All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
The below is a response from the Mayor of Tower Hamlets Lutfur Rahman, in response to a blog written by Nick Cohen. Nick Cohen has attacked me as a ‘bully’ for reporting to the police some threatening tweets by Rob Marchant, a blogger who used to work for the Labour Party. I make no apology to Cohen in respect of
One can’t help but feel sorry for Liam Byrne. He is a fish out of water in Ed Miliband’s Labour party, something he implicitly acknowledged when he announced his intention to run for Mayor of Birmingham. But then Birmingham voted against having a mayor so he had to stay in the shadow Cabinet, albeit having
Alex Massie asks why I didn’t mention the Union in my piece in this week’s magazine on what David Cameron’s legacy will be. It is a good question. Indeed, one former Cameron aide told me that he thought that the likely preservation of the Union would be Cameron’s greatest achievement. But the reason I didn’t
George Osborne has been behaving rather oddly of late. Normally, he’s known as the ‘submarine’ for surfacing only twice a year. Now, it’s twice a week. On Tuesday he delivered a speech to supermarket staff, talking tough on welfare and sometimes lapsing into a Dick Van Dyke mockney accent. On Thursday he used the Philpott
It’s 45p day in Westminster, and Ed Balls is trying to make the most of the end of a 50p rate his own party only imposed for a month or so before it left government. The story hasn’t made it to the front pages, aside from the Mirror getting cross about Nick Clegg going on
If you succumbed to Downton fever, then the BBC’s latest period-drama, The Village, might have attracted your attention. But if it was Downton Revisited that you were after, you might have been sorely disappointed, says James Delingpole in his Television column. Set in 1914 Derbyshire, The Village is everything that Downton is not: ‘taut, spare,
Philip Collins is shackled by the epithet ‘Tony Blair’s former speechwriter’; shackled because his columns prove him to be his own man. His latest (£) is a carefully argued critique of the Labour Party’s total lack of a welfare policy, titled ‘Labour Can’t Win If It’s On Mick Philpott’s side’ . The most arresting section is:
After almost a week of media breast-beating about the Philpott case, a creepy consensus is emerging over benefits for children. Bernard Jenkin, the Conservative backbencher, wants child benefit to be limited in future to a family’s first two children. Lots of Tories agree. So does former Tony Blair speechwriter, Philip Collins. ‘This would save £3.3 billion
The sorry truth of the Philpott case is that almost nothing can be learnt from it. Everything would be so much simpler if there were clear public policy conclusions that could be drawn from the horrors of this case. But there are not. How could there be if we’re expected to mine a case like
This poster will, I am sure, have the Lib Dems hopping about with fury. The Tories have hi-jacked a key Liberal Democrat policy: raising the personal allowance. Perhaps this is what lies in wait for the Lib Dems as 2015 approaches: the Tories steal all of their good ideas. If that happens, perhaps a merger
Let us be clear — Beijing bankrolled this monster. As Kim Jong-un continues his bellicose bluster, now having moved a second missile to North Korea’s east coast, we cannot forget: it’s the Middle Kingdom that has for decades funded Pyongyang’s armies and kept this cruelest of regimes afloat. Forget Kim’s crankiness. North Korea is one
David Cameron – who, in case you’d forgotten, leads the Conservative and Unionist Party – made a rare visit to Scotland yesterday. He spoke about defence. His message was clear: an independent Scotland could not expect to win defence contracts from what remains of the United Kingdom. Jobs and expertise, therefore, would be lost. Vote
The banking witch trials resume today, and we are offered three new men to burn at the stake: Lord Stevenson, Sir James Crosby and Andy Hornby. The Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards released its report at midnight (pdf), and it is as personally damning as any I’ve seen. It basically calls for them to be
In last week’s Spectator, our man in the know Robin Oakley let us in on the secrets of who he’s backing in the Grand National, and his view on the ‘jump reforms’. With Irish trainer Willie Mullins having blitzed the Cheltenham Festival with no fewer than five winners, I am hoping that his luck continues. I
The Philpott case has already turned into a row about media reporting. You can see why. It is so much easier to argue about a newspaper front-page than to talk about the terrible underclass this country has created. In a nutshell our problem is this. For hard-working couples, having children in 21st century Britain is
45 years ago tonight, Dr Martin Luther King, Jr was shot and killed as he stood on a motel balcony, aged just 39. Here is the leader from the following week’s Spectator: The agony of America, The Spectator, 12 April 1968 The assassination of Dr Martin Luther King at Memphis, Tennessee, on Thursday 4 April
Steerpike is back in this week’s magazine. As ever, here is your preview: ‘One of Lord Hall’s predecessors, Mark Thompson, is toiling away as chief executive of the New York Times. But he’s devised a brilliant wheeze to give his old chums at Broadcasting House a bit of extra work. Later this month his newspaper
Several Labour MPs have expressed their disapproval of George Osborne’s comments about the taxpayer funding Mick Philpott’s lifestyle. For example, Andy McDonald, MP for Middlesbrough, said that welfare is a ‘completely separate discussion, it should not be had in the context of the most appalling crime of a father killing his six children. It just demonstrates
There’s a BBC website where you can find out what class you are, according to new criteria drawn up by some bloke at the LSE and a babe from Manchester University. There are apparently seven new classes – which I suppose is designed to replace the old registrar General’s Scale – ranging from ‘Elite’ to
Bassem Youssef is better known as ‘Egypt’s John Stewart’. He is a 39 year old cardiologist who made his name with an online comedy programme styled along the lines of The Daily Show. Ever since Egypt’s revolution in 2011 Youssef has attracted a large following in the Middle East, making fun of religious and political
Politics is at least partially a matter of perspective. The same object can look very different depending upon the angle from which it is viewed. Which brings me to Brother Forsyth’s latest column. I bow to no-one in my admiration for James’s reporting and astute analysis. Nor do I dispute much of what he says
The Chancellor of the Exchequer has just made a statement about Mick Philpott; the man convicted of the manslaughter of 6 of his children; the man who also lived off enormous benefit hand outs, banking the equivalent of £100,000 salary in benefits from various sources if reports are to be believed. George Osborne said: ‘There’s a question
A new group designed to increase the Tory party’s appeal to urban northern voters will be launched this June. It already has the support of a considerable number of MPs and, I understand, senior figures in Number 10 are offering support to the project. David Skelton, who moved the Tories from third to second in
It now looks almost certain that Andrew Mitchell will be our next EU Commissioner in 2014. The job was not advertised and the backroom selection process remains a mystery. In the wake of the Plebgate row, though, we can make an educated guess as to why, according to the FT, Downing Street has asked Mitchell
Another day, another story of the forces of order hounding an innocent citizen for making innocuous remarks on Twitter. This week’s target was Rob Marchant, a centrist Labour supporter, who was chatting online with a few comrades. They all opposed Lutfur Rahman, the sly and to my mind thoroughly unappetising mayor of Tower Hamlets. Labour
I always enjoy Peter Oborne’s columns not least because his opinions are as entertaining, predictably unpredictable, quixotic and changeable as his cricket captaincy. This is not a bad thing. This week he’s back in full-on Cameron as Disraeli mode, arguing that the coalition’s reforms of education (in England, though sadly the Peter and the Telegraph
Are Iain Duncan Smith’s welfare reforms necessary to bring fairness to our benefits system? This week’s Spectator leading article argues the work and pensions secretary returned to front-line politics for one reason only — to end the present waste of human potential. Author and Independent columnist Owen Jones disagrees; he debates with our associate editor
Game on: Boris has accepted Pippa Middleton’s ‘Whiff-Whaff’ challenge. The Mayor of London has declared: ‘I’m game if she is. Happy for Pippa to join me on a visit and see the benefits of our £22m Sports Legacy Fund in action.’ While Pippa would no doubt enjoy that, the Spectator is happy to set up
The European Convention of Human Rights is developed and interpreted as times change; but is there a democratic imbalance when only lawyers and judges can do this? Particularly where the rights being litigated are not just matters of strict law but properly political issues. It is a valid democratic concern that the Human Rights Act,
Fun can be had by playing with the BBC’s new class calculator. The calculator, which was designed with the help of several eminent sociologists, replaces the 3 classes with seven stratifications, drawing on social criteria (such as taste, accent and hobbies) as well as more tradition measurements (such income group and upbringing) to determine membership. Toby
Shortly after the 2010 general election I attended an event where mandarins complained of ‘swingeing cuts’. Then one NHS boss admitted that he had so much cash sloshing around he was having trouble spending his multi-hundred million budget. Local government, which accounts for one quarter of government spending, has the same mindset. Despite the rhetoric
The right of gays to have a civil marriage in a non-religious service is once again an issue. There have been large and slightly violent protests in Paris as well as on-going judicial contortions in the US. I know my support for gay marriage appears to put me in a minority among conservatives. But perhaps
Pippa Middleton writes an Alpine Notebook for the new Spectator, out tomorrow. She has this to say at the end: ‘Back home in London after my Alpine challenges, I can now pursue less demanding hobbies in my spare time, such as ping-pong. I’m informed that Boris Johnson, former editor of this magazine, wants to be
The strange story that jockeys have been asked to ride more slowly in the Grand National on Saturday has not been explained. The demand to make the fences safer has made them more dangerous. If fences are lower, horses can run at them faster. Since their riders want to win, they will urge their horses