All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
The good news is that Rod Dreher is blogging again, this time at the American Conservative; the sad news is that his sister Ruthie, pictured above with her daughter Claire, has just been killed by cancer. Rod – we email-know one another and have at least one good friend in common – has been blogging
It was doomed from the start; that’s the prognosis of those who think that the single currency’s crisis is near terminal, such are its structural and political weaknesses. People warned that it could be thus when the Euro was first launched. Bruce Anderson was among them: Had Mr Blair been braver, he could have been
The great story-teller’s latest piece is a rum business indeed. Apparently: The guiding idea at the heart of today’s political system is freedom of choice. The belief that if you apply the ideals of the free market to all sorts of areas in society, people will be liberated from the dead hand of government.
The strength of Coffee House lies in the quality of the arguments which follow our posts. Journalism today is about starting a conversation with readers, something we at The Spectator firmly believe in. So on Wednesday, we invited 250 subscribers around for a cup of tea. We have a wonderful garden here at 22
After a Spectator debate on climate change in March, Fraser Nelson wrote about whether or not we should try to engage in the debate ourselves or “trust the expert”. Simon Singh had argued in the debate that the most credible experts supported the view that the human contribution to potential global warming was real and serious. The
At some media whore shindig early in the summer I bumped into Michael Gove and asked, politely, if he would mind very much making me the boss of Ofsted. After all, I had once employed him as a reporter – it seemed the least that he could do. He was sadly non-committal; I have waited
George Osborne spoke to Telegraph’s Festival of Business this morning and he gave a speech that was dominated by the issue of growth, or rather its absence. He reiterated the tax cuts and entrepreneurial relief measures first unveiled in March’s Budget. Osborne didn’t limit himself to his list of accomplishments. It was an empathetic speech.
I hadn’t noticed that Keith Tantlinger, who may fairly be considered on of the fathers of globalisation, had died. Actually, until I read his obituary in yesterday’s Telegraph I’d never heard of him. Nevertheless, were you to write a history of the last fifty years you’d want to include a chapter on the man who,
Summed-up by the Economist in a single chart. When you consider that many people support spending cuts in principle but tend to oppose them when they target particular favourite programmes you may appreciate that the government faces a fairly acute political problem. That’s before you consider the practical difficulties of really cutting spending. In its
It is conventional wisdom that David Cameron won’t get much of an electoral bounce from the Libya intervention, despite emerging as a bold and competent interventionist. People, the argument goes, are tired of warfare. A senior figure in Tony Blair’s No 10 told me yesterday that he did not think the PM would earn a
As the EU debt drama continues unspooling like a perversely watchable soap opera (the FT’s Neil Hume describes it as ‘eurozone crisis porn’), an intriguing sub-plot has emerged: Britain is suing the European Central Bank. The Treasury is unhappy with an ECB move to limit the kind of euro-denominated products that can pass through UK
Who dares say the County Championship is a useless anachronism? Rumours of its irrelevance have been much exagerrated for years and we were reminded of this again today as Lancashire took their first outright title since 1934, defeating my beloved Somerset by eight wickets and with just five overs to spare. It still, even in
Martin Vander Weyer’s column in the latest issue of the magazine is essential reading. It features five current stories from the business world. The Vickers report, Martin says, will merely offer the same poor service for consumers at a greater cost. Martin also notes, as he did two weeks ago, that American banks are winding
For many years, it has been Government policy to move healthcare out of hospitals and into community units and homes, and concentrate specialist surgeries in centres of clinical excellence. This is politically contentious: former Secretary of State for Health Patricia Hewitt was closing local maternity units, but she had to deal with the humiliation of
The more we learn about the riots, the more it is becoming clear that experienced criminals were responsible for a lot of the looting. The Standard reports today that in London a quarter of those charged in relation to the riots had already been convicted of ten or more offences. What remains to be seen
Today, Johann Hari admitted to vandalising his enemies’ Wikipedia entries using the psydonym David Rose. One of his victims, the writer and Spectator blogger Nick Cohen, suspected so all along. His dairy, from July, is below: I learned that Johann Hari was a journalist who was better at attention-seeking than truth-telling when a small American journal
The Spectator debate next week is about whether or not we should leave the European Union. Luckily, this is one of the very few issues upon which I am undecided and not possessed of an arrogant and fatuous opinion. Luckily, because I am moderating the debate and therefore am required to be neutral. My objection
I understand that Number 10 will lean on Cabinet ministers not to object to what the boundary review does to their seats. This is an intriguing development because at least three Tory Secretaries of State are deeply unhappy with the proposed changes to their constituencies. It’ll be fascinating to see whether Downing Street can persuade
Back in June, Melanie McDonagh wrote that “the Tories are desperate to regain the female vote”. Today’s Guardian scoop, a government memo on the need to better appeal to women, proves she’s right. In places, the document reads as if it were written by a group of men to whom women are very much from
“Russian democracy has been buried under the ruins of New York’s twin towers”, famous KGB rebel Alexander Litvinenko wrote in 2002. The West, he warned, was making a grave mistake of going along with Putin’s dictatorship in exchange for his cooperation in the global war on terror. He would never be an honest partner, and
Cameron and Miliband went six rounds on the economy at PMQs. Miliband tried to portray Cameron as just another Tory who thinks that “unemployment is a price worth paying”. Cameron, for his part, wanted to paint the Labour leader as someone whose policies would send Britain tumbling into a sovereign debt crisis. At the end,
VERDICT: The 80,000 rise in unemployment announced today gave Ed Miliband an immediate tactical advantage and he made the most of it, damning the government’s economic policy and painting the coalition as uncaring Conservatives. He even cracked the odd risqué joke, such was his confidence. Cameron defended as best he could and he managed to avoid looking
Nick Clegg gave a speech on the economy earlier this morning. As Tim Montgomerie notes, Clegg came close to admitting that the economy is nearing crisis. He said, “The economic context is much worse than before. Yes, facts have changed” and added that the “government is not blind to deterioration in economic environment”. These warnings
The Palestinians are seeking United Nations recognition as a state and a vote is apparently imminent. The Guardian’s Jonathan Freedland has a useful account of the diplomatic arithmetic and explains how the possible vote could be decided by European countries and by Britain in particular. ‘Barack Obama has already said the US will vote against
The Institute for Fiscal Studies enjoys quasi-divine status in Westminster: chancellors and their shadows bother it for its blessing, and Budget Day is never complete until its judgment has been passed. Both parties have bent a suppliant knee before the institute in the past, but the IFS became particularly important to Labour after it declared
File Tim Pawlenty’s endorsement of Mitt Romney in the drawer marked Fancy That! So, not a surprise but telling nevertheless and a useful signal that the battle for the Republican party’s presidential nomination can be summarised as Problem Solvers vs Firebrands. This may be a little unfair on Rick Perry since his candidacy is an
David Cameron and IDS have been promoting the Work Programme this afternoon and they reiterated that jobseekers must learn English to claim benefits if their language difficulties are hampering their job applications. It’s another indication of the government’s radical approach to welfare reform. Aside from that, the main event in Westminster today was Ed Miliband’s speech to
The Culture, Media and Sport committee has recalled James Murdoch to give further evidence into phone hacking and James Murdoch’s people are briefing journalists that he is happy to appear. Sophy Ridge reports that the committee had a long discussion about who to recall, but were largely in agreement and there was no vote. In
Ed Miliband is the Brothers’ man, or so the popular myth relates. Miliband has been trying to shake that perception ever since his election was secured by the union vote. He will make his most visible show of defiance yet in a speech to the TUC conference today. Miliband will refuse to countenance the proposed general
So what’s the upshot of yesterday’s Vickers review into banking? A research note issued today by UBS puts it bluntly: Lloyds to do better, Barclays to shrink and HSBC to quit Britain entirely. The UBS note, written by Alastair Ryan and John-Paul Crutchley, points out that HSBC took not a penny of bailout money. It
Wee Georgie Monbiot is desperate to find a Koch-sized “conspiracy” in Britain. Apparently: [F]ree-market thinktanks are nothing of the kind. They are public relations agencies, secretly lobbying for the corporations and multimillionaires who finance them. If they wish to refute this claim, they should disclose their funding. Until then, whenever you hear the term free-market
Today’s inflation figures remind us of the trouble the Bank of England will have if – as most analysts suspect – it embarks on another phase of Quantitative Easing. CPI inflation was 4.5 per cent in the year to August, and RPI at 5.2 per cent, both up a touch from July. CPI inflation has
I hear that 124 Tory MPs attended the inaugural meeting of the Tory ginger group pushing for renegotiation of Britain’s relationship with Europe. Those present included at least one minister — Theresa Villiers, several PPS and a few whips who were keeping a beady eye on proceeding. George Eustice, the convener of the group, told
George Osborne made a firm statement on the Vickers report this afternoon; if he felt uneasy about the proposed abolition of his seat or Natalie Rowe’s latest sally against him it didn’t show. As expected, he accepted Vickers’ proposals “in principle”, giving himself and his coalition partners enough room to manoeuvre within an agreed timetable that