All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Gosh! Jeremy Clarkson – a muckle tube, for what it’s worth – said something silly/stupid/offensive/boring and now everyone’s twittering that he must be sacked or arrested or hung, drawn and quartered. Who cares? Plenty of people, it seems, but the mustering of outrage is itself becoming an outrageous feature of British life. We are becoming
This week’s Spectator cover star Nils-Axel Mörner brings some good news to a world otherwise mired in misery: sea levels are not rising dangerously – and haven’t been for at least 300 years. To many readers this may come as a surprise. After all, are not rising sea levels – caused, we are given to
Our local paper, the Southern Reporter, reports that “2,000 public service workers” took the day off work yesterday. Sorry, withdrew their labour to protest against a monstrous government regiment that should horrify and disgust all sensible people. Soon, you know, armed resistance will be necessary. Fine. But, in these parts at least, it is interesting
Mervyn King’s words today, in the Financial Stability Report, are probably more important to the UK economy than George Osborne’s on Tuesday. As James points out in the magazine this week, Osborne’s plans could well turn out to be irrelevant if the eurozone collapses, flattening whatever is left of Britain’s growth prospects. Basically, King feels
In the midst of a futile* call for partisans on either side of Scotland’s great constitutional debate to avoid twisting history for their own ends, Professor Richard Finlay and Dr Alison Cathcart write: One feature of a mature democracy is the respect it accords to its past, which means accepting it in its entirety, warts
The lack of growth in the economy has taken its toll on the government – and George Osborne – according to YouGov’s post-Autumn Staement poll. After the Budget in March, 34 per cent said the Chancellor was doing a good job – now it’s just 24 per cent. And the percentage saying he’s doing a
In this week’s Spectator – which hits newsstands today – James Forsyth reveals the political calculations behind the Chancellor’s announcements on Tuesday. Here, for CoffeeHousers, is a taster of James’ column: The government wants to be seen as on the side of necessary but fair reform; facing down opponents who believe in ‘something for nothing economics’.
The pressure is piling up on Iran – from below, as people demand greater freedoms; from the region, where Iran is about to lose its one ally, Syria, to a popular revolt; and from the international community, which is tightening the economic sanctions in response to Tehran’s illegal nuclear programme. So Iran is hitting out
My old chum and occasional cricket skipper Peter Oborne is at it again. Causing mischief, that is. Peter – who once compared David Cameron to Disraeli and still, I think, has great hopes for the Prime Minister – thinks the time will soon come for Cameron to sack his Chancellor. That’s not quite what he
A splendid ad released by Ron Paul’s campaign: Youtube has been great for political ads and while ads alone can’t kill or win a campaign they greatly increase the gaiety of the circus. British politics may not enjoy (or, if you prefer, be afflicted by) TV advertising on the American scale but surely the creatives
If I were a teacher, I’d be on strike today. Public sector workers are being asked — in what is now a well-rehearsed soundbite — to work longer, receive less, and pay more. In these austere times, with deficit reduction a necessity, two of those three aims might be reasonable. But doing all three at
In the midst of a piece explaining how Jon Huntsman bungled his Presidential campaign, Ross Douthat offers this: Voters don’t necessarily need to like a candidate to vote for him, but they need to think that he likes them. This is good, though really a small twist on the need for politicians to have some
Walking through Parliament Square this afternoon, you’d be forgiven for wondering whether some kind of bomb threat had been made on Westminster Palace. The fleets of police vans and hoards of fluorescent-jacketed officers seemed absurdly disproportionate to the motley pickets of public sector strikers gathered serenely outside parliament’s gates. ‘Actually, I shouldn’t be working today,’
This morning I debated the President of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers live on Sky News. It was incredible how few answers she had when confronted with the facts about the strike. According to research at the Office for National Statistics, public sector workers are paid 7.8 per cent more than those in the
It was vicious. It was frenetic. It was full of rage and class-hatred. It was great political sport. If you like a serious punch-up, the Commons at mid-day was the place to be. The viewing figures at home were boosted by the many millions of strikers who couldn’t quite make their local anti-cuts demo and
I know Ed Miliband isn’t trying to persuade me or, for that matter, many Spectator readers but I still don’t understand what he’s up to or trying to achieve. At PMQs today he had an obvious choice: attack the government on the economy or on today’s strikes by government-paid workers. Bafflingly he chose the latter,
We’ve already heard a lot about Dave’s problem with female voters. Melanie McDonagh wrote our cover piece on it in June, and in September there was that memo detailing Number 10’s efforts to respond. But, judging by the polls, we may well be hearing even more about it after today’s strikes. It seems that, while
It was a real blood and thunder PMQs today. This was the politics of the viscera; whose side are you on stuff. Ed Miliband chose to start on the strikes. David Cameron ripped into him from the off, calling him ‘irresponsible, left-wing and weak.’ Miliband came back with an attack about how he wasn’t
Via Norm, Verso are publishing a very silly book by Marc Perelman titled Barbaric Sport: A Global Plague. Norm reports what the publishers promise: Marc Perelman pulls no punches in this succinct and searing essay against the global phenomenon of sport, which he describes as both a “recent form of savagery” and “the opium of
PMQs 30 November
By way of Spectating, I thought I’d take a quick stroll along Westminster’s picket lines. And, to be honest, there isn’t a huge amount to see, as yet. The groups of around five or six industrial actioneers outside some departments trump the small pile of placards outside the Treasury. There are about thirty to forty
Another testing day for the government, as we shift from the autumn statement to a national strike. It will certainly be more noticeable than the industrial action in June. Some 2 million public sector workers will be involved. According to the schools minister Nick Gibb, around 75 per cent of state schools will be closed.
Amidst the economic doom and gloom (though all the forecasts are always wrong so who knows how things will look by 2015?), the politics of the coalition government remain interesting. So Danny Alexander’s performance on Newnight tonight was very interesting. The Chief Secretary of the Treasury told Jeremy Paxman that the Liberal Democrats were committed
There probably hasn’t been a meeting of European finance ministers as important as the one tonight. The euro is still at risk; with new governments in Spain, Italy, and Greece incapable of calming the markets, and Angela Merkel unwilling to let the ECB act. In a speech in Berlin, Polish foreign minister Radek Sikorski put
Today was always going to be a difficult day for the Chancellor. The figures from the OBR were always going to dominate the headlines and the restrictions of coalition meant that there couldn’t be as much as the Tories would have liked on the supply side. It was striking that the loudest Tory cheer of
Today, the government has listened. In his Autumn Statement, George Osborne scrapped the fuel tax bombshell that was scheduled for January 2012. As regular Coffee House readers will know, more than 100 MPs supported my cross-party campaign for cheaper petrol. At its height, it saw an e-petition attract more than 124,000 names — triggering
The question of who will succeed David Cameron is, in every essential, a pointless parlour game. Obviously, then, it’s great sport for the press and just the kind of thing to entertain hacks and everyone else at Westminster. The “rivalry” between George Osbore and Boris Johnson is the sort of thing that, if it did
Today, George Osborne had a choice. Growth prospects have evaporated, and tax revenues along with it. Should he reopen the 2010 Spending Review and cut the spending totals? Or stick with those totals, and finance this with extra debt? He chose the latter. And I think, on balance, he was right to do so. Credibility
Your views, please, on the government’s new-found interest in Boris Johnson’s stupid idea of a huge new airport built on the Isle of Grain, in Kent. Johnson, with his recently acquired catamite, Sir Norman Foster, has been agitating for a new airport to be built for half a decade or more. The favoured scheme right
The real story, as everyone expected, wasn’t in the Pre-Budget Report ‘Green Book’ — but in the supplementary document produced by the Office for Budgetary Responsibility. Growth forecasts have taken a dive. And while that is both unsurprising and not all that revealing, it carries grim implications for so much else. I mean, just look
There’s really no need to switch off your phones and iPods and iPads next time you are on a plane. Over to James Fallows: – 100% of the pilots making those landings and approaches have GPS receivers right there next to them in the cockpits, of the kind you would have to turn off if
Meanwhile, the New York Times’ Gail Collins makes the case for Ron Paul: Paul says he believes that the federal government (“the wealth-extracting leviathan state”) shouldn’t be doing anything that’s not specifically enumerated in the Constitution, which once caused him to vote against giving a Congressional medal to Mother Teresa. He doesn’t really believe in
British politics is pretty depressing at the moment so thank god for the entertainment provided by the Republican candidates squabbling to become their party’s Presidential nominee. Dark times demand dark comedy leavened by appropriate measures of farce. Hurrah for Newt Gingrich, then. We are advised that he must be taken seriously now that he’s been
We’ve been posting some of these charts on Twitter, but here they are, collected, for CoffeeHousers. You can expect more as we mine deeper into the OBR’s supplementary document. Do shout out, also, if you spot anything yourself. 1. Weaker growth — except for a very optimistic figure for 2015 2. Higher debt — both