All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
This weekend’s closing of US embassies in the Muslim world and the British embassy in Yemen combined with the warning to Americans about overseas travel is another reminder that the Islamist terrorist threat has not gone away. But the relative calmness with which this news is being treated is a reminder that the politics of
This week we have another old favourite. Competitors are invited to take an existing word and alter it by a) adding a letter; b) changing a letter; and c) deleting a letter; and to supply definitions for all three new words. (Total word count of entry 150 words maximum.) Please email entries to lucy @
Did you know that the Russians once had an empire (of sorts) in the Pacific North West of America? No, neither did Sam Leith. He has reviewed ‘a blindly good story extremely well told’ about this forgotten history (Glorious Misadventures: Nikolai Rezanov and the Dream of Russian America by Owen Matthews) in this week’s edition
First the white vans, now the spot checks – Nigel Farage is being given fresh voice by the Home Office’s attempts to tackle illegal immigration. He has said of the spot checks: ‘Spot checks and being demanded to show your papers by officialdom are not the British way of doing things. Yes of course we want to
An old Washington cliche has it that a gaffe is what happens when a politician inadvertently blurts out the truth or, in a variation on the theme, reveals what he really thinks. Enter Lord Howell. In ordinary circumstances Peer Says Something Daft might be thought as newsworthy as Friday Follows Thursday but Lord Howell is not some backwoods eccentric. He’s
Shale has been back on the front pages this week, with exploratory drilling at Balcombe in West Sussex and Lord Howell offending sensibilities north of the Watford Gap. The leading column in this week’s issue of the Spectator makes this point: ‘Lord Howell’s comments add grist to the arguments of those who complain that the
Jura, George Orwell wrote, is “an extremely ungetable place”. It is easier, but only modestly so, to reach Jura now than it was when Orwell lived on the island. Unless you have your own boat or take, in summer, the small passenger ferry it still requires two ferry trips. But for Orwell, who disliked “big
Several articles in this week’s issue of the Spectator are worth the cover price alone. We’ll be flagging them up on Coffee House over the weekend. To start with, here is Rod Liddle on the row over pornography: ‘The Co-operative stores, with all the high-handed self-righteousness of the political movement to which it is paying
Steerpike particularly enjoyed this close-up.
Formulating policy on the back of what you believe human beings ought to be like rather than what they tend to be like can have serious consequences. Mass immigration is a case in point. I have tended to accept the proposition that immigration (the more the merrier) is an inherent good on the grounds that
I watched this thinking it would be hilariously bad, but ended up quite liking it; especially the line, near the end, ‘it’s not British, it’s brutish’. Ok it ain’t T S Eliot. But then the wizened old chap would sit oddly at the Guardian. (‘In the room the women come and go, talking of George Monbiot’).
A couple of weeks ago, the Spectator ran a cover feature on the number of Australian, Kiwi, South African and Canadian men (and they are invariably men) at the top of the British establishment. Not since the likes of Jan Smuts, Keith Park, Robert Menzies, Lord Beaverbrook and countless others were fighting Nazism, have men
In recent days Tunisia has seen major unrest after the assassination of opposition leader Mohamed Brahmi. Faced with growing unrest over a faltering economy and rising violence by extremists, Tunisia’s moderate Islamist led government is facing its biggest test. But this is not Egypt. Nascent democracies in the region are not acting in a uniform
Politics abhors a news vacuum. So with the government on holiday, attention shifts to the opposition. This is why oppositions normally have a whole series of summer stories ready to fill this vacuum. But, oddly, we have heard little from the Labour front bench in the last ten days or so. One consequence of this
George Mudie is the Labour Party’s answer to Marvin the Paranoid Android. He gave an interview to The World At One earlier today which was so morose in tone that I think he must, as a matter of urgency, have a meal at the Restaurant At the End of Universe. Yet, through the fog of his despair, Mudie (a seasoned
Forget the unedifying spectacle of today’s appointments to the House of Lords; a much more sought-after list is doing the rounds: that of the presents our political leaders sent wee Prince George and his proud parents. Mr Steerpike detects the hand of Mrs Clegg in the Deputy Prime Minister’s choice of a blanket handmade by
UKIP is up in arms about the new working peers (or at least it’s pretending to be). The Greens get a peer and the Lib Dems get many peers; but UKIP gets none, despite its healthy polling. There are very good reasons for this. The Greens and the Lib Dems are powers in certain parts of
Michael Gove’s team is cock-a-hoop about the performance of free schools in the latest round of Oftsed reports. Of the 24 schools tested, 4 were judged outstanding, 14 were rated good, 5 have room for improvement and 1 was declared inadequate. A quick turnaround is required of the 6 substandard schools. The Department of Education
Will online abuse and trolling ever be stopped? On this week’s View from 22 podcast, Hugo Rifkind discusses his Spectator column on the subject with Helen Lewis of the New Statesman. They ask if trolling has got better or worse? What, if anything, can or should be done about ‘morons’ who mindlessly attack people? And
Here is the list of new working peers. It features a number of donors and cronies, which is not remotely surprisingly. And yesterday’s party hacks get gifted a tomorrow – Annabel Goldie being the most conspicuous example. There are one or two interesting names, though – Doreen Lawrence and Daniel Finkelstein, for instance. No UKIP peerages, you’ll note. Conservative party Richard Balfe – former MEP and Conservative Party Envoy to
Mark Cronshaw at The Wine Company of Colchester has helped me assemble half a dozen luscious wines. They are pricier than our normal range, but by golly they’re good, and generously discounted. You can buy by the case of six, or get a sampler with one of each wine. You will not be remotely -disappointed.
Boris Johnson will not stand for parliament at the next election, The Spectator understands. The Mayor of London has told the Cameron circle that he will not seek to return to the Commons in a pre-2015 by-election, nor will he stand at the general election. Boris’s decision not to be a candidate in 2015 indicates
Much, if not all, of the discussion about immigration in recent days has barely mentioned migration from the European Union, which, given the scale of such migration, was an oversight. Freedom of movement is sacred in Brussels – and indeed elsewhere on the continent. But the times they are a changing. The accession of Bulgaria
Grant Shapps’ latest broadside against Labour shows how keen the Tories are to frame the next election not as a referendum on their performance in government but as a choice between them and Labour. Shapps wants voters to think about the fact that the alternative to David Cameron as Prime Minister is ‘Miliband and Balls’
Some years ago, soon after he ploughed £30 million into the Independent titles, Russian oligarch Alexander Lebedev proclaimed: ‘I’m taught to be more Marcus Aurelius than Caracalla if you know your Roman history.’ He said even nicer things about his new employees: ‘If we’re lucky to find somebody like Mark Twain, who used to be
40 u-turns and counting, the coalition has a habit of dropping difficult policies. One notable exception is High Speed 2, which is still being keenly promoted. Today, members of a new HS2 growth task force have been announced. The advocates are an impressive selection of council leaders, academics, businessman and trade unions. Their job will
My best mate revealed to me that his bicycle was wrecked. I asked if he would be buying a new one. He said yes, via the government’s Cycle To Work scheme. What the hell’s wrong with Halfords, I thought silently to myself. Apparently the government will let you pay for a bike tax and NI
Amid all the bloodshed in Egypt and Syria at the moment the fact that the Israelis and Palestinians are once again at the negotiating table has received less notice than usual. Which is not necessarily a bad thing. The intense international focus on the dispute seems to me a minor contributing reason why the dispute remains unresolved.
Charming little spat between the Conservative Party and George Orwell’s old literary haunt, Tribune. The magazine, which is edited by a former Labour councillor, is up in arms because the Tories will only give it one free pass to their autumn conference. Given that the periodical has only three members of staff and is the chosen reading
A Conservative Home poll, which found that a majority of activists believe that the coalition is good for Britain, is the latest little boost for David Cameron, so says Paul Goodman. The Tories are having a good the summer; confidence is building. Yet there is, as numerous commentators and MPs are keen to stress, some way to
Lord Howell has got himself into a spot of fracking bother this afternoon. The Newcastle Chronicle reports that George Osborne’s father-in-law says fracking should be carried out in ‘unhabituated and desolate areas’. Nothing too controversial about that, except Howell singled out the north east of England, where there is apparently ‘plenty of room’. Howell —
At the weekend I was on the BBC TV programme Sunday Morning Live. We discussed pilgrimages and the ethics of the banking industry. But the first debate was the most heated. It was titled, ‘Are Muslims being demonised?’ The Huffington Post’s UK political director, Mehdi Hasan, claimed that Muslims are indeed being demonised. For my
Did you know that DFID cost each person in the country £97 last year? Or that the DWP spent £173 billion in 2012-13? Or that the BBC cost each person £21.59 last quarter? Well, you do now thanks to GIST, the government’s new spending website launched today. In an attempt to fix the messy Data.gov.uk, GIST
The High Court has rejected the “bedroom tax” claimants’ case. In a ruling issued earlier this morning, Lord Justice Laws said that ‘the PSED [Public Sector Equality Duty on the benefit reforms] was fulfilled; and the effects of the HB [Housing Benefit] cap were properly considered in terms of the discipline imposed by the requirement of proportionality.’ On the