All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
listen to ‘George Osborne conference speech, 8 Oct 12’ on Audioboo George Osborne began his conference speech by pointing out that two years into government, Ted Heath had flinched on the economy and lost while Margaret Thatcher had kept on and won. Osborne’s message was, I’m determined to be Thatcher not Heath. The Chancellor’s
If warm white wine and dodgy canapés are your thing, then party conferences will be your heaven and I urge you to gate-crash them before the parties become extinct. Gate-crashing is an innate skill. Mr Steerpike crashed a members-only do for constituency bigwigs at the Tories’ tempestuous conference in Birmingham, and found himself in good company:
Patrick McLoughlin was the obvious choice to confront Ed Miliband as the Labour leader tries to steal the ‘One Nation’ mantle from the Conservative party. The former miner opened his speech by remarking that the last time he had addressed conference was 28 years ago. He then invited delegates to watch a video of this
Ahead of his conference speech this morning, George Osborne was on the Today Programme. Much of the interview revolved around whether or not the Chancellor would have to abandon his aim of having the national debt falling as a percentage of GDOP by 2015/16. Osborne batted away these questions, stressing that he was waiting for
George Osborne is due to speak to the Conservative party conference just before lunch today. What he tells the Symphony Hall at the International Convention Centre may well put his Liberal Democrat coalition partners off their food, as his speech will make clear the Chancellor’s determination to cut a further £10 billion from the welfare
Speaking to John Pieenar on Five Live, Boris Johnson said he wished to deal with the leadership speculation, shoot it down with “six inch guns”. He did so by repeatedly refusing to say that David Cameron is doing a better job than he would have done. He was behind Cameron “from the very beginning,” he
The Tory party loves its former leaders and the queue for Conservative Home’s fringe event with Iain Duncan Smith went round the block. IDS began by explaining why he had chosen to stay in the Welfare job rather than move to Justice in the reshuffle. Though he stressed that there had been no Prime Ministerial
Conservatives need to become more effective at winning marginal seats if they have any hope of gaining a majority at the next general election. But what exactly does the party need to do if they wish to improve on their 2010 performance? This was the question posed at a ConservativeHome fringe event this evening, where
Nick Boles started his first fringe as a minister this evening by saying that after years of trying to make controversial points at party conference events, he wasn’t going to say anything interesting. The new planning minister’s attempt at being boring wasn’t thoroughly successful: Boles’ version of being dull and unreportable is still more fascinating
This morning the Mail on Sunday reported that George Osborne has promised there will be no mansion tax, no wealth tax and the council tax freeze will be extended. Homeowners are safe for now, but why has Osborne made that call? It might be something to do with a past Conservative Party Conference back in
If the next election is simply a referendum on the government’s performance, I doubt that the Tories will win. But if it is a choice about which party you want to govern Britain, then they are in with a chance. So, today we’ve seen a determined attempt to draw contrasts with Labour. Notice how quick
When it came to the passage in his speech on Europe, William Hague was clearly building up to a crescendo. He thundered out the lines ‘which will require the fresh consent of the British people’, and then paused for what he expected to be a rapturous round of applause from a Tory audience thrilled to
Grant Shapps used his speech this afternoon to the Conservative party conference to encourage Tories to not be shy. It’s not a charge you could level at the Conservative party co-chair himself, especially after he devoted the first section of his speech to talking about himself and his own election battles. He also revealed to
If the Lib Dem conference was all about proalition, the Conservatives seem determined to at least start their conference in a less coalicious frame of mind. This morning Chancellor George Osborne made very clear on Murnaghan on Sky News that he would not introduce either a wealth tax or a mansion tax: measures Nick Clegg
Ed Miliband is, for all his faults, fairly honest – as politicians go. So why did he tell an outright lie in his conference speech? Andrew Neil has just confronted Douglas Alexander on a claim that Miliband made last week. Here’s what was in the speech:- Next April, David Cameron will be writing a cheque
Beyond being implicated in the Jimmy Savile scandal it’s hard to imagine how last week could have been worse for the Tories. The build up to their conference in Birmingham has been marked by about as catastrophic an example of incompetence as it is possible to imagine at the Department for Transport. The cancellation of
David Cameron was in feisty form on the Andrew Marr Show this morning. Cameron, who has finally woken up to the need to be more political, defended his record — including his decision to cut the top rate of tax — with vigour. Cameron stressed how the richest 10 per cent are paying 10 times
I have always wanted to be part of that tranche of voters identified by pollsters as being crucial in general elections. But it never happens. Every few years arseholes in fashionable spectacles coin some new description of a bunch of people who they believe hold the keys to 10 Downing Street – and every time
I’m a bit late with this, as the book has been out a few days or so. But it’s worth getting hold of Mick Hume’s book about newspapers: There is No Such Thing As A Free Press. It’s very good, a timely defence of freedom of the press at the time of Leveson, but rightly
Too often the debate about the future direction of the Tory party is polarised between those who want to ‘modernise’ and those who want to ‘go right’. But there’s another problem, these labels now obscure as much as they reveal. In the next few days in Birmingham, the Tories have two important tasks: to show
Jeremy Hunt: what a card! A row about abortion is just what the Conservative and Unionist party needs to kick-off its conference week! The MP for South West Surrey is certainly entitled to say he favours outlawing abortion outwith the first trimester; the Secretary of State for Health would have been wiser to have kept
Why has David Cameron made his conference slogan ‘Britain can deliver’? That word ‘deliver’ is revolting. Cameron clearly likes it: ‘Britain delivered’, he said after the Olympics. But if only Dave and his handlers read the Spectator’s Dot Wordsworth more closely, they’d know better. In 2003, Dot wrote: ‘Politicians and managers who use the word
Today’s Guardian magazine runs a Michael Gove profile, colouring him blue on the cover as if to alert readers to the threat he poses. “Smoother than Cameron,” it warns. “Funnier than Boris. More right-wing than both. Are you looking at the next leader of the Tory Party?” There is nothing unusual about leadership speculation following a
Another day and another unasked for letter asking me to live online. This time it is from my bank, NatWest – and yes, yes, thank you I know that by not moving my account to a reputable bank I am endorsing the pocket-lining incompetents who helped bring Britain to its knees, but as gleeful financiers
Your tireless Coffee House baristas have been busy since our last update to Spectator Blogs just over two months ago. This time, we have revamped the cogs behind the magazine side of this website. If we are doing our job properly, the only thing you’ll notice is that it’s much easier to use. Our archive easier to
The High Court yesterday issued a final ruling on the extradition of Abu Hamza and four other men saying they will be handed over to American authorities to stand trial on terrorism charges. It’s unusual for the courts to lump different cases together like this, and that’s one of the things supporters of Babar Ahmad
I believe in evidence-based policy, and if the Home Office or anyone else claims that they need new powers over the people of this country, the onus is on them to demonstrate what they need and why. They should never assume that they will always get what they want, simply because they ask for it. Politicians
Thousands of Iranians took to the streets this week to protest inflation and the collapse of Iranian currency on international markets. Tehran’s historic Grand Bazaar closed for business with many of its merchants leading the demonstrations. This will worry the government because traders there are normally seen as bridging the gap between clerics and Iran’s
Things have come to a pretty pass when the Labour Party is launching a campaign with a deficit clock to expose George Osborne’s shortcomings. But they are about to do today, I understand, highlighting how much extra the government is borrowing over the four days of the Tory conference compared to last year: £277 million,
‘The election that never was’ is one of the most important events, or non-events, in recent British political history; if it had gone ahead, David Cameron might never have become Prime Minister and there might not have been a coalition at all. Equally, Gordon Brown could have seen Labour’s majority slashed and had to quit
David Cameron has a tough task ahead of him for this week’s Conservative conference – a task that got a little harder when Ed Miliband surprised almost everyone by producing a cracking speech this week. The Prime Minister has a number of problems to tackle when he arrives in Birmingham. These include a rowdy party
Brushing aside recent criticism of his universal credit scheme, Iain Duncan Smith claimed that nothing now ‘demoralised’ him. After surviving two years of gruelling denigration as Conservative Party leader, he can perhaps be taken at his word. Yet the line between a thick skin and complacency is a thin one. For all the sniping from
The reality is that Britain needs a new hub airport. Paris has four runways, and so do Frankfurt and Madrid. Amsterdam has more, and American cities more still. Of course, sticking our heads in the sand won’t send us back to the stone age, but connections and prosperity go together. But siting a four runway
We have had the dreaded cartoons, films, teddy-bear and more. But I bet that until now nobody imagined we would ever see a (cue dreaded music) ‘Pineapple of Hate’. Yet despite the now familiar feeling that this is all some terrible spoof, the fruit has joined the growing list of household items which can be