All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
The Spectator’s sales figures are out today, with digital sales included for the first time. I’m pleased to report that, in a pretty murderous market, our sales are still rising — and, thanks to our new digital readers, rising at the fastest rate in ten years. The red line shows our print sales. It’s not
Julian Assange is one of my best enemies. For my part it was hatred at first sight. He was only slightly slower on the uptake. Our relationship was consummated last year when we debated in London, and he fluttered those strange dead eyes at me, and threatened to sue me, and then didn’t, and I
William Hague took a robust line on Julian Assange at his press conference this evening. He made clear that the British government would not allow the Wikileaks founder safe passage out of the UK, and warned against using diplomatic immunity as a means of ‘escaping regular process of the courts’. Assange is wanted in Sweden
The British state’s curious relationship with radical Islam appears to have gone full circle. I’ve just found a picture on an internet forum affiliated with al-Qaeda showing Abu Baseer al-Tartusi carrying a rifle in Syria. Al-Tartusi is a little known cleric who was granted political asylum in London and who gave Islamic lectures in Tower
If ministers needed any more encouragement to improve the supply of new homes in this country, today’s figures on house building starts and completions from the Communities and Local Government department might just do it. Housing starts in England in the three months to the end of June fell by 10 per cent on the
The first polling on the Corby and East Northamptonshire by-election is out today and not surprisingly, it suggests that Labour will take the seat by a landslide. The poll commissioned by Lord Ashcroft predicts Corby will fall in line with national polling trends — a collapsed Lib Dem vote, reduced Tory presence and a resurgent
How many of history’s great revolutions were sparked by sheer, human hunger? In 2008, global food prices spiked, with the cost of basic crops doubling. In the two years that followed, Egyptians saw their food prices increase by some 40 per cent – in 2011, as we know, the Arab Spring broke across the Middle
This year’s coverage of A-levels has been a little different to that in previous years. Sure, there are still plenty of blonde twins coming out of the woodwork to take impressively high jumps in the air but there are no headlines about results breaking new records for the proportion of top marks awarded, and that’s
Are we about to see revolutions on the streets thanks to crop prices? John R. Bradley argues in this week’s cover feature that crop price rises this year are going to lead to insurrection across the world. In the latest View from 22 podcast, Clarissa Tan discusses which places the price hikes will affect the
Reader TT asks a good question: given your (self-appointed) role as the Spectator’s unofficial darts correspondent, why haven’t you written anything on the death of Sid Waddell? What can I say? Grief moves one in mysterious ways. Few people can claim to have created a sport, yet that was Waddell’s achievement and only nit-pickers and
The Olympics may be over, but the political row over school sports fields is set to rumble on into the autumn. Stephen Twigg today announced that Labour will force a vote on the matter when the Commons returns in September. His motion will demand that the government restore a minimum space requirement for outdoor space
In Michael Lewis’s The Big Short, one of the few Wall Street analysts to bet against the US housing market explains his decision to short Merrill Lynch: We have a simple thesis. There is going to be a calamity, and whenever there is a calamity, Merrill is there. Sure enough, Merrill was there when the
Earlier this week IPPR published a paper which made the case against for-profit schools. Two of the leading proponents of such schools, Toby Young and Gabriel Sahlgren, have since responded. Young accuses me of being ‘an evangelical believer in an ‘evidence-based’ approach to public policy’. He implies at the start of his piece that empirical evidence
Last week Boris Johnson was in jellyfish mode, drifting along and delivering the occasional sly sting to the coalition. Now that the Olympics are over, the Mayor has launched something of a shark attack on his Westminster colleagues. In an interview with the Evening Standard, Boris accuses ministers of ‘pussyfooting’ and calls for the government
Euston, we have a problem. Richard Branson found out today that Virgin Trains has lost the rail franchise for the West Coast Mainline to First Group. From 9 December, First plans to ‘offer substantial improvements in the quality and frequency of services’ on one of the country’s key arteries. This overhaul will bring in 11 new trains
Ministers are generally cautious in welcoming falls in unemployment in case they represent a blip for just one quarter. But Iain Duncan Smith was pretty chipper this morning when the Office for National Statistics announced a fall in the jobless stats for the fifth quarter running and the strongest employment rise since the middle of
When Nick Clegg announced he was giving up the struggle on House of Lords reform, he named a number of policy areas that could fill the huge legislative void left by the collapse of the plans to overhaul the upper chamber. One of them was banking, and the Deputy Prime Minister told journalists it might
King Abdullah opened an emergency session of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation in Saudi Arabia today to address ongoing instability in the Middle East. Syria is high on their list of priorities, with other member states already voting to suspend its membership of the OIC until Bashar al-Assad gives up power. The OIC is a
The same problem keeps occurring for the megaphones of Iranian propaganda in the West: they keep being let down by their own side. Every time another op-ed appears in the Guardian or Nation arguing that Iran isn’t seeking a nuclear device (and even if was it would never use it, and even though it doesn’t
Living legend Usain Bolt is an unlikely mascot for those who campaign for reform of our tax system, but by confirming that he will continue to avoid competitions in the UK because of the amount of tax he would have to pay, he’s now the poster boy for the movement. If he attended races here,
In every aspect, the concerns about following Beijing have been swept aside, and the legacy of London 2012 is already some paces down the track. The politicians who played their part, from Singapore on, must now have eyes wide open about the value of sport to the morale of the country. Equally there is a
As he relaxes on a Majorcan beach, David Cameron might find his mind wandering to his plans for next month’s reshuffle. The latest demand from ‘influential figures’ is, according to Tim Shipman in the Daily Mail, that he replace Europe Minister David Lidington with a more Eurosceptic minister. Supporting those influential figures from the sidelines
John Bercow’s interview with the World at One was guaranteed to raise a few hackles across Westminster, and he certainly delivered on that by attacking ‘totally low-grade, substandard’ ‘no-hopers’ in the media. But well as revealing that he told his mother to stop reading the Daily Mail after reading something unpleasant about him in the
The Olympics are over and, with grim inevitability, politics have returned. Not the least lovely aspect of the Olympic fortnight was the manner in which it eclipsed everything and anything our politicians had to say. They were not missed but now they’re back. And so is Joan McAlpine MSP. As I’ve said before, McAlpine’s column
This morning’s announcement that the retail prices index rose to 3.2 per cent in July, up from 2.4 per cent in June, means commuters will see a 6.2 per cent rise in their train fares in January. Fares rises are currently calculated using RPI + 3 per cent. Analysts had predicted RPI would be 2.8
‘That’s just boring waffle!’ shouted Evan Davis on Radio 4 this morning when policing minister Nick Herbert refused to give direct answers to his questions on the turnout expected in the police and crime commissioner elections. Herbert repeatedly argued that ‘any turnout will confer greater legitimacy’ than the current system of unelected police authorities. But
The Liberal Democrats published the agenda for their autumn conference today, and one of the motions on the paper is on ‘a sustainable future for aviation’. Conference will debate the motion, tabled by Julian Huppert, on Sunday 23 September, and you can read it in full here. In essence, it rejects new runways at Heathrow,
Over the pond journalists are one by one being accused of plagiarism, while here our old friend Johann Hari popped back up on my radar. Though the Indy columnist was eventually disgraced for conducting mythical interviews, he never properly addressed other accusations of smearing rivals and colleagues on Wikipedia and in comment sections across the
Are the Tories about to do a deal with the Liberal Democrats over political party funding? Benedict Brogan intriguingly suggests that David Cameron might offer a post-Lords reform olive branch to Nick Clegg — the state funding of political parties. In return, the Lib Dems would have to support a future vote on boundary change:
It would be wrong to say that David Cameron has had a bad Olympics. After all, the Games went extremely well, both in terms of logistics and Britain’s wonderful medal haul. The Prime Minister is not responsible for the bouncy mood of the country at the moment, but he’s also not having to answer aggressive
We won’t know the economic impact of the Olympics until the GDP figures for the third quarter of this year are released, but today both Boris Johnson and Downing Street tried to strike an upbeat note. In his Telegraph column, the Mayor of London writes: ‘As we marvel at what they have done, and the
I have hugely enjoyed the French verdict on London 2012: the whole thing was botched and all our athletes cheated. They really are the most ghastly people. The only positive thing about France, on a personal note, is that if the country did not exist I would have been more likely to have been in
Paul Ryan is a solid if not sensational choice for the Vice Presidency – a reverse Sarah Palin, if you will. I know, I know, he is meant to be a gamble, but all Veep nominations are gambles. Ryan may not be deemed a ‘safe pick’ in the Tim Pawlenty mould, but a safe pick
The confrontation between military brass and Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt came much sooner than expected. Mohammed Mursi has effectively sacked the head of the armed forces, Field Marshal Mohamad Hussein Tantawi, and Chief of Staff Sami Annan, in the hope of asserting his authority. Relations between the army and president have been strained for months