All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
The relationship between Turkey and France — which started with the alliance between Francis I and Suleiman the Magnificent — is in precarious territory following the French Parliament’s decision to ban denial of the Armenian Genocide. Turkey’s moderate Islamist government has taken as hard a line on the issue as previous Kemalist governments did, and
In the run-up to every New Year, newspapers and the blogosphere are full of articles about what happened in the year just gone. 2011 was a particularly eventful year so there will be much to pick from. But what about the things that did not happen, though they were widely expected? Here are five things
The Christmas weekend was, I’m sure you noticed, rich with political incident. And yet, from continued turbulence in the Middle East to continued turbulence in Chris Huhne’s career, few things stood out as much as the protests against Vladimir Putin in Russia. They were, by most reasonable estimates, the largest in that country since the
It is an eternal and reassuring fact of human nature that when an editor announces that he is stepping down from a great publication, there is not the slightest interest in what he plans to do with his life, or even who he was. I have received many phone calls from friends and colleagues since announcing
Welcome to the latest CoffeeHousers’ Wall. For those who haven’t come across the Wall before, it’s a post we put up each Monday, on which — providing your writing isn’t libellous, crammed with swearing, or offensive to common decency — you’ll be able to say whatever you like in the comments section. There is no
The year is ending not with a successful US withdrawal from Iraq — as President Barack Obama claims — but with what amounts to a coup d’etat by the country’s Shiite prime minister (and former ally of the US) Nouri al-Maliki. Less than 24 hours after the last US soldier left Iraq, the country’s Sunni
May you and yours enjoy the day and have a rare and swell old time. Once you’ve done the quiz you can enjoy what is still the best damn (non-religious) Christmas song of all…
It’s that time of year again. So here’s the 2011 of the annual Christmas quiz. As always, there are no prizes and it’s just for fun. Mr Google may help with some, though perhaps not all, questions but where’s the glory in enlisting him as your assistant? The answers will be posted in the New
Christmas is all about enjoying the look on the face of a loved one as he or she opens something which you know will fill them with great emotion. And so Christmas day came a couple of days early for me as I watched my wife open the Oftsed report on our daughter’s school and
Christmas is but a day away, and with it a chance to remember when British and German troops clambered out of the trenches to declare impromptu ceasefires in December 1914. CoffeeHousers are no doubt familiar with the specifics: how the Germans started by singing carols, and finished off (according to some letters from the time)
A brief post to let CoffeeHousers know that the blog will be going a bit quieter over the next few days. We hope you have a very happy and peaceful Christmas. Coffee House won’t fall completely silent, though. Tune in over the weekend for the occasional post and selections from The Spectator archives. And there’s
William Hague has transformed the Foreign Office in his 18 months in charge. He inherited a system hardwired with the dynsfunctionality of the Labour years, and it’s almost fixed. But not quite. It has not yet woken up to the wave of what can only be called ‘religious cleansing’ in the Middle East, which I
His ad team* PAC seem to be inspired by Patrick Swayze’s finest hour. That’s the 1984 classic, Red Dawn. (What else could qualify for that palm?) Anyway, whatever else it is this ain’t exactly pandering to the GOP base. Again: it’s time for UK parties to emulate the cousins’ approach to these things. Granted, the
Say this for Newt Gingrich, he does know how to have some sport at Mitt Romney’s expense. How else to explain this? Forget the back and forth attacks with Mitt Romney. Newt Gingrich’s campaign has decided to take another route on his bid to the Republican nomination: pets and music. The campaign said today that
While we’re talking Christmas, how about this release from the Office for National Statistics today? It reveals how the cost of certain ‘Christmas shopping basket’ items has risen over the past year. We’ve put them into a table below — but let’s just say, you might want to start stocking up on carrots.
It shouldn’t surprise anyone who remembers anything about Ron Paul’s run for the Presidency four years ago that The Newsletter Issue has cropped up again. There are many things that place a low ceiling on the Texas Congressman’s potential level of support and the newsletters are one of the reasons for that. This won’t matter
Keen-sighted Spectator readers may have noticed that there was no ‘Barometer’ column in our Christmas double issue. The weekly column, which features topical, little observations and statistics, had to be pulled because of space restrictions. But no such restrictions on the Internet, of course — so we thought CoffeeHousers might care to see some of
Drivel, of course, and the kind of thing you’d expect to find in the Guardian. One expects rather more from the Times but, nay, here is a piece of Simon Winchester’s column (£) today: The State’s founder, Kim Il Sung, claimed that all he wanted for North Korea was to be socialist, and to be
For the populist president of Argentina, Cristina Kirchner, the ban on Falklands-flagged ships agreed by the Mercosur summit in Montevideo is a diplomatic triumph. It comes after a string of similar moves throughout the region aimed at tightening the noose around the Falklands. For example, HMS Gloucester was denied access to Montevideo in 2010 and,
Unseemly to talk about this while the old Lady still breathes. Unseemly but necessary. Peter Oborne considers the argument in the Telegraph today: I believe it would be wrong to give Lady Thatcher a state funeral, even though I accept that she was a very great woman, one of the six or seven most important
Parliament has decamped for midwinter, but the business of government goes on. Today’s announcement, by the children’s minister Tim Loughton, is contained within a Times article here. ‘An expert panel,’ it reveals, will be tasked with designing a new system for assessing prospective adoptive parents by March next year. That new system, making it easier
STOP PRESS: LONDON MANDARIN RECOGNISES SNP WON ELECTION, INTEND TO CALL REFERENDUM. FUTURE OF UNITED KINGDOM UNSURE. ASTONISHING SCENES. Lord knows what the Telegraph paid Sir Gus O’Donnell, heid neep at the civil service, for the valedictory piece published in today’s paper but if the news summary of the thing is at all accurate they’ve
A reader asks: What do you think about Johann Lamont winning the Scottish Labour leadership contest? Well, jings, far be it for me to intrude into these matters but it bears noticing that Lamont, doughty as she may be, relied upon the tame votes of Trades Union affiliates to secure her victory. Ken McIntosh –
It’s not very festive, but we have to wander into acronym territory again. Moody’s last night warned that the UK’s AAA credit rating is at risk if economic growth continues to slow. At the same time, minutes from the Bank of England’s meeting early this month, released today, show that its committee members were unanimous
Good sense from Dan Hannan: The House of Commons rises today, prompting traditional seasonal whinges. ‘MPs have already awarded themselves a number of bonus holidays this year so they risk looking out of touch by sloping off early at Christmas,’ says the TaxPayers’ Alliance. Hang on a minute. Isn’t the TPA forever complaining that we
One of the rules of American political journalism is that every four years there must be an attempt to guage the likelihood of a “serious” third party challenge that will change everything we’d previously thought we’d known about American politics. Happily, this year is no exception. TIME’s Alex Altman asks “Can a Well-Heeled Group of
Jonathan Bernstein is mildly miffed that now that Newt Gingrich’s self-inflated bubble is collapsing too few people are remembering those who always said this would happen. I quite agree. (Complete Newt-scepticism collected here.) As I said and still say: Perhaps Republican voters aren’t yet willing to “settle” for Mitt Romney but despite the Union-Leader and
Quentin Letts certainly wants a lot from good ol’ Father Christmas. In the festive double issue of The Spectator he pens a wish-list that contains no less than 56 items. Here are some of the highlights: A referendum on Britain’s future in Europe… Or, a Linguaphone course to brush up my German. A protest march
I’ve been away and then laid low by some bug, so am late to writing anything about the sad news of Vaclav Havel’s death. Pete has already noted his 1990 New Year speech, but I’d also recommend reading David Remnick’s profile of Havel, published by the New Yorker in 2003. There’s plenty of good stuff
There’s some rare good news for the government in today’s public finance statistics. Public sector net borrowing in November is estimated at £18.1 billion, down from £20.4 billion last year. This means that total borrowing for the first eight months of this financial year is £88.3 billion, down 11 per cent on last year. That’s
Usually at this time of year my family decamps for a weekend to some lovely city in what used to be called eastern Europe — Bratislava, Krakow, Vienna or, best of all, Budapest — for the Christmas fairs. The air tickets to these places are dead cheap, usually about twenty quid, and the hotels good
It’s a strange sort of Christmas present; interviews with Ed Miliband and Ed Balls — but that’s what the papers have seen fit to deliver us this morning. There’s not much political content in the Miliband one, which is more of an At Home With Ed and Justine sort of deal. But Ed Balls’s interview
Steven F. Hayward’s audit of the state of American conservatism, which David Brooks judges to be one of the best magazine articles of the year, argues that the Reaganite ‘starve the beast strategy’ has failed to halt the growth of government. Hayward writes: ‘Thirty years after the arrival of the Reagan Revolution, government is bigger
I think this is my favourite seasonal story so far, aside from that Korean bloke popping his clogs. Toddlers at a playgroup in York have been banned from doing the hand motions to a nursery rhyme in case it inadvertently offends any deaf people who might, or might not, be watching. The rhyme in question