All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Is Queen Rania of Jordan turning into the Marie Antoinette of Jordan? She is loved in the West, and seen as the very model of a modern Muslim monarch. But in Jordan she’s viewed with increasing resentment. As the Arab Spring shakes thrones all over the Muslim world, Mary Ann Sieghart jetted off there to
As the situation deteriorates in Libya and the international community begins to look at various options, including military ones, policymakers would do well to remember a number of key lessons from the last 15 years of warfare. Like all history, they don’t provide a guide to the future, but can be a warning nonetheless. The
Is David Cameron a hawk or a dove? And how useful is that question anyway? I suspect the answers are “more of a hawk than not” and “not much”. The Prime Minister has not, shall we say, been at his best vis a vis Libya. Then again, foreign policy is not his longest-suit as anyone
Nick Clegg’s speech in Luton today on extremism is a challenge to large parts of David Cameron’s remarks on the subject in Munich just last month. Indeed, even the venue of the speech can be seen as a rebuke to Cameron who was attacked for giving a speech on Islamic extremism on the same day
The decision on News Corp’s take-over of BSkyB has thrust Jeremy Hunt into the spotlight. The culture secretary is many Tories’ bet to be the next leader of the party. Hunt is ambitious even by political standards: during the Brown bounce he canvassed opinion as to whether he should stand in the Tory leadership contest
Need a bestiary to tell the hawks from the doves? Then this article (£) in the Times should serve your purpose. It’s an account of Tuesday’s Cabinet meeting on Libya, and the differences of opinion that transpired. Michael Gove, we are told, was “messianic” in his call for a tougher stance against Gaddafi. William Hague,
Government is about choices. In opposition you can like anything, support any measure, back any proposal. But when in office you either make choices or invite dismissal. So when International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell looked at Britain’s development spending he was determined to make choices. Now that he has, some people don’t like it. Not
The London School of Economics once had a global reputation. The Libyan revolution wiped it away as easily as if it was mist on a window. I cannot find precedent for the collapse in liberal and academic standards Howard Davies, the LSE’s director, presided over. The Cambridge spies met at Cambridge University, as their
The Nottingham Post has a great scoop about Labour-led Nottingham City Council’s abuse of taxpayer funds. The story can be distilled into one sentence: ‘City council leader Jon Collins has used a consultant paid £870-a-day by the taxpayer for advice on Labour’s campaign in the run-up to the May election.’ Nottingham is one of England’s
I can’t decide whether Matthew Sinclair thinks High-Speed Rail too ambitious or not ambitious enough. I’m happy to share his scepticism towards the economic and jobs numbers put forward by the plans’ backers but trust he will not be offended by the suggestion his own figures should be treated with comparable scepticism. Who knows what
The government release a claim that HS2 will bring 40,000 new jobs. They are so desperate to let the public know that figure they breach proper practice by briefing it ahead of the publication of the consultation document. When the consultation document comes out, I will look at whether creating that number of jobs is
I think that nice Laurie Penny over at the New Statesman must actually be a conservative mole dedicated to undermining leftism from within. How else to explain this sort of stuff: The difference between Tahrir Square and Parliament Square is one of scale, but not of substance. Across the world, ordinary people are being denied
The BBC are reporting that unleaded petrol has now reached 130p per litre and are blaming Libya. I¹m not convinced. Libya only accounts for about 2.3 percent of global oil production and even now the Arabian Gulf Oil Co¹s production in east Libya is around a third of normal levels. The real cause of the
Theresa May has a new soundbite: police pay or police jobs. May has been asked to find cuts of 20 percent in the police budget. May insists that the frontline must and will be protected and that therefore these ‘extraordinary circumstances’ mean that the government will have to rewrite the terms and conditions of police
PoliticsHome reports that the government is to ask the ECHR to reconsider its verdict in the prisoner voting rights case. The website says: ‘In a response to a parliamentary question from Labour MP Gordon Marsden, Cabinet Office Under-Secretary Mark Harper said: “We believe that the court should look again at the principles in “Hirst” which
On Friday Ireland threw away a chance of victory against Bangladesh, losing a game their bowlers had put them in a position to win. Chasing 205 on an oddly-paced pitch proved too much. And that’s often the way: anything much more than 4 an over is asking a lot. So when England reached 327 today
It was Monty Python without the jokes. The focus of PMQs today veered surreally between crisis in north Africa and early swimming pool closures in Leeds. The session opened in Security Council mode with Ed Miliband politely asking the PM to brief us on the humanitarian disaster evolving in Libya’s border-zone. Cameron went into his
VERDICT: What began as a measured affair, with polite questions from Miliband about Libya and the Defence establishment, effervesced into something more dramatic. I was surprised Miliband didn’t concentrate on the rising cost of living; rather, he chipped at the local government funding settlement. By concentrating on examples of Tory-led council intransigence, Miliband did not
Danny Finkelstein’s paean of praise (£) to Andrew Cooper, the PM’s new director of political strategy, contains several interesting lines. Finkelstein says that his former flat mate’s biggest challenge is, ‘Devising a strategy for changes in the NHS so that a critical political battle isn’t lost disastrously’. This is yet another indication of how nervous
The Home Office has an ambitious police reform agenda and is overseeing challenging budget reductions, but they are also forging ahead with plans to introduce real workforce modernisation. The serious and credible reviewer, Tom Winsor, will publish his independent report next Tuesday. Winsor’s review will cover pay, conditions and other aspects of employment that
Matthew Sinclair argues that the government’s plans for high-speed rail would not create enough jobs to justify the government spending money on the project. But his argument is disingenuous as he is not comparing like for like. He is comparing predictions about jobs created directly by high-speed rail with predictions about jobs created indirectly by
Some interesting statistics buried away in the excellent Populus survey carried out for the Searchlight Educational Trust (and which received a lot of press attention last week). The headline figure was that 60 per cent of British people (including first, second and third generation immigrants) think that immigration has been a “bad thing” for the
Under a week ago, when James Forsyth wrote about how the government was successfully mobilising third party groups to support high-speed rail, it looked like Philip Hammond was going to get the neat debate he wanted. The script was simple: the new high speed line was urgently needed and in the national interest, a small
Reading Brother Blackburn’s post on high-speed rail I was, I admit, surprised to find so many Coffee House commenters backing the project. I had – unworthily! – assumed most would be against it. And if HSR stops at Birmingham I would oppose it too. Indeed, I think that if HSR is to go ahead it
As the candidate most likely to aver that the stars really are “God’s daisy chain” Mike Huckabee is already the Madeleine Bassett of the not-yet-officially-existing Republican Presidential campaign. That’s enough reason to wish him ill. Now there’s more: beneath that jovial southern-aw-shucks exterior lurks a Class A Idiot. From a recent radio interview: MALZBERG: Don’t
There are two significant developments in the Middle East to reflect on tonight. The New York Times is reporting that two Libyan air force jets conducted bombing raids on Monday. These raids appear to have been relatively ineffective. But they do suggest that there are still pilots prepared to carry out the regime’s orders, something
Developments in Libya continue to dominate the news, and rightly so. The view from Whitehall is that this stands off will continue for some time. There is even talk that we might be heading to a situation where Gaddafi holds onto Tripoli for months while the rest of the country is liberated from his rule.
“A well-targeted aid budget is essential if Britain is to punch above its weight on the world stage.” That’s how Tim Montgomerie finishes his neat defence (£) of British aid policy for the Times today. But, putting aside the matter of whether it’s wise to give aid to, say, India at a time of spending
Attack, attack, attack. That’s the temper of George Osborne’s article for the Guardian this morning, which sets about Labour’s economic credibility with a ferocious sort of glee. Perhaps the best passage is where he asks how many times Labour can spend their ubiquitous “bank tax,” but this is more pertinent to the recent debate: “Where
No one, most of all the normally genial Eric Pickles, said that reforming local government would be easy or quick. The New Local Government Network reports that the government’s plan to encourage councils to share back office functions is ‘hugely ambitious’. It says that considerable savings can be made, but it doubts that councils will
Should Gaddafi be pushed? That is the question diplomats and policy makers are beginning to ask. The UN has imposed travel restrictions and frozen Gaddafi’s assets. But Gaddafi is resisting the hangman’s noose; the loss of his Mayfair property empire is the merest of inconveniences. And still he fights on. There is now a growing
After a week of hesitation and well-publicised problems evacuating British citizens from Libya, the government has led the international community’s response to the crisis. The decision to move HMS Cumberland into position was astute, as was the authorisation to rescue the people stranded in the dessert. At the UN, British diplomats have been drafting most
The Sun has launched another sortie against Ken Clarke’s restorative justice programme. The paper reports: ‘SHOPLIFTERS could escape prison by just paying for what they pinch and saying “sorry”. Jail sentences and tough fines will be SCRAPPED as the default punishment for nicking from stores under controversial plans soon to be unveiled by Justice Secretary
The government’s game of catch-up on Libya continues apace. David Cameron came to the Commons to update the House on the current situation. His main message was now that we have the vast majority of our citizens out, we can have a policy. Indeed, the government is today openly admitting that it was hamstrung last
