All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Presently, the waves of bad news are as relentless as biblical plagues. The latest trade figures show that Britain’s trade gap opened in December; the seasonally adjusted deficit stood at £9.2bn, a rise from £8.5bn in November. There are plenty of explanations as to why the export-led recovery failed to jump customs, despite the comparatively
Foreign Secretary William Hague has arrived in Tunisia in order to support to the pro-democracy movement. Unlike his previous visit to Syria, which I think was poorly timed, this one is perfectly-timed. It could even end up looking like George Bush Snr’s visit to Poland in July 1989 when the US president publicly backed the
Not to grant him guru status or anything but I’m glad that Reuel Marc Gerecht has at last weighed-in on the Egypt Question. I’ve mentioned his writing before and think him one of the most interesting, and in some ways provocative, middle-east analysts. Even if you disagree with him, his ideas are worth serious consideration.
November 8th, 1994 is one of the hinge moments in modern American politics. If you wanted to write a counter-factual chronicle of recent American politics you could do worse than begin with the night George W Bush was elected Governor of Texas and Jeb Bush was defeated by Lawton Chiles in Florida. The 63,940 votes
Cambridge University’s decision, leaked to The Guardian’s Nick Watt, to start charging fees of £9,000 a year from 2012 is an irritation for the Liberal Democrats who did not want any university to move to charging the highest fee possible straight away. It also threatens to overshadow Nick Clegg’s efforts to increase the social mix
Balls is a bit like a vampire – he has bite, but he works best in the darkness. In the House of Commons, with those lights shining on him, his powers drain. George Osborne had the better of him in their brief exchanges at Treasury Questions. Balls led on the snow joke. But Osborne had
Here is a dispatch from the north-east by Andrew Hankinson, one of the best feature writers around, who wrote a superb piece on the effects of the crash of 2008 on the young. It sums up one of my worries about Labour’s awful response to David Cameron’s speech on the need to revive liberal values.
In October last year, Osborne announced a new levy on banks’ balance sheets. It was 0.05 percent for this calendar year, before rising to 0.075 percent from 2012 onwards. But, today, the Chancellor has announced that the ‘introductory’ rate has been abolished – so banks will be charged the 0.075 percent rate on all liabilities.
In continental lore, it is Britain that is often seen as the greatest impediment to EU integration. The government’s EU Bill initially caused horror in the rest of Europe. Would Britain have to vote for each treaty change, even those needed to enlarge the Union? Before the text of the bill became clear, every self-respecting
The morning after the day before, it seems that some of the murk around Abdelbaset al-Megrahi’s release has lifted. In particular, one thing is explicit that wasn’t before: that the policy of the Brown government was to “do all it could” to facilitate the convicted Lockerbie bomber’s transfer to Libya. We might have surmised the
This morning’s newspapers would have made grim reading for the government. The Department for Transport has been forced to reverse its helicopter privatisation plan, there are doubts that the baccalaureate will suit Michael Gove’s education reforms and diverse packs of hounds have converged on the Big Society fox – and this is a cruel bloodsport.
An ungodly alliance has converged on the Big Society. From the left, The Voice of the Mirror, the Unions and Steve Richards have published diverse critiques; from the right, Philip Johnston has joined Peter Oborne in suggesting that the policy is suffering a near-death experience. The Local Government Association and councillors have added their disgruntled
The popular uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia have exposed as nonsense the notion, held in many quarters, that Middle Easterners – be they Arabs, Persians, Muslims and Christians – are uncommonly uninterested in democracy. But as former CIA agent and Middle East expert Reuel Marc Gerecht writes in the New York Times: ‘A revulsion against
Tomorrow is the first Osborne Balls Treasury Questions clash. It should be a fiery encounter. There’s little love lost between the two men, they are both aggressive despatch box performers and the two of them know that their clash over the economy is likely to be the major factor in determining the next election result.
We at The Spectator have not had much company in criticising Mervyn King for the failure of his monetary policy. The Bank of England governor has a status like the Speaker used to: someone whose position must command respect, otherwise the system collapses. And yet there are Octopuses with a better track record in inflation
Thursday’s debate on the backbench motion on prisoner voting tabled by Jack Straw and David Davis is set to be a real parliamentary event – a rare occasion where the will of the elected legislature might just make a big difference. The real news will not be how many endorse the ban, but which MPs
After a difficult few weeks for the Big Society, culminating in Liverpool’s nakedly political ‘withdrawal’ from the vanguard projects, Peter Oborne has already drafted an obituary for the Conservative’s policy agenda. As Oborne says, the Big Society goes to the heart of this government’s reason for existence, and its (real or perceived) failure would
…here is a selection of posts made at Spectator.co.uk over the weekend. Quentin Letts gives his bluffers guide to Egypt. Fraser Nelson says that No.10 needs to get a grip. James Forsyth defends Cameron’s muscular liberalism speech, and hopes for an orderly transition of power in Egypt. Peter Hoskin asks how much we spend on
“No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money,” declared Dr Johnson. Boswell did not like the maxim and explained it away as an example of Johnson’s lazy nature. “Numerous instances to refute this will occur to all who are versed in the history of literature,” he puffed. If they were numerous in the
The Independent has a remarkable story today which shows just how public money gets wasted. The paper reports that the Department for Energy and Climate Change has employed a firm of headhunters to find it a new chief economist. Tom Peck writes that the headhunters then approached Vicky Pryce about the job. Ms Pryce had
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
We shouldn’t have believed the hype. For all of Tony Blair’s earnest focus on Anti-Social Behaviour Orders, this flagship policy was barely in effect at all. By the latest figures, only 18,670 ASBOs were issued between April 1999 and the start of 2010. According to this Policy Exchange report – the best on the subject
Interviewed by the Times, Frank Field fails the Canute Test: Mr Field said that it was not good enough for the Government to say there was enough money in the budget to maintain the existing Sure Start centres. “The Government needs urgently to step in,” he said. “At some stage they are going to have
The gushing nonsense that has accompanied the centennial of Ronald Wilson Reagan’s birth can be no surprise to anyone even if, no especially if, you consider it mildly unseemly. “A Republic, if you can keep it” said Benjamin Franklin and Reagan’s beatification is another reminder that the United States long ago became a republic in
When the Tories were in opposition, non-aligned friends used to complain to me that the party’s front bench was unimpressive. Labour politicians had walked the political stage for more than a decade; many were household names, while the Tories were unknown. But eight months in and Labour’s top team is a largely unknown entity, with
For once, I am in total agreement with Nigel Farage: the best way for Sally Bercow to help her husband is to take a vow of silence. Her recent Cleopatra act diverted attention from the persistent indignity of parliament’s relationship with IPSA, but it has done little to raise the diminutive Speaker’s diminutive reputation. Flushed with embarrassment,
David Cameron’s speech yesterday was one of the most important he has given as Prime Minister. I’d urge you to read the whole text just to see how absurd some of the opportunistic, party political attacks on it have been. As I say in The Mail on Sunday, they’ll be a huge amount of resistance
So, does the chairman of the Conservative Party, Baroness Warsi, agree with David Cameron’s statement that British Muslims should do more to weed out extremists from their midst (and therefore with the direct implication that they are not doing enough at the moment)? And does she agree that multiculturalism is a failed experiment and that
In opposition, one of David Cameron’s strengths was the speed at which he dumped bad ideas. But, now, he is starting to acquire a habit for U-Turns – especially those called for by minor celebs. We’ve seen Scottish school milk, NHS Direct, BookStart, school sport – and soon, I suspect, forests, World Service cuts and
It appears almost certain that the protests in Egypt are not going to stop until Mubarak leaves office. For that reason, Mubarak’s departure seems a necessary step to an orderly transition. The New York Times ‘ latest report reveals that the Egyptian military and US officials are discussing how Mubarak could visibly leave while remaining
A sad juxtaposition between David Cameron’s defence of liberal values and the Times’s interview (£) with Paul Maynard, the Tory MP for Blackpool North & Cleveleys. Maynard – who has cerebral palsy – describes his experiences in what ought to be a bastion of British decency: “Mr Maynard knew that people could be unkind, perhaps
The all-too-predictable reaction to David Cameron’s speech on the importance of tackling the ideology of radical Islam has been depressing. Much of what he said in Munich should be entirely uncontroversial. For too long, Whitehall has been prepared to deal with the self-appointed gatekeepers of the Muslim community without asking serious questions about their political
As shocks go, Politician Uses the Correct Statistic is not particularly electric stuff. But I was struck nonetheless by Cameron’s claim in his speech earlier that, “we still have the fourth largest military budget in the world.” You see, Gordon Brown used to exaggerate this figure by various sneaky methods – and so, by his
“State multiculturalism has failed.” Angela Merkel put voice to that sentiment last October. Now it David Cameron’s turn to do the same. In a speech in Munich today, the Prime Minister has taken a rhetorical torch to Islamic extremism. “Frankly,” he says, “we need a lot less of the passive tolerance of recent years and