All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
VERDICT: An inconclusive sort of PMQs, where neither leader particularly triumphed, nor particularly sank. Ed Miliband was persistent, and more aggressive than usual, with his questions on the NHS — but failed, really, to properly discomfort the PM. Cameron dwelt lazily on the extra money going into the service, but it was enough to carry
The papers report this morning that David Cameron has been urged by his aides to be more polite to his opponents at PMQs or risk playing into the Flashman stereotype of him as a cocky public school bully. Now, as with all advice about making PMQs a calmer affair (remember how Cameron pledged an end
The coalition is 1 today. Unfortunately, we can’t serve jelly and ice cream over the internet — but we can write an A-Z to mark the first year of Cameron and Clegg’s union. Below is the first part of that, covering the letters A to F. But, first, a little piece of political nostalgia for
The PM is looking to intensify the military campaign in Libya. Losing is not an option. Just think about it. The US gets its man; Britain gets angry, bombs a bit and then goes home. The dictator lives on in infamy: very Clintonesque. To avoid such an ignominious end, a delegation from Benghazi has been
When David Cameron was a backbench MP he condemned the “abject failure” of the War on Drugs. And when he campaigned for the Troy leadership he said it was time for “fresh thinking and a new approach” to drug policy. He correctly noted that “Politicians attempt to appeal to the lowest common denominator by posturing
Here are letters N to S in our A-Z guide the coalition’s first year. A-F are here. G-M are here. N is for No Nothing has frayed coalition relations quite like the AV referendum has. This was always going to be the case, but the viciousness it inspired has still been fairly shocking. Need we
There was no racing in the Giro d’Italia yesterday. Instead the peloton rode at a funereal pace to honour Wouter Weylandt, the Belgian sprinter killed in a crash on Monday. Then Weylandt’s Leopard-Trek team-mates came to the front to lead the field into Leghorn. With them was Garmin-Cervelo’s Tyler Farrar, Weylandt’s best friend in the
Hillary Clinton has given a fascinating interview to the Atlantic Monthly’s Jeffrey Goldberg. The main topic of it is the Arab spring but it is her comments about China that are making waves. When Goldberg comments that the Chinese have been scared by the sight of dictatorships toppling across the Middle East, Clinton replies:“They’re worried,
The power of the press has, almost from nowhere, become one of the defining leitmotifs of this Parliament. Only two years ago, the Telegraph exerted that power to (partially) clean out British politics, and won general acclaim in the process. But now, it seems, the media is more likely to have its actions attacked, or
When David Laws resigned from government last year, his return was thought to be only a matter of time. Today, it is looking considerably more indefinite. Not only has Cameron been talking down the prospect of a reshuffle any time soon, but the Evening Standard is reporting that Laws has been found guilty of breaching
So farewell then, Annabel Goldie. As Hamish Macdonnell says, your position was weakened by the inquest into last year’s disappointing (let’s be kind, here) Westminster results. But Miss (never Ms) Goldie can step down knowing that her party is better-off than either Labour or the Liberal Democrats. A cynic might suggest it’s easy for a
Our coalition government was forged one year ago tomorrow — and we shall have more on that then. But the Sun has already marked the occasion by publishing an interview with David Cameron today. It is a wide-ranging sort of conversation, touching on everything from the Prime Minister’s workload (“every day feels like a week”)
Pauline Neville-Jones was a first. She was one of the first women in the Foreign Office to climb the department’s male-dominated ladder, serving as Lord Tugendhat’s chef de cabinet at the European Commission, obtaining the coveted post of Political Director and eventually becoming JIC Chairman. She led the British delegation at the Dayton Peace Accords
That’s it, the full house. Alex Salmond has seen off all three main opposition party leaders before the Scottish Parliament has even convened for the first time in this new session. Yesterday afternoon, Scottish Conservative leader Annabel Goldie joined her Labour and Liberal Democrat counterparts (Iain Gray and Tavish Scott) in standing down. The Conservatives
You might think this should have been their strategy all along. But just as Labour in Scotland misidentified their primary enemy, concentrating on the Conservatives when they should have been opposing the SNP so Labour in London has spent the past year looking for monsters in all the wrong places. Peeved by being thrown from
What a knotty problem David Willetts has created for himself today. Speaking to the Guardian this morning, he floated an idea to help the universities make a bit of cash: they could, he suggested, sell extra places to students who were prepared to pay exaggerated fees up front. This isn’t yet government policy, and the
The House is united in loathing of IPSA, which explains why Tory MP Adam Afriyie’s amendment to the Parliamentary Standards Bill 2009 is proving so popular. Afriyie’s aim is ‘to simplify the way in which expenses and salary payments to Members of Parliament are made’ and attempt to limit IPSA’s costs. The government, however,
Having flirted with the idea on several previous occasions, Newt Gingrich has decided this is the moment America has been waiting for. So he’s running for the Presidency. Alex Knapp supplies the only slogan – coming to a t-shirt near you soon, I hope – and commentary his opponents need: GINGRICH 2012: HE WILL ALWAYS
Recalling the collapse of RBS, Tyler Cowen suggests that Scottish independence might not be such a nifty notion: The conceptual point is simple. If you think that the world is now more prone to financial crises (and I do), the optimal size for a nation-state has gone up. Risk-sharing really matters. That’s a pretty widely-held
I was all set to write a post complaining that, as usual, the Anglophone press never pays enough attention* to the Giro d’Italia but for the saddest of all possible reasons, that won’t be the case tomorrow. Wouter Weylandt, pictured above winning the third stage of last year’s Giro, died this afternoon after crashing on
One of the worries of Tory modernisers about the coalition back in May last year was that the Tories would end up being seen as being responsible for all the tough but necessary stuff, eg deficit reduction, while the Lib Dems would claim the cuddly stuff, for example the pupil premium — a policy that
The Prime Minister, it seems, is now finally accepting what everyone else has been saying for a long time: that the NHS reforms were dangerous and would hurt the government. If Nick Clegg forced a re-think — even one that is supported by many Tories — then he may, in the end, play a greater
Norman Lamb’s comment on the Daily Politics about the Lib Dems having become a “human shield” for the government sums up the mood on the Liberal Democrat benches. Lamb went onto wonder whether this was inevitable: “Whether that’s inevitably the case for the junior partner I don’t know… But we are in this for the
I’ve just caught up with Tim Montgomerie’s exhaustive and tremendously insightful account of the successful No to AV campaign. For those CoffeeHousers who haven’t yet had their fill of last week’s referendum and its implications, I’d heartily recommend it. Numerous points stand out, of which Paul Waugh has already highlighted one of the most vivid.
It’s Europe Day today, where the flag of the EU will be flown by 26 of its 27 member states. David Cameron is refusing to join in* — and rightly. Why celebrate an institution to which the British public is hostile? I’ve always found it strange that Euroscepticism is caricatured as a fringe, minority position
…here are some of the posts made on Spectator.co.uk over the weekend: Fraser Nelson rails against the Tories’ intellectual dishonesty over the NHS. James Forsyth explains why Nick Clegg will get his way on NHS reform, and lists the winners and losers from last week’s elections. Peter Hoskin reports on Chris Huhne’s latest difficulties, and
Financial meltdown. As Ben Brogan says this morning, it tends to concentrate the mind. And so it is with the coalition, after days of infighting and spiteful diversion. The meltdown is not our own, of course, but that of the Greeks. And although much will be said by Conservative and Liberal Democrat politicians about how
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
Can Tom Elliott lead the Ulster Unionists? That’s the question commentators in Northern Ireland are asking, after the party suffered yet another reverse at the polls. Elliott was elected leader on a landslide in September and he is already under pressure, seemingly powerless to arrest the decline of the once dominant force in Northern Irish
Two down and one to go: that’s the score among the opposition leaders in the Scottish Parliament as the parties continue to sift through the wreckage left by the SNP tsunami last week. Iain Gray, the Scottish Labour leader, didn’t wait long. He announced he was quitting on Friday afternoon, even before the full extent
Liberal Democrat fury at the behaviour of the prime minister is all over this morning’s papers. They are not just blustering because they lost the referendum – although, obviously, there is an element of that. They are also genuinely outraged that Cameron used the fact that Clegg compromised to form the coalition that put Cameron
It may not be reflected in the popular vote, but politics is still mostly about the Liberal Democrats this morning. We have Ed Miliband’s latest sally for their affections. We have the usual veiled threats and dread innuendo from Vince Cable. And then there’s the weird, but piercing, accusation on the cover of the Mail
Why should Cameron ditch the Lib Dems? Coalition has made his party more radical, more electorally successful – and the worst ideas in the Cabinet come from men with blue lapels. Take Andrew Lansley. His press release today would have been shocking had it come from a Lib Dem, and denounced as dangerous leftist nonsense
One summer holiday, bored and 11 years old, I embarked on a trawl through the wardrobes in my Grandparents’ spare bedroom. Most of the discoveries were unpromising: an old coat, a great quantity of pillowslips, and my mother’s teenage collection of Elvis 45s, which at that time were below my condescension. But then, in the