All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
On the other hand, Philippe Legrain makes the case that too much blame is being apportioned (perhaps opportunistically) to the euro and not enough is being fixed to the Irish government: The problem is not that savings flowed from Germany to Europe’s periphery. It is that they funded property bubbles rather than productive investment. But
Everyone is talking about the royal wedding today. It will be a great occasion but the public finances are tight and people are already asking about the cost. There is a bigger issue for British taxpayers, though. Our politicians have arranged for them to get hitched to the bride from hell: the ongoing fiscal disaster
The giraffe was back. Hattie Harman came to PMQs today wearing That Frock with its eccentric pattern of burnt umber pentagonals framed by light squiggly outlines. A great colour scheme for camouflaging giraffes in Africa. And an even better one for attracting attention in the house. Why does Hattie feel herself particularly giraffic? Her noble
Alas, poor Hibernia. According to RTE, Brian Cowen Denies Any Bailout Talks. The rest of the world is not so easily fooled, however. These may be “technical” discussions but they’re not discussing the finer points of hurling, are they? Among the more creative solutions to Ireland’s predicament: rejoin sterling. According to Mark Reckless, Tory MP
For a writer who died in 1936, Pirandello still feels remarkably contemporary. In the short plays, like the newly revived The Man With the Flower in His Mouth, he hones in on emerging details of the twentieth century experience which still pattern our lives today. A woman narrowly misses the sliding doors of a
I kid, I kid – but it’s still striking that Labour are pushing ahead in the polls as soon as Ed Miliband takes his paternity leave. According to today’s YouGov poll, they are now 5 points ahead of the Tories: their biggest lead since 2007, and an escalation of the 2-point advantage they recorded in
VERDICT: Harriet Harman’s questions must have looked quite clever on paper: a heavy emphasis on police cuts, followed by a quick dose of indigation over the vanity photographers. But, in reality, they were breezily repelled by Cameron. All he had to do was cite the words of Alan Johnson and refer to a list of
The superb Slugger O’Toole blog highlights what is certainly the most resonant quote if the day: “When you borrow, you lose a little bit of your sovereignty, no matter who you borrow from.” Those words were uttered by the Irish finance minister Brian Lenihan this morning, and they capture his country’s grisly predicament perfectly. The
I had just got to the stage where I quite like the Royal Family. Especially Phil. It’s been a gradual thing, over the last fifteen years or so. I sort of ideologically don’t approve but they annoy so many awful people that it seems churlish not to give them one’s support. And it is true
Two years into her term, and after carefully avoiding any success-free issues, Hillary Clinton has finally launched herself into the Middle East peace process. According to Roger Cohen in the New York Times, “The heavy lifting is now in Clinton’s hands”. As evidence of Clinton’s new role, Cohen lists a video conference with the Palestinian
I’m sure we’ll all be bombarded with footage over the coming days, weeks and months – but, in the meantime, here’s the first post-engagement interview for any interested CoffeeHousers:
After being pre-empted by the morning newspapers, Ken Clarke’s statement this afternoon contained nothing that was unexpected. “We’ve paid the money so we can move on,” he said. And he went on to emphasise that the Guantanamo payouts are not an admission of culpability, but rather all about sparing the public’s money and the spooks’
It’s not just the embarrassing and the difficult that will be buried underneath the Wills ‘n’ Kate coverage tomorrow – some good news will be too. Among it is the coalition’s plan to expand the provision of personal budgets. According to the Lib Dem health minister Paul Burstow, speaking today, some one million elderly people
Slap all kinds of health warnings on this, but – in view of speculation that the Wills and Kate nuptials might work in the coalition’s favour – I thought CoffeeHousers might like to see what happened to the the Tory government’s poll rating in 1981, around when Prince Charles married Diana. So here’s a graph
CoffeeHousers, you may have heard: Prince William and Kate Middleton are going to marry. Even now, the news helicopters are cluttering the sky above St. James’s Park. and their overhead imagery is punctuating the breathless television coverage below. As it happens, The Spectator dealt with this story in 2006, with a piece by Patrick Jephson,
Today is a very good day to bury bad news. Prince William and Kate Midddleton’s engagement is going to dominate the news and the front pages for at least the next 24 hours. Almost any other story can be slipped out unnoticed in the current circumstances. So it was a convenient time for Downing Street
Remembrance Sunday was observed scrupulously at football grounds across Britain, except of course at horrible Celtic, where the fans did their usual anti-British spite and venom and held aloft banners saying that we “shamed devils in hell,” etc. And then there’s Airdrie. A mate spotted their programme for the weekend’s home fixture against Livingston. I
William Hague told the Foreign Affairs Select Committee that British combat troops will leave Afghanistan in 2015 – even if parts of the country remain violent. Speaking to a number of senior military officers and civilians who have recently returned from Kabul and Helmand, I have come away with the clear sense – whisper it
What to make of the out-of-court settlement that has been paid to around a dozen former detainees of Guantanamo Bay? According to unofficial reports, taxpayers might have to shoulder £10 million as a result. One of the men is thought to be receiving £1 million. The explanations seeping out of Westminster are understandable enough. Security
Blogging is a risky business for any MP*. There are some whose blogs would persuade one to cast a vote for almost any other candidate, regardless of party. But if I lived in Glasgow South I’d be quite happy to have Tom Harris as my MP. Hell, I might even vote for him despite disagreeing
If you’re a dictator, that is. The New York Times has a fun silly thingy whereby you too can take a machete to the US budget deficit. It’s easy! My Cunning Plan even produces surpluses in both 2015 and 2030. 65% of my proposals are achieved by cutting spending; 35% by taxes. And I didn’t
Goals don’t come much better than this. Part of Lionel Messi’s charm – and his football really is charming – comes from the impish glee that runs through his performances. There’s an almost childlike joy to Messi’s game that leaves you smiling and feeling just a little better about the world. Some of that, no
Tim Farron is a name to remember. Farron has just been elected Lib Dem president and is widely regarded as the brightest hope of the party’s left. Farron is a political natural. He won his seat from a Tory in 2005 and from endless campaigning has turned into as near as you get to a Lib Dem
Her reach – and ability to generate traffic – knows few bounds: The Oxford English Dictionary has just named “refudiate” word of the year. The Oxford link seems to be crashing at the moment, from volume, no doubt. Last year, apparently, it was “unfriend” and the year before “hypermiling” (whatever that is). And actually, “refudiate”
Did the government pay money for the release of the poor Chandlers, that elderly couple who decided to do a spot of yachting off the coast of Somalia? Indirectly, without question. What passes for a government over there, the Somali Federal Republic, has confirmed that some of the £30m aid we bunged the country recently
A minor landmark for David Cameron tonight, as he delivers his first Mansion House speech as Prime Minister. Like occupants of No.10 before him, he will use the occasion to talk about foreign affairs – although the result may be rather more like the Chancellor’s annual speech at the same venue. Judging by the extracts
There are precious few heroes in Ireland today and no gods either. But not all the losers are Irish either. Some are Scottish. Chief among them, Alex Salmond and the Scottish National Party. Not because an independent Scotland would necessarily have been destroyed by the financial tsunami that swept the globe (though, to put it
Spectators might smile wryly at the news that the government is to devise a method for tracking the well-being of the nation. This idea of General Well-Being (GWB) was common currency in the early days of the Cameron project, when the Tory leader was going all out to “detoxify the brand”. But it soon hit
After months of rumours, plummeting approval ratings, and battles with anti-reform protesters, French President Nicolas Sarkozy reshuffled his Cabinet yesterday. With a new government in place, the worst of the reforms behind him and the G-20 chairmanship in the offing, President Sarkozy is hoping to rebuild his profile before the next presidential election. But will
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
A post about the blogosphere, I know – but I thought CoffeeHousers might appreciate a link to the new ConservativeHome USA site that launched in the past hour. It is, of course, a sister site to the UK’s very own ConservativeHome which, under the thoughtful editorship of Tim Montgomerie, has done so much to clarify
…here are some of the posts made on Spectator.co.uk over the weekend: Fraser Nelson says that IDS is showing how arguments are won. James Forsyth reports on Prince William’s visit to Afghanistan, and gives his take on David Laws’ account of the coalition negotiations.. Peter Hoskin wonders what happened to Labour’s economic message, and reports
“We certainly haven’t looked to Europe.” That was the message spilling from the mouths of Irish Cabinet ministers last night – but, as Alex suggested in a superb post on the matter this morning, their utterances may come to naught. After all, Europe has certainly looked to Ireland – and it doesn’t like what it
Yes it is. Despite what the Irish government says, it’s now surely a matter of when Ireland has a bailout forced upon it. We left “if” behind some time ago. Even the non-denial denials are specific enough to be revealing. As Shane Ross put it on Sunday, “The game is up.” Perhaps it won’t happen