All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
There’s one government adviser who still feels Steve Hilton’s absence very keenly indeed. ‘He was always thinking ahead, how do we set the debate rather than endlessly react to it, that was why he was such a delight to work for. All the time he was racing ahead. It was difficult to keep up with
Some Tories are all aquiver today after the Prime Minister’s radio hint yesterday that he might be prepared to introduce an EU referendum bill in this parliament after all. Here are David Cameron’s words on yesterday’s World at One that are supposed to set your heart pounding: ‘I think we need to demonstrate absolutely that
Steerpike is back in print in today’s Spectator. Here’s a taste of what to expect: ‘It’s been a tricky few days for Populus, the ultracool research organisation. Once the Tories’ favourite pollster, Populus has long enjoyed the patronage of Fleet Street’s most prestigious client, the Times. But no longer. The Thunderer is about to sever
Is UKIP a bunch of fringe lunatics, or a party ready to shake the establishment to its core? In this week’s Spectator cover feature, James Forsyth examines the Ukip mission and Nigel Farage’s plan for dominating the political landscape. On the latest View from 22 podcast, James reports in from South Shields on how Farage
At the launch of my biography of Margaret Thatcher, I was flattered to see Michael and Anne Heseltine joining the signing queue. It was very sporting of him. When they reached me, Anne asked for my inscription, but Michael said he wished his copy to be blank so that he could quickly sell it. I
David Cameron’s refusal to say ‘UKIP’ on the radio today was rather entertaining, but it does highlight a strange problem that the Conservative party has brought upon itself for these local elections. Here’s his exchange with Martha Kearney, which you can listen to below, from 8m 49s in: Cameron: ‘My role is to get around
Travel around Britain, and the paradox of our labour market quickly becomes apparent. There are far too many young people out of work, yet employers complain that they can’t get the people they want. That is because, for too long, young people have been denied the experience that employers want. This is what’s known as
In the course of a long career as a polemical journalist I have got thoroughly used to being insulted, libelled and attacked in a multitude of different ways. It comes with the territory, and is probably good for the soul. As a general rule the best policy is to allow these assaults to pass by
Nick Clegg is frustrated. He told callers on LBC this morning that ‘one of the most frustrating dilemmas that we have face in government is that we have thrown a barrage of initiatives at this problem to get the construction sector and house-building sector moving, it just takes longer than, I think, you or I
UKIP are buoyant and, all of a sudden, everyone’s favourite protest-group. In a curious way, the confirmation that many of their candidates really are boggle-minded, eyes-popped extremists of one stamp or another almost helps UKIP. It confirms that they’re not like the other political parties and encourages people to adopt them as the Sod it,
It’s not a case of will they, won’t they when it comes to whether Labour would borrow more, but will they admit it and try to sell this plan to voters? In the past few days, we’ve seen the party trying to work this out in public. Ed Miliband, in his awkward World at One
The government’s ‘nudge unit’ has always been regarded as radical – or a bit wacky, depending on your outlook – and now this Cabinet Office division, officially known as the Behavioural Insights Team, is getting a bit more radical. It’s going into the private sector. A source close to Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude says
The Labour Party is most exercised by the news, broken by the Spectator, that Economist journalist Christopher Lockwood has been appointed to the Downing Street Policy Unit. Poor old Lockwood is charged with being a bit posh, knowing David Cameron personally and attending a good school. This amounts to a crime against humanity in Labour
Dirty tricks against UKIP by the establishment are not a new phenomenon. Though in recent days the Conservative party have been found engaging in them, there are far more striking examples from the recent past. On 25 May 2001 the Spectator published a piece by Norman Tebbit that deserves to be far better known. Tebbit
Ken Livingstone’s remarks about the motives of the Boston bombing suspects have been widely condemned for suggesting that American foreign policy ‘fuels the anger’ that drove such young men into acts of terrorism. Tory chairman Grant Shapps has demanded the former Mayor of London apologise for causing offence: ‘These are irresponsible, insensitive and thoughtless comments which show why Ken Livingstone
Almost three thousand years ago the Prophet Amos asked ‘can two walk together except they be agreed?’ How can the Church of England, pragmatic and volunteer-led but with complex legal and cultural structures, stay meshed with its culturally incompatible overseas churches? What is its future? Theo Hobson argues in this week’s Spectator that the C
Not wanting to heap worries onto the Prime Minister when he’s just about found harmony with his party, but as well as the underused backbenchers I mentioned this morning, he might want to think about his party’s PPSs as well. Some of them feel they were offered their jobs with the promise that the role
Is it possible for a government minister to give a speech that is not a “keynote address”? That was my first thought upon reading Maria Miller’s speech at the British Museum last week. My second thought was remembering the old saw that any time a government minister talks about “culture” it is sensible to reach
When J.B. Priestley visited Stoke-on-Trent on his 1934 ‘English Journey,’ he tried his hand throwing a vase at the Wedgwood factory in Etruria. It is fair to say, he lacked the skills. After a lot of jokes about ‘jollying’ and ‘jiggering’ and watching his vase flop back into clay, Priestley praised the craftsmen ‘doing something
I know the Liberal Democrats are trying to take credit for anything they like the sound of, but their rewriting of history is getting out of control. It seems that they have claimed Gladstone as a ‘Liberal Democrat’ on the Downing Street website. I doubt that even Mr Gladstone could make Thursday’s elections any easier for Clegg & Co – assuming
Could life in Bangladesh be better? Of course it could. Is life in Bangladesh getting better? Of course it is. The horrific death toll after a factory building collapsed in Dhaka last week encourages us to forget this second point. But we should still try and remember it. Sensible advocates for reform and improvement know
In her cover piece for this week’s Spectator, Alison Wolf describes the divide between ‘alpha females’ and other women. Here are some of the starkest differences, illustrated using figures from her book The XX Factor. 1. The rise of the alpha female. ‘In England, by the age of 16, girls are dividing into two distinct
David Cameron is really trying to reach out to his party at the moment. The announcements of a policy board of MPs and a policy chief who is also an MP were intended to show that it’s not just the inner circle that calls the shots. Jo Johnson appears to have received a bigger promotion
Downing Street has pulled off a coup with the recruitment of Chris Lockwood, the US editor of The Economist, to the new Downing Street policy unit. Lockwood is one of the brightest and most insightful people in journalism and one imagines that he wouldn’t have left a prime perch at The Economist if he did
The Tory leadership is getting increasingly nervous that the party isn’t sufficiently braced for bad local election results this Thursday. They’re worried that too many MPs assume the party won’t lose much more than 300 seats. The problem is that, for understandable reasons, MPs are treating all of CCHQ’s dire predictions — one source there
Whether you like Ed Miliband’s latest party political broadcast depends very much on whether you’re the sort of person who openly weeps while listening to Coldplay. It’s got plenty of the Chris Martin playing Wembley factor: emotional piano music, people saying things like ‘please, give people some hope’, and the Labour leader leaning comfortingly against
The problem with Ed Miliband’s World at One interview was that he addressed Martha Kearney as if she was a public meeting. Whenever she asked him a difficult question, he just spoke louder. At one point, he barked at her ‘you don’t understand’. listen to ‘Martha Kearney interviews Labour Leader Ed Miliband – The World at
This weekend, Iain Duncan Smith sparked a furore when a Sunday Telegraph interview quoted him as saying he would ‘encourage everybody who reads the Telegraph and doesn’t need [their winter fuel allowance], to hand it back’. This morning, however, he appears to have offered a retraction, telling the Today programme that ‘I’m neither encouraging nor
Last week I recorded an edition of Hardtalk for the BBC which has gone out today. It is a discussion with Kate Hudson, the General Secretary of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), on the future of nuclear weaponry. The discussion is available on iplayer here. A couple of observations. Firstly, I seem to have
Kenneth Clarke has always seemed, to me, a decent sort. By far the most likeable and least lordly and arrogant of those Euro-wanking wets who plagued Thatcher and, later, Major. Nonetheless, he is always wrong. About everything. If you are ever in doubt about where you should stand on a particular issue, find out what
How do the Tories deal with UKIP? The party likes to split on most issues, and it has got a nice little fault line running across it at the moment on whether to squash the party as ‘fruitcakes’, or, as Conor Burns eloquently argued on Coffee House this morning, engage with the problems and anxieties
If we had a time machine and could take a stroll down our local high street twenty years ago, we’d discover a place alive with activity. As well as shoppers hunting through famous outfits such as Woolworths, JJB Sports and Comet, we might see queues snaking at the local bank branch, someone waiting their turn
Some of the coverage of the background and views of UKIP local election candidates has been met with a glee born of a belief that it might be the silver bullet to puncture the party’s recent rise in support. I have an intrinsic suspicion that this will prove not to be so. Last night I
Bids for the 2015/16 spending review will land on George Osborne’s desk today from Secretaries of State across Whitehall. Some, like Iain Duncan Smith and Patrick McLoughlin, are signed up to the idea that their departments need further cuts. McLoughlin, as a former chief whip, prefers to avoid conflict, while Duncan Smith has made it