All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
I have rarely heard the House as loud as it was after David Cameron’s ‘calm down, dear’ put down to Angela Eagle. The Labour benches roared at the Prime Minister and Cameron turned puce, while the Liberal Democrats looked distinctly uncomfortable. There is already a rather over-blown debate going on about whether the remark was
Robert Gates, the US Secretary of Defense, is stepping down and will be replaced, it is reported today, by Leon Panetta. Panetta, currently head of the CIA will in turn be succeeded by General David Petraeus. Gates of course is an ex-CIA guy himself but these latest appointments make it clearer than ever that CIA
VERDICT: To paraphrase that famous football cliché, this was a session of two halves. Cameron put in a confident performance against what should have been the trickier set of questions: on the economy. But when it came to Ed Miliband’s second topic of choice, the NHS, it all went suddenly awry. The PM’s arguments were
The coalition can breathe a little easier today. The economy returned to growth in the first quarter of this year, avoiding a double-dip recession. It expanded by 0.5 percent which is in the middle of City economists’ forecasts but below the OBR’s prediction of 0.8 percent. Recoveries are generally choppy and particularly so when coming
So, we’re not back in recession, and growth of 0.5 per cent in the first quarter of this year is in line with what many forecasters were predicting, but… It is hardly indomitable stuff. As Duncan Weldon explained in a useful post yesterday – in which he rightly picked me up on a loosely worded
That, Watson, was the remarkable thing about the Royal Wedding: the dog barked and still no-one heard it. You can scarcely open a paper this week without encountering yet another thumbsucker on the future of the monarchy. Most of these, such as this New York Times effort from John Burns, suggest the old ship needs
…here are some of the posts made at Spectator.co.uk over the bank holiday weekend. James Forsyth reveals that it will be a long time until Cameron and Clegg play tennis again, and worries that the ill-feeling between the coalition partners will be permanent. Ed Howker has a question for Chris Huhne, and reveals further conflicts
Ryan Lizza’s New Yorker article on the development of Barack Obama’s approach to foreign policy is, as always, full of interestig stuff even if, perhaps unavoidably, I suspect it depends a little too heavily upon the Slaughter-Power approach. Nevertheless, Ryan gets to the heart of Obama’s presidency – or at least the style of it
Something has undoubtedly changed in the coalition in the past fortnight. Even those at the centre, who have been most loyal to the concept of coalition, are now happy to complain about the other side and its behaviour. But I’m still sceptical of all the early election speculation which has been sparked by Jackie Ashley’s
It is hard to feel anything but nauseous when reading the Guardian’s continuing special report on Guantanamo Bay, which started yesterday. The paper has released hundreds of classified files which were obtained last year by Wikileaks, including detainee assessments prepared between 2002 and 2009 to summarise what the government knew about each detainee — and
It may look diminutive in between Easter and the Royal Wedding, but tomorrow is still a big day in the political calendar. It is, after all, the day when we hear the official growth estimate for the first quarter of this year. A negative number, and we shall have experienced two consecutive quarters of shrinkage
An interesting piece, a week or so back, from Matthew Parris in the magazine – sorry I haven’t got around to it before now. There are columns I read immediately in The Spectator and others which I lay down like a fine wine to mellow for a while, perhaps for months or even years, always
William Hague has chimed in on the situation in Syria, unsurprisingly condemning the horror and bloodshed being perpetrated by al-Assad’s regime. But considerably more significant is the statement that has today been released by the Arab League. Although the text doesn’t mention al-Assad by name, it clearly has the Syrian autocrat in mind when it
I have for a long time been sceptical of the idea that the AV referendum will damage the work of the coalition — even once the recriminations start to fly. Having seen it up close, I know how much effort both Tory and Lib Dem ministers actually put in to keep each other informed of
I don’t think this is a very good idea: Senior staffers in Ed Miliband’s office started briefing Scottish hacks last night that Miliband is now going to take a much more “hands on” approach to the campaign. Miliband has only made one, brief appearance in the campaign so far. But he and Ed Balls are
I agree with Matt Yglesias: this Canadian Conservative hit on Michael Ignatieff is great*: *I mean great as in thoroughly, entertainingly, usefully reprehensible…
This week, breakage. Next week, super glue. Given the noises emanating from Downing Street, there’s little doubt that the Tory and Lib Dem leaderships are going to do a repair job on the coalition once the AV referendum has been decided. As Rachel Sylvester puts it in her column (£) today, “Mr Cameron and Mr
By some dark magic, the Ghosts of New Labour have been roused from their political slumber. Over the extended weekend, we had news of Gordon Brown’s new job and Alistair Darling’s new book. Today, it is Peter Mandelson and Alan Johnson who are haunting the newspapers. Both give interviews – one to the Independent, one
One should never be too prissy about political campaigns. But even when the usual excuses about the “rough and tumble of politics” have been trotted out, the argument about AV has been so dire it would have embarrassed an unusually truculent toddler. David Cameron elevated Sayeeda Warsi to the peerage and gave her in a
The storming of the town of Da’ra by the Syrian regime is a further escalation of its attempt to put down protests against it. The details of what have happened are sketchy, the regime cut the town’s communications links before moving in, but the use of full military force does suggest, as the New York
Can Ed Miliband and Ed Balls save Labour in Scotland? The two Labour heavyweights have decided to move in to rescue their party’s disastrous campaign in Scotland — with Balls being sent up north to sharpen his party’s teeth. A desperate measure for a desperate situation: Labour has not only blown a 10-15 point lead
The Preston North End striker, Nathan Ellington, who is black, has complained about the abuse he received while playing, briefly, for his club against Millwall on Saturday. On that medium for the half-witted and forlorn, Twitter, he said the Millwall crowd were “a disgrace to the human race,” and added: “Monkey noises and Calling (sic)
Chris Huhne’s decision to threaten the Prime Minister with legal action — as I mentioned earlier — is particularly curious because he must be well-aware of the conflicts of interest at work in the Yes campaign. After all, his partner, Carina Trimingham is a director of Yes! and the Electoral Reform Society. She has been
You know a political campaign has gone terribly wrong when a Cabinet Minister threatens defamation proceedings against the Prime Minister. And that is precisely what happened this weekend, when Energy Secretary Chris Huhne began snarling in the Sunday papers. Stating that the Tory claim that the AV electoral system would cost more was “demonstrably untrue,”
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
Politics has never really settled down since last year’s general election — but it still seems especially convulsive at the moment. Only a few weeks ago, Clegg was caught on camera joking about his and Cameron’s similarities. Only a few days ago, he was standing up, vigorously, for the coalition. Yet, now, both his rhetoric
The AV referendum: it’s enough to make you long for the life to come. As James notes, this Easter Sunday has been shaken by the Lib Dems’ righteous fury over the conduct of the campaign. Many will think this anger synthetic, but its virulence is striking nonetheless. Gone, it seems, is the bonhomie of earlier
Easter/Pesach is always a good time to be at the Jewish Chronicle with all the combined holidays. This year it is all the more congenial now the Pope has been so kind as to absolve the Jews of blame for the death of Christ. A time for reflection, perhaps, and a reassessment of history. I
The SNP have this morning been put a whopping 13 points above Labour in the Scottish Parliament race: on 45 percent and 46 percent of the vote in two separate polls. Given that they went into this election campaign somewhere around 35 percent, this represents a huge leap giving them a near-impregnable lead in the
When I was writing my novel The Pile of Stuff at the Bottom of the Stairs I wanted the hero, Joel, to create a CD to play during the birth of his first child. I wanted this act to be a symbol of his devotion to the mother of his child and his desire to
Why does everyone think that the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, is so clever? Is it just the beard? Maybe if you nailed a beard onto Wayne Rooney people would start saying he was clever too, rather than thinking him a truculent potato-headed troll with learning difficulties. Beards are a mask, a diversionary tactic. If
The Liberal Democrats are mad as hell at their coalition partners—and don’t seem to care who knows it. Their fury has been caused by what they see as the roughhouse tactics of the No campaign and the Tories’ complicity in them. Chris Huhne’s letter to George Osborne has been written to make clear just how
Judging from the front page of tomorrow’s Independent on Sunday, the coalition’s relationship troubles are escalating. The paper’s front page blares, “Clegg rages against Cameron ‘lies’”. Even accounting for the license headline writers takes, this shows just how fraught things are inside the coalition at the moment. The Liberal Democrats feel that the Tories have
