All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
‘Drones save lives’ is the title of my piece in this morning’s Wall Street Journal. President Obama is currently receiving criticism from left and right for his policy of targeted assassination by unmanned drones. I think among a range of bad options drones are the least bad option for dealing with the threat, and explain
Members of the World’s Most Rational and Peaceable Religion © have been going berserk in the lovely Bangladeshi town of Cox’s Bazar. Some bloke put a photo of a burned Koran on his Facebook page and the Muslims have been rioting, taking out their infantile fury on the minority Buddhist population. Setting them on fire
Last year Steerpike broke the news that fourteen rebel backbenchers had written to Graham Brady, the chairman of the 1922 Committee, as part of the formal process to trigger a vote of no confidence in the Prime Minister. The number of names required is forty-six. This morning our editor, Fraser Nelson, reveals that senior rebels
The success of Britain’s coalition government over the last two years has been extraordinary. That two parties could come together, in Westminster’s adversarial system, was itself unusual. That they could agree a radical programme of government: school reform and welfare reform, was exceptional. But in my Telegraph column today, I say suggest that the battles
Yesterday Ed Miliband reiterated his party’s existing policies on immigration for voters, today Yvette Cooper went into further detail about how Labour would address the policy area in government. Like Miliband’s PPB, Cooper’s speech speech to IPPR included an acknowledgement that politicians don’t like to talk about immigration, and a mea culpa. She said Labour
So David Cameron says there is ‘no magic money tree’. In his big economy speech today, the Prime Minister said: ‘Now of course there are plenty of people out there with different advice about how to fix our broken economy. Some say cut more and borrow less, others cut less and borrow more. Go faster.
Another evening and another set of headlines opening with the now familiar line ‘senior Liberal Democrats have denied they knew’. Not the allegations about Lord Rennard (which he denies) this time, but whether they had any prior warning in spring 2011 about the coming storm that seems likely to land Chris Huhne and his ex-wife
What is the political impact of the Chris Huhne/Vicky Pryce case? It’s a question that you’ll hear a lot from those who view everything through what Edward Leigh might call the merciless prism of politics. And yet, as James Kirkup points out on his Telegraph blog, this is more about a terrible family breakdown than it
The only Tory more Tiggerish than Michael Fabricant is the party chairman Grant Shapps, and perhaps that’s why the two work so well together on campaigns. But even the jovial Conservative vice chairman is exhausted after the full-throttle Eastleigh by-election. Fabricant was shouted at in the street by a voter who, thinking he was a
1. The plan: To limit the bonuses that can be paid to bankers to the level of their salary. Any higher bonus would need the approval of shareholders (65 per cent of votes cast if a quorum of 50% of shareholders is reached; 75 per cent of votes cast otherwise) and a quarter of it would
Vicky Pryce has been found guilty at Southwark Crown Court of perverting the course of justice by taking speeding points for her ex-husband Chris Huhne. Huhne had already pleaded guilty, but Pryce had pleaded not guilty on the grounds of marital coercion. The jury rejected her defence. The pair will be sentenced at a later
As we move towards the budget we will be hearing more and more warnings about the impact of further cuts in public sector employment. One line, pursued repeatedly by the TUC and the Fawcett Society since Mr Osborne’s first budget, is that such cuts will particularly impact on women. As the public sector employs more
The Government’s bid to make Britain that little bit more like Australia, in a bad way, by requiring cigarettes to be sold in plain white packaging may well be announced on that annual irritant, No Smoking Day, next Wednesday. And for good measure, it may throw in a ban on smoking in cars carrying children
What are the Times trying to say about noted Spectator fan and new Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby? They have delved into his past. It turns out to have been rather eventful; but they’ve left unexplained the connections between the many interesting dots in Welby’s life. The Thunderer exposé reveals that Welby and his wife
Steerpike is back in this week’s magazine. As ever, here is your preview: How much would you stump up for the Economist? Most of us would draw the line at a fiver, but I’m told that Mike Bloomberg, mayor of New York, is drawing the line at £300 million. Bloomberg is busy relocating to London and he’s
Britain isn’t the only country whose politicians are getting just a little bit jittery about an increase in Bulgarian and Romanian migrants. In this week’s Spectator, Rod Liddle examines the German and Dutch response to the lifting of transitional controls. We were enjoined by the Romanians to believe that our fears of being ‘flooded’ or
According to The Grauniad, the world has lost a colossus, a political giant, an inspiring politician dedicated to rooting out corruption and standing up for the poor, etc etc. It was Hugo Chavez they were talking about, bizarrely. They even wheeled out Tariq Ali to pen a eulogy. Martin Kettle hopped about between the cracks,
Should we be doing more or less to help to tackle drug addiction? And does addiction even exist? Are addicts just selfish people? In this week’s View from 22 podcast, the Mail on Sunday’s Peter Hitchens and the Daily Telegraph’s Damian Thompson enter into a riveting and lively debate on this very matter (1:06). Prompted by Russell Brand’s article
It is only towards the tail end of his lengthy New Statesman essay on ‘the long economic stagnation of post-crisis Britain’ that Vince Cable lets off one of his bombshells. He’s clearly freelancing, and not at a bad time, either, given it’s his party’s Spring Conference this weekend. Although it’s possibly not enormously helpful for
Tonight’s meeting of the 1922 Committee of Tory MPs was dominated by calls for Sir David Nicholson to quit as NHS Chief Executive over the Mid Staffs scandal. Bill Cash, who was the MP for Stafford and now represents the Staffordshire seat of Stone, stood up and asked, ‘is there a single person in this room
‘In the ranking of dictators, Hugo Chávez is in the welterweight class’ this magazine said just a few weeks ago. Now the Venezuelan President has gone to that final meeting place of dictators great and small. And after the remnants of the international left have concluded their inevitable period of eulogy and mourning, it will
What sort of Budget will George Osborne unveil on 20 March? In this week’s Spectator, Fraser Nelson predicts that it will be an empty one, devoid of radicalism. The piece outlines one meeting in which the Chancellor explained why he is feeling so cautious: Before every Budget, George Osborne always seeks the advice of various
After today’s slightly confusing PMQs line from the Prime Minister about unidentified ‘people’ who ‘should be thinking of their positions’ after the Mid-Staffs scandal, ministers and loyal backbenchers have gone out to bat for the government. After PMQs, the Prime Minister’s sources refused to say who these ‘people’ were who needed to consider their positions.
As the row over who knew what and when in the Mid-Staffordshire tragedy grows, it’s worth taking a close look at the data involved. When you consider the Mid-Staffs scandal across the timeline of the previous government, the findings present extremely uncomfortable evidence for which the Labour party must be held to account. There are
Whooo that was nasty. Today’s was the most vicious PMQs of the last twelve months. Easily. Ed Miliband started by quoting the case of a Londoner called ‘John’ who was concerned about living standards. ‘John’, however, wasn’t a disabled pensioner but a City fat cat concerned that next year’s bonus might be capped at two
Today’s Prime Minister’s Questions highlighted the problem Cameron has on high earners and bankers. Ed Miliband chose to attack on George Osborne’s opposition to the EU’s bonus cap, and he had some pretty good jokes to back it up, too. He started his attack with a case study, which tricked Tory MPs into thinking he
As would-be dictators go, Hugo Chavez was on the clownish end of the repressive spectrum. By the end, however, the joke was wearing thin. He was, as Rory Carroll aptly describes him, an “elected autocrat”. But if you judge a man by the company he keeps, Chavez’s legacy takes a darker turn. In the name
There’s no business like government business. Reacting to Philip Hammond’s statement on future army basing yesterday, today’s newspapers have led on either the decision to strip the Desert Rats of their tanks or on the broken promises on basing made to some parts of the country. Bringing the army back from the Rhine makes plenty
Today is, according to the party’s own institutional memory, the first time Labour has talked about immigration in a party political broadcast. As I blogged yesterday, the party struggles to raise its voice when this policy area is debated in parliament because of the mistakes ministers made on migration when in government. Ed Miliband knows
In this week’s View from 22 podcast, the Mail on Sunday’s Peter Hitchens takes on the Telegraph’s Damian Thompson about Russell Brand, drugs, and whether addiction even exists. Click here to listen. The last time I thought about taking heroin was yesterday. I had received ‘an inconvenient truth’ from a beautiful woman. It wasn’t about climate change
Norman Lamb’s announcement today that the government will re-write regulations on competition in the NHS seals up one source of grief for the Lib Dems ahead of their spring conference this weekend. Activists had been threatening an awkward showdown with the leadership on the section 75 regulations, and instead ministers (its notable that Lib Dem
Sir David Nicholson didn’t deliver the most confident performance before the Health Select Committee this morning, but he didn’t leave the session looking fatally wounded. Here are the key points from his evidence: 1. No-one knew what was going on. The NHS is such a big organisation that, as Nicholson admitted, it was perfectly possible
I was fascinated to read the reaction to Nick Cohen’s article expressing his view that after 10 years he still believed the invasion of Iraq was the right thing to do. The heart of Nick’s argument is this: ‘I regret much: the disbanding of the Iraqi army; a de-Ba’athification programme that became a sectarian purge
‘Oooh, your statement was so much more partisan than mine!’ Iain Duncan Smith almost said to Stephen Timms this afternoon as the pair sparred over Bulgarian and Romanian migrants. The Work and Pensions Secretary was answering an urgent question from Labour’s Frank Field on the government’s readiness for the end of transitional controls. The debate