All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Nick Clegg gave a rather sombre speech to the CentreForum summer reception last night. Addressing the guests from a pulpit in the vaulted cloisters of Westminster Abbey, as the rain poured down outside, the Deputy Prime Minister admitted he felt ‘lobotomised’ in government. It was actually a clumsy attempt to praise the work of the Lib Dem-aligned
I like Ken Clarke. He remains a Class A act in a government that could do with more heft and bottom. So there’s that. And his candid admission that the War on Drugs is a failure is welcome. Alas, even Ken can’t quite bring himself to acknowledge that the only thing madder than continuing a
Following Claire Perry’s campaign for porn prohibition, the Department of Education has now launched a consultation on parental internet controls. For those of you unaware of the policy proposals, it is something we should be concerned about as it poses a very real threat to our internet freedoms. This year, Perry held an independent inquiry
Could the government save £33 billion a year through better use of data? That’s the claim of a new report from Policy Exchange, which highlights how the government has failed to modernise and make efficient use of huge amounts data sitting at its disposal. Although playing with information isn’t exactly glamorous government, the inefficiency highlighted
The opinion on Paul Simon’s famous Graceland album seems finally to have swung 180 degrees from where it once was. Simon recorded the music — which has just bee re-released — with black African performers (mostly) in South Africa in 1986 and was of course castigated by the authoritarian left for ‘breaking’ the cultural boycott
Bob Diamond had thought it safe to take a bonus this year. His record, he thought, spoke for itself: Barclays had steered its way through the financial crisis without taking a penny of government subsidy. In 2012, it was making profit, paying tax, providing mortgages and being a model corporate citizen. His zombie rivals, RBS and
It’s immensely difficult to manage such a huge and complex country as China, we are constantly told by its mandarins. Indeed it is. Tens of thousands of Hong Kongers took to the streets over the weekend to protest their new leader, the Chinese Communist Party-friendly Leung Chun-ying. There have been demonstrations annually on 1 July
It’s Euro-mania in SW1. Always reliable for hard hitting analysis, Tory foghorn Louise Mensch summed up what she saw as her party’s position on the EU: ‘We want a Diet Coke version. A skinny latte. An EasyJet ticket. An IKEA flat-pack. Pain, vin, Boursin. You know. Just the basics.’ And who said a referendum would
Pressure has been building all weekend for the Prime Minister to give some form of concession to his eurosceptic backbenchers in his statement on the outcome of the Brussels summit. James blogged shortly before David Cameron stood up in the Commons that Tory MPs were being reassured that they were going to like what they
David Cameron’s position on Europe is becoming clearer. ‘Fresh settlement, fresh consent’, the soundbite he kept using, is simply a euphemism for renegotiation followed by a referendum. It seems that this renegotiation will span the next election. Indeed, it will start as soon as a new EU treaty is proposed. In response to a question
Has David Cameron now shot the UKIP fox? The Prime Minister has now put a referendum on the political agenda. No.10’s thinking, as revealed by James Forsyth weeks ago, is that the weekend’s high-profile posturing will see off the UKIP threat. The PM has given it a decent amount of welly in the Commons today
Nick Clegg won’t be sitting next to the Prime Minister in the chamber for today’s statement on the EU Council. He has, I’m told, got other meetings to attend. This absence might be for the best given what Tory MPs are planning to ask Cameron. As Isabel revealed earlier, a string of Eurosceptic backbenchers are
It’s hard to believe that executives at Barclays had much confidence that the resignation of Marcus Agius as the bank’s chair would place a stopper on the Libor scandal. Ed Miliband drove those doubts home this morning when, appearing on Daybreak, the Labour leader reiterated calls for Bob Diamond to resign. He said: ‘I don’t
David Cameron’s attempt to placate backbenchers clamouring for an EU referendum by writing a piece in yesterday’s Sunday Telegraph has not gone down particularly well. Backbenchers are more than mildly irked that the Prime Minister focused mainly on the problems with an in/out referendum, when the letter co-ordinated by John Baron (which you can read
The Osborne/Balls clash today was one of the most brutal I have seen in parliament. Osborne, leaning across the despatch box, mockingly enquired, ‘who was the City Minister when the Libor scandal happened? Put your hand up if you were the City Minister?’ Balls looked increasingly cross as Osborne continued down this path, demanding that
Marcus Agius’ resignation this morning as chair of Barclays took few by surprise after being widely trailed over the weekend. But as ever, The Spectator was far ahead of the curve, with columnist Martin Vander Weyer calling on 5 May for Agius to go, nearly two months before the Libor scandal even broke. You can
Is manipulating interest rates really as shocking to the Chancellor and the Governor of the Bank of England as they make it out to be? The Libor and Euribor fixing scandal has shown several bankers at it, yet this weekend there were suggestions that at least some of these bankers thought that the regulators, the
Suddenly, unexpectedly, this is becoming the Summer of the PIGS. The balance of power inside the EU has shifted with Francois Hollande’s election victory. Now the bone idle and impecunious southern nations – Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain – are being spared the German hairshirt and workhouse treatment. Instead, the new mantra seems to be
It’s funny how things turn out. David Cameron said in opposition that there was nothing worse than the Conservative party banging-on about Europe. These days, it bangs-on about little else. The prime minister is a repeat offender. He said on Friday that there should not be an in/out referendum on Britain’s membership of the European
Over at the books blog, former Tory MP Jerry Hayes has reviewed James Hanning and Francis Elliott’s Cameron: Practically a Conservative. The key to Hanning and Elliott’s analysis resides in their title. David Cameron is a practical politician, not an ideologue; his quiet values instilled by a comfortable upbringing and a natural talent for conciliation.
Many Spectator subscribers, picking up today’s newspapers, will be a bit puzzled. Is it news that David Cameron has come round to the idea of an EU referendum? Haven’t they read that somewhere before? This sensation is called Déjà Lu, and it I’m afraid afflicts all Spectator subscribers. Cameron’s decision to change his position on
Tory MPs are plotting to oust Speaker Bercow, the Sun on Sunday reports today. They are apparently furious that Bercow allowed Chris Bryant to brand Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt a ‘liar’ in his party’s opposition day debate calling for a full investigation into Hunt’s conduct. The Speaker refused to censure Bryant because he argued the
The Glasgow-based writer Gerry Hassan took part in our Scottish independence debate on Tuesday, and then made the mistake of getting the train back to Glasgow. It took 15 hours. No one could help a landslip in Cumbria, but then one of the engines caught fire. His story, below (recorded by the BBC), is perhaps
The more we learn about the Libor scandal, the more serious it becomes. Robert Peston’s suggestion that during the financial crisis, Barclays traders thought they were manipulating Libor under instruction from the Bank of England takes matters to another level. It should be stressed that the Bank is indicating that it offered no such
Don’t expect Cairo to become Kabul now that the Muslim Brotherhood’s presidential candidate, Mohammed Mursi, has been sworn into power earlier today. There are real fears, of course, about the future of Egypt under an Islamist president and it’s foolish to whitewash Mursi as either moderate or benign. The Muslim Brotherhood is a deeply reactionary
The momentum for a public inquiry into banking is growing. The Daily Mail front page demands ‘Put Bankers In the Dock’. While Ed Miliband has given an interview (£) to The Times in which he calls for an inquiry into the ‘institutional corruption in the City’. Miliband thinks that this inquiry should be tasked with
It is Armed Forces Day and army morale is low – according to the Telegraph at least. The prospect of a 20 per cent cut in personnel is provoking anger in the ranks, which the civilian can perceive dimly by looking at the posts left on the Army Rumour Service. Rumours of amalgamation and abolition have
Ed Miliband stands accused of many faults, but he rarely slips an opportunity to be opportunistic. James has said that the error and arrogance of the banking establishment, epitomised by the LIBOR and mis-selling scandals, allows Miliband to pose as a ‘tribune of the people’. And so it has come to pass. Miliband has today
It suits a great many people to blame the banks. The ministers (like Ed Balls) who oversaw the debt-fuelled credit bubble; the Tories (like George Osborne) who signed up to Labour’s debt-fuelled spending binge; the regulators who failed so appallingly (a global crisis but how many collapsed banks in Australia and Canada?); and Mervyn King,
This all feels rather miserably familiar. Eurozone leaders come to a dawn agreement about resolving the crisis. Markets react positively. The leaders appear on podiums to congratulate one another and themselves on reaching said dawn agreement. By lunchtime, something rather awkward has happened. Angela Merkel, perhaps inspired by George Osborne, had done a U-turn in
The Libor scandal is both a threat and an opportunity for Labour. The threat is that the abuses took place under a regulatory system that was devised by the last Labour government and by a Chancellor who both Eds worked for. As I said yesterday, the Tories are determined to hammer Balls — a former
After Merkel’s decision to allow Eurozone funds to be used to bail out Spanish and Italian banks, the press tomorrow may declare – yet again – that some kind of breakthrough has been reached and that the Teutonic queen of austerity has been forced down from her throne. But, as ever with the Euro summits,
It took them 13 hours, but eurozone leaders have finally agreed to use bailout funds to recapitalise banks directly. The deal, which was reached at 4am (David Cameron had gone to bed at 1am because this is a eurozone, not EU matter), involved Germany giving in to the demands of Italy and Spain. You can
Hardly a day goes by without more bad news on youth unemployment. The latest figures on NEETs (a horrible de-humanising term for school leavers who are not in education, employment or training) show that the numbers rose between 2010 and 2011 to over eight per cent. The release of these statistics coincided with new polling