All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Writing at Big Questions Online Brian Kaller, an American now living in Kildare, claims that Ireland and the Irish are better-placed to survive the Age of Austerity than their American cousins. Though he’s careful to acknowledge that the boom years swept away much that was rotten and repressive in Ireland the piece ends up as
The Judean Desert, above Jericho. So, Israel was interesting. Lots more on that in the coming days. Not the least pleasure of spending a week abroad was missing George Osborne’s Spending Review and, indeed, barely keeping up with the news at all. I won’t claim that tootling around Israel and the West Bank produced any
The Tory MP for Harlow, Rob Halfon, has secured an historic backbench business debate tomorrow on privacy and the internet. In my opinion, this subject is of vital importance to our public life. I attended the Backbench Business Committee with Rob as a witness to secure the debate, and invasions of privacy online are of
Russia and Nato are now allies, or birds of a feather at least. The Independent reports that the twentieth century’s opposed spheres will work together for stability in Afghanistan. The attendant irony is blissful. Two years ago, machismo raged between Nato and Russia over Georgia. Why the sudden accord? There are two schools of thought,
Weak again. For the second session in a row Miliband was feeble at PMQs. He opened in his quiet-assassin mode with a quickie question. ‘There are reports that the government is planning changes to housing benefit reforms. Are they?’ Clearly he meant to wrong-foot Cameron by tempting him into admission which could be instantly disproved.
The f word, fairness, got another outing today at PMQs as David Cameron attempted to defend the coalition’s proposed housing benefit changes from attack by Ed Miliband. Cameron’s argument was that it isn’t fair for people to be subsiding people on housing benefit to live in houses that they couldn’t afford to live in themselves.
It says a lot about the Lib Dems that a meeting between their party leader and deputy leader can throw up so many policy differences. When Nick Clegg and Simon Hughes chatted behind closed doors yesterday, the latter sought concessions over the coalition’s housing benefit cuts – the cuts that Clegg then had to defend
VERDICT: The housing benefit cuts inspired Ed Miliband’s chosen attack – and he deployed it quite effectively, with none of the unclarity that we saw last week. For the most part, though, Cameron stood firm – leaning on his favourite rhetorical stick, What Would Labour Do? – and his final flurry against Ed Miliband was
Labour have sprung a leak, and it’s furnishing the Times with some high-grade copy. Yesterday, the paper got their hands on an internal party memo about economic policy. Today, it’s one on how Ed Miliband should deal with PMQs (£). With this week’s bout only an hour-and-a-half away, here are some of the key snippets:
The Fire Brigade’s Union (FBU) have called for strike action in London during the busiest firefighting night of the year: Bonfire Night. Attempts to renegotiate work patterns (already changed in several fire brigades but unchanged in London for thirty years) have been hysterically termed ‘sacking’ all London firefighters by the union. Rather like the threatened
Labour’s spin is less dexterous now that Alistair Campbell and Peter Mandelson have passed into night; but it can still artfully disguise politics as principle. Douglas Alexander is at in the Guardian, fanning the dull embers of George Osborne and IDS’ summer spat. He renews the offer of cross-party dialogue that he made on Andrew
Free schools are all well and good – but what about the schools that remain? Some CoffeeHousers raise this question in response to my earlier blog, and it’s important enough to deserve a post in itself. Because introducing new schools to compete with council schools is the best way of raising standards for all –
Third time’s the charm? Not when it comes it Deputy Prime Minister’s Questions it’s not. Nick Clegg put in an effective performance this afternoon, but – just like the previous two sessions – there was rather more heat generated than light. So far as Labour are concerned, this monthly Q&A is little more than an
David Cameron’s cuts agenda is winning him some unusual praise from the American hard Right — from the sort of people the British political class considers beyond the pale. For instance, Pat Buchanan, the former presidential candidate and hardliner extraordinaire, is so impressed by Britain’s austerity measures that he has affectionately labelled Cameron the ‘Tea
Perhaps, the most important thing about the 0.8 percent growth figure for the third quarter announced this morning is that all but 0.1 percent of it came from the private sector. The strength of the private sector in this quarter suggests that the coalition is right to think that the private sector can more than
The police are more Thin Blue Line than The Sweeney. Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary has found that 15 of 22 police authorities perform ‘adequately’, which is defined as meeting ‘most of the minimum requirements of the specified role…they were most effective at dealing with local short-term policing priorities’. More worrying, with forces facing 20
The growth figures for the third quarter of the year have just been released, and it’s better than we thought: 0.8 percent, twice the 0.4 percent figure that was expected, but down on the 1.2 percent achieved in the spring. In any case, it should play well for Osborne & Co. We’ve just witnessed the
At last, The Guardian is reporting the grassroots rebellion in education. It has picked up on the story of Fiona Murphy who blogged on Coffee House yesterday about her trouble with the Tory-run council in Bromley. But hang on… the “grassroots revolt” of which the Guardian speaks is the councils, trying to protect their monopoly
We are about to find out how many coalition MPs are lobby fodder. In half-an-hour or so, the House of Commons is going to vote on whether any reduction in the number of MPs should be matched by an equivalent reduction in the number of ministers. If this measure is defeated, the power of the
In The Guardian today, David Laws argues for increasing funding for the pupil premium to £5 billion in the next parliament. But, revealingly, rather than talking about achieving this through the Liberal Democrat manifesto, Laws want to secure the increase this side of the next election and so writes about how it relies on persuading
A luminous streak of self-aggrandisement in Vince Cable’s speech to the CBI this afternoon, which began thus: “I should acknowledge that that the CBI has been remarkably far sighted; Digby Jones first invited me to speak to you eight years ago, the first Lib Dem asked to do so. I recall some members wondering ‘Vince
David Cameron’s first battle with the EU opens on Thursday. Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy hope to introduce a treaty that will deliver tough sanctions on eurozone members that break budget guidelines. Their success rests on David Cameron’s support. Europe is built on quid pro quos, so Cameron will ensure that the new treaty does
An opportunity to compare-and-contrast David Cameron and Ed Miliband outside the sweaty heat of PMQs, with both party leaders delivering speeches to the CBI this morning. Given the audience, both majored on business, enterprise, and all that – and it meant there was plenty of overlap on areas such as green technology and broadband. There
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
For the parents where I live who are campaigning for a better local school, the Spectator’s expose on ‘the secret war over England’s schools‘ – with its description of how groups like the National Union of Teachers are attempting to stymie Michael Gove’s plans for making education better – was familiar territory. The only difference
…here are some of the posts made at Spectator.co.uk over the weekend. Fraser Nelson reveals that rising living costs will be far deadlier than the cuts, and introduces George Osborne – the Paul Daniels of the political world. James Forsyth says that the Liberal Democrats have been changed forever by the past week, and thinks
Since last week’s Spending Review – and even before – the government has been operating in a toxic news environment. I mean, just consider the three main news stories that have surrounded the cuts. First, the 500,000 public sector job losses. Then, the IFS report and that single, persistent word: “regressive”. And today – on
May 2015 is an age away in political terms. But the question of what happens to the coalition after the next election is too politically interesting to be able to resist speculating on; even if this speculation is almost certainly going to be overtaken by events. Over at ConservativeHome, Paul Goodman asks if Cameron and
A hoary old foreign correspondent once advised me on how to report on a new country when parachuted in during a crisis. I was about to be sent to Russia to cover the rouble collapse, when it looked like the whole country was about to implode. I was more than a little nervous. “When you write your
Is George Osborne the first British Chancellor to hide good news in the small print? I ask this in my News of the World column (£) today, and ask what he’s up to. Listening to Nick Clegg on Marr this morning, even he can’t quite say that the same forecasts that predict 500,000 public sector
The saxophone, the bass, the piano … but what about the drums? In this playlist, I try to trace the role of drums in the history of jazz. From the ‘oompah oomph’ of the bass drum, to ‘pea soup pea-soup’ of the hi-hat, hopefully this selection covers the lot: ‘Heebie Jeebies’ – Louis Armstrong’s Hot
Plenty of attention for Nick Clegg’s listening, reading and smoking habits this morning, as well as his appearance on the Andrew Marr show. But it is another of Marr’s guests who has made perhaps the most important intervention of the day: the shadow work and pensions secretary, Douglas Alexander. Here’s how the Beeb website reports
As Benedict Brogan observes, the government’s renewed emphasis upon growth is hardly deafening – but it is certainly echoing through this morning’s newspaper coverage. Exhibit A is the Sunday Telegraph, which carries an article by David Cameron and an interview with Vince Cable – both of which sound all the same notes about enterprise, infrastructure,
It’s very telling that, in a debate earlier this week, Christine O’Donnell seemed not to know that the separation of church was in the Constitution. The wider point is that the religious right, which underlies the Tea Party movement (as a recent study shows), is built on a skewed version of American history. It depends