All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
There is some consternation with the defence secretary today, who has indicated, in as much detail as he can at this stage, how the regular army will be reduced from a permanent establishment of 102,000 men to 82,000 men by 2020. You get a flavour of the disquiet on the Army’s anonymous message board service,
Before David Cameron’s trip to Berlin later today, George Osborne appeared on the Today Programme to emphasise that in the event of a Eurozone banking union, Britain would require safeguards. Given the importance of finance to this country, Cameron and Osborne can’t accept anything that creates a two-tier single market for financial services. The
Two bits of interesting news yesterday: 1. France – while the eurozone is in financial meltdown – is allowing some of its workers to retire early; 2. China – while the eurozone is in financial meltdown – is on a shopping spree, buying European assets on the cheap. Perhaps there we have, in a nutshell,
The debate over the Union provides Ed Miliband with a political opportunity. He is the only one of the three major party leaders whose party plays in both England and Scotland. The Tories only have one seat north of the border and the Lib Dems fear that they might lose all of their seats in
More than a week on from the massacre at Houla, another hundred or so men, women and children have been slaughtered in Hama, Syria. They were apparently stabbed to death and some of their bodies then burned. David Cameron has responded to this by describing the killings as ‘brutal and sickening’. William Hague had previously
There is an intriguing intervention from Lord Owen in this morning’s Times (£) — and he has also written a book on the subject, Europe Restructured?. He writes: ‘The [likely response to the] eurozone crisis [greater integration] now presents us with a clear choice: do we want to be part of a country called Europe?
Ed Miliband laid out his vision for Scotland today, which didn’t quite set the heather alight. But word reaches me about what David Cameron is planning. He has already said that if Scotland votes ‘No’ they’d get a special something as a thank-you. But he did not specify what that something was. A bluff, says
To those of you who are discovering our new website: welcome. The aim is for it to be leaner and faster, but in the rejig we have had to drop some items that we’ll miss. One I will particularly miss is Night & Day, the Spectator Arts Blog, which was brilliantly run by Simon Mason
We’re all familiar with the eurozone boom-bust news cycle by now. First, there are reports of more European banks in trouble, then news of governments seeking bailouts, closely followed by speculation over the future of the euro. Then, as if to crown it all, there will be news that global political leaders and finance ministers
When David Cameron reshuffles his top team, one of the questions he’ll have to answer is what relationship he wants between the Conservative party and the coalition government. The Liberal Democrats have a deputy leader in Simon Hughes and a party president in Tim Farron who are quite often used by their leadership to try
Whitehall sits and waits. Normal politics is continuing, squalls over whether the apprentice stewards at the Jubilee were taken advantage of and the next stage in the Warsi saga have dominated today, but everyone knows that the big story is unfolding — albeit, at an unpredictable pace — on the continent. There are, at the
David Cameron finds himself in the same boat as Dr Frankenstein. Baroness Warsi, a political creation designed to bring Toryism to sceptical ethnic minorities in which Cameron has invested heavily, may have to be neutralised as she is engulfed by two inquiries. Paul Goodman writes of Cameron and Warsi’s awkward relationship in today’s Telegraph, and he
Can George Osborne recover? Much depends on how the Chancellor confronts the twin crises he faces: the lack of economic growth (or any prospect of it) and his personal reputation for competence after his shambolic Budget. Today, we have alarming news. The Independent says that Osborne is offering ‘growth bonds’. These appear to be a
The European melodrama continues. The European Commission is to publish draft legislation to insulate taxpayers from bailing-out Europe’s sclerotic banks in the future. The plan is to give governments the power to reduce the claims of shareholders and bondholders so that any losses are born by creditors not taxpayers. These changes, if enacted, would ease
One of my objections to monarchy is that it is a vulgar institution that encourages verbosity, prurience, sycophancy and banality. I was not therefore surprised that the BBC’s jubilee coverage was vulgar, verbose, prurient, sycophantic and banal. Others were, however, and the papers are full of condemnations of the corporation. You should always remember that
It was beautiful and a bit strange this morning, sitting in St Paul’s Cathedral with the rest of the congregation, waiting for the Queen to make her entrance for the national thanksgiving service. We were hushed and awed — I was up in the press gallery — under the great dome of the stupendous cathedral.
Martin Amis is not appearing at Hay until next week, but his new novel was already getting the intelligentsia chattering this weekend. ‘Lionel Asbo: State of Britain’, a grim tale of a violent lottery winning criminal, is under strict embargo until it’s release on Thursday and the Telegraph has paid an undisclosed fortune for the
As the Jubilee celebrations draw to a close, attention once more returns to events in Europe. There’s a distinct sense among politicians, and especially coalition ministers, that what is happening there will change British politics in a huge way. As one senior MP said to me over the weekend, if a country leaves the Euro
‘Ten years ago, if you’d been asked what Gary Barlow would be running now, you’d have said a Little Chef off the A32.’ This, from Lee Mack, was one of the best gags of the night, which isn’t saying much. The music outstripped the comedy but Mack raises an important question: did Barlow get it
It turns out that there is a minister in the Cameron cabinet who can say sorry. Following the second week of Warsi rule breaking revelations, the Tory party co-chairman has apologised for ‘causing any embarrassment’ to the government. But Cameron isn’t stopping there — she is also being hauled up for potentially breaking the ministerial
Even as the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee BBC Concert rocked on outside Buckingham Palace (amid the slightly worrying news that the Duke of Edinburgh is in hospital), some bad economic news came in — rating agency Egan-Jones has cut the UK’s credit rating to AA-minus with a negative outlook, from AA. ‘The over-riding concern is whether
One of the issues that David Cameron is contemplating at the moment is the timing of the reshuffle. I hear that he devoted a considerable chunk of last week to thinking about the structure he wants for the government. The pressing matter that has been delaying the move is doubts over whether certain ministers
In my Observer column on Sunday I mentioned in passing that in a crisis, elites have to be able to show that they are sharing the plight of the masses. Asking for ‘equality of suffering’ is too much, you will never have that, but there has to be a sense that — to coin a
Was the BBC’s coverage of the Jubilee celebrations really as awful as all the papers seem to say it was? I’ve always rather liked Sophie Raworth, yet she and her colleagues come in for a terrible pasting — especially from the Mail of course. But I’d be interested to hear your views. Also on the
Back in November I wrote a cover story for The Spectator arguing that the trend in North Africa for those countries which had thrown off their dictators appeared to be more in the direction of Winter than that of Spring. Since then there have been many developments, including the first round of the Egyptian Presidential
Apparently, ‘it wouldn’t be the same’ for the 25th anniversary of the Hay-on-Wye literary festival without the sideways rain and mist. The weather couldn’t dampen the spirits of the thousands of Guardianistas who have converged on the tiny welsh village this weekend. Neither could the facts that the Telegraph is the festival’s sponsor, and that
The situation in Syria is very precarious, according to multiple reports – including those of UN observers. Diplomatic tensions remain as before, with Russia and China unyielding in their intransigence. The question of intervention (in some form) is being considered, and all options are supposed to be on the table. Sir Malcolm Rifkind, chairman of
The rain makes today’s Jubilee celebrations a truly British event. We didn’t want any of this continental sun, anyway. The flotilla is making its way through the drizzle, and as we have to celebrate indoors due to the weather then there’s the perfect accompaniment: the new Spectator double issue, out today, which is overflowing with
In a bid to make Tory MPs feel more involved, Downing Street is inviting small groups of them to see Andrew Cooper, David Cameron’s director of political strategy, and Stephen Gilbert, the PM’s political secretary. Patrick Rock, who acts as the political liaison to the civil service run policy-unit, also attends. The first of these
There is a cracking scoop in today’s Mail on Sunday. An anonymous Tory backbench MP has excoriated George Osborne’s performance as Chancellor. The MP repeats many of the arguments made by Fraser on Thursday, as the latest lines of the Budget were excised. Osborne is, apparently lazy, uninterested in economics and hubristic. The MP implies
Here’s a U-turn that we can all welcome: felling the wind farms. Matt Ridley described, in a Spectator cover story some while ago, how George Osborne has turned against them. Today, the Observer has more details, saying that Osborne is: As Ridley argued, wind farms are a ‘monument to the folly of mankind’, representing the
A visibly relieved David Cameron gave a statement outside No. 10 earlier today about the successful rescue of four aid workers from a cave on the Afghan/Tajikistan border, including a Northern Irish aid worker, Helen Johnston. The Prime Minister said he had personally authorized the operation, which must have been some decision given the recent history
Jubilation has erupted outside a court in Cairo, where former President Hosni Mubarak has been sentenced to life imprisonment for his role in the killing of 850 anti-government protesters during last year’s revolution. This has been a long process. When Mubarak was indicted, he was wheeled into a cage on a hospital bed, which raised
There is plenty of nostalgia around in this Jubilee Weekend. Any look back on 60 years brings temptation to think that the past was better than the present. This is what Woody Allen calls ‘golden age’ fallacy, which is defined (in his Midnight in Paris) as an age-old and ‘erroneous notion that a previous time