All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
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
Autumn Statement Live Blog
Before we plunge into the Autumn Statement, we really ought to mention the poison cloud hanging over Brussels today. European finance ministers, including George Osborne, are meeting there later — and it’s certainly not going to be good for their collective health. Klaus Regling, the head of the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF), is expected
I very much doubt today’s Pre-Budget Report will be memorable; a shame, given the circumstances. The supplementary Office for Budget Responsibility document will be more interesting — and relevant to people’s lives — than the Budget itself. Sure, everyone focuses their attention on the Red Book (or Green Book, as it is for the PBR)
In some ways, George Osborne will always be haunted by his 2007 Tory conference speech. That speech and the reaction to his commitment to raise all estates worth less than £1 million out of inheritance tax contributed to Gordon Brown not calling an early election. It has a claim to be one of the most
Many thought the day would never come. Even as recently as yesterday, some doubted it would happen. But today Egyptians went to the polls in the country’s first parliamentary elections since Hosni Mubarak’s fall, hoping to take a first step toward democracy. Under a complex electoral system, voters picked both party lists and individual candidates.
There’s just over a week to go until the crunch EU summit on 8-9 December, so David Cameron has to decide how best to play his cards — and quick. The problem, as Daniel Korski has pointed out, is that Britain faces the risk of ‘structural isolation’ in Europe in the short-term. To counter this,
The British government is becoming ever more gloomy about the prospects for the euro, believing that Angela Merkel will not do what she has to if the single currency is to survive: namely, let the ECB intervene massively in the markets. Whether it’s because of Germany’s inflation-scarred history, or the hope that market pressure will
A brief post to alert CoffeeHousers to The Spectator’s carol concert, which is taking place next Wednesday in the beautiful St Bride’s Church on Fleet Street. It promises to be a suitably Christmassy affair. There will be carols from the choir of St Bride’s; readings from Jeremy Clarke, Rod Liddle, Rory Sutherland and the Mary
The Democrats come to the GOP party with this reminder that Mitt Romney’s the most credible general election candidate the Republicans have. That doesn’t make Mitt some kind of Captain Invincible. But this is not actually some kind of double-bluff. Democrats really would like to run against Newt Gingrich or Rick Perry. Mitt has his
Not many folk are aware of it, but there is an official riots inquiry and it has delivered its interim report today. Its conclusions are pretty clichéd and not really worth studying; David Lammy’s book is infinitely more instructive and readable. But it does produce a few figures about the rioters — or, I should
Wednesday’s strike is going to be big — unlike the one in June, which I suspect most people didn’t really notice. You’re not going to be able to miss this one as 90 per cent plus of schools shut — compared to a third in June — and it takes half a day for anyone
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
Thanks to the tremors along Westminster’s grapevine, we already knew that today’s OECD Economic Outlook would make for pretty dreary reading. But now that the report is actually out, we can see the organisation’s numbers for ourselves. The headline point appears to be that the eurozone is in, or is facing, ‘mild recession’. Or to
…here are some of the posts made at Spectator.co.uk over the weekend. Fraser Nelson says that Osborne and Balls are like wrestlers, putting on a show but doing no real fighting. And on the Arts Blog, he picks his ten favourite cover versions. James Forsyth reports that the Tories are getting fed up with the Lib