All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
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
OK, cards on the table: I’m a big Obama fan. I desperately hope he wins next month, and I’m reasonably confident he will. But even to my biased eye, he clearly put in the weaker performance of last night’s debate. He knew his stuff, and had plenty of good points, but threw them out in
Everyone says that the debates don’t change the dynamics of a presidential race very often. President Barack Obama better hope that remains the case this year. Last night’s debate wasn’t even close. Mitt Romney thumped Obama in Denver. It was, as they say, an old-fashioned ass-kicking. Any Democrat who pretends otherwise is either deluding themselves
This post s out-sourced to the almost-always-brilliant Hopi Sen who, despite being an incorrigible Labourite, has written a speech for David Cameron to deliver at next week’s Tory conference that is almost certainly better than the speech the Prime Minister will actually give. Among the many choice cuts: Mr Miliband spoke of Disraeli’s speech in
Believe it or not, Labour’s party conference has finally ground to a halt. Here are the key lessons from the past six days in Manchester: 1. Ed Miliband is no longer a joke leader of the opposition. The Labour leader’s speech showed that he can now talk a good game, and even though much of
Labour leave Manchester today with a 14-point poll lead over the Conservatives, according to YouGov. That’s their biggest lead in a YouGov poll since June, although one last week showed them 13 points ahead, so we shouldn’t rush into declaring a big conference bounce for them. It does seem, though, that Ed Miliband himself did
A Labour conference delegate was heckled from the floor when she mentioned her school. Joanne, an immigrant who came to this country seeking political asylum and is about to read law, came face to face with the vested interests that blight education reform: the hall did not like the fact that she went to an
There was plenty of panto on the conference floor this week in Manchester. Ed Miliband encouraged delegates to boo several villains in his speech, and one of them was Michael Gove. In fact, Michael Gove popped up as the villain on Tuesday and in the Labour leader’s question-and-answer session yesterday, too, and again when Stephen
Mr Steerpike is now available weekly in the magazine. This one’s been getting them talking today: It’s a hat-trick! Word reaches me that Dave may be about to lose his third spin doctor in a row. First Andy Coulson left to spend more time with his Fingertip Guide to the Criminal Law. Then Steve Hilton
It’s been quite a week for weird would-be national leaders. First we had Ed Miliband deliver the best speech of his life in Manchester. And, last night, Mitt Romney bettered Barack Obama in the first presidential debate. The two men are at very different stages of their political cycles – Romney has 30 days until
The West Coast rail franchise balls up is a remarkable kettle of fish, isn’t it? I remember when the successful tender was announced by the government being surprised at the ferocity of old beardy’s rage, and also astonished at the figures he was quoting. Can this be right, I wondered to myself at the time?
‘Are you better off than you were four years ago?’ That was the question Ronald Reagan told Americans to ask themselves when choosing their President in 1980, and it’s a line Mitt Romney’s campaign has been hoping would work for them this time around. ‘The president can say a lot of things, but he can’t
Some dog-munching old thug from Pyongyang has been addressing the United Nations, warning that his country is the ‘world’s hotspot’ and a spark could trigger a thermonuclear war. It’s quite possible I’m wrong about this, as I am wrong about a lot of things, but North Korea worries me far less than one supposes it
It doesn’t seem entirely fair that Stephen Twigg’s speech has been left to the final day of the Labour conference, when many have packed up and left Manchester already. But today Labour’s Shadow Education Secretary is to announce more reforms to education as part of the party’s new One Nation project. The idea is to
If we learnt nothing else from this afternoon’s question-and-answer session that Ed Miliband held with delegates, it’s that Labour delegates are quite as eccentric as Liberal Democrat members, if not more so. The junior coalition partner has long enjoyed the reputation of having an eclectic following, but those gathered in Labour’s hall had bought an
The good thing for Labour about Ed Miliband’s speech yesterday was that he didn’t talk about the deficit, or welfare or other thorny issues which make certain sections of the party very grumpy indeed. The Labour leader made only fleeting references to cuts to public services, too. So there was little to disagree on. It
Talking to senior Liberal Democrats and Conservatives about Ed Miliband’s speech, it is striking how similar their analyses of it are. Despite coalition, we’re entering into a period of stark government, opposition dividing lines. Pretty much everyone admits that Miliband has put to bed the question of his leadership of the Labour party and moved
The Labour party’s love-in with great Tory statesmen continues. Yesterday Miliband went all Disraelian; today Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, has raised the spectre of Robert Peel in an attempt to paint modern Tories as out of touch with the police service in the wake of the Andrew Mitchell ‘pleb’ scandal. However, it seems that
With Labour conference winding down, attention shifts to the Tories. They will head to Birmingham facing several challenges. First, the loss of the boundary changes means that winning a majority requires them to be on, at least, forty two per cent — six points up on where they were in 2010. Second, Ed Miliband has
In this week’s Spectator James Forsyth interviews new Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt about how he will continue Andrew Lansley’s legacy on NHS reform. He says his ‘burning mission’ is to ‘demonstrate that we have as much to offer the NHS as Labour ever did’. But while Hunt is keen to praise the work of his
Sir Richard Branson is not a man who takes kindly to failing to get his own way. That was why few people were surprised by the Virgin boss’ furious response to the government’s decision to award the West Coast Mainline to his rivals First Group. It wasn’t fair, he protested, and thousands of people seemed