All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
As symbolism goes, it borders on cliché. Running out of time to gain any serious traction, Germany’s Social Democrats last week unveiled their new campaign posters, and they promptly disintegrated on first contact with rain. The seven images neatly chronicle – or will do once they’re replaced – the profound failure of the main challengers
Scottish teenagers received their exam results this week and, for the seventh consecutive year, the pass-rate for Highers increased. So did the pass-rates for all other exams: the Advanced Highers success rate marched past 82 per cent while a scarcely credible 98.9 per cent of all Standard Grade exams were passed. Cue the annual debate over grade
The ‘routine’ deployment of HMS Illustrious and two bustling frigates to Gibraltar, en route to the Gulf of Aden, has excited the morning papers. And the evacuation of the American consulate in Lahore gets lots of attention, following the closure of consulates and embassies across the Middle East last weekend. Neither story is the most interesting defence news
You can’t keep a good pervert down. Every time the Dominique Strauss-Kahn saga – l’affaire DSK, to give it its nom propre – threatens to fade from view, it rears its dirty head again. The latest is that DSK was, according to a leaked document written by the magistrates investigating his case, a ‘pimp party king’
What have the Churchill £5 note, the Home Office ‘racist vans’ and the ‘Bedroom Tax’ got in common? All were alleged breaches of section 149 of the Equality Act 2010, which provides that public authorities are under a duty to have ‘due regard’ to preventing discrimination and advancing equality. Dropping Elizabeth Fry from banknotes was
It is beginning to dawn on Westminster just how much shale Britain has. The Bowland Basin — which runs from Nottingham and Scarborough in the east to Wrexham and Blackpool in the west — will deliver, on a cautious estimate of how much of it can be recovered, the equivalent of 90 years of North
The Prime Minister’s love in with President Obama is blossoming. Not only has he recruited Barack’s campaign manager, but he’s also become one of those annoying acquaintances who jumps on your music taste and tries to make it their own. Hip Dave has declared that Bruce Springsteen, who was a key Obama fundraiser, is his
I have the impression that David Miliband’s valedictory essay in the latest issue of the New Statesman contains some really corking ideas; but I can’t see them through the words. David Miliband’s tragedy is not that he lost to his brother. It’s that he can’t express himself in plain English. He has five things to work on in
Will holidays ever be truly relaxing again? In this week’s View from 22 podcast, Mary Wakefield and Freddy Gray discuss Clarissa Tan’s magazine cover piece on how technology has ruined our holidays. Has our love of the smartphone and tablet destroyed our ability to ‘switch off’? Do we need to control our impulse to use
Since I was elected to Parliament in 2010, I have taken every opportunity to push back against the EU’s move towards ever closer union. I have also been a long-time supporter of offering the people a say on our membership of the EU and was delighted when the Prime Minister led the way in pledging
I’m in two minds about blogging this post. On the one hand, I’d really rather be on a sunny beach somewhere, reading a good old-fashioned book or staring at the blue horizon. On the other hand, I really, really want to publicise my Spectator cover story about summer and our addiction to technology (it’s fab!).
Ties between the Tories and the Republicans have rarely been weaker than they are today. The hiring of Jim Messina, Barack Obama’s campaign manager, is another sign that the Tories are more interested in the technical effectiveness of the Obama machine than they are in anything that the Republicans are producing. I suspect that the
Roll up, roll up, Cameron-bashers everywhere. Peter Cruddas is planning to blow some of the £180,000 he won in libel damages against the Sunday Times with a ‘Victory Party’ at his City offices on 17 September. Cruddas was falsely accused of charging donors for access to Number 10, and he’s somewhat piqued at having got
In January of this year, Melissa Kite wrote our cover story about how the RSPCA has morphed from being an animal welfare charity into an animal rights group. She wrote of the ‘culture of fear at their headquarters’, and explained ‘how deeply suspicious some animal experts have become of this once-respected body’. Since then, the problems have
Lots of people are hating on Ukip’s Godfrey Bloom after he featured on the Today programme attacking foreign aid, which he said was used ‘to buy Ray-Ban sunglasses, apartments in Paris, Ferraris’ and ‘F18s for Pakistan’. What made many furious was that he was recorded referring to recipient countries as ‘Bongo Bongo land’. I genuinely
It really is time that we had an honest debate about sex crimes. But in the present climate I wonder if it is possible. Over the next few days there will be howls of rage from women’s groups about comments by a prosecutor that a thirteen year old girl’s behaviour was sexually ‘predatory’. I am
Mark Carney made his mark this morning. Moments ago, he opened his inflation report and issued his ‘forward guidance’, which is designed to make the markets aware of his long-term plans for interest rates. This is important because, although there are signs of life in the British economy (and Carney was cautious about them), inflation remains
Listen to Godfrey Bloom discuss his comments with Jim Naughtie on the Today programme: listen to ‘Godfrey Bloom discusses ‘bongo bongo land’ remarks on Radio 4 Today’ on Audioboo
Peter Hain, I see, has suggested that we come to a negotiated settlement with the Spanish government over Gibraltar, in order to stop them being spiteful by taxing those who move in and out of the territory, and harassing the locals. The remarkable thing about Hain is that he is wrong about almost everything; the
There was a row earlier today when a leading figure in the EDL linked (inadvertently, he says) to a website of anti-Semitic sympathies. It is dispiriting that, more often than not, Judaism and Jewish people only receive mainstream media coverage when there is a public spat about anti-Semitism, for there is so much more to
Jonathan Bernstein objects to the notion that it’s Chris Christie’s supposed ability to speak like an “average Joe” than makes him a strong candidate to win the Republican party’s 2016 presidential nomination. Specifically he objects to a Chris Cilizza post in which he writes that: Christie has one thing that no other candidate — not
Ed Miliband is rumoured to be on the verge of sacking shadow education secretary Stephen Twigg, who is simply no match for Michael Gove’s flair and intellect. I hear that Vernon Coaker, who was Children, Schools and Families Minister under Brown and Balls, is in line for promotion. Coaker is a former teacher and seasoned political pugilist, so he would
Matt Hancock is both a competent economist (read his account of the Great Recession) and a keen political strategist. Where possible he has used his position as minister for skills to position the coalition on the compassionate side of the employment argument; for example, with his considered support for the minimum wage. Yesterday, in an
You might be interested to see how Daphne the tortoise reacted to being on the front cover of the Spectator. Here she is just having spotted her headline (halfway down on the left): And here is her reaction (look closely at her mouth) Yawn!
65 per cent of the people buying a home in London in 2012-13 paid the 3 per cent rate of Stamp Duty or more. You can pay that rate on a one or two bedroom flat in the capital now. But it would be a mistake to think that Stamp Duty is only an issue
Blimey, George Osborne has got something right! Astonishing scenes. Suppose the government thought it a good idea for us to eat more bananas and, recognising that bananas have become extremely expensive, offered those of us struggling to afford bananas a modest subsidy to make it easier to purchase bananas. We might reasonably object to this
The battle for The King’s School is over, and Labour has lost. As reported in today’s Newcastle Chronicle, North Tyneside Council met yesterday and voted against pursuing a judicial review of the new Kings Priory Academy in Tynemouth. After threatening to halt the merger of the independent King’s School and state Priory Primary School since
So it has come to this. The Washington Post, paper of Bradlee and Woodward and Bernstein and all the rest, has been sold to Amazon’s Jeff Bezos. For $250m. That, apparently, is roughly the daily fluctuation in the value of Bezos’s Amazon shares. For a man worth more than $20bn, buying the Post is a bit like the
The most dramatic part of Lothar-Günther Buchheim’s unmatched submarine novel, Das Boot, takes place beneath the Straits of Gibraltar, when Buchheim’s U-boat is ordered from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean. ‘How can we get through?’ Asks one of the luckless crew, certain that Gibraltar’s massive defences will be the death of them. At least 9 U-boats
David Cameron is committed to an EU referendum if he’s still Prime Minister after the next election. We also know that he’d like to lead the ‘In’ side if he can get a good enough deal. Given this, the fact that the FT is reporting that Ivan Rogers, the PM’s Europe adviser, is the frontrunner
One million people on zero hours contracts, scream the media – quoting figures released today by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. This is at odds with recent ONS figures that put the number on these contracts closer to 200,000. Zero-hours contracts have been around for many years in the retail and hospitality industries, where demand
Mr Justice Tugendhat delivered a ferocious verdict last week. Undercover reporters from the Sunday Times claimed they had found Peter Cruddas, co-Treasurer of the Conservative Party, offering influence in return for wodges of cash. With damning language, the judge found against the paper, leaving it with costs and damages of around £700,000. I don’t want
I was away last week, filled with joy and love following the birth of our child, but just occasionally I’d check the multi-character psychodrama that is Twitter to stop myself getting too soppy. I sort of agree with Caitlin Moran’s stance in principle; if people are behaving appallingly on Twitter, Twitter should kick them out.
The government is busy quelling worries about the planning process for exploratory shale drilling, following this disobliging article in yesterday’s Observer. The government stresses that its planning guidance document, which was published last month, contains a list of environmental risks that planning officers ‘should address’, together with an explanation of the competences of other relevant government