All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Note, please, the wisdom of the man from the San Francisco Examiner who says “We aren’t going to make much [money] from this*.” *So, yeah, subscribe to the Spectator. Please. It’s good for you and, quite importantly, good for us too. [Hat-tip: Radley Balko]
A woman on a British Airways flight who was seven months pregnant was told to give up her more spacious seat because of overbooking. A whole bunch of other passengers were instructed likewise. It was a two leg flight, as I understand it, and for the duration of the first leg all the spacious seats
Driving through post-revolution Cairo at night is eerie. The normally busy streets are deserted, most of the city’s squares and roads are blocked by military checkpoints, and dark clad figures slip in and out of the shadows. Breaking the curfew may result in a six month sentence, or worse. Come dawn, however, the city springs
Cabinet ministers were relatively relaxed about yesterday’s march against the cuts—and rightly so. It did not make a sea-change in British politics and merely served to underline the lack of a credible alternative to what the coalition is doing. But what does worry ministers is where the growth is going to come from in the
Judging by today’s reports, it’s fear and self-loathing in Lib Dem Land. And it’s not just that one of their Scottish candidates has quit the party in protest at its, ahem, “draconian policies” and “dictatorial style”. No, according to this insightful article by Melissa Kite and Patrick Hennessy in the Sunday Telegraph, there are more
Jazz musicians absorb tunes, spend time with them, nearly live with and in them. Getting to know a tune means internalizing its contours and chord sequence to the point where one can walk onto that no-bullshit-zone of a bandstand and tell a story through just joining up the notes. It’s what you work towards. In
The story today of a pregnant woman being downgraded so Gordon Brown and his six aides could travel business class from Abu Dhabi to London may ring a bell with CoffeeHousers. We revealed last August that Brown has a taste for freebies, and that he was offering himself for $100,000 at speaking and award-giving engagements.
With NATO planes circling above Libya, Saudi troops quashing protests in Bahrain, and troops killing civilians in Syria and Yemen, there has been little attention paid to Israel. But Israel has recently been the victim of a series of violent attacks. More than 30 people were injured in a bombing in Jerusalem, and Islamic Jihad’s
The fight between Colonel Gaddafi’s forces and the resistance to his rule will clearly take some time, but the rebels have had a good 24 hours. In Brega, Gaddafi’s forces deserted in large numbers, handing 10 vehicles over to rebels. A loyalist brigadier was killed and in Ajdabiya government forces withdrew overnight, while rebels also
I don’t think there’s any point in pretending that Ed Miliband is not an idiot. All the evidence the prosecution needs comes from this typically self-aggrandising passage in his address to protestors in London this afternoon. We come in the tradition of those who have marched before us. The suffragettes who fought for votes for
Ed Miliband’s decision to address today’s anti-cuts march is a strategic mistake. It makes him look like the tribune of an interest group not a national leader. He’ll also be tarred by association, fairly or not, if these scuffles we’re seeing turn into anything more serious. In his speech, Miliband tried to place the march
On the morning of the March for the Alternative, a friend alerted me to the brilliantly angry Andrew Lansley rap (chorus: “the NHS is not for sale you grey-haired manky tosser”). Admittedly not the most sophisticated political polemic, but as agit-pop goes, pretty effective. Andrew Lansley’s health reforms are fast become a deep embarrassment to
Lord Lawson has given George Osborne’s Budget an A-minus. Writing in today’s Times (£), the former chancellor said that his successor ‘got the big questions right’ by sticking to deficit reduction and assisting hard-pressed taxpayers where he could. The only blemish was the carbon price floor for the energy sector, which Lawson describes as ‘nothing
This is one reason why critics are a good thing. Woody Allen appears to have not even the slightest clue about his own work: [Thanks to DC]
“We should have more history on the programme,” said Evan Davis at the end of yesterday’s episode of R4’s Today. “I learned a lot from that.” He had just been interviewing Peter Jones (listen here) about a piece in this week’s Spectator about the two Libyas — a split which may emerge as a result
Thousands have converged on London today, to march against the monolithic evil of ‘cuts’. They have not stated an alternative, a fact that led Phil Collins to write an eloquently savage critique in yesterday’s Times (£). That the protesters are incoherent beyond blanket opposition to the government is not really an issue: as this morning’s
The greatest game in the world returns this weekend for Season 2011, and too much football will never be enough. Season 2010 will be remembered for the most controversial defection since Anakin Skywalker went over to the Dark Side, as Gary Ablett Junior abandoned Geelong to play for the new Gold Coast team. But if
There are two reasons to return to the Kosovo Conflict for this week’s hit from the archives. First, of course, the surface parallels with Libya: Nato involvement, bombing raids, all that. Second, that yesterday was the 12th anniversary of Nato’s first operation in Kosovo. Here’s Bruce Anderson’s take from the time: Milosevic has Kosovo, Nato
Here is a selection of posts about this week’s Budget, made at Spectator.co.uk. Coffee House ran a live blog of the Chancellor’s statement and the Leader of the Opposition’s response. Fraser Nelson has ten questions for the OBR. James Forsyth considers the politics of Osborne’s measures. Peter Hoskin wonders if Osborne has done enough to
Via Hendrik Hertzberg, here’s Charles Dickens reflecting upon the spirit of American politics: If a lady take a fancy to any male passenger’s seat, the gentleman who accompanies her gives him notice of the fact, and he immediately vacates it with great politeness. Politics are much discussed, so are banks, so is cotton. Quiet people
Who would have thought it? Miliband’s short speech in Nottingham today went largely unheralded, and doesn’t seem to be getting a whole lot of attention now — and yet it tells us more about his approach to Opposition than almost anything he has said previously. Fact is, the Labour leader is taking two risks that
So NATO will now “lead” the Libyan intervention. That makes everything fine and dandy, right? Well, no. There’s no need for anyone unpersuaded by the wisdom of this operation to make a case against it. Not when its supporters do such a good job pointing out its shortcomings. Take my friend Brother Korski, for instance.
The Libya intervention has already turned the international kaleidoscope, showing new and remarkable patterns. It has seen China acquiesce to a no-fly zone, and the West in alliance with the Arab League. Nobody thought that was likely 6 months ago. It has also changed reputations. Nicolas Sarkozy may win re-election on the back of the
If you want to get an MP going, just ask them what they think of IPSA — the new expenses watchdog. The body is hated: when Cameron joked at PMQs this week that it should be relocated to Croydon there was laughter across the House. IPSA is regarded as rude and inefficient. When Tory MPs
Like an unseasonal Atlantic gale, the Portuguese sovereign debt crisis has blown in to ruin the latest EU summit. This meeting was intended to mark the beginning of the end of the eurozone crisis. Instead, the ponderous European Union has been overtaken by events, with grave consequences. Already speculation about contagion is rife: Spain, Malta*
Now, at least, we know: Nato will be taking charge of the no-fly zone that has been erected around Libya. And we might even welcome the news. As soon as the Americans made it clear that this was not their conflict to command, a new leadership arrangement was always going to be required — and
I understand that agreement in principle has now been reached to pass command of the Libya operation to Nato. The United States has been keen to relinquish control for days now–the Obama administration has no desire for Libya to turn into another American responsibility–but agreement within Nato about the alliance taking over command of the
The Libya intervention goes on, with as many question marks hanging over the operation as airplanes in the sky. What is the aim? Who will run it? Can the United States, Britain and France keep allies such as Turkey on board? Behind the scenes, officials are said to be looking at various options, including if
Last night, Portugal’s parliament voted to reject its latest measures to deal with its deficit. It was the fourth time that the Portuguese parliament had been asked for more taxes and for more spending cuts. The result has been a further loss of confidence in Portugal’s ability to pay its debts. Market interest rates have
Amid allegations of Clegg being a Tory stooge, this Brown-esque mic-boob is likely to run. It’ll also be reprised at the next election, whoever leads the Liberal Democrats. Hat-tip: Channel Four.
There were few surprises in yesterday’s Budget. As expected, it focused on growth and the majority of the policies announced had been heavily trailed in the weekend newspapers. The fiscal picture did not change much. Potential over-optimism from the Office for Budget Responsibility on inflation and the output gap aside, the Chancellor is still on
Let’s make one thing clear right from the off: the IFS did not just say that the government would break its pledge to increase health spending in real terms. What it did say is that the government is coming close to breaking it — and that’s the truth. Here’s the graph that we’ve put together
As if the budget and Libya weren’t enough, the UK Government woke up today with another major challenge on its hands – yet another flare-up in the eurozone debt crisis, which has been continuing to bubble away under the radar. Yesterday, Portugal’s Prime Minister José Sócrates literally walked out of Parliament, during a debate
With the Budget over, attention is beginning to shift back to the situation in Libya. A government source tells me that they expect the mission in Libya now to run for months not weeks. The challenge is that while the allies can stop Gaddafi’s forces from advancing from the sky, they can’t make the poorly