All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Developments aplenty on the Portuguese front — the most noteworthy being that Britain is probably in for a €4.8 billion share of the €80 billion tab. Robert Peston explains the numbers here, although it basically comes down to the lending mechanisms that will be deployed. Add up our 13.5 per cent exposure to the European
Is the defence budget the most chaotic in all Whitehall? George Osborne said as much last October — and he’s still dealing with its hellish intricacies now. The main problem, as so often in military matters, is one of overcommitment. Thanks to various accounting ruses on Labour’s part, large parts of the MoD’s costs were
Here is a selection of posts made at Spectator.co.uk over the last week. Fraser Nelson calls for the schools revolution to be reinforced. James Forsyth lists the runners and riders in a possible reshuffle, and wonders why Clegg didn’t complain about Lansley’s reforms earlier. Peter Hoskin reveals who has won and who has lost, and
The Ministry of Defence is Whitehall’s last monolith. Charged with the nation’s defence, it is powerful enough to challenge the Treasury. As Pete notes, there are signs that it’s trying to defer (if not avoid) the cuts laid out the punishing strategic defence and security review. It has many ways of doing this. Obviously it
The American academic and foreign policy realist Stephen Walt has put an interesting idea on his blog: would re-introducing the draft make America less interventionist? Perhaps it would, and perhaps there’s a good case to be made for doing the same in Britain. Calling for a return to conscription might sound like a silly right-wing
I’ve not been hugely impressed by Scyld Berry’s tenure* as editor of Wisden and his decision to name just four rather than the customary five Cricketers of the Year this season merely confirms that. It’s either a cop-out or a dishonourable play for extra publicity. Neither explanation reflects well upon the venerable Almanack. For the
I’m most grateful to Selena Gray for publicising Glenda Jackson’s response to the notion that volunteers might run a library that Brent council has threatened to close. I don’t think, however, Selena goes nearly far enough. Firstly, it cannot be pointed out too often that any library closures are the responsibility of councils, not central
There is one particular question swirling around when it comes to Libya: how brittle is the regime and its military arm? An answer is now slowly emerging, and one that looks like good news for the rebels – if also yet more proof of Gaddafi’s depravity. Reuters is running a story about refugees inside Libya,
Well, David Cameron is doing his part to boost the Spanish economy — by EasyJetting to the country with SamCam to celebrate her 40th Birthday. But what about Spain’s peninsular cousins, the Portuguese? They were, more or less, the subject of George Osborne’s speech to the British Chambers of Commerce conference earlier — but not
Most councils publish a newspaper – usually delivered to your door and instantly discarded. The government has decided that these freesheets are both a waste of public money and detrimental to local newspapers competing in the open market; the accusation that they are predominantly used for propaganda purposes has also been made. Labour opposed the
Toby Young’s piece in the latest issue of the Spectator magazine captures one of the problems facing the Big Society. It’s not that people don’t want to donate their time to fill in the cracks left by the cuts – it’s that they’re often blocked from doing so. Toby highlights the case of Kensal Rise
How much are we in for? That is the question that springs most readily to mind after Portugal’s request for fiscal aid from the EU. And, sadly, the answer is difficult to work out. The figures being spread around range from £3 billion to £6 billion, with valuations in between. But, really, it depends on
There is extraordinary news today, suggesting that the Academies revolution is continuing apace. What was a trickle under the Labour years is turning into a flood. This time last year just 1 in 16 state secondaries had ‘Academy’ status: that is, operationally independent within the state sector. Now, it is 1 in 6. By Christmas,
Nick Clegg’s interview with Jemima Khan (née Goldsmith), in which he admits to crying regularly to music, is already coming in for predictable mockery. But the point that Clegg makes about how his job is affecting his kids is worth dwelling on. Clegg is not the only coalition minister to fret about this. Sarah
David Cameron is determined to get away from the idea of an annual Cabinet cull. He has repeatedly told friends that he doesn’t want to reshuffle the Cabinet until March 2012. But The Times, the most pro-coalition paper, today uses its leader column (£) to call on Cameron to reshuffle straight after the May elections.
Ahead of this morning’s Cameron, Clegg, Lansley event on the NHS, it is worth reminding ourselves of what Nick Clegg was saying about these reforms back at the start of the year. On January 23rd, he went on the Andrew Marr show and had this exchange: ‘ANDREW MARR: Huge change to the NHS just coming
The Guardian’s political editor, Michael White, has been writing about the possibility of there being a British version of the American’s Tea Party. He says: “Potential leaders? Motormouth red-top columnists such as Jon Gaunt, Rod Liddle and Richard Littlejohn are routinely touted……..” Are we? Excellent. I think I’d make a wonderful leader of a British
The birds chirruping in the sunlight clearly didn’t get Ed Balls’s memo. Otherwise they’d know that today is “Black Wednesday,” the day when the coalition’s tax and benefit policies swoop in to leave the average household some £200 a year worse off. This is the message that the shadow chancellor is broadcasting this morning, be
Judge Richard Goldstone has changed his mind. Writing in the Washington Post, he admits that his “fact-finding mission had no evidence” for key allegations made in the UN report into the Gaza war that bears his name, including the claim that Israel intentionally targeted civilians “as a matter of policy.” Wow! That’s the only possible
With all the talk about social mobility, it was inevitable that those who believe grammar schools were the doorway to opportunity would wade into the debate. The most prominent of these interventions came yesterday from David Davis, who said: “The hard data shows that the post-war improvement in social mobility, and its subsequent decline, coincided exactly
Reassurance — that’s what the happy trio of David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Andrew Lansley sought to emit during their NHS event earlier. And reassurance not just about where the coalition is taking the health service (although there was plenty of that), but also about the “listening exercise” they are engaging in now. Although all
Lockerbie is back in vogue. The Telegraph reports that Mi5 has ‘conclusive evidence’ that Moussa Koussa was ‘directing operational and intelligence gathering activities against Libyan dissidents’ and organising support for terror groups. Koussa is expected to meet with Scottish prosecutors later this week to discuss the Lockerbie bombing. Also, the Libyan rebels have pledged to
George Monbiot is undergoing an astounding and very public transformation. Last week he overcame the habit of a lifetime and fully endorsed nuclear power as a safe energy source. He went further this week, attacking the anti-nuclear movement for perpetuating lies and ignoring the consensus around scientific facts. He levels special criticism at the allegedly
Ed Miliband’s hand of friendship has to be one of the shakiest body parts in British politics. Sometimes it’s extended to the Lib Dems, sometimes it’s not. Sometimes it’s extended to Nick Clegg, sometimes it’s not. Sure, the Labour leader does appear to have finally settled on a position: that he will only shake the
Tucked away in an old building, where few people knows of its existence, lives one of the most important parliamentary creatures – the House of Lords European Union Committee. Often ignored because it applies analysis to a debate where loudness is the main currency, it has produced a new report on the Single Market. The
Grenades are seldom expected – yet Andrew Lansley knew that one was going to fall into his lap this morning. The Health Select Committee has today released its much trumpeted report on the government’s plans for NHS commissioning. In normal circumstances its dry take on an even drier subject would evade public notice. As it
Get your guide to body language out for tomorrow morning Cameron, Clegg and Lansley will be doing a joint event on NHS reforms. The three men all have subtly different messages to get across and there are concerns in Tory circle that Clegg will use the occasion to present himself as the defender of the
For the last fortnight, I’ve been doing an internship at The Spectator. And having seen the furore over Nick Clegg’s announcement today, I thought I’d give CoffeeHousers my take. Until I was 22, I’d never heard of internships: no one at my school (Aylwin Girls’ School in Bermondsey) went on them. Most of us left
David Davis has been relatively quiet for the past couple of months, perhaps nursing a hangover after this. But he’s back making a seismic racket today, with an article on the coalition’s social mobility report for PoliticsHome. He dwells on the education side of things, and his argument amounts to this: that the government’s school
The government’s new report into social mobility is, it tells us, all about “opening doors” and “breaking barriers” — but it’s probably taxing attention spans too. 89 pages of text and graphs, offset by the same pea soup shade of green that’s used for all these coalition documents. To save you from wading through it
In opposition Liam Fox boasted he could cut the Ministry of Defence by 25% without there being any impact on “frontline” troops. The confirmation that there will be 17,000 fewer men and women in uniform by this parliament’s end mocks that promise. To govern is to choose, for sure, but the scale of these cuts
The most important planks of the coalition’s social mobility strategy are its education and welfare reforms. Raising the standards of state education in this country will give far more children a chance to get on in life. While reducing the number of children brought up in workless households will, hopefully, halt the development of a
The decision, announced yesterday, that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will not stand trial in New York or any other corner of the United States hardly came as a surprise. He will be tried before a military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay instead. The Obama administration gave up fighting for its own policy a long time ago. Sometimes
This is one of the key questions about the Libya intervention. The Libyan Fighting Islamic Group was once one of the largest jihadist groups in the world and many Libyans fought in Iraq. So the fear of al Qaeda’s presence in Libya is well-founded. The terrorist network certainly appears to be trying to associate itself
