All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
I have just returned from two hours of broadcasting on the BBC World Service. It is an odd time to be inside the BBC, not least because reporters from the organisation itself, as well as its rivals, are standing outside the studio doing pieces to camera about what is going on inside. Anyhow – having
Chris Patten has just appeared on the Andrew Marr Show to discuss the resignation of George Entwistle and to evaluate its fallout. Patten conceded that the BBC is mired in a mess of its own making and that it was inevitably under pressure as a result. He opened a media war while defending the BBC’s
Is the idea of any form of statute relating to the press inimical to liberty and therefore incompatible with Conservative belief? Fraser Nelson argues that it is but it is time for Conservatives to think again and for journalists to reassess who is really on their side in this debate. People elect Conservative Prime Ministers
This is an unusual Remembrance Sunday; it is 70 years since the feats of arms which led Churchill to say: ‘Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end; but it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.’ It is 70 years to the day since Allied troops were
After his Today Programme interview this morning, it seemed almost inevitable that George Entwistle would have to resign as director general of the BBC and this evening, in a dignified statement, he has. I suspect that Entwistle’s won’t be the last resignation before this saga ends. Chris Patten, the chairman of the BBC Trust, appears
After just 54 days in the job, George Entwistle has quit as BBC director general. In a career-ending interview with John Humphrys this morning, Entwistle admitted that he didn’t know in advance about, or even watch, the Newsnight investigation which which led to Lord McAlpine being falsely named as a child abuser. Nor did he
One issue that is in the background of nearly every political conversation at the moment is the Leveson Inquiry and how David Cameron will respond to its recommendations when it reports in the next few weeks. What Cameron does will do a lot to shape the political and media mood between now and the next
Oddly enough, re the latest Newsnight/BBC debacle, Esther Rantzen got it right. She was talking on Newsnight. She made the point that her old programme That’s Life regularly did investigative stuff, but that there was always a lawyer involved, all the way along, right from the off. Absolutely. I did the same thing at the
Tony Little, the headmaster of Eton College, has given an interview (£) to the Times’ Alice Thompson and Rachel Sylvester. It’s a curiosity. On the one hand, Little is extraordinary: a local boy who won a bursary to Eton in the ‘60s. On the other hand, he is emblematic of how the headmasters of the
Few people have been more important in America’s recent wars than David Petraeus. Petraeus led the surge of US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan and redefined the US approach to counter-insurgency warfare. He was the most influential military figure of the post-war era and successful enough for some of those close to Obama to hold
Who was the greatest sporting star who fought in the first world war? It is a difficult argument to settle at a century’s distance, with nobody still alive who saw them play and only fleeting glimpses from the very first steps of the newsreel era. The names are less familiar now, but contemporary accounts of
Free speech in Britain is being pulled in two completely opposite directions. On the one hand, thanks to the increasingly tortuous mission-creep that is the Leveson Inquiry, there are a range of demands for greater regulation of the print press. Today’s rather surprising letter to the Guardian by various Conservative MPs is an example of
Will David Cameron be denied his veto moment after all? Brussels sources appear to think the European Union budget summit on 22 and 23 November could still be cancelled. A report from Italian wire service ANSA quotes one source saying ‘everything indicates that it will be impossible to overcome the British veto’ and that cancelling
After Lord McAlpine’s statement this morning about the allegations and rumours of child abuse surrounding the Tory peer and other figures, Tory MP Rob Wilson has gone on the warpath and written a stern letter to Tom Watson, who first raised the possibility of a paedophile ring linked to Number 10. Wilson doesn’t hold back
Fresh from his success nationalising the Post Office pension, which artificially knocked £23 billion off the national debt, the Chancellor has come up with another manoeuvre which effectively adds £35bn to the total of QE – and analysts think this just save him from having to tear up his fiscal rule in next month’s mini-Budget.
With the elections over and Barack Obama returned to the White House for four more years, the attention of US politicians has turned to the so-called ‘fiscal cliff’ — a collection of tax hikes and spending cuts that threaten to send the country back into recession. But what exactly is going on, and why? The
What will free schools mean for the quality of education — in the new schools, and in the old ones they compete with? In Sweden, they don’t have to guess. They have almost 400 free schools, and data from millions of pupils. The latest study has just been published, and has strong results that I
When I worked in Washington, I was shown round the White House by a junior Bush administration staffer. As our group made it round the building we passed various photos of George W. Bush signing bits of legislation into law, at nearly everyone our guide would stop and tell us how many voters in various
Ed Balls has secured a debate for next week calling for the government to postpone for a second time the 3p rise in fuel duty that is due this January. It’s a pretty shameless move by the Shadow Chancellor, given these rises are ones that Labour instituted in 2009 and 2010. But he clearly believes
Lord McAlpine has broken cover this morning after the Guardian named him in its story claiming the peer is a victim of mistaken identity in the swirling allegations about a Tory paedophile. He has released a lengthy statement, which you can read here, denying the ‘wholly false and seriously defamatory’ claims, and adding that he
Her Majesty’s Comptroller and Auditor General seems to have been nicking ideas from Private Eye. National Audit Office reports these days arrive with a frontispiece of ‘key facts’, reminiscent of the Eye’s ‘number crunching’ feature, plucking a handful of noteworthy numerals from the deluge of auditry that follows, and designed presumably to make the reader
How strong is the Conservative commitment to liberty? Today’s Guardian front page holds the answer. A long line of Tory MPs have written to the newspaper, calling for the Prime Minister to seize a ‘once-in-a-generation’ opportunity to regulate the press. It is surprising as it contains several of the names I would had put down
David Cameron knows that a third runway at Heathrow would be one of the most controversial and significant outcomes of his premiership, which is why he has kicked the decision into the long grass with the Davies Review. Thanks to ever spiralling passenger numbers and the bulging state of our existing airports, both London and the South
It’s strange how coy the rich and famous can be. Roger Moore never watches his own films, and celebrity chef Marcus Wareing never eats in his own Berkeley Hotel restaurant. The second of these facts changed on Wednesday night, when Wareing broke a nine year habit to mark the launch of a new limited edition Johnnie
The focus, of course, is on President Barack Obama’s resounding re-election — but there are plenty of other reasons why Democrats are celebrating Tuesday night’s results. In the summer, it looked like Obama’s party would struggle to maintain their Senate majority. Instead, they have extended it. Embattled incumbents held on in tight races in Missouri,
Few people have been more important to Tory modernisation than Nick Boles. He co-founded Policy Exchange, the think tank that has developed most of its policy ideas, and has been a tireless—and tieless—advocate of it. But one of the things that has always marked Boles out is his willingness to think and reflect. In an
With Barack Obama being returned to the White House, it’s worth considering what his key foreign policy challenges will be during the second term. I’ve outlined a few areas I think will dominate his thinking over the next four years. 1. Afghanistan and Pakistan Obama has committed to withdrawing American forces from Afghanistan by the
The Prime Minister goes on a mid-morning talk show and is forced to respond to a list of alleged paedophiles that the presenter has taken off the internet. If you put this in a political satire, it would be dismissed as far-fetched. But that is what happened when David Cameron went on This Morning. No-one
Not only the US, but China is gearing up to welcome a new President, in its case Xi Jinping. That’s not the only similarity between the two global powers. While nothing can beat America’s critical levels of debt (watch the media leap like lemmings over the term ‘fiscal cliff‘), the Middle Kingdom isn’t doing too
So, another Old Etonian at the apex of the British establishment: Justin Welby, the Bishop of Durham, will be the next Archbishop of Canterbury. It’s sweet, in a way. All we need now is an OE named as Bank of England Governor, and David Cameron’s alma mater will have the complete power set. But it would be
Andrew Mitchell emerged from his post-resignation exile on the backbenches this morning to defend his decision to sign off on a £16 million aid cheque to Rwanda on his last day in the International Development department. The former chief whip was summoned before the International Development select committee, where he described as ‘offensive’ the suggestion
As Remembrance Sunday draws closer and we pin poppies to our coats, we can also see them adorning the jackets of books. This powerful symbol of remembrance features on the covers of many books about the First World War, which tend to be put on display at this time of year. The inspiration behind the
How much longer must we put up with this kind of thing? A bus driver who was fired for being a member of the BNP has won a long legal battle claiming his dismissal was a breach of his human rights. Arthur Redfearn, 56, was sacked from his job in Bradford, West Yorkshire, where he
Yesterday in the House, both parties welcomed the re-election of Barack Obama. An incumbent leader has been returned to the White House. Incumbency is of course a massive factor in US politics – an incumbent has been unseated only a handful of times in history. The reason for this is clear. For all the bumps