All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
There’s ‘no secret plot to get Britain out of the EU’ declared David Lidington on the Sunday Politics. In an interview with Andrew Neil, the Europe Minister was determinedly vague on the issue of what powers the next Conservative manifesto will seek a mandate to repatriate. But he made clear that the free movement of
A friend of mine who has worked in the City all his life, and is by no means a leftist, can still explode with rage at the nom-doms and corporations, who expect to stay in Britain without paying tax. When their representatives say they will leave if the government taxes them, he replies “Fine. If you
David Ward, a Liberal Democrat MP, is in trouble with his party bosses. He chose Holocaust Remembrance Day to indulge in a bit of anti-semitism, suggesting that the very Jews who suffered under the Nazis in death camps were now meting out the same treatment to the poor old Palestinians. I am not sure why
Nick Clegg was careful in his interview on the Marr show today to leave the door open to a Lib-Lab coalition – which bookmakers regard as more likely (4-1) than another Con-Lab coalition (6-1). It was interesting that so much of his description of coalition referred to himself: He told Sophie Raworth: ‘I’ve never, ever
The camp supporting backbench Tory MP Adam Afriyie in a possible leadership bid have been busy, managing to get whispers of their planned coup into three Sunday newspapers (the Sun on Sunday, The Sunday Times, and the Mail on Sunday). Whether or not Afriyie is a popular backbencher who managed to soothe colleagues over toasted
As the speaker for yesterday’s Davos British business leaders’ lunch, Boris Johnson had the audience in his hand in his usual colourful way. I grabbed his very new Chief Economic Adviser, Dr Gerard Lyons, former Chief Economist at Standard Chartered, on the way out. How did he think we are doing economically? He told me
Is there anything more pathetic, more risible than rich and privileged Britons whining that their cadre fails to receive a fair shake in the matter of admissions to this country’s most prestigious universities? Oh, sure, I suppose there must be but the smugness and evident sense of entitlement on display in these matters remains enraging.
It might have been pushed down the news agenda this week by David Cameron’s Europe speech and the bad economic news, but the situation in Mali is offering us a preview of the next decade in international relations. This decade will, William Hague warns in The Times today, be far more dangerous than what we
I have been out of the country for a couple of weeks and away from the sweet furore of the internet. I’ll be posting in the coming days on some of the bigger things which have gone on while I have been away. In the meantime, readers who are interested can read here a piece
‘George Osborne is under pressure to tear up his austerity programme after Boris Johnson called on the government to drop its ‘hair-shirt, Stafford Cripps agenda,’ reports the delighted Guardian today. Even Boris is against it! Even he can see that the obvious solution to our debt crisis is even more debt! Except, as you’d expect, it’s
A while back a friend remarked that a piece I’d written – on cricket probably though, perhaps, darts – was “worthy of Frank Keating”. I can’t say if the compliment was earned but it was appreciated mightily. To be compared to Keating, on however dubious a basis, was the kind of pleasantness guaranteed to put
Ruth Davidson became leader of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party in large part because she was the candidate favoured by the party establishment. Where Murdo Fraser suggested – rather too boldly as it turned out – the party should fold its tent and start again under a new banner, Davidson preferred a more cautious
It won’t take long for the US decision to allow women in combat roles to travel here according to The Times today, on the basis of, it must be said, unnamed sources. And the paper’s leader is duly supportive of the idea: ‘The number of women who want the risk and pass the tests will
‘Cameron’s speech on Europe is badly timed; we must stop this endless European bickering when facing such huge worldwide political challenges’. That’s the view of Neil Selby, the London-based Director of Executive Education for the Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business but who at the moment is, like me, here in Davos. ‘Let’s think instead
Claire Perry, the determined MP for Devizes, is very, very determined not to be set up as a 21st century Mary Whitehouse. Her job title, as the Prime Minister’s adviser on preventing the sexualisation and commercialisation of childhood, might suggest the Tory MP is yearning for a more innocent bygone era. But she’s insistent that
Normally, it is really rather tiresome when a politician is pilloried in the media for choosing to send their children to a private school above the local state schools. There’s even an argument that if you can afford to send your kid to a fee-paying school, then at least it is one less pressure in
What would George Orwell write about today? asked the Guardian. Here’s our nomination: an EU report that recommends giving the EU more powers to sack hacks, regulate the press and dole out subsidies to ‘good’ journalists, a pan-European press and failing newspapers. The report is called ‘A free and pluralistic media to sustain European democracy’.
Nick Clegg was apparently just being self-critical in his House magazine interview when he said the Coalition hadn’t got it right from the beginning on infrastructure. Those close to the Deputy Prime Minister are insisting that though speaking out on economic policy remains unusual in the Coalition, he was simply pointing out what has actually
Reihan Salam highlights the latest pro-immigration move by Stephen Harper’s Canadian government: Canada is looking to poach Silicon Valley’s intrepid foreign up-and-comers as it launches a “first of its kind in the world” program that will grant immediate permanent residency to qualifying entrepreneurs starting April 1. Immigration Minister Jason Kenney said Thursday he will head
Now we know why David Cameron delivered his Europe speech on Wednesday. It’s time for bad headlines again: the GDP figures just announced show that the British economy is contracting yet again — by 0.3 per cent in the final three months of last year (see above graph). Now, you’ll hear a lot of people
In the Jewish joke a matchmaker calls on a poor tailor living in a Tsarist shtetl in the middle of nowhere. He tells the old guy that he wants to arrange the marriage of his middle daughter to the heir to the Rothschild fortune, no less. The tailor isn’t impressed. He cannot marry off his
The government’s gay marriage bill is published later today, after receiving its first reading in the Commons yesterday. How it’s received by the Tory party will be an interesting indication of just how powerful David Cameron’s EU speech was this week. When Maria Miller unveiled the ‘quadruple lock’ to protect the Church of England from
It is not often that I find myself agreeing with Sarah Palin. But the erstwhile Governor of Alaska and hockey-mom-in-chief had a point when she asked how all that hopey-changey stuff was working out for ya? Barack Hussein Obama, you have been a disappointment. Change we can believe in? More like Continuity that Shames America.
The GDP figures for the final quarter of 2013 are out tomorrow morning, and with them will come the usual round of commentary from government and opposition. They’re not expected to be good: Citi predicts that the ONS’s first estimate will show a contraction of 0.1 per cent in Q4. So perhaps that’s why Nick
Can science and technology become the backbone of the British economy? David Willetts thinks so — he’s set out eight great technologies he believes will ‘play a vital role in delivering economic growth’. The Universities and Science minister explained today why British scientific research needs beefing up, albeit in a very free market manner: ‘The
Shadow Defra minister Mary Creagh told MPs today about her fears that a carcinogenic drug commonly used as an anti-inflammatory in horses could have entered the human food chain. Speaking in the Commons, she said: ‘I am in receipt of evidence showing that several horses slaughtered in UK abattoirs last year tested positive for phenylbutazone,
Angela Merkel’s statement yesterday was a big fillip to David Cameron’s European strategy as it suggested renegotiation was possible. One senior government source called it ‘as good as we could have hoped for’. I understand that Merkel and her officials have indicated to the Cameron circle that they want Britain to stay in the EU
Keep an eye on Jordan next week where King Abdullah is set to announce further subsidy cuts to water and electricity to ease the country’s economic crisis. The last time he was forced to cut subsidies was in November, prompting widespread protests across the country. It is likely similar unrest will follow if he now
Finally: Number 10 admits that far from ‘dealing with debt’, the government is seeing it rise. This morning the Prime Minister’s spokesman was grilled on the party political broadcast that horrified Fraser last night in which the Prime Minister said ‘we are making progress. We’re paying down Britain’s debts.’ Fraser has explained the reality –
Aaron Ellis makes a good point: the comparison between Mali and Afghanistan is flawed. But I disagree with him as to why. Afghanistan was a failed state long before al-Qaeda settled there (as a last resort). The pattern is slightly different in Mali: Islamists have further destabilised an already weak country in a strategically sensitive
Since revealing that the Shard’s ‘loos with a view’ give punters more than they bargained for, I’ve been inundated with even saucier tales emanating from western Europe’s tallest building. I hear that a new exclusive club has been formed at the top of the 1,016ft glass spire: the almost mile high club. Staff became aware that the
Why should we worry if jihadists control a poor, landlocked country thousands of miles away? As the French push on with the ‘reconquest’ of Mali, there’s a feeling here that Britain must play its part in preventing a terrorist safe haven on Europe’s southern border. Some compare the situation to pre-9/11 Afghanistan. Back in May,
It did not, in the end, take very much to outfox Ed Miliband. You wonder what he had been expecting the Prime Minister to say about a referendum on withdrawing, or otherwise, from the EU. As it was, Ed floundered, and felt obliged to say that Labour would not be promising a referendum – that
How broken is the British criminal justice system? In this week’s View from 22 podcast, Fraser Nelson and Rory Geoghegan, research fellow at Policy Exchange, explain the rehabilitation game and the cover up masterminded by our political class to hide the truth about how we dole out justice. Why is the government so keen on using electronic tagging?