All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Severin Carrell reports that tomorrow’s edition of the Sun will endorse Alex Salmond and the SNP. This should not surprise anyone. I suspect most of the Scottish press will support, albeit with significant qualifications, the Nationalists. The most significant of those qualifications is that this is a Holyrood election, not a Westminster one. Endorsing the
Is Andrew Lansley hearing rather than listening? Dame Barbara Hakin, one of the Department of Health’s national managing directors, has written a letter to some GPs that suggests the pace of health reform will not be affected by the ‘legislative pause’. Hakin writes: ‘Everyone within the Department of Health is very aware of the support
An ICM/Guardian poll suggests that 58 percent of those likely to vote will back the No campaign. The Guardian reports: ‘Three-quarters of Conservatives are planning to vote will vote against, as will a small majority of Labour supporters. Only Lib Dem voters are firmly in favour, with more than two-thirds saying they will vote for
The only thing that has been proved by this referendum on changing the electoral system used for Westminster elections is that referendums are a hopeless way of deciding these matters. Neither the politicians nor the press have distinguished themselves during an affair that’s been distinguished by the mendacity of almost all the protagonists, the hysteria
A mute, almost disbelieving response (except on the Markets) has met Standard & Poor’s announcement that the US government’s fiscal profile may become ‘measurably weaker’. The credit rating agency has put a ‘negative outlook’ on the US’s AAA rating; the accompanying report said: “We believe there is a material risk that U.S. policy makers
Here is David Cameron at this morning’s event, arguing that FPTP produces decisive results, even in the event of a hung parliament. He argues that Gordon Brown’s denuded Labour Party could have remained in office after the last election had AV had been used. Perhaps, but I’d point out that Brown could easily have remained
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
It must be Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau season at the Commons’ film club. A string of odd political couples has stalked stages across the land this morning, supposedly pronouncing the merits or demerits of the alternative vote. David Cameron and John Reid were the oddest: the Prime Minister’s well-heeled insouciance contrasting with his lordship’s
This morning’s battle of the political odd couples shows the dangerous direction in which the AV referendum is going for the coalition. The Yes campaign are becoming ever closer to making explicit the argument that a yes vote is the best way to keep the Tories out. For their part, the No side are continuing
…here are some of the posts made at Spectator.co.uk over the weekend. Fraser Nelson urges you to have a look at this week’s Spectator, and says that the Bank of England needs to listen to Andrew Sentence. James Forsyth wonders of the coalition will declare war on the enemies of enterprise, and explains Vince Cable’s
Last week, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) found former Croatian General Ante Gotovina and a fellow officer, Mladen Markac, guilty of war crimes during the Yugoslav Wars. The news has been greeted with dismay in Croatia. Tens of thousands of war veterans and citizens rallied under the slogan “For the Country”
Meanwhile in Scotland, Tavish Scott, leader of the Liberal Democrats at Holyrood is enduring a tough election. Even if the latest polls are too pessimistic about his party’s chances the Lib Dems could still lose half their seats. It’s clear that Tavish blames Nick for this. If Clegg hadn’t done a deal with David Cameron
Vince Cable’s disagreement with David Cameron over immigration seems entirely reasonable to me and much less problematic than his attitude to Rupert Murdoch’s attempt to purchase SKY. Sure, if he were a Tory he’d have been sacked. But he’s not a Tory and on a subject such as immigration – and the way in which
The row sparked by Vince Cable’s attack on David Cameron’s speech on immigration is still rumbling on. The Sunday Times reports that Cable’s opposition to the coalition’s immigration policies has even extended to advising a college to take out an injunction against the government’s policies limiting non-EU student numbers. Cable’s actions are undoubtedly straining the
Eric Pickles has been fighting councils who publish newspapers to celebrate their exploits. The government has used a combination of political pressure and legislation to curtail these ‘Pravdas’. Most offending councils have maintained their resistance, but Lambeth has relented. Its freesheet, Lambeth Life, cost £500,000 to produce last year. The Spectator submitted freedom of information
As James Kirkup says, David Cameron’s appearance on Sky News this morning was intriguing. In addition to trying to reassure the massing media doubters that the coalition “remains strong” despite its differences, the PM was keen to discuss the military mission in Libya. The letter that he authored with Sarkozy and Obama on Friday asserted
Being the second in an occasional series. Part one is available here. Let me see if I can get this straight. The British Conservative Party has not won a general election since 1992, in part because the voters did not trust it to run the NHS. Ever since David Cameron became leader, the Tories have
Nick Clegg has announced a review into male primogeniture, but subscribers to The Spectator will – as so often – be already well-briefed on the subject. We ran a piece on this in Thursday’s magazine by Rachel Ward, the firstborn of the younger brother of an earl. This in itself will be enough to earn her
Scotland on Sunday publishes a thumper of a poll today that suggests the SNP is on course to defeat Labour and remain the largest party at Holyrood. In fact, John Curtice’s calculations have the Nats taking 55 seats to Labour’s 49. The Tories, meanwhile, slip to 14 while the Lib Dems suffer a catastrophe and
Is secularism now a greater threat to Christianity than Islam? This is the title of our next Spectator debate, to be held at 29 June, and it grows more topical by the week. In tomorrow’s Mail on Sunday, we learn that a Christian electrician could be sacked after displaying a crucifix in his white van.
For weeks now, the genteel coalition has been getting grubbier. Today the Deputy Prime Minister cut loose and went into campaign mode as the leader of the Liberal Democrats. With both eyes on preserving his party’s loosening roots in local government, he assaulted (£) Conservative and Labour councils for cutting services. Clegg was not assisted
Iain Martin has a great story in his column today about how the coalition is so frustrated with the civil service that it is considering sacking a bunch of permanent secretaries and replacing them with outsiders. This move would take the coalition’s battles with the civil service onto a whole new plane. Talking to ministers
This week, former Foreign Secretary David Miliband gave a speech in the United States about Afghanistan, proposing the hand over of responsibility for building a political solution to the UN, headed by a Muslim mediator capable of negotiating with the Taliban as well as partners throughout the region. Last week, also saw former US negotiator
This week, Bagehot has devoted his column in the Economist to a popular theme: the ‘shockingly low quality of the national campaigns’ in the AV referendum, typified perhaps by the Yes campaign’s latest funding scandal and the No poster pictured above. Bagehot writes: ‘I came away from a whistle-stop tour of the country pretty impressed by
Inflation – the cost of living – is the number one issue in Britain today. It is under-discussed in the House of Commons as MPs have no say in it: the task of controlling inflation lies with Mervyn King and his nine-strong Monetary Policy Committee, and its members are rarely interviewed. Little wonder, as a
The name ‘Ken Clarke’ and the word ‘sacking’ are inseparable to the chattering classes at the moment, but so was it ever thus. There are signs though that the normally insouciant Clarke has been shaken on this occasion. He has given an interview in defence of his contentious prison reforms to the Times this morning
Some political organisations chase the news agenda, others just plough their own furrow driven by the overriding morality of their cause. The work of Gerry Gable and his anti-fascist organisation Searchlight has never been fashionable, but his tireless monitoring and exposure of the extreme-right has acted as an important check on violent racism over four
Though it’s not as calamitous as the War on Drugs, Washington’s War on Poker* is even dumber than that long-running fiasco. What they have in common, of course, is the criminalisation of consensual behaviour. As of today it seems that if you try and play poker online at Pokerstars, Full Tilt Poker or Absolute Poker
I don’t know if the Obama administration is as enthused by the idea of deficit reduction as James suggests, not least since the American left has looked at George Osborne’s approach and judged it a failure. Kevin Drum, for instance, says Osborne’s plans are “not likely to work” and Britain “is probably going to be
It is 13 years to the day since Pol Pot died in mysterious circumstances while in exile on Cambodia’s remote western border with Thailand. Where did Pot and his maniacal fellow travellers acquire their politics. There are a number of candidates from the megalomania of the 20th Century, but Michael Sheridan, the Sunday Times’ former
Ed Balls has long said that America is the right comparison for Britain when it comes to how to deal with the deficit, contrasting the Obama administration’s fiscally loose policies with Osborne’s plan for fiscal tightening. This comparison has always been flawed; the dollar is the world’s reverse currency which gives Washington far more fiscal
Here is a selection of posts made at Spectator.co.uk over the last week. CoffeeHousers reveal their choice for Gordon Brown’s greatest mistake. Fraser Nelson urges policy makers to blame the schools system, not Oxford. James Forsyth says that Cameron needs to tread with care, and explains why the Vickers review won’t harm London’s global competitiveness.
A week that started with the Vickers review on banking has closed without another national explosion of banker-bashing. Thank God. Beating up on the banks has lasted almost three years now, and it’s blinding us to the real causes of the financial crisis. The banks are the perfect alibi: blaming them gets everyone off the
In the magazine’s cover piece this week (read it here or subscribe from just £1/issue), Richard Littlejohn described the rather feeble assortment of Republican contenders for next year’s presidential elections. But he left out Mitch Daniels, the Governor of Indiana, who seems to be emerging as a favourite among American conservatives. Daniels hasn’t yet