All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
…here are some of the posts made at Spectator.co.uk over the Bank Holiday weekend. James Forsyth says you couldn’t make the Wayne Bishop story up, and wonders if Sarah Palin is about to launch a bid for the Republican nomination. David Blackburn reveals the unlikely triumvirate opposing the government’s energy policy, and argues that the
Turkeys don’t vote for Christmas, that much we know. But thanks to the wonders of modern science, we can now poll them on it. Today’s Times carries a survey of the 789 peers who are entitled to sit in the Lords — of whom, 310 responded. It’s not a huge sample size, but the results,
As Noman Benotman predicted, Colonel Gaddafi’s relations with his military are disintegrating. Reuters is reporting that 120 loyalist officers have defected and arrived in Rome. Details are scant, but this is a major success for Britain and France’s attempt to effect regime change without intensifying their military deployment. There will be doubts as to how
What do the TUC, heavy industry and the European Commission have in common? This is not the start of a bad joke; the answer is that they all oppose the government’s energy policy. Ten days ago, Tata (formerly British Steel) announced that it was to cut more than 1,500 jobs at plants in Scunthorpe and on
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
The Harvard economist Martin Feldstein proposes an intriguing solution to Greece’s problems in his latest column: “A temporary leave of absence from the eurozone would allow Greece to achieve a price-level decline relative to other eurozone countries, and would make it easier to adjust the relative price level if Greek wages cannot be limited. The
While Britain agonised over deploying attack helicopters to Libya, the conflict seems to have escalated of its own accord. Noman Benotman, a former member of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, has described the current dispositions for the Times this morning (£). He has learned that many of Gaddafi’s military leaders are planning a coup to
I’m back in Cairo to find out where the revolution of 25 January has got to. Nearly six months after Hosni Mubarak’s downfall, the transition from authoritarianism is well under way. There is one immediate difference from my last visit: the absence of army check-points. Police officers in new white suits stand on street corners
With David Cameron in Ibiza and Ed Miliband on honeymoon, British politics is relatively quiet. But something fascinating is happening in America: Sarah Palin, contrary to media expectations, appears to be preparing to run for the Republican nomination. With the former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee deciding against getting into the race, Palin has a far
Listening is seriously damaging the coalition’s health. The Sunday Mirror carries a report that chimes with a week of rumours in Westminster: the NHS reforms are going to be significantly diluted to appease warring Liberal Democrats. The Mirror adds that Lansley is likely to quit in protest. Matt d’Ancona argues, in his essential column this
To present the government side in the Shoesmith case, former minister Kevin Brennan MP has written an extensive defence of Ed Balls’ decision to sack Sharon Shoesmith. Brennan’s argument is predicated on Ofsted’s report. Brennan writes: ‘Faced with such a report, the Secretary of State had to act decisively. Anyone who doubts for a moment
The FT has been speaking to Christine Lagarde, the French finance minister tipped to become managing director of the IMF. A few salient points emerge from it. First, she has more than a dash of hard-nosed Gallic defiance. Responding to the charge of a lack of a qualification in economics, she reiterated the comments she made
Sharon Shoesmith cut into Ed Balls on the Today programme this morning. She said: “Why don’t we ask Ed Balls why he acted on November 12, 2008 when he knew for 15 months that Peter Connelly had died and I was working with his officials, I was going to the government office, they were reading
Sometimes I wonder if the judiciary and the human rights culture are just trying to make Richard Littlejohn’s columns look understated. Today’s story in the Daily Mail about how a convicted criminal has been freed from prison because of the effect that his incarceration was having on his children is in real ‘you couldn’t make
You may have noticed that Barack Obama came to the country on a state visit this week. But he wasn’t the first US President to be extended an invitation from the Queen, oh no. George W. Bush beat him to that particular honour in 2003. Here are a couple of Spectator pieces from the time,
Here is a selection of posts made at Spectator.co.uk over the last week. Fraser Nelson cuts through the BS, and points out that the austerity hasn’t even started yet. James Forsyth considers the super-injunctions saga, and watches Barack Obama reaffirm the special relationship. Peter Hoskin notes that there are limits to Obama and Cameron’s mutual
The British Medical Association (BMA) has always been a trade union with elements of professionalism on the edges. Its report this week on the NHS reforms was the work of unadulterated, self-serving trade unionism. Our modern trade union leaders would have been embarrassed to publish it, even Bob Crow. It tries to portray competition as
Target culture. It’s a pejorative phrase, and understandably so. As we discovered during the New Labour years, targets designed to encourage good public services can frequently do the opposite — replacing genuine care with box-ticking, and action with bureaucracy. I mention this now because of an article in this week’s Spectator (do subscribe, etc.) by
There was an exchange on Question Time last night that may go some way to explaining why the government’s health plans are so mired. One panellist, media lawyer Charlotte Harris, said that she was very worried by the substantial cuts being made to the NHS’ budget. Large sections of audience greeted this with rapture. (From
Whitehall sources say Michael Gove will appeal the Court of Appeals judgement which decided Sharon Shoesmith’s dismissal was so ‘legally flawed as to be null and void’ to the Supreme Court. Although Gove recognises that Balls blundered in the way he dismissed her, he also believes that there are important constitutional principles at sake in
Sharon Shoesmith, who was head of children services in Haringey at the time of the Baby Peter case, is set to receive a sum that could be as large as a million pounds in compensation. The Court of Appeal has ruled that the way Ed Balls, then the secretary of state, and Haringey took the
Deborah Warner’s latest production tries so hard to be outrageous, one almost wants to fake shock out of pity. When The School for Scandal first opened in 1777, it was lauded for its witty dissection of a shallow society obsessed with rumour and status, what William Hazlitt called ‘the habitual depravity of human nature’. Layer on a
When President Nicolas Sarkozy dispatched Dominque Strauss-Kahn to the IMF in 2007, he did it to remove a potential competitor. Now, however, the French president may be trying to do the opposite: use the IMF post to create an heir and successor in finance minister Christine Lagarde. Lagarde was on Today this morning, explaining why
A small series: 1. I was annoyed but not surprised when Barack Obama referred to Westminster as “The Mother of Parliaments” on Wednesday. This was not a surprising error for a foreigner even if his speechwriter should have been expected to know and do better. It is England that is the Mother of Parliaments, not Westminster.
Nick Clegg’s speech on the NHS today has fanned the flames of the Tory backbench rebellion on the issue. Tory MPs’ tribal instincts have kicked in and even those who were worried about the Lansley plan are now swinging behind it. As Nick Watt revealed earlier today, there’s currently a letter from Nick de Bois
Remember Herman Cain? The former CEO of Godfather’s Pizza who scored a surprise win at the first Republican presidential primary debate earlier this month? Well, the latest Gallup poll is out today, and shows him on 8 per cent amongst potential primary voters: essentially tied for third behind Mitt Romney and Sarah Palin. This is
Nick Clegg’s speech on the NHS this morning was not as bad as many feared it would be. It recognised that there is a role for competition in the NHS, something that the Lib Dems were questioning last weekend, and that the NHS needs to be opened up to any qualified provider. But, on the
The day started out looking bad for the Balkans, with the Serbian president boycotting a meeting with Barack Obama in Poland because the Kosovo president was attending. But things look rather better now. After a decade-long man-hunt, Serbian police arrested Ratko Mladic in northern Serbia. He was living under the name Milorad Komadic and had
A lovely picture of Her Majesty with the Obamas. Captions please! (Also, what joke is Prince Philip keeping to himself?) Meanwhile, I’ve a piece on Obamamania at the Daily Beast and a grumpy take on the “Special Relationship” at Foreign Policy.
Academies, as CoffeeHouser knows, are booming. There were around 200 of them when Michael Gove became Education Secretary last May. Now, just a year later, and steaming well ahead of expectations, there are over 600. This is, as Benedict Brogan suggests in his Telegraph column today, one of the great successes of the coalition era — albeit
It cannot be said that Alex Salmond’s ministry is off to a good legislative start. Not when its immediate aim is, apparently, to rush through ill-considered, illiberal, speech-curbing legislation that asks the public not to worry about the detail and trust that the legal authorities will not actually enforce either the letter or the spirit
What scares Israel more than anything else? Not, I wager, the rockets flying over the fence from Gaza or even, at least on a quotidian basis, the Iranian shadow. No, what happens if the Palestinians say Yes? Granted, the Palestinian leaderships – not without their own battles – have persistently demonstrated a fatal lack of
Sometimes you wait and wait for an event, and nothing ever happens. Pakistan is always said to be teetering on the brink of collapse but never quite edges over the precipice. The same used to be the case with Yemen. In fact, Coffee House predicted that Yemen would implode last year, but Yemeni President Ali
“It’s not imminent. But you can see this happening.” So sayeth Vince Cable about the prospect of another global financial crisis, in interview with the New Statesman today. To be fair, you can see his point: there is a pervasive sense that the contradictions of the banking sector still haven’t been fixed, and — as