All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
By-elections are notoriously hard to call. But everyone who comes back from Eastleigh says the same thing, UKIP are the party with forward momentum. This morning’s Populus poll bears that out. They are in third place with 21 per cent, with the Tories second on 28 and the Lib Dems ahead with 33. But, as
Oscar Pistorius has now been granted bail ahead of his trial in June. His case has raised many basic questions abroad, such as: is it normal for South Africans to have loaded guns on hand? And is it a defence to say that you killed someone because you thought they were someone else? There’s a
As George Osborne digests the news of the Moody’s downgrade, he can thank his lucky stars for Ed Balls. The Shadow Chancellor’s statement, just released, neatly illustrates why he is the single biggest obstacle to Labour’s regaining economic credibility:- “George Osborne said keeping the credit rating was the key goal of his economic policy. As
The United Kingdom’s triple A rating is now lost with one credit rating agency, Moody’s. This is a politically difficult moment for George Osborne. Back in February 2010, he set keeping the triple A rating as one of the key tests of a Conservative government’s economic policy. His opponents will delight in pointing out that
Even the pessimistic analysts had given Britain until September to lose its AAA rating. That it has happened now, before the Budget, shows just how fast things are moving. Moody’s has tonight downgraded Britan from AAA to AA1 and has also told us why. Don’t expect economic hell to break loose as a result: these
A rather feverish mood around the Vatican today: La Repubblica’s sensational splash suggesting that Pope Benedict XVI was pushed out by a ‘gay mafia’ within the Church hierarchy has set Latin tongues wagging. Lurid whispers about sex and bribery abound. The theory – given wind by Benedict’s Ash Wednesday statement that opposition ‘mars the face of
There are over 3,000 pages of evidence in the cache of transcripts, emails, statements and texts for the Pollard Review released by the BBC today. Some of the interviews covered familiar old ground, such as Jeremy Paxman telling the inquiry that it was ‘common gossip that Jimmy Savile liked, you know, young – it was
Like John Rentoul, I think much of the scoffing and chortling at the expense of the poor jury asked to consider Vicky Pryce’s guilt (or innocence!) is misplaced. This was an unusual case. The questions* they asked – which have been much mocked – seem entirely reasonable to me. More than that, they’re quite intelligent.
All the evidence is pointing to a Lib Dem win in Eastleigh, but those Tories visiting are continuing to fight to the bitter end. Eric Pickles was down there today, and wasted no time at all in sinking his teeth into his Coalition partners. The Communities Secretary said: ‘The Lib Dems are taking the people
Ministers and MPs are nervous about a mass influx of Romanian and Bulgarian migrants putting the benefit system under strain next year. But ministers should beware, and learn from the political mistakes of the past. The failure to predict the scale of post-2004 migration to the UK from the EU caused major political problems for the Labour
Should the 10p tax rate be brought back? Should the top rate be higher, or lower? Can the personal allowance be raised further? Is a mansion tax a good idea? Should the fuel duty rise be scrapped? These are the questions that are rearing their heads again — as they do every six months or
‘Would you say the same thing about Jews? Gays? Or any other minority?’ This is one of the witless questions asked of anyone who writes about Islamic extremism. And it is a fascinating point in a way, taking in – as it does – everything other than the facts. Yesterday another radical Muslim cell in
The BBC has released its (redacted) transcripts and other evidence from the Pollard Review, which examined the decision to drop Newsnight’s Jimmy Savile investigation. There are thousands of pages of evidence, which you can read here, some with large sections which have fallen foul to the censor’s black pencil, even though Jeremy Paxman in particular
Steerpike is back in this week’s edition of The Spectator. Here is a sneak preview, as ever: ‘Ed Miliband, meeting Denmark’s prime minister, Helle Thorning-Schmidt, gobbled up his Danish pastry double-quick so that he could immortalise their interview on Twitter. ‘Discussed growth, living standards and how to make Europe work for its people,’ he told
Remember those menacing HMRC eyes that Fraser found staring out at him from a cashpoint last month? Well, it turns out they’re a pretty expensive pair of eyes. A Freedom of Information request by the TPA’s Matt Sinclair returned this week, revealing that this cashpoint campaign on tax evasion cost just under £100,000. The response
Today’s jobs market is highly competitive and globalised. It is no longer enough simply to see if we are doing better than we did last year, or the year before, or 10 years ago. Far better to judge how we are doing against other countries – for our young people will be fighting for jobs
George Osborne is getting used to the twice-yearly battle that precedes an autumn statement or a budget when motorists, newspapers and some of his own MPs start haranguing him on fuel. It’s the Times’ splash today, with petrol prices expected to rise to their highest-ever levels, and campaigners calling once again for the Chancellor to
How can Labour win back voters in the South East? At the 2010 general election, Labour took ten southern seats outside of London, compared to four times that in 1997. Like the Tories in the North, Ed Miliband needs to offer policies that will ease the concerns of these lost southeastern voters; to convince them Labour
‘Isn’t there a case for looking at the whole system at some point?’ whispered Isabel on Tuesday when MPs criticised the taxman again. Well, yes, there is. Last May, the 2020 Tax Commission published its final report, setting out the moral, economic and practical case for lower, simpler taxes. The Commission deliberated for 18 months
The decay and decline of George Galloway was on full display in Oxford last night when he stormed out of a debate with a third-year PPE student from Brasenose College. The student’s crime was to be an Israeli, a discovery which led Galloway to declare: ‘I don’t debate with Israelis. I have been misled.’ He
Health tourism is raised every now again by politicians, but never has it been raised so forcefully by such a senior doctor. In this week’s Spectator, Professor J.Meirion Thomas, a consultant surgeon with the NHS and one of Britain’s leading cancer experts, speaks out about health tourism. He writes: I am frustrated at seeing the
Today’s borrowing figures show that the government had a surplus of £11.4 billion in January. But before we get too excited, a bit of context is in order. There’s (almost) always a surplus in January, thanks mainly to self assessment and capital gains tax receipts. And today’s figure includes £3.8 billion transferred from the Bank
The good news for Nick Clegg—and the bad news for David Cameron—is that the Liberal Democrats are racing certainties to hold Eastleigh in the by-election next Thursday. As I say in the magazine this week, the Liberal Democrats’ base in the constituency – they hold every ward in the seat – has given them an
The White House is piling pressure on the EU to ban Hezbollah after Bulgarian authorities linked it to a bomb blast in Burgas which killed six people last year. The intended target was a group of Israeli tourists, of which five died in the attack along with their Bulgarian bus driver. An extensive investigation lasting
People are quite often pilloried for saying the opposite of what they actually said. I have read Hilary Mantel’s London Review of Books lecture, and she is quite clearly not attacking the Duchess of Cambridge, but criticising what it is that people try to turn royal women into. When she speaks of the Duchess as ‘a jointed
The Tories and Lib Dems are locking horns in Eastleigh but what is Labour’s strategy? In this week’s View from 22 podcast, James Forsyth debates with the Fabian Society’s Marcus Roberts on how Labour is working to regain long-lost voters in the South East, as well as their aims for this by-election. We also examine
The annual offer of Château Musar is here, and The Wine Company of Colchester has again given us some very generous discounts. I never recommend wine as an investment, partly because I believe it is for drinking rather than money-making, and also because I don’t want to be blamed for you losing your life savings.
Andrew Mitchell’s piece in the FT today marks his return to normal politics post-Plebgate. Up to now, Mitchell has confined his post-resignation comments either to his old stomping ground of development or to the sequence of events that led to his premature departure from government. By contrast, today’s piece sees Mitchell getting involved in a
The jury in the trial of Vicky Pryce has been discharged having failed to reach a verdict. The decision comes after the jury informed the judge that they were highly unlikely to come to even a majority verdict. The retrial is scheduled to start on Monday. There are, obviously, limits to what can be said
Today’s jobs figures are pretty unambiguously good news. The number of people in work rose by 154,000 in the last three months of 2012 to a new record high of 29.73 million — surpassing pre-recession peak by 158,000. And unlike other recent rounds of employment growth, this wasn’t driven by a rise in part-time workers
Like grief, stupidity has a hierarchy. So, on balance, Ed Miliband’s response – if it can be so dignified – to Hilary Mantel’s essay about the mystery and magic attraction of royalty was even dumber than David Cameron’s. Neither, plainly, had read what Mantel had written. The Leader of the Opposition at least had the
Mario Cuomo, former governor of New York state (and father of the present governor) is perhaps these days most famous for his quip that politicians campaign in poetry but govern in prose. Sometimes, anyway. Scotland’s independence referendum campaign, at present, doesn’t even rise to the level of William McGonagle’s execrable verse. Most of the prose
Labour’s current plan to embarrass the Lib Dems over its clothes-stealing mansion tax policy is an Opposition Day debate in the Commons. But, in a mark of how serious the party is to score a political point on this matter, I understand that it is also considering tabling an amendment involving a mansion tax to
Oh dear. George Osborne’s claim in December’s Autumn Statement that ‘the deficit is coming down this year, and every year of this Parliament’ was already looking hubristic, even before today’s news that the 4G mobile spectrum auction raised just £2.3 billion, rather than the £3.5 billion that the Office for Budget Responsibility had forecast. As Fraser