
South Africa’s first black president Nelson Mandela has died aged 95 this evening. From The Spectator’s archive, here is a personal account of Nelson Mandela’s character from November 1994. Richard Stengel collaborated with Mandela on his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom. Nelson Mandela loves newspapers. He reads them slowly, studying each article, turning the page with unhurried
Downing Street has released the following statement from David Cameron: ‘A great light has gone out in the world. Nelson Mandela was a towering figure in our time; a legend in life and now in death – a true global hero. Across the country he loved they will be mourning a man who was the
Ed Balls has not had a good day. He has just given his post-autumn statement briefing, at which he argued that Labour had set the agenda for this statement with Ed Miliband’s energy price freeze pledge. He’s right, but as James explained in his blog, while Labour set the terms of debate for the autumn,
After an autumn in which Ed Miliband has made the political weather, the government desperately needed a competent autumn statement that would change the terms of political trade. Today, it looks like they got that. George Osborne avoided trying to be too clever by half on the cost of living and instead stuck to the
Hallelujah, vaguely. The Prime Minister’s extremism task force set up in the wake of the murder of Drummer Lee Rigby has just reported and its findings, ‘Tackling Extremism in the UK’ include the following admission: ‘We have been too reticent about challenging extreme Islamist ideologies in the past, in part because of a misplaced concern
Ed Balls knew that his response to George Osborne’s Autumn Statement today was going to be difficult. As I blogged this morning, the Shadow Chancellor didn’t really have anywhere to go other than complain about the cost of living. This was aggravated by the fact that any Shadow Chancellor’s response to any autumn statement is
I know this is not exactly breaking news but Gerry Adams is a vile man. Since no-one devotes much attention to Northern Ireland these days it is easy to forget this. Easy to file Adams and his Sinn Fein comrades into a musty drawer marked Ancient History. But the past is not another country. In Dublin
listen to ‘George Osborne’s Autumn Statement’ on Audioboo Mr Speaker, Britain’s economic plan is working. But the job is not done. We need to secure the economy for the long term. And the biggest risk to that comes from those who would abandon the plan. We seek a responsible recovery. One where we don’t squander
Just because George Osborne had some very good figures indeed to read out at today’s Autumn Statement doesn’t mean that he had an easy job. There’s Labour’s campaign on the cost of living, which the Chancellor and his colleagues have given enough ground to that it has credence. Then there are the worries of his
1. Growth has been re-forecast, again (above). This year and next, it’s a lot better than Osborne forecast last time (in the red). A little worse thereafter. 2. The projected deficit is, as a result, smaller than he forecast in March. But still way ahead of his original Plan A. 3. Debt as a share of GDP, Osborne
I’m interviewing the Prime Minister tomorrow – he is a keen reader of Coffee House (or so he says!) and is always happy to take some questions from CoffeeHousers. So please do leave some suggestions below. I’ll choose some, put them to him and report back.
George Osborne wants to use today’s Autumn Statement to focus on the good figures and his government’s responsible approach to the economy. This, Tory strategists hope, will leave Labour with nowhere to go: Ed Balls has been a prophet of doom whose predictions now look as useful as those offered by a chap with a
Look; I’m sorry Nelson Mandela is dead. It happens quite often to people in their 90s who have been very ill, even famous people, but I’m sure that doesn’t lessen the sadness for many of us. I never met the man but, on balance, I came to the conclusion that he was a force for
The Trussell Trust, which runs the biggest network of food banks in the UK, has used today’s Autumn Statement to remind politicians that over 500,000 people have sought emergency food parcels since April. There is a particular poignance to this,as today was the day the Lib Dems were having a song and dance about their
Following George Osborne’s 2013 Autumn Statement this morning, The Spectator’s Fraser Nelson, Isabel Hardman and James Forsyth discuss the Chancellor’s announcements, the reaction he received in the House of Commons, how Ed Balls responded to the statement, the winners and losers and what we can expect to see on tomorrow’s front pages. You can subscribe to
Throughout the day, we’ll be posting audio highlights from the 2013 Autumn statement — including speeches from George Osborne and Ed Balls. George Osborne’s statement to the House of Commons: listen to ‘George Osborne’s Autumn Statement’ on Audioboo