All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
The outgoing US Defense Secretary Robert Gates has delivered a remarkably frank warning to the European members of Nato that if they do not spend more on defence, the United States will be unwilling to maintain the transatlantic alliance. Gates declared that, “The blunt reality is that there will be dwindling appetite and patience in
The Telegraph’s publication of all those documents today has got everyone talking about that feud again. Here is what The Spectator’s former editor Matthew d’Ancona had to say about the Blair-Brown wars when things were hotting up in the autumn of 2006: The great New Labour civil war, Matthew d’Ancona, 6 September 2006 Two days
Here are some of the posts made on Spectator.co.uk over the past week: Fraser Nelson looks at the latest efforts to fix Britain’s economic dysfunction, and explains George Osborne’s fiscal flexibility. James Forsyth says that David Cameron is a leader in need of a People, and argues that the coalition’s u-turns come at a price.
Forget Balls, today brings one of the most significant moments in the life of the coalition so far: the launch of its Work Programme. The name may be commonplace but, as Fraser suggested earlier, the policy is revolutionary. Over the next year, around one million unemployed people will be enrolled on work schemes run by
The largest welfare-to-work programme on the planet is launched today by Chris Grayling and Iain Duncan Smith. It’s not much of an exaggeration to say that the future of this country — and, perhaps, David Cameron – depends on its success. The lead article of this week’s Spectator looks at it, and we used various
Well you can’t blame them, can you? Project Volvo – it just shows how out of touch senior politicians were. Leaked documents labelled Project Volvo, revealed today, that outline a plot to unseat former Prime Minister Tony Blair show just how out of touch with reality senior politicians within the previous government had become with modern Britain. The
Next week the Prime Minister will make his much-awaited law-and-order speech. This should, under normal circumstances, be the third or fourth such speech by a Tory leader who’s been in government for more than a year. Normally, it would be an occasion to score easy points from centre-right voters. But these are not normal times.
I understand another story concerning improperly obtained documents may break shortly concerning Ed Balls, his spads, a civil servant and a journalist at the FT. Whitehall is in a febrile mood.
The most important political consequence of the leak of the Project Volvo documents is that it reminds everyone in the Labour party of what a divisive figure Ed Balls is. Ever since the leadership contest, where his reputation as a plotter crippled his candidacy, Balls has been trying to soften his image. He has sought
Intrigue, hilarious intrigue this morning, as the Telegraph releases a bunch of documents that clarify just how far the Brownites went to oust Tony Blair. They are, it is said, from the personal files of Ed Balls, and they are copious in both quantity and variety. From straightforward poll results to 31-page reports on how
That Gordon Brown loathed Tony Blair is hardly news. Nevertheless the details and depth of that hatred, revealed in the Daily Telegraph’s scoop today*, remain hilarious. Poor Gordon. His people seem to believe – or have been told – that being compared by focus groups to a Volvo or a British Rover was a good
Oh look! Newt Gingrich’s preposterous Presidential “campaign” has imploded. His top strategists and campaign staff have resigned en masse and so has his Iowa staff. What a shame. Turns out that staffers didn’t appreciate Newt taking his latest wife on a cruise around the Greek islands while they were working hard to sell the impossible
The Metropolitan police are confirming that a 46 year old MP has been arrested on suspicion of sexual assault. The member concerned is a Tory. UPDATE: The BBC is now naming Andrew Bridgen as the MP involved. There’s been no statement as yet from CCHQ on the matter. In the last parliament, Andrew Pelling was
It seems that, in cycling as everything else, when the facts become intolerable it’s no longer credible to insist upon them. That being the case it’s not, perhaps, a great surprise that the Facts for Lance website appears to have disappeared. In one sense the question of whether or not Lance Armstrong ever took illegal
Yesterday, Keith Vaz received a response to a written question he filed to John Thurso regarding thefts on the parliamentary estate. Having lost an iPad and a laptop from his office, Vaz was keen to see if petty crime is a problem on the estate. Thurso’s response appears to confirm that it is. The catalogue of listed
One of the odd things about David Cameron is that he wants to be a consensual radical. Unlike Margaret Thatcher he doesn’t want to have ‘a people’, a section of the electorate that is loyal to him personally. Rather he wants to be seen as a unifying national figure. He is, to borrow a phrase
When a clergyman damns a government I prefer he do so with a proper quantity of hellfire. They do it differently in the Church of England which, though lovely for evensong and all the rest of it, is not a political or particularly muscular enterprise. The Archbishop of Canterbury’s much-trumpeted blast against the Cameron-Clegg regiment
As I argued this morning, the Rowan Williams furore will be sustained if the government over-reacts. So far, so softly from Downing Street: ministers and prominent MPs have been across the airwaves this morning and no one has taken the so-called nuclear option. As you can see below, the responses have been mild. Paul Goodman
To an extent, British politics is still determined by whether or not you agree with Tony Blair. For more than a year, the coalition and the opposition have been debating whether to continue Blair’s public service reforms; this is a testament to his failure as Prime Minister as much as it to his success. Today,
It is now nearly five years since I wrote When Progressives Treat with Reactionaries for the think tank Policy Exchange. It was a plea for sanity in the debate on radical Islam, which had become poisoned by the belief in parts of government that Islamists of the Muslim Council of Britain were the genuine representative
Yesterday, Foreign Office minister Alistair Burt went to Chatham House to explain the UK’s Libya policy. It was a mildly painful experience. A particular gem: “Where we will end up nobody quite knows.” Well-spoken Lindsey Hilsum easily skewered UK policy, talking of the “indecent haste” of the ICC investigation and raising the ICC’s proposal to
“Nowadays politicians want to talk about moral issues, and bishops want to talk politics,” said Sir Humphrey. This week’s New Statesman has been guest edited by the Archbishop of Canterbury. In his lead editorial, Dr Rowan Williams has launched a brutally eloquent assault on the coalition for embarking on a programme of radical reform for
Yes, really. Like his American contemporary George HW Bush, John Major has suffered from being sandwiched between two far more glamorous premiers and like Bush Sr this probably means he’s under-rated these days. At the time his government often looked hopelessly weak and of course it often was, riven with feuding and driven to distraction
David Cameron came into power promising to deliver the greenest government ever and this week the government published its Natural Environment White Paper. In his article on this site, Richard Benyon – Defra Minister and long-time supporter of rural affairs – explains where he believes this White Paper will make a difference. From provisions to
One of the many problems with the equalities act is that it requires a level of consultation and a number of equalities impact assessments that are not compatible with speedy decision making. Word is seeping out tonight that the coalition is now having to ‘reconsider’ its decision on Academy funding because the Treasury, the Department
David Cameron hasn’t wasted much time since his return from holiday in dealing with the government’s two biggest political vulnerabilities: its policies on the NHS and criminals. The u-turns have got Cameron into a better place politically but they come at a cost. On the NHS, Cameron has had to water down the Lansley reforms
What does Turkey actually think? That’s an issue that has been occupying many Europeans, as the vital NATO ally heads to the polls. On the one hand Turkey has in the last 10 years become more like the West: globalised, economically liberal and democratic. Turkey’s economy is now the world’s 16thlargest, the sixth largest in
Three cheers for Megan McArdle: I think Pawlenty’s claims are crazy–though not specially crazy. They’re crazy the way that all political speeches on the economy are insane: they claim far more power over economic growth than any politician actually has. It is entirely possible that the economy will, for some period in the next few
Cameron made history today. He gave the Speaker a genuine reason to call PMQs to a halt. Usually Mr Bercow pops up two or three times to shout down shouters and to waste time by ordering time-wasters not to waste time. But today protocol obliged him to stop proceedings. A half-hearted punch-up was in progress
Today’s announcement on a proposed new National Crime Agency (NCA) is a key element in the government’s ambitious police reform agenda. Recent political attention has focused on changes to police pay and conditions and budget reductions, but the structural reforms that Theresa May and Nick Herbert are pursuing matter more in the long-term. And before
It might seem axiomatic to observe that Red Tories and Blue Labourites must have as much in common as anything that might divide them. That’s one thing to take from Amol Rajan’s splendid overview of Philip Blond and Maurice Glasman’s attempts to refashion British politics. The other, I would suggest, is that Blond and Glasman’s
Having u-turned on two more policies in the last two days, one would have expected David Cameron to have a hard time today at PMQs. But he didn’t. Ed Miliband never got going, turning in one of his worst PMQs’ performances. Cameron pithily summed up Miliband’s performance when he joked that ‘the best thing that
VERDICT: It’s nigh impossible to overstate what a pickle David Cameron found himself in this morning: the strain of the recent health debacle continues and he has had to orchestrate a u-turn on Ken Clarke’s liberal prison reforms, although don’t call it a u-turn. But, somehow, Ed Miliband contrived the PM’s escape. Miliband’s brief reconnaissance