All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Fraser’s article on the Californification of the Tory party is a splendid piece of work and highly recommended. I enjoyed it very much. And yet, the more one thinks about it, the more problematic, and perhaps even contradicory, some parts of this vision of a Tory future seemed to be. For one thing, it seems
Golly. The Daily Mail seems to have a very narrow, dangerous view of who is, and who isn’t, British: However although the figures from the Government’s Office for National Statistics show an increase in numbers of foreign born people they still fail to record the true impact of immigration because they record their children as
A friend has just pointed out this extraordinary quote from The Times article on Fred Goodwin (I have stripped him of his knighthood as the government should). “The handout means that RBS will have received more than £45 billion in public funds, equivalent to a penny on income taxes for more than a decade” I
Plenty of interesting comments have come out of Mervyn King’s appearance before the Treasury Select Committee – Reuters collects some of the highlights here. But, after the claims Lord Turner made yesterday, King’s criticism of the regulatory system is particularly eye-catching. Here’s how the Telegraph’s James Kirkup reports it: Mervyn King, the Governor of the Bank of England, has said that financial
Fraser’s piece in the magazine this week on how California is inspiring the Tories is well worth reading. Fraser makes the point that the Tories are attracted to California because family friendly policies and dynamic businesses go together there. The important thing to appreciate is that these businesses are family friendly not because of regulation
The story of Adolf Burger, a Slovakian Jew forced by the Nazis to produce counterfeit British banknotes, is utterly compelling. To a lesser degree, so is this statistic mentioned in the Times analysis accompanying a report of his visit to the Bank of England yesterday: “Counterfeiters continue to ply their trade in Britain and are
The Standards and Privileges Committee has now reported on the complaint against Gordon Brown and it has concluded that Brown did breach the rules, albeit inadvertently: “We conclude that Mr Brown should not have sub-let part of his accommodation paid for from Parliamentary allowances. However, neither Mr Brown nor the Labour Party derived any financial
In terms of the cash involved, the controversy surrounding Fred Goodwin’s £650,000 a year pension is a mere footnote to the massive RBS bailout announced this morning. But, politically, it could be far more damaging for the Government. Their attempted solution to the problem is beyond parody – as Alistair Darling revealed this morning, the banking Minister, Lord Myners, has left a
Today’s yet another downturn milestone. As RBS announces the largest annual loss in UK corporate history, the Treasury’s set to make the bank the beneficiary of what could be the biggest bailout so far. Robert Peston sets it out thus: “The Treasury has announced that we as taxpayers will provide insurance to Royal Bank against
The tragic news of Ivan Cameron’s death broke this morning, and all of us at The Spectator offer our deepest, heartfelt condolences to David and Samantha. It is impossible to imagine what they have come through so far, and what they are feeling now. It one of those moments where there is nothing more to
I was very sad to hear the news that Ivan, David Cameron’s six-year-old son, has died. This is a terrible blow for him and his family. There is really not much more I can say.
So Jack Straw has been the subject of an email scam. I hear some fraudster was putting it about that he was a politician of principle. His veto on the release the Cabinet minutes in the run-up to the Iraq war is a disgrace. The man who introduced the Freedom of Information Act has become
Coalition negotiations are ongoing in Israel and so you’d expect them to be the main story for the media there. But every time I go to Haaretz’s site or that of the Jerusalem Post, the top story is about Iran and its nuclear programme. Israel is acutely aware of the threat it faces. The more
Bobby Jindal’s response to Barack Obama’s speech last night flopped. In terms of content it fell back far too often on simplistic anti-government platitudes and did not offer anywhere near enough of an alternative vision for how to chart a course out of this crisis. But the content was not its biggest problem, the delivery
Gene Healy, author of The Cult of the Presidency (highly recommended, incidentally), resurrects one of my favourite Never-Gonna-Happen-Ploys: the President should make fewer speeches and deliver the State of the Union address in writing, not in person: The “permanent campaign” that dominates modern presidential politics would have appalled our forefathers. Accepting the 1844 Democratic nomination,
Ok, so I have a bit of a fascination with space and space travel, which I manfully try not to inflict on CoffeeHousers. But indulge me just this once, as this image taken by the European Southern Observatory – and reported by the Telegraph here – is too stunning not to share. For obvious reasons,
There’s a fascinating table in today’s FT, taken from the new study Towards a more Equal Society (ed. John Hills, Tom Sefton and Kitty Stewart), which I’ve reproduced below. It shows how people’s attitudes have hardened towards welfare over the past couple of decades: I suspect the recession has caused attitudes to harden even
Chris Grayling’s first major speech this week as Shadow Home Secretary has largely been written up as the latest blueprint of powers for ‘cracking down’ on hoodies. But there’s another issue at stake here: a future Conservative Government will likely inherit a public purse that’s pretty much empty which means Grayling will have responsibility to
The speeches by Gordon Brown, William Hague and Vince Cable in the Commons just now were moving proof that there are times when Westminster can set party politics to one side. Watching it one couldn’t help but reflect on how many of our national leaders’ lives have been touched by tragedy. Brown and Cameron have
Following the tragic death of Ivan Cameron, PMQs has been cancelled today. Instead, Gordon Brown, William Hague and Vince Cable will make brief statements at 1200. You can watch them here.
Today’s splash in The Independent about British citizens attacking the British military in Afghanistan is yet another reminder of the challenges we as a county face from Islamic extremism. The fact that these people choose to fight with the Taliban, proponents of the most repressive form of Islam, against the military of their liberal democratic
Here’s complete footage of Obama’s first speech to a joint session of Congress last night (you can read a full transcript here). Unsurprisingly, it’s economy-heavy and contains plenty of Reaganesque nods to the spirit of the American people, but it’s striking just how much Obama mentions getting the budget deficit down:
O to be a fly on the wall of the Brown Bunker, and watch the grim soap-opera unfold in real time. After the infamous Cabinet meeting over bankers’ bonuses – which triggered much of the Harriet Harman speculation – the Daily Mail’s reporting yet another angry meeting between Brown and his ministers, this time over
Thanks for your suggestions on what to ask Lord Lawson, who will be the first ‘expert witness’ on our wiki-inquiry into the recession. The premise behind this whole exercise is that we can, with the internet, harness your collective wisdom – and take this inquiry in directions it couldn’t go on its own (or if
It is a great pleasure to say that Lord Lawson of Blaby will be our first ‘expert witness’ for The Spectator’s wiki-inquiry into the recession. As a former Chancellor and editor of the magazine, it’s a tremendous way to start and we’d like your thoughts on what to ask him. Our inquiry is not intended
I’m still recovering from Lord Mandelson’s deeply peculiar behaviour during his interview with Nick Robinson on the Ten O’Clock News. He was talking perfectly calmly (too calmly) about the row over his plans to sell of 30 per cent of the Post Office. Nick Robinson made the perfectly valid and uncontroverisal point that it may seem
Last week I noted that if Labour returned to opposition, the Parliamentary Labour Party would elect the shadow Cabinet. Politics Home has now asked their panel of Westminster experts who they think will be voted in–and out–by the PLP. The results, which they’ve kindly advanced to me, make for interesting reading. The majority of the
Tonight President Obama addresses a join session of Congress in a televised, prime-time address. It will be in style, if not title, just like a State of the Union speech. So expect special guests—notably Captain Sullenberger who landed that plane in the Hudson, lots of glad-handing as Obama walks to the Speaker’s chair and wave
With all the subtlety of a bludgeon, Liam Byrne goes on the attack against those warning about the hole in our public finances. His primary target is Iain Martin’s column last week, but he also takes aim at Malcolm Offord’s recent report claiming that £100 billion of public spending cuts may be needed by 2020 to
David Frum gets it: A federal bank takeover is a bad thing obviously. I wonder though if we conservatives understand clearly enough why it is a bad thing. It’s not because we are living through an enactment of the early chapters of Atlas Shrugged. It’s because the banks are collapsing. Obama, Pelosi, et al are
I must admit to being rather fascinated by the details about the lives of the fraudsters who are being caught out now that the financial tide has gone out. New York Magazine has a set of pieces on Bernie Madoff this week that not only suggest he was slightly relieved to be caught—when the FBI
From Stalin to Mr Bean back to Stalin again? Turns out that Gordon Brown’s new ‘Real Help Now’ website has already been airbrushed to delete references to action being taken by his political foes, in this case the SNP. Here’s how they report it: Efforts taken by the Scottish Government to help the economy through the recession
Today’s Guardian poll suggesting Labour would do better with someone other than Gordon at the helm is another blow to Brown. Realistically I can’t see Brown being replaced as Labour leader before the next election, there’s no stomach for the bloody struggle that it would take to prise Brown out of Downing Street and it
The Daily Mail has today picked up a scare story initially given (rather more nuanced) prominence by the Guardian’s ever-more influential Jackie Ashley. Speaking in a debate about social networking sites, Baroness Greenfield, Oxford neuroscientist and director of the Royal Institution, argued that the new digital technologies may actually be changing the brains of a