All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
PMQs today was a taste for David Cameron of what he will have to face over the coming weeks as the scandal surrounding the News of the World continues to grow. Ed Miliband asked him whether he agreed that Rebekah Brooks — a friend of Cameron’s —should resign and then mocked him when he wouldn’t
VERDICT: A crescendo of a PMQs, which started in sombre fashion but soon swelled into a vicious confrontation between the two leaders. It is strangely difficult to say who won, not least because both men had their moments. Ed Miliband’s persistent anger — including over Rupert Murdoch’s takeover of BSkyB — will have chimed with
The judges are judging the judges, or at least judging by the cover of this morning’s Times (£) they are. “Radical reform of the selection of judges,” some leading figures tell the paper, “is needed to break the stranglehold of white Oxbridge males at the top of the judiciary.” The story continues inside the paper,
The cascade of News of the World stories has, this morning, become a deluge. On top of last night’s Andy Coulson news — which, as George Eaton points out, really oughtn’t be that surprising — we have the Indepedent claiming that Rebekah Brooks personally “commissioned searches” from one of the private investigators tangled up in
On the Ten o’clock News tonight Robert Peston reported that News International have allegedly handed emails to the police that show Andy Coulson as editor of the News of the World authorised payments to the police. If this was true, it would be illegal. But it should be stressed that Peston could not reach Coulson
An exclusive look at a strategy memo prepared for Rebekah Brooks this afternoon: Rebekah, The Boss has sent word: this phone situation has developed not necessarily to our advantage. He’s asked us to formulate a strategy for you. It’s balls-out time. This is a go large or don’t go at all moment. Sticking your fingers
The political plates on phone hacking are shifting rapidly. The story has now ‘gone mainstream’ following the accusations about how the phones of Milly Dowler and the parents of the Soham victims may have been hacked. Politicians are racing to catch up. Ed Miliband is rapidly moving into a more robust position. The Labour leadership
I briefly mentioned Ed Miliband’s assertive remarks about the News of the World earlier. But it is worth returning to the video, above, to highlight one of his specific demands. “A police inquiry needs to take place without fear of favour,” said the Labour leader, “and then we need a much wider inquiry to restore
Nevertheless if you are the type of Republican who feels the need to ask What would Reagan do? then you should probably read David Brooks’ column today: If the Republican Party were a normal party, it would take advantage of this amazing moment. It is being offered the deal of the century: trillions of dollars
That, I think, is what we are supposed to take away from the ridiculous statement News International’s Chief Executive has issued today. Surely the editor of the News of the World asks the occasional question about the provenance of the stories she chooses to publish? Apparently not. This being so a reasonable person might just
The news that 1,400 jobs are to be shorn from Bombardier’s train manufacturing plant in Derby has sent the worlds of business and politics into collision. Ostensibly, these job losses are the result of the Department of Transport’s decision to award the Thameslink renewal contract to German company Siemens. And unions warn that the 12,000
The beatification of Ronald Wilson Reagan by American conservatives is itself a grisly affair but at least he was their President. The tendency of some on the British right to elevate Reagan to saintly status is just embarrassing. This does not mean he was not a fine President – in many ways he was –
Released in the last hour or so: Dear All, When I wrote to you last week updating you on a number of business issues I did not anticipate having to do so again so soon. However, I wanted to address the company as a matter of urgency in light of the new claims against the
The latest, hideous developments in the phone hacking scandal are emblazoned across all this morning’s papers — all, that is, expect the tabloids. And our political leadership is putting voice to its concerns, too. Only this morning, David Cameron said of the allegations surrounding the News of the World that, “If they are true, this
It is important to praise Dan Hodges. He should be nurtured and honoured and bathed with tender affection by the right. Hug him close my friends, otherwise there’s a risk the left might start to listen to him. Since they would be wise to do so he should be cultivated by Tories so much the
The politics of the phone hacking saga have changed dramatically in the last 24 hours. Up to now, it has been a scandal that has been of huge interest in political and media circles but hasn’t cut through to the public. But that could all be about to change with the allegation that Milly Dowler’s
Why, I hear you ask, did the editors of the New Statesman and Independent do nothing about Johann Hari? Private Eye and many others had been raising killer questions about his journalism for years before the scandal broke, and yet they stood aside and let him be. Why, to raise the obvious follow up question
Another day, yesterday, to remind us of the precariousness of everything in Afghanistan. With David Cameron in the country, it was announced, first, that a British soldier had gone missing from his base; and, then, that the same soldier had been found dead with gunshot wounds. “His exact cause of death is still to be
Even by the standards of what has been a particularly shameful episode in British media history, the latest phone-hacking revelations are disgraceful stuff. According to the Guardian, private investigators hired by the News of the World targeted the phones of the then-missing schoolgirl Milly Dowler and her family, in 2002, to listen into their voicemails.
Say what you like about Jose Manuel Barroso, he’s a wily old card. The European Commission president makes public demands for Britain to surrender its rebate in European Union membership fees. The government refuses. Then, hey presto! Headlines suggesting that Brussels has been seen off. “Brussels bribe to buy off UK rebate,” says the Daily
One of the upshots of the euro was always a certain loss of self-determination. Even on a basic level, its member states had relinquished control of their monetary policy and handed it over, wholesale, to the European Central Bank in Frankfurt. But — as James suggested last week — it’s only now that we’re seeing
Even by the debased standards of the tabloid press this Guardian account of how the News of the World intercepted and deleted messages left on Milly Dowler’s mobile phone days after the 13 year-old’s disappearance in 2002 must represent a new low. That’s assuming the Guardian story is accurate, of course, but there seems little
One of the things about the press that politicians frequently complain about is that papers concentrate more on personalities than policies. But reading the latest extracts from Alastair Campbell’s diaries you see just how much personality matters. Indeed, according to Campbell, Tony Blair excluded Gordon Brown from a discussion about what to do after 9/11
As unveiled in Grosvenor Square earlier:
The approach that the Liberal Democrats take to social care over the next few weeks and months will be the best guide we have to how they now view the future of the coalition. If, in the coming all party talks, they effectively ally with Labour and try to score points off the Tories by
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
…here are some of the posts made at Spectator.co.uk over the weekend. Fraser Nelson considers Osborne’s voteless recovery. James Forsyth notes that Boris has turned against HS2, and says the times are changing in Europe. Peter Hoskin watches Yvette Cooper attack the coalition’s immigration policy from the right. David Blackburn reviews IDS’ great expectations, and
It was hard to be a supporter of U.S. President Ronald Reagan in Western Europe. As a student living in West Germany at the time, I remember well the commonly held view of him: B-rate actor who read cue cards, a nuclear-weapons-obsessed warmonger, and not very bright to boot. Never mind that he had also
Uncertainty reigns. Or at least when it comes to today’s Dilnot Report into social care it does. We largely know what measures will be contained within its pages: a higher threshhold for council-funded care, but a cap (of around £35,000) on how much individuals ought to be liable for. What’s less clear is how the
The government has stuck to its guns on overseas aid, promising to donate 0.7 per cent of our national income to other countries. In the Chancellor’s words, the government will not balance the books on backs of the world’s poorest people. In fact, as the criticism of the policy was at its highest the Prime
Betty Herbert’s new book, The 52 Seductions, is released this week, and has just been reviewed on Night and Day by the author Christina Hopkinson. We’re delighted to publish a special Spotify Sunday selection from Betty herself — one channeled through her two protagonists, Betty and Herbert, aka her and her husband. Here it is:
This is a strange old recovery. The News of the World has an interesting ICM poll today, showing that 66 per cent think the economy is getting worse. It’s not: GDP is growing and we have the second-highest job creation in the G7. Rather than losing jobs to China, we’re flogging Coventry-made Jaguars to Beijing
What an intriguing interview Yvette Cooper gave to Sky’s Dermot Murnaghan show this morning — and not just because she was standing, ruffled and incongruous, in a field somewhere. I was live-tweeting proceedings here, and there was much to anticipate even before she appeared. On top of today’s stories about housing benefit, social care and
Before writing my column for The Spectator this week I asked one of the most clued-up Eurosceptics on the centre right what opt-outs Britain should push for in any negotiation over an EU treaty change. His answer, to my surprise, was “forget that, we should just leave”. This answer took me aback because this person