All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
The Prime Minister needed to reassure his own side at PMQs today on the EU budget and give his whips something to work with. He largely did that, saying almost immediately that his position was that at best, he’d like it cut and at worst, frozen. That Cameron has said he’d like it cut will
I gather that self-important Labour MP Tom Watson has earned £10,812 in royalties for the book he recently co-authored on phone-hacking, Dial M For Murdoch. New parliamentary records show that Watson claims to have devoted 175 hours to the project. Despite shunning an advance from publisher Allen Lane, this means the MP has still made
The unusual sound of a toast to Gordon Brown echoed around a Parliamentary dining room earlier this week. Don’t get carried away: George Eustice was hosting a dinner for his alma mater Truro School, where the new headmaster is unfortunately cursed with the name of Andrew Gordon-Brown. There is still no sign of the real McCoy
At PMQs today, David Cameron will need to go some distance to meet his backbenchers and head off a government defeat tonight on the EU budget. He’ll need to say that he personally would like to see the EU Budget reduced and that if other countries are prepared to agree to that, he’d be delighted.
Gabby Bertin is one of David Cameron’s long-marchers; she has been with him since he won the leadership in 2005. Bertin has acted as his political spokeswoman for the last seven years, pushing the Cameron message and dealing calmly with the inevitable crises and mishaps. Few people know what Cameron thinks as well as Bertin
Appointing Lord Heseltine to lead a review of the government’s growth plan was a risky decision as not only was he always going to say exactly what he thought, but he was also going to say it from his own particular interventionist stance. It was originally a Steve Hilton idea, and the PM’s guru must
Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin today admitted that he held himself responsible for the West Coast rail franchise fiasco, as he appeared in front of MPs to explain what had gone wrong. Describing the mistakes as ‘very regrettable and indeed very serious’, McLoughlin told the Transport Committee that both bidders and taxpayers have ‘a right to
Apparently so. You can always count on the British left to sneer at the United States. (You can count on quite a bit of the British right to do so too.) According to Jon Snow, the veteran Channel 4 news presenter, the United States should probably recognise that it brought Hurricane Sandy on itself. If
This Monday Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin faced the House of Commons to make a second statement on the fiasco surrounding the West Coast Mainline rail franchise. Reporting on the initial findings of an inquiry into what went wrong, the Transport Secretary said the conclusions made ‘uncomfortable reading’ and showed, amongst other failings, a lack of
If two things could have been predicted about Hurricane Sandy it was that, first, far too many people would waste time pondering the likely impact of the storm upon next week’s presidential elections and, second, that someone would look upon Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s steady leadership and ask why he’s not running for President. I had
When in 1996 the US Congress threw out Bill Clinton’s Federal budget they precipitated a partial shutdown of the US Government. However, anyone looking at the growing prospect of a UK EU budget veto and cheerfully imagining Eurocrats being shut out of their offices on 31 December 2013 will be disappointed. Because when it comes
It was inevitable that the new team of whips was going to be rather unsettled by tomorrow’s vote on the EU budget: it’s the first challenge the team has had to face. But what is surprising is quite how serious their palpitations are. I understand from a number of Conservative MPs that one of the
We’re now just a week away from election day in the United States. And after all the campaign rallies, all the debates, all the billions of dollars spent, it looks quite possible that things will be left pretty much the same as they are now — as far as control of the federal government goes,
Business Secretary Vince Cable bewildered a select committee this morning by telling members that a new sub-committee, the Growth Implementation Committee, was yet to meet, before later backtracking and announcing that it had in fact met twice. When asked by Labour MP Anne McKechin why the much-lauded new sub-committee, which was launched in September, had not
The Spectator hosted a packed-out debate last night on the motion — ‘George Osborne isn’t working: we need a Plan B’ — and you can now hear the outcome for yourself. As Isabel reported earlier, it was an evening of intense discussion and disagreement, so we have recorded the entire evening for you to listen at your leisure. The
Will American Muslims swing the US Presidential election? It seems highly unlikely, if not improbable, but that’s the line being pushed by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a not uncontroversial lobby group with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. A poll released by the group last week found that 68 per cent of American Muslims intend
At this morning’s Cabinet meeting, ministers discussed tomorrow’s debate on the EU budget, which is shaping up to be a big row. MPs I have spoken to who have either signed or are considering putting their names to the amendment calling for a real-terms cut in the budget have found their whips to be in
At the Spectator debate on the economic consequences of Mr Osborne last night, Andrew Neil repeated JK Galbraith’s line that ‘economic forecasters exist to make astrologers look good.’ The impressive Conservative MP Jesse Norman countered with ‘an economist is a man who knows 17 ways to make love to women – but no women’. Lord
Nearly a third of the audience at last night’s Spectator Battle of the Chancellors debate arrived not knowing whether George Osborne’s plan was working or whether a plan B was in order. It was all to play for, and the six speakers attacked the task with quite some gusto. Former Labour Chancellor Alistair Darling kicked
‘The body is a multitude of ways of coming apart’ writes Keith Ridgeway in his most recent novel Hawthorn & Child. He describes these ways. It can be beaten, broken or burnt. It can fall down stairs or in to deep water. The excoriation of adult skin differs to that of a child’s. Ridgeway begins
Tony Blair gave a speech today in which he proposed a ‘Grand Bargain’ to revive the European Union. One of the proposals in this grand bargain is – and Blair is clearly speaking entirely without self-interest – that there be an elected president of the European Commission or European Council. The former Prime Minister told
Cutting the EU budget is a very good idea. Much of it is spent inefficiently and its priorities are all wrong, 40 percent of it goes on agriculture. Given that a cut would also be popular with voters, why doesn’t David Cameron propose one? The reason is that there’s virtually no chance of getting agreement
With a week and a day to go until the US elections, here’s a quick run-down of the 33 Senate races. Currently, the Democrats have 53 seats (including two Independents who caucus with them) to the Republicans’ 47, so the GOP would need a net gain of four seats to take control. Back in the
When Nick Harvey was sacked in September’s reshuffle, leaving the Ministry of Defence without a Liberal Democrat minister, anti-nuclear campaigners and the SNP claimed the move put the future of the review into alternatives to the current Trident nuclear deterrent in doubt. To underline the review’s security, the party announced at the start of its
Philip Hammond is one of those ministers who seems to be held in greater esteem by those inside the Westminster hamlet than those of us who live beyond its boundaries. Westminster’s natives may, of course, be right, but it is striking how often the Secretary of State for Defence prefers to cast his arguments in
David Cameron now appears to have been outfoxed by his own backbench and the Labour party on the European budget. A Downing Street spokeswoman confirmed this morning that while the opposition and a group of rebellious MPs will campaign for a real-terms cut in the multi-annual budget, the Prime Minister remains committed to negotiating for
David Cameron is already irritating European leaders with his refusal to support any real-terms increases in the multi annual EU Budget, but this week, the Prime Minister is going to come under pressure to go even further and force a real-terms cut. This morning, he has Ed Balls and Douglas Alexander breathing down his neck,
Monday morning in dreich late October. What more appropriate moment to ponder the questions of corporation tax and Northern Ireland? The question of whether the Northern Ireland Assembly should control the rate of corporation tax payable in the two-thirds of Ulster for which it is responsible won’t go away, you know. Nor, despite the fact
And still it goes on and on. Apparently Jimmy Savile was banned from Children In Need because it was thought he was a bit creepy. Did he try to touch up Pudsey, or something? I think we are getting ourselves into a self-righteous frenzy here. Savile was unspeakably ghastly. He was unspeakably ghastly before these
Diners at Mayfair’s overpriced and underwhelming Japanese restaurant Hakkasan had something to distract them from their lobster ‘wrapped in glass vermicelli with Gu Yue Long Shan rice wine’ this weekend, as party planner extraordinaire and world renowned author Pippa Middleton dropped in. Witnesses, who sound dangerously like PR professionals, tell the Mirror that Pippa and
Labour has been pushing its One Nation branding campaign with quite some gusto in the past few days. Stephen Twigg announced at the weekend that ‘One Nation Childcare’ could include co-operative nurseries, and today Ed Miliband has given a speech on what One Nation means for mental health services, with the party launching a mental
I think that most people working in publishing think they’re involved in some giant role playing game. Rather than simply running around muddy fields on a Saturday, dressed in tin foil, they’ve decided that their nine-to-five is in the grip of a massive capitalist conspiracy. On one side, traditional publishers and retailers form the Rebel
We all want there to be some new quick fix for tackling poverty and a ‘living wage’ is the latest fad in this area of simplistic marketing slogans. The reality is far more complex. It is great that KPMG and many other companies are doing well enough that they can afford to pay their employees
Since leaving the Cabinet, Liam Fox has acted as a cross between a scout and an out-rider for various of his former Conservative Cabinet colleagues. In a speech in Oslo tomorrow, he’ll argue that the only way to deal with the Euro crisis is for all of those countries who cannot realistically cope with the
