All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
On the face of it, the Supreme Court’s decision to allow three suits to be brought against the Ministry of Defence is surprising, almost shocking. My colleague Alex Massie has castigated the judgment; but, while I don’t necessarily disagree with Alex’s sentiments, the judgment merits very close attention. It is a politically far-reaching decision. The
The Spectator debate on Monday will no doubt pick up from Cameron’s statement to the House of Commons after the G8 meeting on Wednesday. It was wafer thin; so were his achievements. The spin generated by Number 10 in recent days has verged on the absurd. On Tuesday, according to The Times headline, Cameron was
From fashion to festivals, Life’s summer issue arrives with your Spectator this week. On our cover this time is the film star Diane Kruger — Helen in Troy, and a scene-stealer in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds. A woman whose talent and sense of style I have long admired, when I met her in New York,
Is George Osborne cutting enough into public sector spending? In this week’s Spectator cover feature, Ross Clark examines how the Chancellor isn’t making much of a dent at all into government waste and how he is wasting numerous opportunities for being austere. On the latest View from 22 podcast, Matthew Sinclair of the Taxpayers’ Alliance
The other day I was chatting to Mimi Avery, of the famous Bristol wine importing firm. She said that she couldn’t understand how some supermarkets can offer bottles of wine at, say ‘£4.95 reduced from £9.95’. If the normal selling price was a tenner, how could they make a profit on a fiver? Then by
Can Barack Obama still pretend to be champion of the liberal dream even though we all know he isn’t? Yes he can! Can a President who rides roughshod over civil liberties, orders illegal drone strikes that kill innocent people, and snoops on citizens still present himself as a harbinger of world peace? Yes he can!
This was a card-shredder of a performance by Ed Miliband. He’s had some difficult outings lately but he barely even showed up at PMQs today. His team of phrase-makers and sloganeers have abandoned him too. Either they’re in the Priory, taking emergency anti-depressants, or they’ve quit the party altogether. And those in Labour’s heartlands watching
What a lot of fun Michael Gove is having with Stephen Twigg’s latest policy pronouncements. The Education Secretary has written a fabulously long letter to his Labour shadow following up on Monday’s speech with 36 questions. He charmingly writes: ‘I am sure your speech was the result of a well-thought-through reflection on schools policy and
I don’t think, so far as I can remember, that I have ever previously found any sympathy with the sayings of top Islamist cleric Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi. But I do appreciate his recent sentiment that Hezbollah is in fact not the ‘Army of God’ but rather the ‘Army of Satan.’ And I can find only
The British Army may never go to war again. Not because it is under-resourced and over-stretched but because, as of today, it may no longer be able to afford casualties. That, at any rate, is one thought prompted by the Supreme Court’s extraordinary – to my mind – ruling that dead soldiers’ families can sue
The Tory party is currently offering a campaigning masterclass on James Wharton’s Private Member’s Bill. As Coffee House revealed last night, any member of the public can sign up to co-sponsor the backbench legislation, and the party has spent a great deal of time squaring backbenchers on the wording of the bill to prevent further
Ed Miliband’s approach at PMQs today was rather odd. He led, aggressively, on whether the government would implement the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards’ recommendation of a new criminal offence for negligent bankers. He asked the question in a manner that expected the answer no, but Cameron—predictably—said he would. At which point, the wind rather
George Osborne is expected to respond to the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards’s final report in his Mansion House speech this evening. The report is hefty and packed with recommendations, but there are two areas where the Chancellor will find himself treading a particularly tricky path. Both the proposal to defer bonuses and introduce a
…bad bankers The commission wants to encourage greater personal responsibility, through making it clear with whom the buck stops for each key area within a bank, and sanctions including a criminal offence of reckless misconduct in the management of a bank. The report emphasises that it would be rare to secure a conviction under this
Is there not something odd about a Prime Minister talking of getting involved in the Syrian civil war on the very day that another 4,500 British service personnel had their redundancy notices handed to them? It has always been my belief that you should never even tinker in a conflict unless you are prepared to
This story broke as an exclusive in tonight’s Coffee House Evening Blend, a free round-up and analysis of the day’s political stories. Click here to subscribe. The Conservatives will table James Wharton’s Private Member’s Bill for an EU referendum tonight for publication tomorrow. Coffee House has exclusive details of the changes to this piece of
The debate about the Syrian crisis is now as much about shoulda, woulda, coulda, as it is about what can happen now. Douglas Alexander’s response to the G8 communique this afternoon said: ‘This statement begs the question whether a different diplomatic approach by the Prime Minister, not focusing so much effort on lifting the arms
There are few worse insults for a minister than to be called ‘house trained’. It implies that the vested interests of your department have you under their thumb. So, Vince Cable and David Willetts should be rather alarmed that one notoriously left-wing academic is boasting that they pretty much are. In an article in Times
Remember that last communique signed at a summit of world leaders, the really challenging one that they’re all worried they will never meet in reality? You don’t? How strange. David Cameron mused at the weekend that these agreements that take days to draft end up in an ‘elephant’s graveyard’, and to try to show that
It’s not often that M&G’s retail bond team link to education pieces; they tend to be more interested in inflation threats and sovereign defaults. But this morning, the guys at @bondvigilantes drew investors’ attention to research published in the current issue of The Spectator on the true economic cost of British educational failure. It makes
It’s said that Ken Clarke would cross a motorway to pick a fight with a political opponent. His aggression is one reason why he thrived (eventually) under Mrs Thatcher: ambulance drivers, teaching unions and local government were all given a bunch of fives when Clarke reached Cabinet in the late ‘80s. Chris Patten (in the
Porn, porn, porn. One way or another, we all like talking about it. But today’s debate about children and ‘sexually explicit material’ on the internet might be more demeaning than the smut itself. For a start, it’s government manufactured: the coalition knows that nobody ever lost votes by saying they cared about kids. The media
You know what it’s like. It starts getting hotter. Stickier, too. There’s something in the air you can’t quite put your finger on. But you sense it all the same. A storm is coming. David Cameron’s insistence – in the face of significant opposition from some of his parliamentary colleagues and possibly even more opposition
We should, I suppose, be grateful to Benedict Brogan for his column today examining some of the reasons for why Britain should become more heavily involved in the Syrian civil war. Grateful, that is, because Mr Brogan’s article reveals how pitifully inadequate these reasons are. Here’s Mr Brogan’s conclusion: The coalition against intervention in Syria appears
The Met Office is apparently holding a ‘crisis meeting’ today to discuss why Britain’s weather refuses to behave itself these days. No sooner had the camp, pirouetting, forecasters told us that we were in for weeks and weeks of gale force winds and torrential rain, stretching into July, better wear your wellies etc, than the
Those cracking jokes about bears visiting the woods following Ken Clarke’s latest warning about the dangers of Britain leaving the EU miss the point. The former Chancellor and Minister without Portfolio is firstly echoing the stance of his boss, rather than briefing against him, and is secondly continuing to plug away at the case for
Tory MPs have long assumed that Sir George Young would be shuffled out of the job of chief whip at the next reshuffle. The 71 year old had, after all, been retired from the Cabinet with honours last September only to be recalled and made chief whip following Andrew Mitchell’s resignation. But David Cameron has
Since we launched The Spectator Archive, the most read piece has been the first ever published article by one Anthony Blair in 1979, before he switched to the more informal Tony. Here, the future Labour Prime Minister examines how immigrants were unfairly treated by the British justice system. Reportedly, the article was only printed because
Michael Gove is naturally having some fun with Stephen Twigg’s schools speech. The Education Secretary has responded to Twigg’s plan for ‘parent academies’ by saying: ‘Labour’s policy on free schools is so tortured they should send in the UN to end the suffering. On the one hand Stephen Twigg says he will end the free
Boris Johnson makes a strong case in today’s Telegraph that even if the west wanted to intervene in the Syrian civil war the point at which is was plausible to do so has long since passed. The benefits of intervention no longer outweigh the risks. Meanwhile, Paul Goodman reiterates that there’s no obvious British national interest in
The Treasury is entering its last minute negotiations with recalcitrant departments ahead of next week’s spending review announcement. But for all the talk of ‘difficult decisions’, the settlement doesn’t look as though it will take some of the more difficult decisions about the shape of government itself. In a Free Enterprise Group paper published today,
Stephen Twigg is, as he probably expected, coming in for a bit of flak on his U-turn on free schools this morning. Labour’s Shadow Education Secretary has launched his own plan for ‘parent academies’, which Toby Young and James Kirkup have had some fun with here. But he is basically doing what Lord Adonis has
A scientific study has revealed that the faces of Lego characters are no longer so mindlessly happy as they once were. This is an important thing to know. ‘Put the cancer cure stuff on hold for a while, will you – I’m deeply interested in the facial expressions of plastic toys.’ Anyway, once upon a
While the G8 begins today with splits already clear on Syria, David Cameron will be aware, as he sits down for talks with world leaders, that the splits in his own Parliament are becoming increasingly vocal. It’s not just Boris Johnson’s column in today’s Telegraph in which the Mayor of London warns that ‘we won’t