All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Now that Saif Gaddafi has been captured, the race will be on to interview him from a prison cell and ask what his business was with the various figures of the British establishment with whom he was so close. CoffeeHousers will remember the 2009 party at the Rothschilds’ manor in Corfu: Saif, Mandy and Nat
Remember when Saif Gaddafi was the Anointed One of those who wanted a freer, more liberal Libya? Now, he’s at the mercy of militiamen in the city of Zintan, having been captured today. It leaves Abdullah al-Senussi, the former intelligence chief, as the most infamous member of the old regime still on the run. The
The riots are fast in danger of becoming the forgotten issue in our politics. The social and cultural problems that they laid bare have been knocked out of the news by the continuing financial and political drama in the Eurozone But if we, as a society, don’t work out how to address these problems then
This week’s Bookbencher is David Davis, the MP for Haltemprice and Howden. He tells us which literary character he’d most like to be and what books would double as good doorstoppers. What book’s on your bedside table at the moment? A Kindle, so about 150 of them. Which book would you read to your children? Given their age,
In this week’s Spectator we have a piece from one of our former editors, Nigel Lawson, where he confronts this idea that the West’s woes can be blamed on a new bogeyman called ‘global imbalances’. This is fast becoming the received wisdom, something that even the bankers can point to and blame. It gets everyone
I’ve had a sense of humour failure, in that I find something funny which nobody else does, apparently. I’ve been watching Ricky Gervais’s new comedy, Life’s Too Short, and thought the first episode, in particular, was hilarious. But people really hate Gervais, don’t they? I haven’t yet read a decent review of the programme and
Should GPs determine whether people on long-term sick leave are too ill to work? Perhaps not, according to the draft copy of a government-commissioned review into sickness absence. It proposes setting up a new, separate and independent body to assess those on long-term sick leave, on the grounds that doctors have no incentive — nor,
Despite – or perhaps because of – the recession, pensioner employment has increased dramtically over the past few years. In his Telegraph column today, Fraser remarks on this important but largely ignored trend in Britain’s workforce. ‘A million jobs have been lost since the Great Recession began’, he says, ‘but the number of pension-aged people in
Here are some of the posts made on Spectator.co.uk over the past week: The winners of the Parliamentarian of the Year Awards are annouced. James Forsyth says Cameron has given the SpAds ‘a bit of a bollocking’ and sees Ed Miliband impress at a factory in Sunderland. Peter Hoskin can’t find much difference between Labour
Yesterday, George Osborne announced the sale of Northern Rock to Virgin Money. Here, to mark the occasion, is the piece Allister Heath wrote on the bailout of the bank in 2007: Northern Rock: morally hazardous, Allister Heath, 29 September 2007 First we heard about ‘sub-prime mortgages’; then it was ‘collateralised debt obligations’; now it’s the
Could it be that Matthew Taylor, the RSA’s chief executive, is even more influential in Downing Street today than he was when he was head of policy under Tony Blair? His latest blog post is certainly causing a huge stir. David Aaronovitch picked it up in yesterday’s Times and put a rocket under it. Matthew
David Cameron and Angela Merkel were clearly keen to show that, whatever the tensions over the role of the European Central Bank, they still get on. I lost count of the number of times in their press conference that they used the word ‘good’ to characterise their relationship and their discussions. But there did not
In his cover story for last week’s Spectator, Fraser described how the Frankfurt Group – which he dubbed ‘a new EU hit squad’ – has begun imposing it’s will on Greece and Italy. In the European Parliament on Wednesday night, Ukip leader Nigel Farage made the same case against them – and quite forecefully, too:
After the Conservative Party Conference, Fraser described this statement in George Osborne’s speech as the Osborne Doctrine: ‘Let’s at the very least resolve that we’re going to cut our carbon emissions no slower but also no faster than our fellow countries in Europe.’ The Government’s current climate policy clearly fails that test, as I set
We’ve got two interventions by high-profile European politicians in the British papers this morning. In the FT, German foreign minister Guido Westerwelle lays out Germany’s stance, providing a taste of what David Cameron can expect when he meets Angela Merkel in Berlin today. He begins by underscoring the importance of keeping the eurozone together: ‘The
The symbolism of this is pretty dire. These are still times for bitter melancholy in Ireland and many a Dubliner has rarely felt as republican as he does now that the state’s sovereignty* is, shall we say, not what once it was. This, a friend says, is just another tale of life “under the occupation”:
This case looks as though it belongs in some Chris Morris show or something: A Muslim Rangers supporter who chanted sectarian remarks at a game at Ibrox Stadium has been fined £600. Abdul Rafiq, 41, the only Muslim member of the English Defence League, was arrested at Rangers friendly game with Chelsea on 6 August.
Jill Sherman, the Whitehall editor of The Times, reports tomorrow that the government will not raise benefits in line with September’s inflation figures as normally happens. However, there’ll be no freeze in benefits. Instead, they’ll rise in line with a six month inflation average which stands at 4.5 percent rather than September’s 5.2 percent figure.
Listening to Ed Miliband’s speech today, you’d be left with the impression that the UK is suffering a huge decline in government spending this year, and that this is to blame for most of our economic ills. The facts are a little different, as the below chart shows. The European Commission estimates that the UK
Is Mario Monti’s administration in Italy democratic? Is Greece’s new government? To some, especially in the blogosphere, it is the exact opposite: a technocratic and undemocratic government foisted upon Italy and Greece by (circle as appropriate) Angela Merkel/Nicolas Sarkozy, the Bilderberg Group/EUSSR, etc. But nobody forced Silvio Berlusconi to resign. Nobody sacked him. Under pressure
Despite yesterday’s gloomy unemployment figures there is, it turns out, good news for the government buried in current labour patterns: the total number of hours worked in the last three months has risen by three million. The bad news is that employers are currently filling this demand by getting current employees to work longer hours
In the latest issue of the magazine, a flock of politicians, commentators and economists offers George Osborne some advice for growing the economy. There are ten contributions in total, but here are three for CoffeeHousers’ consideration: Arthur Laffer Chairman, Laffer Associates Cut the 50p tax Reducing the burden which government places on the economy, through
The UK can now claim to be No.1 in Europe… for inflation. Further to Tuesday’s figures, the EU has now updated its own spreadsheet. And this is what it shows: We’ve been hovering around the top for a year or so, but now we’ve finally touched the summit. Let’s see if we start to plummet
The Sepp Blatter business is interesting, an example of a very modern, very ‘now’ process. That is, the comeuppance arriving for the wrong reason, but the politically correct reason. The most obvious example in the last ten years or so was the shooting of Jean Charles De Menenez on the tube at Stockwell station. The
‘Sir Richard Branson set to buy Northern Rock.’ So read the headlines in November 2007 — and now they’re finally true. It has been announced this morning that Virgin Money is going stump up £747 million to return the bank to the private sector. This, says George Osborne, ‘is an important first step in getting
Governing is about choices. That goes for Europe too. The government says it can get everything it wants – that’s politics – but the reality is different. It actually faces a number of trade-offs, the biggest being a choice between staying in an EU that reforms but not as quickly or as dramatically as parts
The Spectator Parliamentarian of the Year Awards bash took place this evening, CoffeeHousers, and a jubilant time was had by all. We shall be putting out a supplement celebrating the event, and Parliament’s most preeminent performers, in tomorrow’s issue of The Spectator. But, in the meantime, here’s the list of all the winners from tonight:
I spent this morning with Ed Miliband on a trip to a factory in Sunderland. Miliband was visiting the Liebherr plant there, which manufactures cranes. The centerpiece of the visit was a Q&A with the workforce. Now, a factory in the North East is not the toughest venue for a Labour leader to play. But
Another day, another downgrade. This time, it’s the Bank of England saying it now expects GDP to grow by only around 1 per cent in 2011 and 2012. In one sense, this is just one organisation’s forecast and tells us nothing more or less about where the economy’s headed than anyone else’s. Thankfully, the Treasury
These days “Talking Scotland down” is both the gravest sin imaginable and the standard SNP response to any suggestion there might be even the occasional or minor drawback to independence. Thus when Philip Hammond makes the obvious point that Rump Britannia might not build warships on the Clyde he’s being “anti-Scottish”. Thus too when George
It’s tempting to respond to the BMA’s extraordinary proposal to ban smoking in cars with a Thin End of the Wedge argument. Ban smoking even on the part of an unaccompanied adult, sitting in a car by the side of the road? How long before they’re banning it in the home, eh? But hold it
Who can blame Newt Gingrich for enjoying his 15 minutes as Mitt Romney’s latest Bum of the Month? And who among us is not entertained by his becoming modesty? Take this, for example: “Because I am much like Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, I’m such an unconventional political figure that you really need to design a
A few weeks ago, Lord Wolfson announced a £250,000 prize for the person who could figure out how a country could leave the eurozone. Given what is happening to the euro, it seemed an awful lot of money to spend on a sub-section of the real question: namely, how Europe can maintain monetary stability and
This is the sort of thing that makes you wonder about this country: Oxford council plans to require all taxis in the city to be fitted with “audio recording devices”. Taxi drivers in the university town have been told that they need to install the £460 devices by 2015 or face having their licenses revoked.