All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
It’s not that I disagree with this post by Blair Gibbs, nor that I don’t think he makes a number of reasonable points. There’s clearly a problem with drugs in prison even if it it’s not, one supposes, on anything like the same level as the Cousins’ difficulties in that area. Nevertheless, surely the most
Despite the focus on the government’s controversial plans to reduce the prison population, the troubled Prison Service continues to cause headaches for Ministers in another way — by failing to get on top of the security problems plaguing the estate In the 1990s, when Michael Howard was in Ken Clarke’s position, the concern of ministers
The Scotsman’s endorsement of the SNP and the Scottish Conservatives is so thoroughly, even startlingly, sensible it could almost have been written by me*. [T]here is no other credible candidate for First Minister beyond Mr Salmond. Despite his party’s apparently staunch commitment to statism, we also know the SNP leader is passionate about the role
In light of ICM’s latest poll, Lib Dems might be relieved to hear that tomorrow isn’t all about the AV referendum. But it’s a meagre sort of relief: they’re facing a drubbing in the local elections too. We’ve put together a quick guide to those elections, as well as those in Scotland and Wales, so
Tonight’s ICM poll is even worse for the Yes campaign than last night’s ComRes poll. The poll, in tomorrow’s Guardian, has Yes heading for defeat by a margin of more than two-to-one and in every single region of the country. The turnout adjusted numbers are No 68, Yes 32. If these last two polls are
Nigel Farage is in a bullish mood. Buoyed by the coalition’s unpopularity, Labour’s listlessness and the success of the True Finns Party, he has declared that Ukip is “no longer a minority party“. I interviewed him ahead of tomorrow’s local election, the first test of his second leadership stint and the new direction in which
Just as it’s difficult for death penalty opponents to be too upset by the verdicts of the Nuremberg tribunal, so it is hard to be upset by the assassination (let us not be coy) of Osama bin Laden. Nevertheless, it seems increasingly probable that al-Qaeda’s titular leader was executed “after” a firefight not, rather tellingly,
There was an eerie, eve-of-battle calm about today’s PMQs. The real bust-up isn’t due till Friday. The votes will be in, AV will be out, Clegg will be down and Huhne will be calculating his next move. Before today’s session everyone expected Labour to co-ordinate an ambush and try to light Cameron’s ever-combustible fuse. But
PMQs today was dominated by the parties trying to get their lines out ahead of the voting on Thursday. David Cameron accused “Labour local authorities of playing politics with people’s jobs” and urged voters “not to let Labour do to your council, what they did to our country.” He received plenty of chances to make
I voted no to AV (postal vote) for a bunch of reasons; the first, and probably most important, is that nobody really wants it. The British public has not been clamouring for constitutional change; as we know, the vote is simply a device to facilitate the coalition. The Lib Dems don’t really want it –
VERDICT: A sedate sort of PMQs today, particularly in comparison to the fizz and fire of recent sessions. The reason is simply the date: with the local elections tomorrow, much of the emphasis was on making a straightforward pitch for votes. Miliband’s was to attack the “broken promises” of the coalition — a charge that,
A senior Liberal Democrat is putting it about this morning that Michael Gove, the education secretary, will be voting for AV tomorrow. But a very close friend of Gove tells me that ‘this is categorically untrue. Michael will be voting to keep first past the post.’ This Lib Dem’s briefing strikes me as rather ham-fisted.
This country’s not used to coalitions. So when we got one we were sceptical. When it worked, we remained sceptical. When it worked really well, taking decisions that a majority Labour government dared not take, we began to come around to the idea. Most people seemed to accept that they could live with a coalition;
Thanks to this ComRes poll, the question floating around Westminster this morning is: how much?! You see, with only a day to go until the AV referendum, it has the No camp on 66 per cent, and the Yes camp on 34. That puts No a punishing 32 points ahead of its rival. Even allowing
On the Today Programme this morning, David Cameron stressed that for all the tensions about the AV referendum, ministers were still capable of sitting round a table and working together. But within a couple of hours of saying this, Chris Huhne had destroyed this argument by using Cabinet to continue his attack about the tactics
The death of Osama Bin Laden may be a very arresting punctuation mark in the conflict against tyranny — but the conflict continues nevertheless, not least in Libya. The latest news from the country is that the rebels are maintaining their fragile hold on the port town of Misrata, although Western agencies are still struggling
“It was decided that any effort to work with the Pakistanis could jeopardise the mission. They might alert the targets.” There have been few blunter, nor more high-profile, condemnations of Pakistan’s intelligence operation than that made by Leon Panetta, the CIA chief, in interview with Time magazine today. And there are plenty of other noteworthy
“This is the Cabinet, not some sub-Jeremy Paxman interview.” I hear that Osborne went on to stress that Cabinet should be discussing the Cabinet agenda, not party political issues.
Up until a few months ago, David Cameron and Nick Clegg tried to avoid doing big set piece broadcast interviews on the same day. This was driven by a desire to both maximise the coalition’s dominance of the media agenda and to avoid having to give a running commentary on what the other had said.
The votes have been counted, and the results of the Canadian federal election are in. Stephen Harper’s Conservatives Stephen Harper’s Conservatives performed much more strongly than many expected, securing their first majority since 1993 by 13 seats. The New Democratic Party’s vote did indeed hold up: they took 31 per cent of the vote (almost
At Cabinet this morning, I am told that Chris Huhne directly challenged David Cameron and George Osborne about the claims that the No campaign have been making. He asked them both in turn, if they were going to — or could — defend them. Osborne responded by telling Huhne that his behaviour was inappropriate and
Is AV too complex? Ask John Humphrys, who unwittingly made the case against switching system today, in conversation with David Cameron on the Today programme. It became clear that Humphrys believed that everyone’s second preference vote would be counted under AV — and Cameron pounced. Here’s the transcript: DC: If you go to an AV
….Coffee House carried extensive coverage of the Royal Wedding and the death of Osama bin Laden. In addition to those stories, here are some of the other posts made at Spectator.co.uk over the Bank Holiday weekend. Fraser Nelson believes that a degree of separation will strengthen the coalition. James Forsyth argues that the Gaddafi family
The covers of our newspapers are emblazoned with Bin Laden this morning — but it is an article in a US newspaper that really catches the eye. Pakistan’s President, Asif Ali Zardari, has written an op-ed for the Washington Post that defends his country’s role in the struggle against Al-Qaeda. It’s a defence that has
The more we hear about the operation that killed Bin Laden, the more impressive it becomes. US Navy Seals held dummy-runs of the raid on April 7th and 13th part of the extensive, leak-free planning that appears to have been going on for months. I think there are two things that come out of this
The world’s most wanted terrorist, Osama Bin Laden, was shot Sunday morning in Pakistan by US special forces. But in reality he had died months ago. On the 25 of January 2011 to be exact. Or that is at least when Bin Laden’s power ended. For on that day millions of protesters — predominantly young
Today Canadians go to the polls for their fourth general election in seven years, after Stephen Harper’s minority Conservative government fell to an unprecedented motion citing it for contempt of Parliament. The story of the campaign has undoubtedly been the meteoric rise of Jack Layton’s New Democratic Party. Until now, the centre-left NDP had been
Of all the election results due in on Thursday night, those for the Scottish Parliament may be the most significant. Labour’s Scottish base, which has been the party’s bedrock for almost 50 years, seems to be dissolving. Two more opinion polls yesterday gave details. One, in the Mail on Sunday in Scotland, gave the SNP
The political and strategic implications of Osama Bin Laden’s death are legion. One of the biggest impacts of this operation could well be that it speeds up the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. Obama has long been keen to start bringing US troops home in large numbers. But a withdrawal from Afghanistan with Bin Laden not
After a top secret operation costing a lot of money and carried out by myself, I can reveal that I have at last killed Adolf Hitler, the man responsible for the second world war. Only hours after the American government told a jubilant world that its special forces had killed the evil Muslim murderer, Osama
The veil is being pulled back on how the United States tracked down and killed Osama Bin Laden. The New York Times reveals that the intelligence trail started with information obtained from a Guantanamo Bay detainee about the courier that Bin Laden used to pass and receive messages to the outside world. This is proof
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
After the events of today, the video above has fresh resonance. It is from the first presidential debate in 2008, and features Barack Obama defending his previously stated view that “if the United States has Al Qaeda, Bin Laden, top level lieutenants in our sights, and Pakistan is unable or unwilling to act, then we
Will we see pictures of the dead Bin Laden? When Saddam’s sons were killed, pictures of their corpses were released by the American military, on the grounds that it was crucial for Iraqis to believe they were no more. This time, we’re told that Bin Laden has already been buried at sea, the Saudis having