All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
If there is one global index it is best not to be on, it is the Fund for Peace’s annual Failed States Index. It ranks 177 countries using 12 social, economic, and political indicators of pressure on the state. This year, the FSI ranked Somalia as number one for the fourth consecutive year, citing widespread
On the other hand, some policy retreats are simply depressing. One of the telling and therefore ignored scandals of our time is the apparent veto the Sun newspaper has over large parts of criminal justice policy. When the Tories were in opposition the paper demanded Dominic Grieve’s head on a platter as a price for
Simon Hughes’ desire (£) to stop Oxbridge academics interviewing potential students is muddle headed as well as an attack on the right of these universities to run their own affairs. If the coalition wants universities to pick on academic potential rather than academic performance to date, then the interview is a crucial part of this
Sometimes changing course is the prudent option. The SNP’s grim plans for their Offensive Behaviour at Football and Threatening Communications Bill have been put on hold for the next six months. The government still wishes to legislate on this matter by the end of the year but at least we are saved the unseemly scramble
A letter is bouncing around Whitehall, and I thought CoffeeHousers might care to see a copy. It has been penned by Michael Gove, and is being dispatched to all headmasters today. It urges them to Keep Calm and Carry On during the impending strikes over teachers’ pensions. “My view,” pens the education secretary, “is that
I live three miles away from where the rioting was happening in East Belfast last night, and heard the helicopters whirring overhead. It was the kind of sound that anyone living in the city hoped never to hear again. As a child, I’d lie in bed and hear bombs and sirens and helicopters — and
It is as Matt Cavanagh predicted in his article for Coffee House, a few weeks ago. Barack Obama has decided to pull 10,000 of the 30,000 American “surge” troops out of Afghanistan this year. The remaining 20,000 will be outtathere by next summer. “Drawdown,” is the word that the US President used in his address
When Ed Balls is around, there are no shortages of stories. Balls, as is so often the case, has been the talk of Westminster today. First, there was the chatter generated by the FT’s story that members of the shadow Cabinet were irritated that Balls’ proposed VAT cut hadn’t been run past them. Then, there
The BBC World Service has been reprieved. An additional £2.2m will be spent to preserve the Arabic service, in line with some of the wishes of Foreign Affairs Select Committee Chairman Richard Ottaway and Lord Patten, the chairman of the BBC and occasional consigliere to David Cameron. I don’t share the Foreign Office’s sometime view
At a time when the Euro is looking so weak, it is a wonder that so many countries are still queuing up to join. Estonia has recently joined, while Hungary and Bulgaria are keen as mustard to join as well. Make no mistake, these countries want to join. They go to lengths to stay for
For all the talk of Cameron and his grasp of detail the fact remains that Miliband may, as Swot of the Lower Fourth, have the nuts and bolts but he’s wrong – hopelessly, utterly wrong – on policy. To recap, today he asked the Prime Minister: “Around 5,000 people each year are arrested on suspicion
The Prime Minister declared war at PMQs today. Not once but twice in the same sentence. ‘We’re at war in Libya and in Afghanistan,’ he said, in a throwaway footnote to some ritual noises about his ‘huge respect for our armed forces.’ Until this historic moment Britain had been engaged in peace-keeping and nation-building in
David Cameron is not a details man. He has always been more comfortable with the grand sweep than the nitty-gritty of policy. Ed Miliband, by contrast, is a natural-born policy wonk who is never more confident than when discussing detail. Miliband is trying to turn this to his advantage at PMQs and, for the
You can imagine, I think, the outrage there’d have been had Tony Blair or, god forbid, Gordon Brown slapped down the service cheifs in this fashion. But there was the Prime Minister, exasperated by repeated complaints from the heads of the Army, Royal Navy and RAF that their resources are perilously close to snapping-point, telling
VERDICT: Ed Miliband repeated the same tactic as last week, concentrating on a specific policy area to test Cameron’s command of the details — and again it had the desired effect, although not quite so tellingly as before. The Prime Minister floundered and generalised on the issue of rape arrests, but managed to turn some
One of the staples of the Westminster summer party season is speculation about future leadership contests and so I rather suspect that Ben Brogan’s piece on the coming George Osborne Boris Johnson leadership contest will be much referenced in the coming weeks. Any speculation about a future leadership contest is, obviously, absurdly premature. If a
Andrew Mitchell was recently informed that the public is split 50:50 for and against increasing the international aid budget to £12 billion in 2013. A YouGov@Cambridge poll for Politics Home suggests that he should get some better advice. The poll shows that while the public is indeed split fairly evenly on the general principle of
Meanwhile in happier news for Alex Salmond and his merry throng, the latest GERS figures are out and you can expect to see the Natiionalists trumpet them to all who care to listen: Government and Expenditure Revenue Scotland 2009-10 figures show that, including a geographical share of UK North Sea oil and gas revenues, Scotland
Perhaps the most horrific battle of them all began 70 years ago today. Here’s Orwell: The Germans invaded the U.S.S.R. this morning. Everyone greatly excited. It is universally assumed that this development is to our advantage. It is only so, however, if the Russians actually intend to fight back and can put up a serious
Five-thousand, ten-thousand, or fifteen-thousand? That’s the question hanging in the air as Barack Obama prepares to clarify his withdrawal plan for Afghanistan this evening (or 0100 BST, if you’re minded to stay up). And it relates to how many of the 30,000 “surge” troops he will decide to release from the country this year. Washington’s
Here’s a clue for politicians: when you’re asked if you’ve just criminalised the national anthem and all you can do is say “Er, maybe, it all kinda depends on the circumstances” the chances are you’ve produced a bill that tests even the patient, hard-to-exhaust, limits of parliamentary absurdity and you should probably put it through
When I asked one Tory how things were going the other day, he replied “we’re living by that Silicon Valley phrase: ‘fail fast and fail often’.” His argument was that for all that we in the press work ourselves into a frenzy over u-turns, the public don’t much care about them and it is much
The spending settlement agreed with the Treasury last October requires the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) to make budget reductions of £2 billion up to 2014-15. And, until this morning, the settled approach was that only by reducing demand on prisons would the necessary savings be found. After Downing Street’s intervention, the revised plans published this
Having spoken to civic leaders in Leeds yesterday about the impact of high-speed rail investment, I cannot recognise the world lived in by Matt Sinclair and the campaign against HS2. In the Midlands and the North, high-speed rail represents opportunity. Opportunities for business people to reach new markets, quickly, cheaply and with minimal hassle. Opportunities
The most important thing about Jon Huntsman is that he’s a much better general election candidate than he is a contender for the Republican party’s nomination. His job is to persuade the Republican electorate that even if they don’t much like him or can’t be quite sure they can trust him, he’s the guy with
It is henceforth illegal for schools to ban certain haircuts because they believe them to be evidence of gang membership. A High Court Judge, Justice Collins, has deemed it to be a form of indirect racial discrimination. A school in Harrow had banned the braided “cornrow” hairstyle because they feared it was worn as a
Last week, Ed Balls warned against the effect of George Osborne’s vicious, front-loaded cuts. Today, we have an update in the form of monthly state spending figures. In cash terms, a new record has been set in state largesse. The UK government’s current spending was £51.7 billion in May, up from £50.6 billion in May
Yesterday the campaign for high-speed rail, endorsed by the Government, made clear the way they want to frame the debate over the new line. They want to make it about Northerners vs. Southerners. Their adverts featuring a bowler-hatted caricature putting the integrity of his lawn above jobs in the North went up on buses in Manchester. By
On the one hand, it’s good that Ed Vulliamy is in the Guardian today highlighting the appalling miseries of the Mexican Drug War; on the other it’s unfortunate that his piece is so very desperately confused. But this is not just a war between narco-cartels. Juarez has imploded into a state of criminal anarchy –
The toughening-up effort continued with David Cameron’s press conference just now. There he was, at the prime ministerial lectern, not just announcing a stricter sentencing system than Ken Clarke broached a few weeks ago, but explaining why the government’s change of mind was actually “a sign of strength”. Out are the 50 per cent sentence
The government’s u-turn on sentencing reveals something quite important about the Lib Dems’ approach to coalition. Despite having backed Ken Clarke in private, they have stayed as far away as possible from the issue in public. The Liberal Democrats were determined not to put themselves on the wrong side of the public on this
Toughness, or at least the appearance of it, is clearly the theme of the week on Downing Street. After the vacillations over NHS reform, David Cameron seems to be going out of his way to sound that little bit more hard. There’s the headline on the front of today’s Times, for instance: “Cameron to Europe:
In the little compound known as “Bantanamo,” located outside the UN headquarters in New York, a small sigh of relief was probably breathed last week. For, inside, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon had just been told of the UN Security Council’s unanimous decision recommending that he be elected for a second term. Gabon’s UN ambassador Nelson
As James says, it’s been a day of high passions here at The Spectator. He feels strongly that many of the problems in Britain are societal, and require a cultural shift. Maybe so. I disagree with James when he says a Prime Minister’s role is to “lead society”. I disagree. We pay him to run