All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
One consequence of the local elections is that no Tory now denies that they need to win over UKIP voters to win the next election. How to do that, though, remains a subject of intense debate — last night’s 1922 Committee meeting with Grant Shapps discussed this point and ran massively over as a result.
Michael Gove likes to make mischief. Every so often he stokes London’s liberal elite into fits of righteous indignation. If he does this out of pure joy, then his latest caper will not have disappointed. This afternoon the education secretary gave a speech to private school headmasters in which he made an important point about the
As expected, the backbench Tory campaign for an EU referendum bill started as soon as the Queen’s Speech proved not to contain one. The first battle is over an amendment expressing regret which John Baron, who is leading the charge on this, has tabled. The amendment, to the motion welcoming the Queen’s Speech, simply reads:
Two ministers appeared in the Commons today to explain two different reforms. One is at the very start of its legislative life, appearing in yesterday’s Queen’s Speech, while the other one appears to be doddering about on its last legs after months of fanfare. Liz Truss found herself summoned to the despatch box to explain
The UK faces two referendums about its future, not one. As well as David Cameron’s promised ‘proper’ referendum on the UK’s relationship with the European Union, there is also the one on Scottish independence due on 18 September 2014. By and large, despite similarities in the arguments involved, each of those debates has paid little
Will Britain’s lack of enthusiasm for shale gas result in a collapse of the government’s whole energy policy? In this week’s Spectator cover feature, Peter Lilley writes we will soon cross this shale rubicon. The former shadow chancellor and advisor to David Cameron vigorously argues that fracking can no longer be ignored in order to
The digital evolution of The Spectator continues apace and I’m delighted to announce our new app for Android. It is due to popular demand: after listening to your feedback, we decided our first priority was to have an app for owners of the Kindle Fire, Fire HD and Fire HD 8.9″. Like our popular iPad
One of the most striking divides in the left/right political debate is this. Those on the right disagree with people on the left. They find left-wing opinions misguided, incorrect or otherwise wrong. But they tend not to assume that their opponents are evil. This favour is rarely reciprocated. The Harvard professor and historian Niall Ferguson
Last week I said something stupid about John Maynard Keynes. Asked to comment on Keynes’s famous observation ‘In the long run we are all dead,’ I suggested that Keynes was perhaps indifferent to the long run because he had no children, and that he had no children because he was gay. This was doubly stupid.
The Queen’s Speech debate is always a mix of MPs patting each other on the back and political combat. This year, in a sign that the next election is looming ever larger in the minds of the party leaders, there was far more of the latter than the former. Ed Miliband in his speech majored
Nadine Dorries has been given the Conservative whip back by Sir George Young, Coffee House can exclusively reveal. Sources in the Tory party tell me that the MP, who was suspended in November for appearing on the reality TV show I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here!, has just been told she can now
I’ve just come from a briefing with a European Union official. He was asked whether Lord Lawson’s call for Britain to leave the EU was a ‘dinosaur argument.’ In response, the official paused. He smiled in an indulgent way. He tilted his head: ‘Mrs Thatcher’s finance minister, who is the father of such a good cookbook
Want to know (or at least pretend you know) what the Queen was talking about when she addressed the House of Lords this morning? Here are the bills that the government will bring into Parliament over the next 12 months, and what they’ll do: National Insurance Contributions Bill – The £2,000 employment allowance for every
Over the next few days, we’ll all have to swallow gallons of journalistic effluvium about the great Alex Ferguson, who announced his resignation this morning. We will be told about the legendary gum-chewing manager who transformed humble, working-class Manchester United into a world-topping global brand. We should, however, be expressing relief that a man who
On Tuesday night, at a Spectator readers’ evening, Andrew Neil interviewed me about my biography of Margaret Thatcher. He asked me if, after leaving office, Lady Thatcher had come to the view that Britain should leave the European Union. I said yes (I think it happened after the Maastricht Treaty in 1992), although advisers had
When I heard that Niall Ferguson had said that JM Keynes advocated reckless economic policies because he was gay and childless, and hence had no concern for the future, I wrote: ‘If true, this represents Ferguson’s degeneration from historian to shock jock’. The reports were true, but I was wrong. There has been no degeneration.
It is probably unfair to say that the Queen’s Speech will have nothing to do with the economy: we are, after all, expecting a deregulation bill among others, which the Treasury hopes will speed things up for small businesses. But if George Osborne looks a little distracted today, it’s probably because his mind is on
In its present form, the EU serves British interests very poorly. The time has come for us to finally take matters into our own hands. But I don’t agree with the idea that we should simply withdraw now. That day may come, but surely not before we have given fundamental reform our best shot. Everything
One of the key bills to be announced in today’s Queen’s Speech is an immigration bill. This serves two key purposes: the first is to bring into legislation all those additional restrictions on access to public services for migrants that was briefed out following the Eastleigh by-election. The second is to answer Tory backbench concerns
The prices of the top Bordeaux reds are down this year, though you can still pay hundreds of pounds a bottle for the most famous labels. What puzzles me is the way that some of the smaller, unknown chateaux imagine that because Chinese millionaires pay ludicrous sums for the great names, they can overcharge for
Peter Hain is pessimistic about Ed Miliband’s chances, in spite of what the bookies say*. ‘If a general election was held tomorrow, Labour wouldn’t win a majority,’ he writes in Progress Online. ‘The truth is if we want a majority in 2015, we need to be performing better than we are now.’ He also zeroes
It is hard to overstate the significance of Israel’s surgical strikes against Syrian military positions over the weekend. The raids targeted missiles bound for Hezbollah in Lebanon while also destroying battery launchers and other delivery systems. Beyond the obvious damage this inflicted on Syrian military capabilities, its real significance lies in the broader political objectives
Having a baby and stuck for a choice of name? Let the eminently sensible and well-adjusted people of New Zealand help you out. Their government has just released a list of names parents wished to call their kids but were banned from doing so by an overbearing and meddling state. Luckily they’re still legal over
The latest extracts of the Andrew Adonis’ book on the 2010 coalition negotiations couldn’t have been better designed to stir up Tory backbench bad feeling to Nick Clegg. Adonis claims that in the final phone calls between Clegg and Brown, the Lib Dem leader kept stressing—you’ve guessed it—Europe. Adonis reports that Clegg told Brown: ‘Following our
Last week I chided those in SW1 who were criticising David Cameron for appointing yet more Old Etonians to his staff without first checking their own teams for signs of blue blood. Now news reaches me that Downing Street has not done much to counter the original charge. Etonian stereotypes were alive and well during Jo
It’s at times like this I’m glad I’m not a Europhile. I imagine that Lord Lawson’s article in today’s Times is causing Brussels-lovers up and down the land a number of headaches this afternoon, not least because it is incredibly detailed and hard to find fault with: The EU’s desire for ‘ever-closer union’ is undiminished?
The Scottish Tories look like supporting more devolution. Cue predictable apoplexy from some. Devolution was a terrible mistake, slopes are slippery, beaches should be fought on and ditches died in. In its own way, this reaction makes exactly the same mistake as nationalists. To understand why needs a history lesson, and a grasp of public
One of the inevitable consequences of Lord Lawson’s announcement that he’d vote ‘No’ in an EU referendum is that the ideological divides over Europe in the Tory party are starting to open up again. This lunchtime, two Conservative MPs debated one another on the issue, which must be confusing for the electorate, and also shows
I shall be on hiatus for the next week as I’m getting married on Saturday and I have an inkling that this is no time to be concerned that people are wrong on the internet. I leave you with my latest Think Scotland column in which I consider some of the topics raised by Douglas Alexander in
You know something is going right with the world when Charles Moore’s biography of Margaret Thatcher is Number 1 in the Guardian bookshop. Little wonder: even if you’re no fan of The Lady, it’s one of the best political biographies that you’ll read. And tonight, Charles will discuss his book with Andrew Neil at Cadogan
The most damaging element of Lord Lawson’s intervention on Europe in today’s Times is not so much his decision that the facts have changed and that he would vote to leave the European Union in a post-2015 referendum, but his lack of faith in David Cameron’s ability to secure any notable reforms. He writes: ‘We
The government’s decision to delay signing off the Royal Charter for press regulation was initially heralded as a dramatic change of heart, before being re-sold by those involved in the process as just a box-ticking exercise to avoid legal action. Either way, there is a growing noise not just about the rival charters now on
The introduction of the Help to Buy scheme was the only very small bone of contention in this year’s successful Budget (successful politically, that is, in that no-one talks about it a month and a half later). The announcement itself was a political win for Communities Secretary Eric Pickles, who believes that the only problem
In this morning’s Wall Street Journal (Europe) I have a piece on the rise of UKIP. It is about hedgehogs, foxes and Nigel Farage. And it suggests that something important is happening in our politics. Finally.