All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Cabinet this morning can’t have been a cheery occasion. The Prime Minister did congratulate all those who had been involved in the Leveson talks, with a little bit more congratulation from the Deputy Prime Minister and Maria Miller. But that was where the backslapping stopped. the Chancellor and the Chief Secretary to the Treasury announced
The government’s childcare announcement, fronted by the formidable Liz Truss, is another attempt to appeal to working mothers and to spread privilege by removing some of the barriers for women who want to return to work after having children. Never mind that Labour and a left-leaning think tank complain this isn’t as generous for low-earners
The Crime and Courts Bill, which contains one half of the government’s response to the Leveson recommendations, has just passed its third reading in the House of Commons. An earlier amendment on exemplary damages, which the Mail’s James Chapman reports this evening has roused the ire of Boris Johnson, saw this group of Conservative rebels
MPs are hard at work in the Chamber tonight: once they’ve finished voting on the Leveson amendments to the Crime and Courts Bill, they’ll move on to everything else in this piece of legislation. And everything else includes that amendment signed by over 100 MPs on Tory and Labour benches which limits the ability of
The Ivy may be known for its famous clientèle and terrible food, but are they taking this celebrity thing a bit too far? The club has invited Mark Pinchin, Public Affairs Director of the Church of Scientology, to speak at the end of the month. Scientology boasts more celebrity supporters than Hacked Off, and are
Since the early 1990s, hundreds of millions of words have been produced about the Web. Enthusiasts have told us that it is the greatest communications revolution since Guttenberg invented movable type, and they are probably right. Utopian fantasists have imagined that cyberspace would be beyond the reach of governments – those ‘weary giants of flesh
As he summed up today’s debate on press regulation, the Prime Minister repeatedly stressed that the new system was a voluntary one, with incentives for journalists to join. It marked a shift in the tone from the leaders at the start of the debate: the Prime Minister was now trying to coax the industry to
MPs are continuing to debate the cross-party deal on press regulation in the Commons at the moment. The debate has been divided between congratulations for the party leaders and their colleagues who hammered out the deal, and wariness from some Tory backbenchers about what the proposals actually mean. David Cameron insisted during the debate that
The three party leaders have just opened the debate on the Royal Charter. David Cameron was at pains to stress that this is not a ‘statutory approach’. But this was undermined by the deputy Prime Minister describing the approach as ‘a mix of Royal Charter and Statute.’ It was Miliband, though, who looked most satisfied
It was only a matter of time before the silence of Uncle Gary would be broken. Last seen splashed across the pages of the News of the World snorting cocaine at his Ibiza villa La Maison De Bang Bang, the black sheep of the Middleton family has given an interview to Hello! magazine. The magazine are famed for high
You know this levy on Cyprus bank deposits? It’s not a levy. A levy is a kind of tax, and what is happening to the people with bank deposits in Cyprus is no kind of tax, although today the European Commission spokesmen have been insisting it is. How can it be a tax when the
Is Labour MP Douglas Alexander paranoid or very candid? The Shadow Foreign Secretary told a group of luvvies and great minds at the Names Not Numbers festival in Suffolk that he may well be the inspiration behind Tom Hollander’s blundering character Simon Forrester, the anti-hero of In The Loop: ‘I had to admit that when
David Cameron has just met Tory MPs to explain the deal he’s struck on Leveson. One of the things many of them were anxious to learn was whether the result does really mean the government has accepted the need for statutory underpinning. Hopefully the PM employed a better turn of phrase than his spokesman, who
A senior Number 10 source tells me that David Cameron was awake and available throughout the Leveson negotiations. They also point out that Nick Clegg left the meeting at 11.30pm, before the crucial business was done. On the Hacked Off point, they insist that Oliver Letwin ‘very politely’ asked them to leave the room for
Scottish people are more generous than English people, contrary to the widely held belief that the Jocks are comically tight-fisted. A new study suggests that they are more likely to give money to charity than English people. I suppose it would only cause unnecessary offence if I suggested that the money they’re so happy to
All eyes are on what’s happening with the cross-party amendments to two bits of legislation on Leveson, but this afternoon in the Commons there could well be another row on the Crime and Courts Bill. As we reported last week, Conservative MP Dominic Raab has an amendment to the legislation which would limit the opportunities
The party leaders should finish their discussions on Leveson – by phone – in the next hour or so. We’ll then get a statement in the Commons on the outcome of those talks, and it’s highly likely that all three leaders will speak as part of that statement. But the big debate now is whether
So, it seems some kind of torturous “deal” has been reached in London on how best to regulate the press in the future. If David Cameron’s proposals for a Royal Charter are less reprehensible than the plans favoured by Labour and Liberal Democrats that is not, in the end saying very much. But I suppose
Who has won in the late-night Leveson talks? Both Harriet Harman and Maria Miller seem to think their own party’s Royal Charter has come out tops. And one says they’ve secured statutory underpinning, while the other says there isn’t any underpinning. And again, one says the deal is done, while the other says the parties
So it looks as though a deal has been struck on Leveson after late night talks. Oliver Letwin, Nick Clegg, Ed Miliband and Harriet Harman were holed up in Miliband’s office until 2.30 this morning, and Labour is now confident that it is close not just to an agreement on press regulation, but an agreement
Reading the Hacked Off memo on how to lobby Tory MPs is to be inducted into a wholly cynical world view. It declares, ‘These people are likely to be people you instinctively distrust, dislike and despair of. If they are what we need to win, however, we must understand their value and not confuse our
The Adam Afriyie leadership speculation has now got to the point where he’s been interviewed by Andrew Neil on the Sunday Politics. His first big broadcast interview as a potential leadership candidate was always going to be a big test for Afriyie and he failed to impress today. Afriyie, who looked like he’d been heavily
It is to David Lammy’s credit that he hasn’t deleted what my Spectator colleague, Hugo Rifkind, describes as his new all-time favourite tweet. For those who haven’t come across it yet, this is how the Tottenham MP responded to the BBC’s coverage of the papal election where it mentioned “white smoke”: This tweet from the
Peter Lilley, the former Cabinet minister and current Tory MP, is this week’s Bookbencher over on the books blog this afternoon. He’s been sharing some of his favourite books, indulging his love for the Russian classics and revealing the allure of psychedelic fairytales.
This year we have had two Tory spring conferences: the first organised by the blog ConservativeHome and today’s organised by the Tories. Last week, hundreds of activists gave up their Saturday to gather in Westminster and talk about how they’d win the next election. The discussion was vibrant, with serious debate about everything from regional economic
Jeremy Hunt used his address to the Conservative Spring Forum this afternoon as the next step in his quest to make the Conservatives the party of the NHS, not Labour. His speech was in some ways quite formulaic: it started with good news about health care in this country, then praise for the ‘extraordinary’ staff
The Tories know that if the next election is a referendum on the current government, it’ll be very difficult for them to win. But if it is a choice between them and a Labour government, then they are in with a good chance. David Cameron’s speech to his party’s Spring Forum today ends with a
The useful thing about most court rulings in judicial review cases is that both sides can take from it whatever they want and make it into a victory. We had that last month with the work experience judgement, which was apparently both a victory for those who thought the government’s scheme was ‘slave labour’ and
Conservative MPs who have previously supported statutory underpinning of press regulation are meeting on Monday morning to discuss how they will vote. There is a list of 75 Tories who have backed the idea, but I understand that if an agreement isn’t reached on Monday between the main parties, there are around 20 MPs who
The original defiance came without malice or forethought. A group of barely pubescent schoolchildren, buoyed by the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, bought a can of spray paint. ‘The people want the downfall of the regime,’ they scrawled on the school wall, mimicking the popular slogan of protesters in North Africa. Syria’s already nervous Ba’ath
The ‘clash of generations’, depicted above by Anton Emdin, was the bestselling issue of The Spectator last year. It’s a new and potent force in British politics: the idea that the young will end up having to foot the NHS and care bills for the old: the working-age will have to support the pension-age as
For many people, Budgets are when you find out if your pint of beer or bottle of wine is going up in price. It’s the day you fill up your car just in case fuel goes up again. It’s the day you hope to see a tax cut that puts some more cash in your
The Conservative amendments to the Crime and Courts Bill which introduce their Royal Charter for press regulation proposal are now out, although Labour and the Lib Dems are yet to table all their formal amendments. Most of the amendments – which are signed by David Cameron, Theresa May, William Hague, George Osborne, Chris Grayling and
The breakdown of cross-party talks today seems to be creating a make or break moment for the basic principle of press freedom. But Cameron’s proposal to hold a vote on Monday is also adding a certain confusion to the brinkmanship. The basic principle is clear: newspapers and other print media are subject to the rule