All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
So here we are again. At least Lord Justice Leveson had the humanity to give us a couple of weeks off whining celebrities, shifty ex-journalists and declaiming newspaper editors. From the Health and Social Care Bill there is no respite. The Bill is back in the House of Lords and Liberal Democrat guerrillas are wound
I’d rather they didn’t. But perhaps a campaign of clerical terror would make the BBC ‘respect’ Christianity. According to the Telegraph, the director general of the BBC said it handles Islam with far more sensitivity than Christianity because: ‘The point is that for a Muslim, a depiction, particularly a comic or demeaning depiction, of the
The Lockerbie case is back in the news with the publication of Megrahi: You Are My Jury by John Ashton, a member of Abdelbaset ali al-Megrahi’s defence team. That Megrahi remains alive, if only just, two and a half years after he was released on compassionate grounds is, plainly, an embarassment and all the evidence
According to early figures from wholesalers and retailers, the first edition of the Sun on Sunday has sold over three million copies, a big win for Rupert Murdoch and the team of journalists — including yours truly — who had to get the new paper out at breakneck speed. Last week, the News Corp chairman
One quirk of the welfare reform debate is that many of the reforms won’t automatically apply in one of the parts of the United Kingdom with the worst welfare problems: Ulster. As Owen Paterson, the Northern Ireland Secretary, points out in a speech tonight, ‘Northern Ireland has proportionately one third more households living on out
It has taken some time, but the media has now worked out that the government’s back-to-work reforms are a story which just keeps on giving. Under the Work Programme, vast amounts of taxpayers’ money will find its way into the pockets of the people running the new system. When these contracts were given out last
Michael Gove for leader? There have been several suggestions to this effect recently — not least from Toby Young in his debut column for the Sun on Sunday. But Tim Montgomerie today quotes one of Gove’s advisors on ConservativeHome, saying that the education secretary has ruled himself out on the grounds that he doesn’t have
The letter from Nick Clegg and Shirley Williams to Lib Dem MPs and peers raises several interesting questions. The first of which is why did Clegg champion these health reforms back in the day? Four days after the first reading of the bill, the deputy Prime Minister had this exchange with Andrew Marr: Andrew Marr:
The mood of this morning’s ‘Growth Forum’ hosted by the Free Enterprise Group of Tory MPs and the Institute for Economic Affairs was summed up by Kwasi Kwarteng’s introductory remark that to meet the OBR’s ‘ambitious growth targets’, the coalition ‘can’t just bumble along’. The headline news coming out of the event is Andrew Tyrie,
This morning a friend from London emailed to find out what the hell has happened to the Australian Labor Party? He was responding to the news overnight that, in a ballot for Labor’s 102-strong legislative caucus, Julia Gillard (the most unpopular prime minister in Australian history) smashed Kevin Rudd (the most popular prime minister in
…here are some posts made on Spectator.co.uk over the weekend: Fraser Nelson says that the government should raise the income tax threshhold and let youth prevail. James Forsyth explains why Nick Clegg wouldn’t be averse to a Boris victory in May, and details the two types of Tory modernisation. Peter Hoskin watches David Willetts try
Finally, Lords reform becomes interesting: it could be the issue that splits the coalition. Lord Oakeshott’s admission of this yesterday has made the newspapers today — but it will come as no surprise to Spectator readers. James Forsyth drew out these battle lines for his cover story last week, and it’s worth reprising his arguments
Today brings the news, distressing to some quarters, that HSBC is paying its chief executive Stuart Gulliver £7.2 million — making him the highest-paid banker in the UK for the financial year so far. The remuneration comes on the back of a 28 per cent jump in full-year profits, which means HSBC has bucked the
Let’s get the following out of the way first: Assad is a brutal authoritarian and Syria is not a democracy. In particular, the shelling of Homs has been an outrage. But. What proportion of the Syrian people are in favour of the uprising and support the rebel army? All of them? Most of them? Or
Meanwhile, in other emergency service news: a milestone has been reached in the United States. 500 people, most of them unarmed and unthreatening, have been killed* by police officers using Tasers: According to data collected by Amnesty International, at least 500 people in the United States have died since 2001 after being shocked with Tasers
Via Bagehot, an enraging story from the Mail on Sunday: [O]n an overcast lunchtime last March when no fewer than 25 members of the emergency services, including a press officer, descended on a 3½ft-deep model boating lake minutes after Simon Burgess, 41, fell into the water when he suffered a seizure. But as an inquest
One thing to be said about Mitt Romney: there’s an artless quality to his campaign and there are times when he seems just a goof. For a man who is accused of parsing and pandering all the time, he’s sometimes shows no idea of how his remarks will be perceived by, you know, normal people.
When David Cameron addressed Tory MPs on Friday, he told them that the London Mayoral elections were ‘the binary moment of 2012’. He argued that if Labour lost in London, one of their traditional strongholds, it would be a disaster for Ed Miliband. In the Cameron narrative, a Boris victory in May would mean that
Seems that the latest plan to fix the eurozone involves cooking up a pot of alphabet soup. Over in Mexico, G20 finance ministers are currently discussing whether to blend two existing eurozone bailout funds, the EFSF and the ESM, with some extra money from the IMF. They hope that this EFSF-ESM-IMF mix will add up
I don’t know if you watched the show, but there was a bravura performance from the British historian Simon Schama on Newsnight last Thursday evening. He spent much of the time furiously condemning the venality and greed of the bankers in accepting large bonuses. He was, for a while, wracked by a sort of camp
Youth unemployment is approaching crisis levels in Britain. For almost two decades, Britain’s more flexible labour market had favourable effects on youth employment. But the re-regulation of the British economy has narrowed the difference between our jobs market, and that of the continent. Meanwhile the British poverty trap has been strengthened by a dysfunctional welfare
This week’s Bookbencher is Alistair Darling, the Labour MP for Edinburgh South West and the former Chancellor of the Exchequer. His memoir, Back from the Brink, is available in paperback in April. 1) Which book’s on your bedside table at the moment? Lloyd George by Roy Hattersley. 2) Which book would you read to your
There have always been two types of Tory modernisers. Both wanted to talk about issues that the party had neglected — public services, the environment and the like. But the soft modernisers were more prepared to compromise ideologically, to go with the flow of the age. The hard modernisers’ interest, by contrast, was in applying
Both the Tory and Lib Dem manifestoes promised to reform the House of Lords, as did the Coalition Agreement, but the gulf in enthusiasm between the two parties is enormous. For many Lib Dems, this is of course — as Nick Clegg put it in December — ‘one boat that urgently needs rocking’. For many
Siphoning the contents of two brains through one mouth and on to a single page will generally produce eclectic results. And that’s certainly the case with David Willetts’ interview with the Times (£) this morning. The universities minister manages to range across subjects that include Robert Falcon Scott, climate change, the Falklands and universities access.
This week brought the sad news of the deaths of two journalists — Marie Colvin and Remi Ochlik — in Syria. As a testament to their bravery, here’s a first-hand insight into the dangers of war reporting written for The Spectator in 1991 by Con Coughlin, who was covering the Gulf War for the Sunday
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgNJBdTaKE8 The Republican primary is dragging on longer than Mitt Romney had hoped — and it’s hurting him. His poll ratings have begun to plummet, and his war chest is feeling the pain too. In January, he spent a whopping $18.8m while raising just $6.5m. His campaign still has $7.7m ‘cash on hand’, but you
This is one reason – among many – why it is a bad idea to agree to be interviewed by Glenn Beck: Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum said Thursday that President Obama wants more young adults to go to college so they can undergo “indoctrination” to a secular world view. In an hour-long interview with
It looks like those £32,500-a-year figtrees won’t be staying in Portcullis House for long. While they may add a pleasant ambiance to the building, the huge rent bill has caused much annoyance, including for the Speaker of the Commons. In an interview with House Magazine, John Bercow says he was ‘horrified’ and adds: ‘If we are
Here is a selection of articles and discussions from this week on Spectator.co.uk… Most read: Fraser Nelson saying George Osborne accidentally makes the case for more savings. Most shared: Rod Liddle on the Saudi journalist who could be killed for a tweet. Most discussed: Matt Cavanagh discussing the implications of the border security report. And
Will there be further changes to the Health and Social Care Bill? Liberal Democrat President Tim Farron certainly wants some, as he told ITV’s Party People last night: ‘If the new competition introduced through this Bill is removed, then I think it’s better on the books than it is off it… What I want is
With all these tax cut suggestions kicking about — and with the British economy desperately in need of some oomph — it’s worth asking: which would help growth the most? It’s not of course the only consideration, but it is clearly an important one as we struggle to find our way out of recession.
On the Today Programme this morning, Employment Minister Chris Grayling defended the government’s Work Experience programme in light of the recent controversies around it. Here’s a full transcript of the interview: Evan Davis: Well how can work experience get such a bad name? A string of high profile companies have pulled out of one government
I have been asked, rightly enough, to use obscene language a little less frequently on these pages. This is something which I have strived to do. But there’s a problem, because this morning I read an article written by the actor Sean Penn, about the ‘Malvinas/Falklands’ dispute, and cannot find any way in which I