All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
After a brief hiatus, the Spectator’s Bookbenchers interview recommences this week. Over at the books blog, Douglas Alexander MP, the shadow foreign secretary, tells us what he plans to read his children over the summer, as well what he hopes to read for himself. He says: ‘My mother, who herself was born in China —
The Indian president lives in a Lutyens palace formerly occupied by the country’s viceroys, replete with ballroom, cinema, and Mughal gardens. I’ve been inside to interview the current incumbent, Pratibha Patil. With 360 rooms, it’s a big house for a small person and you can get lost – indeed recently, Patil reportedly did go missing
The sticking plaster is peeling off again. Spanish bond yields have again breached 7 per cent this morning. That 10 year gilts are back over this level is yet another reminder that the piece-meal solutions the Eurozone is trying just won’t work. Indeed, they are unravelling at an ever quicker rate as the markets realise
That the Liberal Democrats might try to scupper the boundary reforms if they don’t get their way on Lords reform has been the talk of the tearooms in Westminster for months. But today the threat comes to the fore as Nick Clegg’s departing head of strategy Richard Reeves warns the Independent that there will be
‘What do you think David Cameron stands for?’ a Tory MP asked me recently. Unsure of his point, I burbled something about ‘responsibility’ and couple of other random abstract nouns. The MP shook his head grimly. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell you what David Cameron stands for.’ I leant forward, intrigued. ‘David Cameron stands for
So what did George Osborne tell The Spectator? The words he used to James Forsyth became the centre of a Question Time bust up last night and one that had to be broken up by a Sex Pistol. Let’s start with Ed Balls’ version. He told the Commons that Osborne impugned his integrity by
The cutting of 17 army units by 2020 was never going to be popular. It is over-dramatic to suggest we now have a self-defence force rather than an army, but the loss of 20,000 regular soldiers will clearly have an effect on the UK’s ability to wage war. And yet the cutting is the easy
A pearl richer than all his tribe who, alas, loved batting not wisely but all too well. If tragedy seems too strong a term for Mark Ramprakash’s career there remains ample room for sadness when one considers the fate of the best batsman England has produced since Gooch and Gower announced themselves more than 30
West Midlands Police have just announced seven arrests as part of an investigation into alleged terrorist activity. This follows the detention of six individuals on similar charges across London yesterday. Together, they reveal just how active the Islamist network in the UK remains and the potency of its ongoing threat. One of those arrested in
Defence Secretary Philip Hammond has the unenviable task today of announcing a cull of army units as the force is cut from 102,000 to 82,000. The Army 2020 review, the launch of which was delayed beyond Armed Forces Day last weekend, also doubles the number of reservists to 30,000. This leaves it half the size
There are, though partisans don’t want to admit it, problems with both a judicial inquiry and a parliamentary inquiry into the Libor scandal and the wider culture it has revealed. A judicial inquiry would drag on and, judging by the Leveson Inquiry, there’s no guarantee that the judge would understand the industry he’s meant to
Following the vote just now, there will be a parliamentary inquiry into the Libor scandal. Andrew Tyrie, chairman of the Treasury select committee, will chair it because Ed Balls has agreed that Labour will participate in it as long as it concerns about membership and the secretariat are addressed; presumably, this means that Labour will
Yesterday, Health Secretary Andrew Lansley reported to MPs on the state of the NHS. The state of the NHS, you’ll be relieved to know, is good, or at least it is in Mr Lansley’s estimation. Budgets are in surplus, waiting lists are down and, unless you are very unlucky, you won’t have to hang around
It has just been announced that the police are going to launch an investigation into the Bloody Sunday deaths. It comes after the Police Service Northern Ireland and the Public Prosecution service reviewed the evidence of the Saville Inquiry. There will be a lot of comment about this in the coming days, but I think
So the Bank of England is firing up the presses again, and injecting another £50 billion of Quantitative Easing (on top of the £325 billion we’ve had so far), in a desperate bid to get the economy moving. The Bank’s certainly right that growth’s not forthcoming. GDP in the first quarter of this year was
One of my first jobs as a junior reporter was covering the inquest of a man who had committed suicide at the end of a legal battle against a rise in his rent. His council house had been transferred to a housing association, and the rents were set to rise by £5 a week. Like
Did those around Gordon Brown create the conditions for the Libor fixing scandal? According to George Osborne, the answer is yes. In his cover feature this week, James Forsyth speaks to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who takes aim at his opposite number, stating those in the last government were ‘clearly involved.’ In our latest
The exchanges between Balls and Osborne just now are some of the most heated and most personal in parliamentary memory. I suspect that Balls would now not offer to cook Osborne ‘my 14-hour pulled pork South Carolina barbecue. I’d know he, as an American aficionado, would truly appreciate it’. The cause for this row is
Happy Fourth of July America! As you salute that Star-Spangled banner today, however, please remember that the war which spawned your anthem was a farrago wrapped in a fiasco inside a folly: ‘If Canada was the winner in the War of 1812, there was no doubt who the losers were. The Federalist Party, sensibly skeptical
The job of George Entwistle, the new Director General of the BBC, will be to manage a gentle decline, rather than hurtling with great enthusiasm towards a state of inexistence. A very ticklish balance needs to be maintained on the issue of the BBC’s moral cross subsidisation – that is, the extent to which the
Follow our live coverage of Prime Minister’s Question Time on Wednesday 4 July 2012: <a href=”http://www.coveritlive.com/mobile.php/option=com_mobile/task=viewaltcast/altcast_code=106b0e8835″ >PMQs live – 4th July 2012</a>
Last night a group of Liberal Democrat and Conservative MPs met to discuss Lords reform. Public outbursts from the Conservative backbench have so far focused on opposition to the bill and the programme motion that the whips are trying to impose on the legislation, but the group of pro-reform MPs, who have informally dubbed themselves
Low party interest parading as high political principle. That was the theme of today’s PMQs as the party leaders clashed over the scope and nature of the inquiry into the Libor scandal. David Cameron’s pungent language was intended to reflect public anger at the banks. He spoke of ‘spivvy and illegal activity’ in the City,
The fundamental division in modern politics is between corporatists and believers in free markets. So what, you might say, that has been a fundamental division for quite a while. This time it is different, however. As a general rule, the more right wing a politician or commentator is seen to be, the more likely he
This is the memo from Bob Diamond, released yesterday, on which many of this afternoon’s questions at the Treasury Select Committee will hinge. It records a conversation with Bank of England Deputy Governor Paul Tucker, and is worth reproducing in full here: Further to our last call, Mr Tucker reiterated that he had received calls
This afternoon’s rather lengthy Treasury Select Committee hearing with Bob Diamond suggests that Ed Miliband might be on to something with his calls for a judge-led inquiry. We were two hours into the session when John Thurso remarked: ‘If you were an English cricketer, I suspect your name would be Geoffrey Boycott… You’ve been occupying
After a subdued PMQs, the politics of the Libor scandal has just been ratcheted up another notch. In an interview with The Spectator for this week’s issue, George Osborne has said that those around Gordon Brown ‘were clearly involved’ in the discussion about how to keep Libor down during the 2008 financial crisis. In the
Like the French Revolution it remains much too soon to say what the consequences of the United States Supreme Court’s decision to uphold Obamacare will be. Except this: defeat would surely have been a catastrophe for Mr Obama. The more one considers John Roberts’ pivotal argument, however, the more it seems as cunning as it
Grover Norquist, a leading voice of American conservatism, is cross about the date of the Republican Party convention. He tweets: ‘Which idiot put the GOP convention the same time as ‘Burning Man’ in Nevada? Is there time to change this?’ Burning Man, in case you didn’t know, is a festival in Nevada where ‘freethinkers’ flock
I have been waiting more than two years for this government to say or do something really radical. By this I don’t mean taking the Blairite revolution to its logical conclusion (or is it reductio ad absurdum?) by introducing pseudo-markets deeper into every area of the public sector and reforms to the welfare state New
Abu Qatada, the Islamist cleric once branded ‘Osama bin Laden’s ambassador to Europe’, has dominated headlines in recent months as the government struggles to return him to Jordan. Theresa May wanted to take a hard line against foreign clerics operating from Britain but has found her hands tied by the European Court of Human Rights.
Yesterday the Prime Minister made a point of showing his backbench how very willing he was to listen to their concerns about the European Union. Today, as he gave evidence to the Liaison Committee, David Cameron made a point of suggesting his Liberal Democrat coalition partners are a little less willing when it comes to
Bob Diamond’s resignation with immediate effect as chief executive of Barclays gives plenty of people in Westminster the scalp they were looking for. Labour had called for Diamond to go after the Libor scandal surfaced. The Lib Dems had called for Diamond to resign, with Vince Cable threatening to use as a last resort his
House of Lords reform? Most politicos are debating whether to elect senators or maintain the status-quo. Not so the Kensington, Chelsea and Fulham Conservatives, who held an evening discussion about whether the Lords should return to the hereditary principle. Mr Steerpike hears that it was a popular motion. Leading the charge was James Bethell, head