All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
At Prime Minister’s Questions yesterday, the Opposition touted food banks as evidence of Britain’s regression into a Dickensian era. With 128,000 visitors passing through the Trussell Trust’s doors last year, today was not the first Wednesday on which the Government has been blamed for more children going hungry and more families struggling to put food
Tory MPs – and the occasional Lib Dem, too – were flocking around Andrew Mitchell in the Commons yesterday to show their support for the former chief whip. He is enjoying a new wave of support in his party, rather than languishing as persona non grata on the backbench. But the picture is still not
The plot is rapidly thickening around the whole Andrew Mitchell and police incident. By the end of this matter, I suspect several reputations will have been severely damaged. The email allegedly sent by a police officer, who was posing as a member of the public and an eyewitness to the incident, to his local MP
Robert Bork was not only an extraordinary and effective jurist, he was also a crucial figure in American conservatism. In reporting news of his death certain media are – as here, running ‘Controversial conservative jurist Robert Bork dead at 85’ type headlines. As Roger Kimball points out in his piece here, the only reason Bork
David Cameron’s appearance before the 1922 committee was designed to reassure his party, and he tried to do this by promising them that the Conservative party would be strong on Europe in 2015. It has been a hard term, and today’s PMQs was savage, so the Prime Minister decided to start his speech by telling
A fascinating PMQs. Labour staged one of the most carefully orchestrated attacks on David Cameron they’ve ever mounted. It was relentless. Ed Miliband kicked off by asking the PM about the six fold rise in food-bank dependency. Cheekily, Cameron praised Miliband for applauding the volunteer spirit. ‘It’s what I call the Big Society.’ Miliband gave
Despite strong competition, Alec Shelbrooke is the new front-runner for the coveted title of Nastiest, Most Stupid Tory MP 2012. Here’s what he proposes: Mr Shelbrooke has drafted a Bill that would change the law to allow welfare payments to be made on a new “welfare cash card” whose use could be restricted by the
David Cameron made a perfectly good stab at explaining what the government is doing to support families who are struggling at Prime Minister’s Questions today. He said: ‘I agree with the right hon. gentleman that we need to do more to help the poorest in our country. That is why we have lifted the personal
PMQs started off in a very consensual manner as Ed Miliband asked some worthy questions on Afghanistan. But this quickly changed when Miliband moved onto food banks. The Labour leader attempted to paint food banks as a consequence of the coalition’s policies. When Cameron mentioned the ‘Big Society’, Miliband shot back that ‘I never thought
What freedoms we have in Britain have not come as a rule from revolutions and thunderous declarations of the rights of man. More often than not, our liberties have come because bloody-minded and obstinate men and women have squared their shoulders and decided to fight an arbitrary decision, when others would have surrendered. Paul Chambers
Now this is what I call a studio discussion. My personal highlights are: ‘My shoe and my urine are more dignified than you.’ ‘I spit on you and on your people.’ And – in the midst of all this – the plaintive line: ‘George, we don’t want the discussion to be like this.’ All of
The Westminster grapevine is buzzing with the latest rumours about the truth of ‘pleb-gate’. There are legal limits to what we can say. But a few things seem certain. Andrew Mitchell’s friends believe he is on the cusp of vindication. On the Today Programme just now, David Davis called for him to be returned to
Did the police stitch up Andrew Mitchell like a kipper? I was at a No.10 reception earlier this evening and a section of a room drained when Michael Crick’s extraordinary report about Plebgate came on Channel 4 News.The police claimed that Mitchell’s swearing shocked ‘several members of public’: CCTV footage, released by the Cabinet Office,
Great news for Manal al-Sharif, the Saudi activist who rose to prominence after footage of her driving on the Kingdom’s roads went viral on YouTube last year. She was arrested, of course, and spent time in jail for defying the authorities, but a small and committed campaign emerged nonetheless. Their tactics were simple: Sharif and
As expected, today’s report from the Commission on a Bill of Rights offered little. With a membership evenly split between Tory and Lib Dem nominees, it was set up to fail. Michael Pinto-Duschinsky, who resigned from the Commission in March, tells me that this problem was exacerbated by the way in which it was run:
Ken Clarke’s announcement that the government will accept a major House of Lords amendment to the Justice and Security Bill might ease the legislation’s passage through the Commons. The Lib Dems and several senior Conservative figures, including Andrew Tyrie, have been pressing the government to accept the amendment, which gives judges more discretion on whether
The latest twist in the Andrew Mitchell story is particularly intriguing. The Guardian is reporting that news of the confrontation between the police and the chief whip was passed onto Downing Street by the deputy chief whip John Randall. Now, Randall and Mitchell were known not to get on and Randall played a key part in
I’ve not written anything for a few days because, well, I’ve been trying to organise what I think about the awfulness of the shootings in Newtown, Connecticut. Trying, also, to find a way of writing about it that seems appropriate. There are moments, I think, when a too-polished piece of prose risks seeming distastefully narcissistic,
UKIP has seen a significant bump in support in the latest set of polls: it is up five points with Populus this morning. All of which makes Lord Ashcroft’s examination of why people are attracted to UKIP particularly timely. The Ashcroft polling confirms that the UKIP vote is only partly about Europe. It also reflects
In the latest Spectator Life, our very own Taki told us: ‘I learned long ago that the harder it is to arrive at one’s destination, the better the resort.’ Apparently ‘Gstaad is one of the few ultra-chic winter playgrounds where big jets cannot land.’ Always up for a challenge, I decided that Switzerland’s finest mountain spot needed
It’s a big day for Chris Grayling: the long awaited Commission on a British Bill of Rights reports today. But the Justice Secretary is already setting himself up for disappointment, with reports swirling in the press that the Commission has failed to reach a strong conclusion. In any case, as Grayling acknowledges in his op-ed
It’s a bit early for predictions for 2013. But my feeling is that it could be the year of the unpaid intern, or rather, the year of the paid intern if the campaign to pay people a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work continues to gather pace. Hazel Blears did well to secure
Think the Commons is in uproar at the moment over gay marriage? Just wait until the legislation makes its way into the House of Lords. The received wisdom is that equal marriage will go into the upper chamber, but never make it out alive after a savaging from socially conservative peers. But is that true?
If logistics had allowed, David Cameron would have given his long-awaited speech on Europe tomorrow. Instead, it’s been postponed until January and we had to make do with a statement on the European Council in the Commons today It’s quite clear that Cameron is thoroughly bored of these meetings: he complained that it was the
As the country approaches a general election, a party leader, desperate to reassure a key group of voters, makes a very silly pledge. He is as unequivocal as possible that, in spite of the big spending implications in a time of economic crisis, he will stick to this silly pledge to keep his target voters
Tony Blair is paying a visit to journalists in the Commons this week for a festive lunch. Last week, David Cameron complained to lunching hacks about the ‘gumming up’ of government; perhaps the former Prime Minister will wish to add his own thoughts today on the ingredients of that sticky gum that makes the progress
Labour under a more left-wing leader, the Tories bearing right. These are circumstances in which you would expect the Liberal Democrats to flourish. But they are in government and haven’t benefitted from this moment. Instead, they are struggling in the polls, coming fourth too often for comfort. Part of the problem is that the public
Both the former Labour MP Tony McNulty and the present Culture Secretary Maria Miller claimed parliamentary second home expenses for houses in which their respective parents lived. This is in contravention of accepted procedure. McNulty apologised, paid the money back, resigned his cabinet position and his seat. Maria Miller is somehow still the Culture Secretary
There’s nothing wrong with Nick Clegg putting some distance between his party and the Conservatives. Today the Liberal Democrat leader is going to open up about the gory details of government, explaining where his party has held the Tories back, and heralding a new era where he and colleagues are honest about what they actually
After more than a decade of wrangling, it seems that a deal is finally about to be struck on long-term care of the elderly, by adopting the package proposed by economist Andrew Dilnot. George Osborne has apparently agreed to a proposal, to be announced as early as next month, to make sure no one pays
Yes, Britain’s employment figures are strong but most of the rise in employment so far under this government is accounted for by foreign-born workers (as was 99pc of the rise in employment under Labour). The recession has not diminished employers’ appetite for immigrant workers and today’s Sunday Times magazine has a long piece asking whether
There’s long been a sense on the Tory side that the party’s campaigning isn’t as sharp as it should be, that CCHQ isn’t up to the job. The Ashcroft target seats campaign was so valued not just because of the money but because of the organisational and management muscle behind it. The new Tory Chairman
These shootings. I think we need J G Ballard back. Looking back through previous such apparently random events, we might observe that: • The perpetrators are almost always white. • They are almost always lower middle class or middle class. • The areas in which the shootings take place are almost always comfortable, although not
This week’s developments over gay marriage have left a febrile atmosphere in the Conservative party. As Fraser wrote yesterday, David Cameron seems to have driven his party ‘quite mad’ by pursuing the policy, and the mood in the tearoom after Maria Miller’s statement on Tuesday certainly seems to have underlined that. I understand from a