All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
On Monday, Polly Toynbee told her shrinking Guardian audience that ‘Britain is a country profoundly ignorant about the distribution of its wealth.’ Well, allow Mr Steerpike to do his part in solving this plight and shine a little light on where that wealth goes. I’ve been passed an invitation to host an ‘audience’ with the
Here’s an interesting thing: Number 10 has released a statement on Ed Miliband’s 10p tax rate pledge. The Downing Street press machine hasn’t been in the habit of doing this sort of official reactive spinning, although this may be in part because Miliband’s speeches thus far have been pretty light on anything you can actually
At long last, Ed Miliband delivered us a Valentine’s Day present that everyone in the political world has been waiting for: a new policy! And a tax policy at that! Not just content with maintaining support for a temporary VAT cut, reversing the Coalition’s tax credit restraint and reversing the 50p tax rate cut (all
Those close to Ed Miliband stress that if elected, Labour will introduce a mansion tax to pay for the return of a 10p tax rate. I’m told that ‘short of publishing the manifesto two years early, we couldn’t be any clearer’. This new 10p band will apply to the first thousand pounds of income, making
When stranded in an airport, most of us open a trashy book. Not Stanley Johnson. He was delayed overnight at the Simon Bolivar Airport at Guayaquil in Ecuador and turned to last week’s Spectator, where he found Mr Steerpike tipping him as a possible Tory candidate in 2015. He immediately emailed a letter to the editor
Ed Miliband has just started his economy speech in Bedford, so as he gets underway, here’s a quick thought on his plan to reintroduce the 10p tax band. Doing this steals a march on a brewing Conservative campaign. Robert Halfon has been pushing over the past couple of months for the restoration of the 10p
A couple of days ago I managed to interview Lars Hedegaard – the Danish journalist currently at an undisclosed location under police protection after an assassination attempt at his home in Copenhagen. The results are in this week’s magazine. Lars was his usual calm, eloquent and forthright self. If anybody thought they could silence him,
If you seek cheap entertainment, the sight of government ministers defending their immigration policies to the foreign press is always worth a sardonic chuckle or two. And, lo, it came to pass that David Cameron assured Indian TV that, actually and despite the impression his coalition may have given, Her Britannic Majesty’s government is jolly
Thanks to AH for this reminder that the Victorians – and many since – were right to think Scotland a land of romance and all that stuff.
There’s another one of those fatuous “studies” in the papers today, based upon that favourite newspaper device, the false correlation. This time it’s about marriage; if you want to make your marriage work, move to Dorset, because part of it has the highest number of married couples in the country and they are more likely
What does Pope Benedict XVI’s resignation mean for the future of the Catholic church? In this week’s View from 22 podcast, the Daily Telegraph’s Damian Thompson and Freddy Gray discuss our in-depth cover feature on the papal resignation. What will be Benedict be remembered for? Will his sweeping reforms be left in place? How does
The pope made his first public appearance since his resignation today, before putting ashes on the foreheads of pilgrims for Ash Wednesday. It’s one of those jos which isn’t itself particularly demanding but which amounts, together with the running of a global church and a mini state, to a role that would tax a younger man.
I went to the Toynbee Hall, the meeting place for the radical East End, this week to listen to a debate many radicals would rather not hear. British Asian feminists and their supporters had gathered to launch the Centre for Secular Space an organisation whose work I would say is close to essential. It is
Whoosh! Crasshh! Ploophm! Crummppp! The personal attacks came pounding in on David Cameron today. Ed Miliband asked about declining living standards and set about portraying the prime minister as an out-of-touch toff surrounded by plutocratic parasites. He cited the recent Tory Winter Ball where a signed mug-shot of Mr Cameron had been auctioned for the
Ed Miliband has taken inspiration for his 2015 attack line from an unlikely source: Ronald Reagan. In 1980, a week before the election between himself and incumbent President Jimmy Carter, Reagan told voters to ask themselves: ‘Are you better off than you were four years ago?’ At PMQs today, Ed Miliband told the Prime Minister
The horsemeat scandal illustrates just how much of our daily government now takes place in Brussels. Owen Paterson is heading there today, for any real action on this crisis will have to be taken at a European level. One of those involved in the government’s response to this crisis tells me the problem is that
The EU budget ‘victory’ cheers go on in the Commons, but the facts seem to have been lost in the Prime Minister’s ‘triumph’. What the cheering Tories can’t quite grasp is that all that came out of the European Council last week was an agreed position to make cuts in the EU’s long term budget.
I see that Con Coughlin is at it again. Apparently, you see, Barack Obama has “taken leave of reality”. How so? By declaring that al-Qaeda is but “a shadow of its former self”. That seems a reasonable statement to me. Moreover, the sensible response to that declaration is surely I should bloody well hope so. Otherwise what have we
Today’s PMQs was not, as James says, a tricky one for David Cameron. He had some good jokes and embarrassing gossip to poke Ed Miliband with, even though the Labour leader chose to attack on the thorny issue of living standards. The key to the next election will be whether voters feel their lives have
The SNP’s rise to power at Holyrood was predicated upon two useful qualities. First, the party has successfully contrived to appeal to different audiences without the contradictions in their doing so becoming either too blatantly apparent or too crippling. The SNP have targetted erstwhile Labour supporters in western Scotland at the same time as they
I suspect that David Cameron was in a better mood at the end of PMQs than at the start. He sailed through the session with relative ease. Ed Miliband went on living standards, his specialist subject, but his delivery was oddly flat. It was as if he was giving Cameron throw-downs in the nets rather
Alarming news reaches this blog from the Eastleigh by-election, where the battle has descended into a catfight about a policy the two main parties support at national level. How unusual for parties to detach themselves from their own policies when a prize seat is in sight: this time round it’s the Lib Dems and Tories
Nadine Dorries said during the debate on same sex marriage last week that ‘This bill in no way makes a requirement of faithfulness from same-sex couples. In fact, it does the opposite’. Her rather surprising claim stems from the government’s plans to maintain the current definition of adultery in the equal marriage bill. Although not
Depending on which paper you read this morning, the government’s work experience scheme is either heading for the plug hole or going from strength to strength. The Guardian has an editorial praising Cait Reilly, the geology graduate who fought the workfare scheme she found herself on, The Telegraph says workfare can ‘still do the job
Around twice a year, I visit the Swig world HQ (an office in Chiswick, west London) and taste some of the most delicious wines known to humanity. Next day I consult my notes, and realise that it is going to be almost impossible to make a choice. They are too good, too delectable and such
I first came to discover the beauty of the Cornish shanty singers Fisherman’s Friends when I was on holiday in the West Country last year. I was late to the game and had bought a copy of their CD at Port Isaac on a whim. I assumed it was a novelty record that I would
Does the Royal Charter, published by the Conservative party this afternoon, take politicians any further away from meddling with press regulation? The charter is the Tory answer to the statutory underpinning recommended by Lord Leveson, and the party is keen to stress that it ‘does not require statute and enables the principles of Leveson to
To Simpson’s-in-the-Strand this afternoon for The Oldie of the Year Awards (the ‘Tootys’ for short), which were presented by Sir Terry Wogan. The guest list read like a Tatler bash in the late 70s. Debonair Peter Bowles charmed anything that walked by him. Naughty Jilly Cooper chatted amiably to all and sundry about nothing and
Adam Afriyie’s team have been on the hunt for a press officer, I understand. Even though the backbencher has tried to play down claims that he’s taking aim at the Tory leadership, a source in the communications community says that Afriyie’s camp have been asking individuals to join them as a press spokesman and strategist.
For the last few weeks, your baristas at Coffee House have been crafting an email summary of the day’s news and tomorrow’s events — combined with a few vital statistics from the markets and bookmakers, from borrowing costs to the Eastleigh by-election odds. You can read the last few here, here and here. We’re now opening
One of London’s worst kept secrets has finally been revealed in an explosion of PR and TV appearances for Susie Boniface, the hack behind the Fleet Street Fox mask. Whilst anonymous, the former Sunday Mirror journalist managed to bring the unlikely bedfellows of Nadine Dorries and Jemima Khan together into an angry pact of hatred
Deputy Prime Minister’s Questions is rarely an uplifting experience: more like watching some hapless chap stuck in a room full of his ex-girlfriends, all pointing angrily at him, like the wedding reception scene in Four Weddings and a Funeral. Somehow Peter Bone either manages to get his name on the Order Paper or to tag
The video (below) of Galloway really does have to be seen. It is best with the sound off (for what it is worth he is lambasting a student for asking a question which is critical of Hugo Chavez). It is best from about 3 mins 40 seconds in. As well as something innately comic, there
Now here’s something to warm the heart. A bunch of medics from Liverpool have set up an organisation called ‘Street Doctors’, where they go out and teach gang members how to staunch and sew up stab wounds. The obvious downside to this pioneering initiative is that we will probably, as a consequence, be left with