All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
I may sue for plagiarism. In my failed bid to become Director General of the BBC I suggested that the corporation should henceforth cover no news stories, nor commission any drama or comedy and instead simply occupy itself by debating, in public, its manifest incompetencies. I thought that this would be an entertaining and cheap
The West Coast Mainline debacle has given opponents of HS2 another stick with which to beat the government. Cheryl Gillan took the opportunity of Patrick McLoughlin’s statement on the matter to ask how anyone could trust the Department of Transport’s twenty year projections for HS2 when it got the ten year ones for the West
While some of his colleagues were dabbing tears from their eyes or pacing their Portcullis House offices in fury after being dumped by David Cameron in the reshuffle, Michael Fabricant seemed rather excited about his new-found freedom. The former whip tweeted on the day he resigned as a government whip that he was ‘ecstatic. Been
Yvette Cooper was in a stern mood this afternoon when she responded to the Home Secretary’s announcement about plans to opt-out of 130 European law and order measures and then re-adopt those which it fancies. Her main gripe was that she hadn’t been sent Theresa May’s statement about the plans until 45 minutes before it
Andrew Mitchell spent the whole of Home Office questions on the front bench, nodding sagely as both Damian Green and Theresa May were repeatedly asked to condemn his behaviour outside the Downing Street gates, which they repeatedly refused to do. He was joined in his nodding routine by Andrew Lansley, who knows a little about
Here’s David Torrance with the kind of acute observation I wish I’d thought of first. There is, he writes, a comparison to be drawn between Alex Salmond and Boris Johnson: [Salmond’s] approval ratings also remain remarkably high, but then Salmond enjoys a very specific sort of popularity. Asked who best “stands up for Scotland” he
In their first poll conducted fully after all the party conferences, YouGov once again tested what difference replacing David Cameron with Boris Johnson would have on the Conservatives’ poll rating. As in their previous two attempts in September, YouGov’s numbers show Boris narrowing the gap to Labour by seven points: with Cameron as leader, the
There’s a quiet confidence in Unionist circles that Alex Salmond will be defeated in the Scottish independence referendum. But Unionists know that Salmond needs to be defeated decisively. If the ‘Better Together’ campaign wins 55-45, the Nationalists will be back for another go in ten years time. But, as Alex says, the anti-independence side needs
Yesterday Fraser asked: Scotland has a tragically long list of problems (especially with inner-city poverty) and [the No campaign] can ask: which of these problem would independence solve? This is a fair question, albeit one that offers the retort: and which of them are being solved by the Union the noo? Of course, this question
I used to be a barman in a pub in Rosyth, where David Cameron is visiting today, and it’s hardly a hotbed of separatism. Its dockyard is not just a reminder of the many defence jobs the Union brings, but of what happens when the work shrinks and the jobs go. Many of the locals
David Cameron’s plan for this autumn was to largely avoid the topic of Europe at his party’s conference, then to focus on the issue later in the year. It’s only a few days since the Tories gathered in Birmingham, and the Prime Minister is already facing a big week on Europe. Home Secretary Theresa May
This is a story that’s going to run and run until MPs walk through the lobbies next year in the vote approving the boundary reforms: senior Tories are plotting to buy the Lib Dems off from blocking changes to constituencies by offering them state funding of political parties. The latest plot has surfaced in today’s
So now’s the day and now’s the hour at which, if you will forgive the mixed allusions, we may discern the beginning of the end of the beginning. Eight months of often tedious wrangling ends this afternoon as David Cameron and Alex Salmond agree some kind of “deal” to fix the terms and conditions of
Perhaps Vince Cable wasn’t listening to the bit in George Osborne’s speech at the Tory conference last week where the Chancellor ruled out a mansion tax. The Business Secretary has just sent an email out promoting the idea and calling for signatures on a petition for ‘fairer tax’. The email, which is signed ‘Thank you,
Only the Governator could bring the political and film crowds together. Arnold Schwarzenegger was in town last night to promote his new film, The Last Stand. He packed Sketch in Mayfair with an audience that contained everyone from business minister Matthew Hancock to Mamma Mia star Dominic Cooper. Even the immaculately dressed Chris Eubank was in attendance. Arnie gave a brilliant impersonation of himself, saying that he was
When the unionists were looking for a hero to fight Alex Salmond, no one really thought of grey old Alistair Darling. He was the human fire extinguisher, sent into blazing departments to make them so boring that no smoke – or anything else – ever emerged. But now, he is taking a torch to Salmond’s
Grant Shapps, the perky new Tory chairman, has just been grilled on The Sunday Politics by Andrew Neil about the Tories’ majority strategy. In a sign of how tight the next election will be, Shapps stressed that you don’t actually need 326 seats to have a majority in the Commons because Sinn Fein don’t take
One of the highlights of the Paul Ryan vs Joe Biden debate last week was Ryan attempting to explain that you can lower tax rates and increase tax revenues. “Not mathematically possible,” snapped back Biden. “Never been done before.” It has, replied Ryan. “Jack Kennedy lowered tax rates and increased growth.” An incredulous Biden said:
Corn dealers were the bankers of the early 19th century. In the popular imagination, they were monsters who threatened the poor with starvation by inflating their prices to satiate their greed. The abused gentlemen, naturally, hated the opprobrium, while the authorities wondered whether agitators would spark food riots or revolution. When he considered what limits
Party conference season is over and it all felt very mid-term. It’s always best not to be swept away by the immediate reaction to leaders’ speeches. Miliband’s was surprisingly good, Cameron’s was not bad at all and Clegg’s was OK too. Where does that leave us? Just under three years until the next election with
George Osborne is a keen observer of American politics, so perhaps it is little surprise to read in the Telegraph that the chancellor is arguing for faster withdrawal from Afghanistan. The American presidential race has confronted national war-weariness. The Obama camp has long held that the 2014 drawdown date is firm; that is when the
Britain’s national debt is rising faster than any of the basket-case Eurozone countries that George Osborne is so fond of disparaging but here’s the thing: only 16pc of voters realise that debt is going up. Why? Are they all thick? Or could it be that our political class is systematically misleading them? I’m inclined towards
One of the problems with the welfare state is that the contributory principle too often gets lost. People’s faith in the whole system is undermined when they see those who haven’t put it, or even tried to, taking out. A classic example of this is ‘health tourists’, those who come here from abroad with the
My colleague and friend the late Alan Watkins was for a spell wine writer on the Observer. Though I had not yet taken up the Spectator job, we disagreed on some important oenophiliac issues. I liked full, rich, strongly flavoured wines, often from the New World. He said they were all well and good, but
What do you do when confronted with a prejudice so strong it takes your breath away? In my case, I did what was immediately necessary. I took a deep breath to replenish lost oxygen, and moved on. It wasn’t the time or place to take on this particularly ugly example of intolerance; but it is
The award of the Nobel Prize to the European Union is a tremendous joke; and like all great jokes it has brought people together. Commentators of left and right are united, for the most part, in condemning the Nobel Committee’s revision of history that claims the EU, a body that has only existed since 1993,
It can seem surreal, almost otherworldly, to read about our judiciary these days. Just a few days ago my colleague Douglas Murray wrote about the peculiarity of imposing a custodial sentence on Matthew Woods for posting bad-taste jokes on Facebook about the abduction of April Jones. As if to confirm that the Bar is indeed
Today is not April the first; but the European Union has indeed won the Nobel Peace Prize. It is a bizarre decision given what is going on in Europe right now. Watching the reaction of the Greek crowd to Angela Merkel on her visit there this week, it was hard not to worry that the
The conventional wisdom dictates that debates between VP candidates are nights that should only interest political anoraks. But the last eight days have not been good for conventional wisdom: remember how boring Mitt Romney was meant to have no chance against a man of Barack Obama’s élan? Far more than any recent presidential debate, last
The great paradox of British politics is that the left moan about inequality, but it’s the right who will remedy it. Ed Miliband is proposing the restoration of the old order, where the poor get the worst schools and the rich get the best (and the opportunities that flow from it). Labour plans to tax
Just as Ed Miliband seemed to get a poll bounce from his conference speech last week, so David Cameron seems to have got one from his on Wednesday. On YouGov’s question of who would make the best Prime Minister, Cameron has extended his lead to 14 points. That more than reverses the bump Miliband got
The papers are unanimous: Andrew Mitchell is a dead man walking, and like most pantomime ghouls he’s become a laughing stock. Fraser’s Telegraph column tells of MPs and cabinet colleagues ridiculing the chief whip. The joke deepens because Mitchell, perhaps due to his insistence that he did not use the word ‘pleb’, apparently does not
A very good point made by Peter Hitchens in an interview with the Evening Standard yesterday. It was this: ‘A particular problem of the Left is that they believe their personal goodness is entangled with their opinions. Therefore, it is hard for them to have friendships with — or even like — conservative people. It’s
I am starting to believe that this country is no longer interested in news, only gossip. Sometimes the gossip is about a celebrity, sometimes a celebrity politician. Twenty-four hour news-channels suggest that the removal of a dead entertainer’s gravestone constitutes ‘breaking news’. We have just had three party conferences so empty and insular that the
