All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Further to Deroy Murdock’s post on Marco Rubio, here’s his acceptance speech. The guy’s a natural. Sure, the hymn to American exceptionalism is much less true now than it was in the past but that’s not the point and nor is it a problem that the anti-Washington stuff is merely well-expressed boilerplate. The thing is:
The Entente Cordial Redux has generated a lot of commentary, most of it ill-informed, some of it ridiculous. Tory MP Bernard Jenkin, in particular, has singled himself out to be a perpetuator of stereotypes with his reference to the duplicitous nature of the French. But many historians, like the otherwise brilliant Orlando Figes, have not
The Tory party’s acceptance of a 2.9 percent increase in the EU budget has persuaded Steve Richards that ‘Europe has ceased to be a toxic issue in British politics.’ As Steve acknowledges, this is in part because the Euro-sceptics have won the argument over the single currency. But it is also because the Tory parliamentary
Amid all the excitement of the US midterms, a small, local ballot took place which has important lessons for the UK’s referendum on the Alternative Vote – due to take place six months on Friday. Like us, America uses the straightforward first-past-the-post voting system for its thousands of elected offices – from local school boards
Alan Johnson has been more comic than cutting during his spell as shadow chancellor. It’s not so much that he’s doing a bad job, but rather that he’s taken a singular approach to the biggest political issue of the day. Where Labour MPs have wanted moral outrage, he has delivered easy quips. Where the public
Yesterday, Nick Robinson set out why the past week may count as David Cameron’s worst in office so far. It’s not a great news day for the Prime Minister today, either. First up is a new report from the Commons public accounts committee. Its headline finding relates to the last government, but has stark implications
It’s pretty unusual for classical pianists to sign a six-album deal with non-classical record labels like Warner Bros – but James Rhodes is pretty unusual. He is one of Britain’s fastest-emerging musical talents, but is not churned out of an elite music college with years of classical training. His story, which he tells in this
The latest edition of The Spectator is now out on iPad (click here for more info) and the newsagents (or £2, posted direct today). I thought CoffeeHousers may be interested in a small selection of the goodies we have in store. 1. Andrew Neil on the conservative comeback in America. He spent the summer
Policy Exchange’s work on Islamism has been some of the most important undertaken by a think-tank in recent years. It has influenced and bolstered the thinking of brave politicians in both the last government and the current one. That’s why it is so important that Policy Exchange came off best in the libel case brought
Of all the good news that the American Right is savouring at the moment, Marco Rubio’s victory must be near the top. Rubio won 49 percent of Florida’s vote, defeating Democratic Congressman Kendrick Meek (20 percent) and (at 30 percent) Governor Charlie Crist, a frightfully ambitious former Republican, turned independent, who reportedly flirted with joining
Fox and the other networks have consulted the augurs and declared the signs good for the Republican party. Projections – as at 2am – suggest the GOP will pick up around 60 seats in the House of Representatives. That’s roughly in the middle of most of the best pre-election predictions. And it’s a very big
That’s not me subscribing to the Cult of the Presidency, it’s incoming Speaker of the House of Representatives, John Boehner who says: “While our new majority will serve as your voice in the people’s House, we must remember it’s the president who sets the agenda for our government.” I guess all that stuff about respecting
The backlash that Barack Obama is now experiencing seemed almost impossible when the neophyte senator swept into the White House. It was, in fact, predicted by some. In 2007 when Barack Obama was but an ambitious Illinois senator, American defence expert Kori Shake penned an essay called the Coming Crisis of High Expectations. It was
The Democrats have lost control of the House of Representatives. The Republican party looks to have picked up more than 60 seats in the lower house, slightly more than they were expected to, and they will have a comfortable majority there. The Democrats have lost six seats in the Senate but held onto their majority
It is early in the night but things are looking good for the Republicans. Marco Rubio, the Cuban-American son of a bartender, has won his Senate race in Florida at a canter and confirmed his status as a rising star in the party. Rand Paul, a committed libertarian, has won in Kentucky. While it looks
David Willetts and Vince Cable deserve huge credit for coming up with an impressive agreement on higher education funding that both the Tory and Liberal Democrat leaderships can live with. They have taken the coalition beyond the coalition agreement and shown that it can make sound policy on even the thorniest of political issues. But
Compare and contrast and be reminded, yet again, that the United Kingdom and the United States play by different rules. During his press conference this afternoon – on which more later – Barack Obama took great care to reiterate his opposition to tax increases for “middle-class” Americans (ie, those earning under $200,000 a year). Increasing
One of the biggest challenges facing the post-Iraq generation of foreign policy decision-makers, like William Hague and Hillary Clinton, is to balance the pursuit of overseas stability with promotion of the dynamic and sometimes de-stabilising forces that build countries’ long-term stability and make economic and political progress possible. This may sound like an academic question
“Remember, our government paid down the debt before the crisis hit.” That’s what Ed Miliband said in a speech last Friday, and I took exception to it at the time. My point was, admittedly, quite blunt: how could the Labour leader make such a claim when debt was around £500 billion in 2006, and rising?
Neither Ed Miliband nor David Cameron had a good PMQs. Cameron let his irritation at questions about the appointment of his campaign photographer to a civil service post show. It was also a bit rich for him to criticise a Labour MP for asking a question scripted by the whips when Tory MPs ask patsy
VERDICT: Perhaps the snappiest exchange between Cameron and Miliband so far, with both men on combative form. Miliband’s charge was that, from tuition fees to child benefit, the coalition is breaking promises that it made before the election. And Cameron’s counter was that he has had to take tough action to deal with the mess
Hysteria has lapsed into disaffection: it was a bleak night for President Obama. But, despite the apparent immediacy of a ‘conservative moment’, there is caution in Republican circles this morning: both Clinton and Reagan won from similar positions in 1982 and 1994. The G.O.P’s leadership knows that elections are not won from the extremes, as
Most sensible taxpayers think Britain’s current housing benefit costs to be a terrific scam. In the last five years the bill has risen by 25 percent. We now pay £21billion each year, a good chunk of which flows private landlords turning a healthy profit from the state’s responsibility to the poor. We all know by
Miliband’s in a mess. He makes it far too easy for Cameron to portray him as a hypocritical opportunist who sidles up to PMQs every week with lame soundbites and incoherent policies. How come? Perhaps because he sidles up to PMQs every week with lame soundbites and incoherent policies. Today he tried to unsettle the
Away from the mid-terms, we have the little issue of tuition fees. David Willetts will today set out the government’s response to the Browne Review, and it’s expected to look something like this: a £9,000 cap on fees, but universities will have to show that they are making extra provisions for poorer students if they
Yesterday saw an outbreak of Yeminitis, with Westminster focused on Osama Bin Laden’s ancestral home after the foiled bomb plot. To CoffeeHouse readers, this will come as no surprise. Last year, the Spectator prophesised that Yemen would be the “sleeper issue” of 2010. And so it has proved. But what have successive British governments been
2008 was an unusual election: even more than in 2004 there were decent grounds for libertarians and libertarian-minded people to vote for the Dmocratic candidate. Quite a few, including a good number of my friends, did so. Reason catches up with some of them here, asking if they regret* that vote. For the most part:
Tomorrow’s announcement on university funding is a big moment for the coalition. It will show that the Conservative and Liberal Democrat leaderships have been able to come to agreement on a subject where they thought the differences were insurmountable just five months ago when they negotiated the coalition agreement. Indeed, in their months together in
It was unlikely that the Coalition could have played for any more time before lifting the ban on prisoner voting. That was the tactic played by the previous Government, but now it seems the will of Strasbourg will prevail. But the policy is wildly out of step with public opinion, hard to justify and difficult
Today is one of those days when you can’t walk around the Palace of Westminster without bumping into a Tory with a grumble about the coalition’s polices. First of all, there’s massive irritation that the government has been forced into agreeing that prisoners should have the right to vote. It has revived Tory concerns about
… defending his decision to commission two aircraftless carriers. Hat-tip: Guido
Tuesday is mid-term day and the only thing left is to measure the height of the Republican wave that’s about to swamp Democrats. This is the third “change” election in a row (which itself might be something that should trouble the White House as it looks to 2012) and one that, in the end, can’t
Fairness has become an important theme in contemporary politics and not just because the electorate – especially the Baby Boomers – are fond of complaining that “it’s not fair”. It doesn’t matter much what that something is or where the complaining is being done: fairness, or the perception of fairness is a thread connecting Washington