All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
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
In the latest issue of Standpoint magazine I have a longish piece on the census for England and Wales. The story made the news for a couple of days at the end of last year, but I thought the census results deserved to be dwelt upon a little longer. I hope readers find it interesting:
Po-faced Labour MP Grahame Morris has been crying into his bitter this morning at young Tories up at York University who hold an annual ‘Hagueathon’ in honour of the fourteen pints the Foreign Secretary necked when he was a student. The game is very simple: right-wing students try to drink fourteen ales, with varying degrees
Panic, once let loose, is hard to corral. And there seems to be plenty of panic on the Tory benches at Westminster. The Eastleigh by-election result, the stagnant economy and the rising sense that the Prime Minister has somehow lost his way all contribute to this. Each fresh setback – or perceived setback – now
Who are all these folk jumping on Nigel Farage’s bandwagon? Ukip — which received just 3 per cent of the vote in 2010 — is now averaging about 11 per cent in the polls. Its rise has fuelled all sorts of speculation about where its supporters are coming from and why they’re turning to the
It is significant that Iain Duncan Smith wouldn’t resist further cuts to the welfare budget in the 2015/16 spending review. This makes him one of the supporters of the National Union of Ministers movement. The Times reports that he has prepared a package of additional cuts, although I understand this doesn’t involve new ideas such
The government won all four votes on the report stage of the Justice and Security Bill last night, but there was still a crop of Coalition rebels when each division was called, and a number of abstentions from both parties too. The issue has excited the group of Tory MPs you see listed below, but
The 2013 budget promises to be a milestone for David Cameron’s government. George Osborne is under pressure to avoid the ‘omnishambles budget’ of last year. As well as satisfying his increasingly-militant ministers, angry backbenchers and coalition partners, the window for making a real difference in time for the next election is closing. Any seismic shifts
This afternoon, Danny Alexander and Oliver Letwin launched something so sensible it’s astonishing governments haven’t been doing it before. They’re actually going to use evidence to determine which policies work. The idea is that a number of different centres in a new ‘What Works’ network will examine how effective policies really are, identifying which represent
Liam Byrne launched Labour’s campaign on the ‘bedroom tax’ today, while Helen Goodman, who was the Labour minister responsible for the party’s own attempt at cutting the housing benefit bill when in government, raised the cut at Education Questions today. Tory MPs groaned a little. Michael Gove pounded the despatch box, and shouted ‘this is
This weekend David Cameron argued that the Tories are the ‘only party simultaneously committed to proper investment in the NHS and bringing down immigration’. This makes it all the odder that the Tories didn’t seize on Vince Cable’s comments on the Sunday Politics yesterday. The Business Secretary declared: ‘I’ve always been very critical of ring fencing
