All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Today’s hearing of the Public Accounts Committee is going to be real box office stuff. Sir David Nicholson is giving evidence, supposedly on the NHS IT programme, but he’ll find himself confronted by Tory committee member Steve Barclay, who, armed with freedom of information evidence of 52 gagging orders in the NHS, will demand that
Since our archive went live yesterday, we’ve had a striking response through email, comments and Twitter. The Spectator Archive has been in the making for a long time, and given the obvious problems with recognising scanned pages (the system is pretty good at recognising 1840s typefaces, but not brilliant) we weren’t sure how popular it
The Tories aren’t giving up just yet on the Communications Data Bill, and Keir Starmer’s intervention, reported in the Sun this morning, will help their cause. The Director of Public Prosecutions’ letter was written before Nick Clegg announced he was blocking the legislation, and argues that ‘communications data is so important that any reduction in
Well done to the BBC Today programme’s Sarah Montague for not screaming abuse at Tommy Robinson, the English Defence League leader, when she interviewed him this morning. It seems that many wanted her simply to shriek abuse at the man – and now she is being criticised for having been too lax. Being aggressive with
Boy, is Boris Johnson persuasive. Not for him the anodyne policy documents that anyone else in regional or central government prefers to produce. His 2020 Vision document, launched today, is brimming with the sort of wit and turn of phrase that he deploys in his speeches and broadcasts. It says a key part of the
Perhaps the Bilderberg conference has had a lasting effect on Parliament, after all. Today we saw what can only be a conspiracy between the Labour left and Michael Gove’s band of reforming right-wingers. As the Education Secretary unveiled his plans to reform GCSEs, he was accosted by Diane Abbott, rarely knowingly in agreement with much
Plots, summary executions, sex scandals, leaks and treachery. No, not the last few weeks for the Prime Minister, but rather your average episode of HBO’s hit show Game of Thrones. When asked at a charity reception that clashed with the series finale last night, whether he kept a close eye on it all, young Dave
While dealing with the teaching unions is a simple stand-off for Michael Gove, spare a thought for poor old Stephen Twigg, Labour’s shadow education secretary, who has to work out how on earth to deal with the NUT and NASUWT habit of opposing everything. There is a palpable sense of frustration on the Labour frontbenches
Critics and fans of Michael Gove alike accept that sometimes the Education Secretary can be a little too pugnacious. He often encourages the pantomime boos that accompany him, and will throw himself into any fight with gusto. But then the representatives of the leading teaching unions pop up to criticise his reforms, and it becomes
As Fraser reported earlier, Tim Yeo has stepped aside from the Energy and Climate Change Select Committee chairmanship following the Sunday Times’ sting this weekend. What’s astonishing is not his decision this evening, but that he even had the opportunity to chair the committee when he had quite so many declared interests in the sector.
From the moment that the Sunday Times caught Tim Yeo offering to advise energy companies for cash, it was clear that his chairmanship of the energy and climate change select committee was untenable. Yet he’s coming to this conclusion slowly. It has taken him until now to decide he’ll “step aside,” apparently under pressure from Labour members of the
William Hague’s statement on Prism was a masterclass in not answering the question. Hague calmly, but determinedly, stuck to the line that he wasn’t going to comment on leaks — which made the whole statement slightly pointless as it was being given in response to a leak. His whole approach was ‘trust me’, which will
What an afternoon it has been for conspiracy lovers. First the Speaker summoned Ken Clarke to the Commons to answer an urgent question from arch theorist Michael Meacher about the Bilderberg meeting, and then MPs took it in turns to ask William Hague whether the Prism allegations meant they were under surveillance from the state.
Two experiences stand out from my recent visit to the Kurdistan Region in Iraq: meeting refugees fleeing Syria at the Domiz refugee camp; and seeing a weeping son uncovering the body of his father, Mohammed Serspi, murdered by Saddam Hussein’s regime in the 1980s. The first, a biblical tide of innocent humans cast out by
Lurk around the Palace of Westminster today and you might hear a strange creaking noise. It’s not the Commons air conditioning, which has broken and is making appropriately eerie noises ahead of an urgent question on the Bilderberg meeting. No, that creaking sound is the Tory Whips’ Office finally limbering up to do something about
In the basement of The Spectator’s offices in Old Queen Street, there are piles of tomes detailing our rich publishing history right back to 1828. Our archive is our most prized possession and today, we’re delighted to share that. For the first time, both scanned and digitised copies of the magazine from July 1828 to
Tensions between some ministers and the civil service are at boiling point, with vicious briefings taking place on both sides. Seemingly keen to keep the pen-pushers sweet, former Chief Whip Andrew Mitchell lashed out last week at colleagues who have been winding up Sir Humphrey: ‘This behind-the-hand rubbishing of public servants is extremely unattractive.’ Spoken
You can accuse Ed Balls of a great many things (and we do), but he doesn’t do gaffes. His interviews are always worth paying close attention to, because every soundbite is carefully-considered, weighed for its political potency and constantly reused. Anyone who missed his interview with Andrew Neil yesterday should catch it (here) because –
William Hague will come to the House of Commons today to offer some answers on the US National Security Agency’s PRISM programme. Here are three key questions MPs will want answered: What can he tell the Commons about how such an exchange of information could work? Douglas Alexander told Today he will be asking for
I just wonder how long Harry Mount has been waiting to put his boot into the Bar. Having a first-class degree from Oxford, membership of the Bullingdon Club and then getting a pupillage in a top class set of chambers, it must have been devastating to his well-nurtured ego to have been turned down for
Defenders of the status quo in the European Union like to argue that 3 million jobs in this country currently depend on Britain’s membership. Aside from the rather shaky maths behind that figure, it’s striking that today Chris Grayling is making a stand on a Brussels plan that will cost jobs in this country, rather
Ed Balls has just told Andrew Neil on the Sunday Politics that Labour will include pensions in their welfare cap. This opens up a major dividing line with the Tories who have been clear that George Osborne will exclude pensions from his spending cap. I suspect that Balls and Ed Miliband will now be badgered
Tim Yeo was due to appear on Sky News’ Murnaghan programme, and on the BBC’s Sunday Politics this morning. But he’s just pulled out of both interviews, where he would have been asked about the Sunday Times’ story alleging that he coached a witness to his own select committee on the right answers. Yeo denies that
Now that it has become commonplace for the press to entrap MPs and peers, why don’t our legislators try to turn the tables? I suggest that ministers sidle up to journalists (secretly filming them the while) and offer them honours. They should hint that the honour is conditional on favourable coverage, and agree to meet
Can I just share with you my satisfaction that the CIA has access to my emails and all the social media sites I visit from time to time? This has been a big story in the liberal press: US fascist spooks can access loads of details about you through the online stuff you’ve been doing.
GCHQ’s use of the US monitoring system Prism is threatening to turn into a major political row. Douglas Alexander is demanding that William Hague come to the House of Commons to explain what GCHQ was doing and what the legal basis for it was. But this controversy is going to have an effect on coalition
It must be boring for you too, returning to the same complaint, over and over again. Report on the BBC’s 10 O’Clock News about the trouble in Turkey. Not a single mention, in the three minutes, of the words Islam, or Muslim, or Islamification. You had to infer everything. Without prior knowledge of what was
Great news on the fracking front. A company called IGas says it’s sitting on a huge shale gas reserve deep below Cheshire. Given the company’s ‘most likely’ estimate of 102 trillion cubic feet of gas, and a potential extraction rate of around 15 per cent, that could fulfil five years of UK gas demand, which
Eeek! The snooper’s charter is back from the dead! And still, for some reason, its advocates don’t seem able to grasp that the objections stem not from what they want to do, but from the manner in which they wish to do it. It’s not about your web history, they say, or your browsing habits
For the first time, David Cameron is trailing behind his party, according to the latest polling from Lord Ashcroft. Labour has long struggled with this problem, but as the charts below show, voters now also feel more favourable towards the Conservatives than they do to Cameron himself: The PM’s allies within the party have long
The Institute for Fiscal Studies gave one of its cheering presentations today on quite how miserable things are going to be for a good while longer. Today’s event was on the forthcoming spending review, but the IFS and Institute for Government also offered some predictions about the long-term economic picture. In a briefing note, the
Ed Miliband thinks a contributory principle in welfare is the way to show voters that his party supports a ‘something-for-something’ approach. Yesterday he proposed to restore that principle, with higher entitlements for those with good records. This was at the heart of the Beveridge settlement, but has been diluted by successive governments, the current one
To Kensington last night, to celebrate Russia Day at the glorious mansion of the noble, kind and august ambassador. There was patriotic music, oratory of great distinction and the crowd rejoiced; or so the propagandists will have it. Tongues loosened as the Russian Standard flowed. John Whittingdale, Commissar of the Culture Media and Sport Select Committee,
Over the years, Brussels has become adept at dishing out heavy-handed and often disproportionate pan-EU ‘solutions’ to problems that are very often not problems for the majority of Member States. It’s at it again, this time on a proposal that would decimate the solar power industry in Britain. This country and many of its European