All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
I spent much of Tuesday afternoon shivering outside the offices of Universities UK. I was there to protest their publication of guidelines which suggest segregated seating of men and women may be legally required where guest speakers demand it. It’s reassuring to learn that protest sometimes works: by Friday, the beleaguered body had shifted their
During this year of recovery, I have enjoyed the turn of the seasons more than ever before. This has been a spectacularly beautiful autumn, with brighter colours going on for longer. London is brimming with beauty and magic: there’s the new bridge by Thomas Heatherwick coming — a kind of Hanging Gardens of Battersea —
David Cameron’s declaration that prisoners “damn well shouldn’t” have the right to vote is a reminder that this issue hasn’t gone away. Cameron was emphatic that the final verdict on this question should rest with the British parliament not the European Court of Human Rights. But this is not the current situation as Cameron admitted
If I were to say that I admire Charles Moore tremendously you would know there must be a ‘but’ looming towards the end of the paragraph. Nevertheless I do admire Charles Moore an awful lot. His column is a weekly treat much enjoyed by all sensible folk. If you don’t do so already you should
On Monday Douglas Murray blogged that I personify the ‘craziness’ of the British immigration debate. By criticising the views of both a Ukip councillor and a Labour pollster I was apparently guilty of a doublethink, as if there were no political space between open borders and ‘send the lot back’. But there’s nothing contradictory about
Today’s announcement that migrants cannot claim benefits if their English is so bad that they are unemployable looks suspiciously like another attempt by ministers to reassure fears about the end of those transitional controls on Bulgarian and Romanian migrants. And that is, in turn, an attempt to reassure Tory MPs that the government has done
Further to yesterday’s post on Britain’s apathy about Christian persecution, the main question people asked in response was: what can Britain do, without military means? Taking aside that our military power helped to bring about persecution in Iraq and almost certainly would have done in Syria had this government got its way, there are lots
When you look ahead to 2014, it is hard to escape the conclusion that two insurgent parties are making the political weather. The two big votes of the year are the European Elections, where Ukip may well top the poll, and the Scottish independence referendum, a product of the SNP’s Holyrood majority. The SNP and Ukip
That’s Duggy Dug, the latest champion of the campaign for Scottish independence. For some reason Brian Cox – the actor, not the physics professor – has decided to put his voice to this cringetastic calamity. Duggy Dug (even the name is grim) is not, mercifully, part of the official Yes campaign which, given his plainly
The huge rift in the Home Affairs Select Committee was laid bare last week when Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger appeared before the committee to defend his decision to publish state secrets and to challenge criticism that he had endangered national security by doing so. Committee chairman Keith Vaz always enjoys being in the limelight. He
We already knew that welfare would be a key dividing line for George Osborne at the next election. He set up the dividing lines in the emergency budget and comprehensive spending review in 2010, and they have largely stuck, which is a testament to the Chancellor’s skill as a strategist. But at today’s Treasury Select
The Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority has released its final report on MPs’ pay today. It’s pretty much what was expected — a big salary bump, paid for by cutting back expenses and pensions, to start in the next Parliament. This is what you need to know: MPs’ pay will a take one-off hike to £74,000.
Much is prattled on about social mobility. Practically the whole emphasis, however, is put on schools. Yet by the time most children reach school, life’s race for many of us has been determined. The report I wrote for the Prime Minister published in December 2010, The Foundation Years: preventing poor children becoming poor adults, had
It’s a shame that Adam Afriyie now seems to be a busted flush when it comes to his leadership ambitions. The Tory MP had succeeded not just in designating his fantasy cabinet, but also the lower ministerial ranks. Mr Steerpike hears that at the height of his plotting, he sidled up to fellow Conservative James
When the Pollard Report into the BBC Jimmy Savile abuse affair was published in December 2012, BBC Trust Chairman Lord Patten confidently told a press conference: ‘As far as we’re concerned the report is an excellent account of what happened. We’re totally in support of the recommendations, and that as far as I am concerned
In Dublin, where I am writing this, people are watching the Scottish referendum campaign more closely than in London. Despite the polls, they almost expect a Yes vote, but most do not want one. People fear that Yes would weaken the UK and therefore make it a less useful ally for Ireland in the EU.
Spectator readers won’t have been particularly surprised by the FT’s story that Ed Miliband is dropping his opposition to a third runway at Heathrow: James reported that the Labour leader was softening his stance on aviation back in November: ‘Miliband is also determined to avoid a head-on collision with his shadow chancellor. Having put Balls
This is our positively final offer of the year, and the famed old St James merchants, Berry Bros. & Rudd, have come up with a stunning mixed case which would see you through a deliciously bibulous Christmas. Together we have selected five table wines (there are two bottles each in the case) plus single bottles
What would the exit negotiations look like if Britain voted to leave the EU? Well, Open Europe tried to give us an idea today hosting a war game sketching out what would happen next. (Seb wrote about their work on the renegotiation earlier). It left me with the view that there would be a second
After his suggestion of cross-party talks on MPs’ pay at PMQs today, Ed Miliband has just upped the stakes by suggesting that the three party leaders meet Sir Ian Kennedy of Ipsa tomorrow to set out their opposition to the pay rise. His letter, which you can read in full below, reminds Cameron that he
What will happen when Britain sits down to negotiate a new relationship with the European Union? The Open Europe think tank decided to find out with ‘war games’ in Westminster this morning. Expert negotiators representing the UK, EU Commission, Germany and France among others tried to figure out how a new Europe could be built
Christmas is here. And Ed Miliband’s script writers have already got their present. The sack. Really, he seems to have let them go. At PMQs he was reading out insults that pre-date Nicholas Parsons. Out of touch, complacent, the plaything of millionaires. Cameron can fight off such jibes his sleep. Tory backbenchers asked questions full of
Today’s NAO report on free schools has recognised the ‘clear progress’ we have made opening 174 schools in three years with significantly lower costs than Labour’s school programmes. But, as Isabel Hardman, Toby Young and Policy Exchange’s Jonathan Simons have pointed out, instead of reading the report the BBC and PAC Chairwoman Margaret Hodge have chosen to ignore the facts.
Tory backbenchers are in an odd mood after PMQs. They weren’t happy about the leaders agreeing so readily on their pay, but their stances were hardly a surprise, and Labour MPs looked just as flat as Ed Miliband and David Cameron skirted around a possible cross-party deal on pay. But what’s striking is that while
I have an ebook published next Thursday, called The Silence of Our Friends, on the persecution of Christians in the Middle East and the apathy of the West about this tragic and historic event. (A link will appear at the top of this page next week – in the meantime please spread the word.) I
Something extraordinary happened on the Committee corridor in Parliament today. A government Secretary of State turned up to a session led by veteran troublemaker Bill Cash to accept a bill that the Tory MP was pushing. More extraordinary still to those unfamiliar with the range of subjects that Cash takes an interest in is that
Ed Miliband wanted agreement from the Prime Minister about MPs’ pay today, but Mr Steerpike hears that the Labour leader is keen to strike agreement on another topic. After David Cameron revealed to the Spectator that he was a member of #TeamNigella, Labour sources whisper to Steerpike that Ed is ‘definitely a member of #TeamNigella too’. So that just
Danny Finkelstein’s column in the Times today is characteristically elegant and incisive. In politics as in life he writes, “whatever apparent power and temptation lies with the adoption of the identity of victimhood it is ultimately destructive”. Since Finkelstein is pondering lessons that may be drawn from the life of Nelson Mandela it may not be
Ed Balls, the Shadow Chancellor, gave an abortive performance in response to the Autumn Statement last week; he blamed his embarrassment on the cacophony of jeers from the Tory benches. You might have thought that Balls would lay low this week. Not a bit of it. There he was chanting ‘Dave, Dave, Dave’ and testing
James Forsyth is right. Whitehall does need reforming. But he is wrong to present this in stark terms of ministers versus mandarins. The real position is more complicated, and not nearly as negative. First, the positives. The Civil Service has delivered an unprecedented scale of cuts in the spending reviews, and in staff numbers with
Ed Miliband started off with a soft question to which he already knew the answer at PMQs: ‘Does the PM agree with me that given the crisis ordinary families are facing in their living standards, MPs should not be given a pay rise many times more than inflation in 2015?’ The PM did agree, and
On the Today programme this morning Justin Webb covered the decision by Universities UK to allow fundamentalist speakers to segregate women from men at public meetings. With a characteristic disdain for accepted standards of behaviour, Universities UK refused to go on air and answer his questions. Webb had to ‘put the other side of the
Mark Carney’s speech to the Economics Club of New York yesterday made clear that very low interest rates now ‘put a premium on macroprudential policies’. Translation: he’s not going to hike interest rates soon, but he wants us to know that there are other levers he can pull to keep the UK economy on track.
It seems that everyone agrees Pope Francis should be Time’s ‘Person of the Year 2013’. Better him than Miley Cyrus, at any rate, or Bashar al-Assad, and Francis deserves it, too. This year he has — forgive the media-speak — changed the narrative about Christianity in the liberal world. He’s spreading the Good News, not