All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Such is the audacity of extreme Islamists that we now have the remarkable situation where a Muslim member of parliament, Sadiq Khan, is being told by the police to review his security arrangements after having his life threatened. Khan provoked the rage of radicals earlier this month after voting in favour of the Marriage (Same
Labour’s Nick Forbes is a great pioneer of austerity. As leader of Newcastle City Council he bravely decided to shut half the city’s libraries, close two respite centres for disabled people and cut 100 per cent of funding to arts institutes. He said he had to do it, because the Government had reduced the council’s
The Sunday Express is at it again. It is outraged that Britain’s prisons contain some inmates who were not born in this country. Of course, everyone is hopping aboard the immigrant-bashing bandwagon these days. Immigration, it sometimes seems, is something to be feared, not valued. I understand the political calculation behind all this. The restrictionists
Is it true that the Today programme did not go out this morning? If so the strikers have done a great public service. Giving the country a day off the Today programme is one of the kindest things anybody could do, in any economic climate. I hope the generosity continues. I stopped listening years ago
The Government is expected to raise around £550 billion in tax revenue this financial year. The Centre for Policy Studies estimates that a mansion tax (of £20,000 on properties of £2 million), would raise at most £1 billion, less than 0.2 per cent of revenue. The tax is, however, likely to weaken the market and
Today’s Financial Times paints a poor picture for pro-Europeans: half of those polled want to leave the EU and just a third want to remain in. Plus, 41 per cent of those in favour of a Brexit will ‘definitely’ vote no even after a renegotiation, which suggests a tough challenge for the In campaign to swing some
John Rentoul draws attention to a new ComRes poll that goes some way towards explaining George Osborne’s predicament when it comes to managing government finances. Put simply, the public is not interested in public spending cuts. On the contrary, British voters want to see public spending increase. Sure, they might agree that, all things being
Before British coverage of the American debate on gun control goes any further, I have to hope the BBC and a lot of other Anglo-Saxons who really ought to be better informed try to find out what they are talking about. The chatter started up again last week after President Obama’s State of the Union
The latest session in May versus Judges over foreign criminals’ right to family life (Article 8 of the European Convention) is running as prescribed. Theresa May used the Sunday papers to demand that judges follow the wishes of parliament and deport more foreign criminals. A gaggle of retired judges and eminent lawyers told (£) her where to get off. In terms of
The details of Labour’s mansion tax proposal remain, to put it politely, sketchy. Here’s the exchange between Andrew Neil and Sadiq Khan on the Sunday Politics on how Labour would work out which homes are worth more than two million pounds: AN: Do you rule out a re-evaluation of all properties? SK: There are a
The ongoing horsemeat scandal has opened up a hugely complicated web stretching across the EU, highlighting the difficulty of tracing the origins of the meat on sale in this country. Even now, almost a month after it was announced that horse could be in beef products, no one is entirely sure of how the horses
The state owning banks is not a good thing. It is, as the annual row over bonuses at RBS demonstrates, very difficult to keep politics out of the running of the business. So, it’s encouraging news that the Treasury is moving to sell the government’s 82 percent stake as soon as possible. Today, the Mail
In the Wall Street Journal today there is a wonderful piece by an American tourist struck by the level of friendliness and civility he found amongst the British people. He starts with our tube etiquette: ‘Three times in the space of 24 hours young men offered their subway seats to my wife, who is neither elderly nor
So Labour is going to force a vote in the House of Commons on the mansion tax. It’s the key announcement trailed as part of Ed Miliband’s visit to Eastleigh today, and yet it’s the sort of thing that only really excites people who look forward to hearings of the Public Accounts Committee rather than
Mr Steerpike spotted an interview in today’s Evening Standard with ex-Westminster luminary Louise Mensch. Across a double page spread, she offers her tips on keeping a marriage alive. In particular, she suggests relationships based around romantic ‘date nights’ are a sham: ‘By the time you’ve got to that, you’ve already lost the battle … You’ve got to
So far, MPs have only been able to raise concerns about the effects of the end of transitional controls for Bulgarian and Romanian migrants in departmental questions in the Commons. But one Tory is calling for a full backbench debate on the issue after recess. I understand that Mark Pritchard wants the government to extend
I wonder what Prince Charles makes of the fashion for abdication? Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands and the Pope are both vacating the seat of power before shuffling off this mortal coil. Perhaps the old Lupin-whisperer imagines his destiny is close. Royal chatter reaches Mr Steerpike that someone at Clarence House recently commissioned a private poll on the
At the moment, the Tories intend to head into the next election with the worst of all airport policies. They won’t have announced where the much-needed extra runway capacity in the south east will be. But neither will they be ruling out extra runways at various existing airports or an entirely new airport. The risk
Nadine Dorries has vowed to ‘go after’ Ipsa today after the watchdog announced her expenses were under investigation. There will clearly be more to come on this, but the claims the Mid-Bedfordshire MP is making about Ipsa being ‘asleep on the bloody job’ by not noticing that a travel ticket receipt had accidentally been submitted
Ten years ago today, Lloyd Evans joined the anti-Iraq war march in London. Evans had an open mind about the war, until he joined the peace movement and met Bianca Jagger. Here is the piece in full from our archive. I’m bursting with excitement. I can hardly get the words down fast enough. There was
Can anyone think of a bigger scandal in any British public service than that revealed at Stafford Hospital? It is worse than Aberfan, or Bloody Sunday, or the King’s Cross fire, or Jimmy Savile, or even the abolition of grammar schools. Up to 1,200 people died unnecessarily, not because of one error, or a particular
Party unity is one of those things you can measure by the frequency with which the idea is mentioned. The more often it is talked about, the less it exists. When a political party is actually united there’s no need to mention party unity. As Isabel notes, Sir John Major has long, wearying, experience of
How can conservatives ensure they always lose? A good place to start is to concede every lie of the left. The Conservative Party appears to be doing what it can in this regard. Take their decision to strike Rachel Frosh from their candidates list for the great crime of… linking Nazism to socialism. Frosh committed
It’s the 10th anniversary of the Stop the War protest today, which led me to think about a point Christopher Hitchens once made: how the world would look if the ‘stop the war’ protests – in their various forms – had their way? Saddam Hussein would be lord and master of the annexed Kuwait, his
Two Conservative MPs are pushing for the government to consider separating the civil functions of marriage from the religious as part of the same sex marriage bill, I understand. David Burrowes and Tim Loughton, who both voted against the legislation at second reading, have tabled an amendment to its first clause designed to spark a
I was on the panel of BBC Question Time this evening, in Leicester. Ed Balls’ tricksy 10p tax proposal was raised, and I raised my reservation: it does very little for the low-paid. Balls says £2 a week, but Policy Exchange showed earlier how benefit withdrawal makes this a derisory 67p a week. And this
The Spectator’s sales figures are out today, and I thought Coffee Housers may be interested to know how things are going here in 22 Old Queen Street. It’s a tough time for print. Newsweek has now gone off to a digital afterlife and even The New Yorker is down 17 per cent on newsstand. As
John Major knows a thing or two about naughty Tory MPs and Europe. So David Cameron would do well to listen to his Chatham House speech today in which he advised the PM to give up on the ‘irreconcilables who are prepared to bring own any government or any Prime Minister in support of their
Arguments over the potential development of UK shale gas resources are too often characterised by rhetoric and hyperbole on both sides. Some of the wilder claims need to be challenged and we need to separate the facts from the ill-informed speculation. That is why I am one of a cross-party group of MPs and Peers
Don’t take my word for it. Ask the redoubtable Ms Penny herself. Contemplating the “lesson” of the anti-war protests a decade ago, she writes: Tony Blair’s decision to take Britain into the Americans’ war in Iraq was an immediate, material calamity for millions of people in the Middle East. I’m writing here, though, about the
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