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Here is a selection of posts made at Spectator.co.uk over the last week. Coffee House has an A to Z of the coalition’s first year in office. Michael Thomas Duffy, a veteran of charter schools in the US, gives his exclusive insights on the free schools programme in England. And Ed Howker reveals that some
And so it starts. The news that suicide bombers have attacked the military base at Shabqadar, northern Pakistan, sounds a chilling note. The Pakistani Taliban has claimed responsibility for the attacks, committed in retaliation for the assassination of Osama bin Laden. Security experts and politicians warned that it would be so. It is, we are
Plenty of folk seem to think otherwise. Including George Bridges who has written a very curious post for the Motherblog in which he seems most perturbed by the prospect of this happy isle’s population increasing. He even suggests he’s not doing his bit since Mrs Bridges is expecting their third child, presumably furthering the onrushing
Bosnia has been getting more attention recently, as analysts predict gridlock (or worse) in the coming weeks. The reason is a move by the country’s Bosnian Serb leader, Milorad Dodik, to challenge parts of the Dayton Peace Agreement, which ended the hard-fought war in 1995. Few people outside Bosnia know who Dodik is. Those who
Yes, this is a site soliciting commitments (and email addresses) from those prepared to pray for Mike Huckabee to assist him make the anguished decision to run for the Presidency of the United States. Or not. It’s not, his spokesman tells Ben Smith, an official Huckabee site, though it is linked to from his own
A trickle of documents from the Chilcot Inquiry have been released today, among which is the written witness statement of former Europe Minister Denis MacShane. It’s rather intriguing. MacShane told the inquiry that it was his understanding that France ‘would not leave the US, Britain and other allies alone in any action against Saddam’ and
In yesterday’s speech to commemorate 12 months of the coalition, Nick Clegg promised a stronger liberal identity in the future. His party was ‘not left, ‘not right’ but ‘liberal’ and would judge other parties by their commitment to liberalism. Above all, and despite professed disavowal of tribal politics, he claimed that the Lib-Dems were ‘more
David Laws has just apologised to the House of Commons in a short statement listened to in sombre silence. Laws stressed that he was glad that the commissioner and the committee had accepted that his motivation had been to protect his privacy not to enrich himself. Indeed, Laws pointed out — somewhat boldly — that
Who cares about immigration? In theory, everyone. It’s always mentioned as the policy that exercises voters but is ignored by politicians. (Europe generally comes second in this category.) Let’s see what YouGov reports. In one of their tracking polls this week they asked voters to pick the three most important issues. Chart? Fully 66% of
In Number 10, they are already concerned that they are losing public support on crime and punishment. David Cameron is planning to give a speech on the subject that will, in the words of one senior coalition figure, ‘throw a lot of bones to his party’s right.’ But Cameron’s words will mean little if
Third party support is an important political asset. Nobody trusts politicians any longer (when did they ever?) and so it’s useful to draft in supposedly apolitical backers to support your plans. Yesterday’s PMQs was a case in point, with David Cameron and Ed Miliband competing for support from GPs. As Jim Pickard writes over on
Ross Douthat and Andrew Sullivan have been debating the extent, if any, to which Barack Obama’s foreign policy has broken with his predecessor’s. Ross’s point in his column this week is that Obama’s approach is more consistent with Bush’s than is generally supposed. I think that’s true, though some of Andrew’s criticisms of that view
There may be a lot of debate about what the “big society” means, but there’s one thing we should all be able to agree on: we live in a big society – and it’s getting bigger. 62 million today. 64 million in five year’s time. And then on up to 70 million by 2028, according
The Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, Sir John Lyon, has delivered his report on David Laws’ expenses claims. The headline is as expected: ‘Mr Laws was guilty of a series of serious breaches of the rules’, and it is recommended that he be suspended for 7 days from 7 June. It is a stern punishment for
Here are letters T to Z in our A-Z guide the coalition’s first year. A-F are here. G-M are here. And N-S are here. T is for Tuition fees “Broken promises, there have been too many in the last few years.” So said Nick Clegg in a Liberal Democrat video during the last election campaign.
YesterdayTom Harris MP wrote a savage-but-accurate appraisal of Labour’s Scottish election failure for Labour Uncut. Pretty much every part of his analysis is persuasive, most notably his appreciation that Scottish Labour has grown fat, arrogant and complacent. Just as importantly, many voters think this too. There was a widespread perception that there had to be
David Cameron was received in the usual desk-thumping way at the 1922 Committee. But what was striking about his appearance was his message that the NHS reform pause is his idea not Nick Clegg’s and that he won’t let the Lib Dems take credit for the coming changes. The robustness of this message took even
This week’s Spectator reveals the rather tantalizing fact that Peter Hyman, Tony Blair’s former director of strategy, is setting up a Free School in East London. This – I kid you not – is a very good thing. Newham School 21 will teach kids between the ages of 4 and 18 – an ambitious span
So Ed Miliband brought up the Flashman thing at Prime Minister’s Questions today. How rum. Now I think it would be sensible for the Prime Minister to be polite to his opponents. There’s no need to belittle Mr Miliband when he does such a good job of doing so himself. If Labour think attacking Cameron’s
Here are letters G to M in our alphabetical guide to the Coalition’s first year. A-F were covered here. G is for Gaffes The coalition, happily, has not endured anything like a Gillian Duffy moment. But there has been a decent smattering of embarrassments and gaffes. Below is a brief selection, but CoffeeHousers can nominate
For the Lib Dems this was the first day of the afterlife. Booted off the AV-train which was supposed to fast-track them to power, the minority party now looks politically homeless. Everyone in parliament makes jokes about them but the gags never raise a laugh. Pity intervenes. At today’s session Ed Miliband was haranguing Cameron
So much for the de-Flashmaning project. At PMQs, a tetchy Cameron doled out his usual number of insults, comparing Ed Miliband to Eddie the Eagle Edwards. Frankly, I don’t think this really matters as long as Cameron appears to be in control of his temper, which isn’t always the case. But Ed Miliband definitely raised
VERDICT: An inconclusive sort of PMQs, where neither leader particularly triumphed, nor particularly sank. Ed Miliband was persistent, and more aggressive than usual, with his questions on the NHS — but failed, really, to properly discomfort the PM. Cameron dwelt lazily on the extra money going into the service, but it was enough to carry
The papers report this morning that David Cameron has been urged by his aides to be more polite to his opponents at PMQs or risk playing into the Flashman stereotype of him as a cocky public school bully. Now, as with all advice about making PMQs a calmer affair (remember how Cameron pledged an end
The coalition is 1 today. Unfortunately, we can’t serve jelly and ice cream over the internet — but we can write an A-Z to mark the first year of Cameron and Clegg’s union. Below is the first part of that, covering the letters A to F. But, first, a little piece of political nostalgia for
The PM is looking to intensify the military campaign in Libya. Losing is not an option. Just think about it. The US gets its man; Britain gets angry, bombs a bit and then goes home. The dictator lives on in infamy: very Clintonesque. To avoid such an ignominious end, a delegation from Benghazi has been
When David Cameron was a backbench MP he condemned the “abject failure” of the War on Drugs. And when he campaigned for the Troy leadership he said it was time for “fresh thinking and a new approach” to drug policy. He correctly noted that “Politicians attempt to appeal to the lowest common denominator by posturing
Here are letters N to S in our A-Z guide the coalition’s first year. A-F are here. G-M are here. N is for No Nothing has frayed coalition relations quite like the AV referendum has. This was always going to be the case, but the viciousness it inspired has still been fairly shocking. Need we
There was no racing in the Giro d’Italia yesterday. Instead the peloton rode at a funereal pace to honour Wouter Weylandt, the Belgian sprinter killed in a crash on Monday. Then Weylandt’s Leopard-Trek team-mates came to the front to lead the field into Leghorn. With them was Garmin-Cervelo’s Tyler Farrar, Weylandt’s best friend in the
Hillary Clinton has given a fascinating interview to the Atlantic Monthly’s Jeffrey Goldberg. The main topic of it is the Arab spring but it is her comments about China that are making waves. When Goldberg comments that the Chinese have been scared by the sight of dictatorships toppling across the Middle East, Clinton replies:“They’re worried,
The power of the press has, almost from nowhere, become one of the defining leitmotifs of this Parliament. Only two years ago, the Telegraph exerted that power to (partially) clean out British politics, and won general acclaim in the process. But now, it seems, the media is more likely to have its actions attacked, or
When David Laws resigned from government last year, his return was thought to be only a matter of time. Today, it is looking considerably more indefinite. Not only has Cameron been talking down the prospect of a reshuffle any time soon, but the Evening Standard is reporting that Laws has been found guilty of breaching
So farewell then, Annabel Goldie. As Hamish Macdonnell says, your position was weakened by the inquest into last year’s disappointing (let’s be kind, here) Westminster results. But Miss (never Ms) Goldie can step down knowing that her party is better-off than either Labour or the Liberal Democrats. A cynic might suggest it’s easy for a
Our coalition government was forged one year ago tomorrow — and we shall have more on that then. But the Sun has already marked the occasion by publishing an interview with David Cameron today. It is a wide-ranging sort of conversation, touching on everything from the Prime Minister’s workload (“every day feels like a week”)