All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
George Osborne had been expected to subject child benefits to tax. Instead he is to abolish them entirely for higher-rate taxpayers. I’ve spent this morning talking to friends, whose judgment I respect, who are furious about Cameron hitting the squeezed middle. I cannot agree, and here’s why. We are not talking about the “squeezed middle”
…here are some of the posts made at Spectator.co.uk over the weekend. Fraser Nelson says Cameron will seek to de-Toryfy the Tory conference, and praises the coalition’s welfare reform. James Forsyth wonders how many Lib Dems are to the right of their Tory colleagues, and speculates that Ken Clarke is in the firing line. Peter
I am travelling to Conservative Party conference in Birmingham today and thought this would be a good time to return to this blog. Thanks to everyone for your thoughtful comments in my absence. As ever, I will try to respond where I can. I should be up to full speed during the week. Meanwhile, I
Rewind the tape to last year’s Tory conference, and David Cameron was assuring us that, “It will be a steep climb. But the view from the summit will be worth it.” Today, it falls to George Osborne to tell us more about both the arduousness off the ascent and the beauty of that view –
Blimey. Here’s a turn-up for the books: in a bid to avoid being thought Europe’s Most Useless Political Party the Scottish Conservative and Unionist party has done something sensible. They have decided that running an election campaign with the unofficial slogan Vote for Us, We’re Only Interested in Opposition is a dumb idea. Hence, as
I suppose the labour movement should be very happy that the Tolpuddle Martyrs were not led by BBC newsreaders. This week’s strike has been called off following the intervention of extremely high paid corporation stars such as Fiona Bruce and Huw Edwards urging their badly paid colleagues not to down tools. They were worried that
When Sir Alan Budd was head of the Office for Budget Responsibility, there was an insistent argument in opposition circles that the independent body was biased in favour of the coalition. Much of this cented around the OBR’s growth predictions. How on Earth, came the question, can growth hit 2.3 percent next year and 2.8
Has somebody stolen the Tory Party? A stranger walking around here would have no idea that its their conference. The word “Conservative” or “Tory” is nowhere to be seen. Just a slogan, “Together in the national interest” – a form of words that Cameron has repeatedly used to describe the coalition. As I say in
Call it a professional hunch, but I suspect the Tories won’t be too pleased that this Guardian story has come out on the first day of their conference. It’s about Andy Coulson – and, much like the revelations in the New York Times Magazine last month, features one of his former colleagues alleging that Coulson
There’s an intriguing pre-conference story in the Mail on Sunday today. The paper reports that: “Ken Clarke faces a whispering campaign by allies of David Cameron and George Osborne to move him from Justice Minister because of his ‘disastrous’ views on law and order, it was claimed last night. Conservative MPs say Mr Cameron and
I have found out a little more about the Universal Credit – and how the arguments over the summer were resolved. First, the backdrop. Money was always going to be a problem. This policy is about saving lives, not money. Right now, we pave the road to welfare dependency, creating a vacuum in the labour
It’s that time of year again: Conservative Party conference. And with it comes wall-to-wall David Cameron. Our PM has a couple of interviews in the newspapers today and, to accompany them, he slotted in an appearance on the Marr show earlier. In all three, he hops neatly across the all same lily pads – spending
Cameron and Osborne may just be about to pull off something incredible. This time last year, The Spectator ran a cover story about a new proposal which we could revolutionise welfare: the Universal Credit. It was an IDS idea: he’d sweep away all 50-odd benefits, and replace it with a system that ran on a
I’ve re-read it several times now and I’m still not sure whether Francis Maude was joking or not when he told The Times that Danny Alexander ‘is obviously a bit to the right of me’. It is the kind of thing that the dry-witted Maude might say as a joke. But equally there’s no signal
Ed Balls is adept at opposition – making a case throughout the recent leadership hustings for immigration controls that he knows are unworkable in practice. Mike Smithson reports than a senior Lib Dem thinks Ed Balls would be an ideal opponent for Liam Fox, the man to exploit the coalition’s most obvious weakness. It’s a
What’s at the heart of the row over defence funding? George Osborne hinted at it today when he told the Telegraph that “frankly, of all the budgets I have seen, the defence budget was the one that was the most chaotic, the most disorganised, the most overcommitted”. The problem is that during the Labour years, various accounting
Bob Woodwood could write a cookbook and it would be a bestseller, but Obama’s Wars, his latest book, will wreak quiet havoc beyond bookshops because Afghanistan already lours over Obama’s presidency. 9 years into the conflict and the limits of victory have been re-defined in the Taliban’s favour. The spat between the White Hosue and
I’ve already mentioned George Osborne’s interview with the Telegraph, but it certainly merits another. As Ben Brogan says, Osborne is in a rich vein of ‘election that never was’ form. As befits the inveterate schemer, Osborne’s tactical grasp is impressive. He is quietly vociferous about Labour’s ‘historic mistake’ in electing Ed Miliband. Revealing senior Tories’
The bravest person in my school days was the only chap who, aged 16, told the rest of our boys-only (at that time) school that he was gay. It took some guts to be the only openly-gay boy at a rural boarding-school at which being called faggot was akin to being handed the black spot.
The Tory conference in Birmingham is the last big political event before the cuts come. After the 20th, every time a senior Tory appears in public for the next few years they will be about why this or that is being cut. As the row over defence shows, these questions will come from right across
Tory on Tory is a brutal cock-fight when defence is concerned. After the leaking of Liam Fox’s now infamous letter and David Cameron’s measured retaliation, George Osborne has broken his silence. Making unspoken reference to the £38bn black hole in the MoD’s budget, Osborne tells this morning’s Telegraph that he was ‘not thrilled’ to learn
Long-time and recent readers alike will have noticed that I almost never write about climate-change or global warming or whatever you want to call it. That’s because I think it an unusually tedious subject about which I lack both the ability and the interest to either care or make an informed judgement. Like many people,
There are still conflicting reports, but Michael Crick and The Times intimate that a deal has been struck: IDS has beaten the recalcitrant Treasury over his £9bn universal benefit reform, with David Cameron’s express help. As Frank Field put it on Sky News, IDS’ plan is ‘good for the country, good for the taxpayer and
We all know that the state grew enormously under thirteen years of Labour government. The most obvious manifestation of this was public spending – an increase of 60 percent in real terms took Britain from having one of the lowest levels of government spending in the OECD in 2000 (36.6 percent of GDP) to having
Here are some of the posts made at Spectator.co.uk over the past week. Fraser Nelson sees the penny drop at the Labour conference, and is sure that Liam Fox did not leak that infamous letter. James Forsyth watches Ed Miliband produce the bare minimum, and notes that the IMF has upset Labour’s plans. Peter Hoskin
The warnings from Auntie’s leading hacks have been heeded – the strike has been cancelled. There is no done deal and the government is still in the union’s crosshairs: the strike has been delayed to the 19th and 20th October, the day of the comprehensive spending review, pending further consultation. All this raises a few
Forget Ed Miliband’s promise of ‘optimism’ – a mantra that became so repetitive it had me reaching for the Scotch and revolver. Philip Collins has delivered a far more cutting verdict on David Cameron’s obsession with austerity. He writes (£): ‘Conservatives such David Cameron are not philosophers. The question to ask of Mr Cameron is
Politics tends to ruin an evening in the pub. On Wednesday, I came across a friend who had been a card-carrying Lib Dem prior to the coalition’s formation. He confessed that he’d been impressed by Ed Miliband’s speech and had joined the Labour party. Several other Lib Dem supporters attending agreed that Ed Miliband is
Strange though it seems in hindsight, the Tory party was not uniformly enamoured with Mrs Thatcher in 1979. The Tories were in government, but doubts over her ability to confront a resurgent Labour party, her shaky presentational skills and the direction of her policy pervaded the 1979 conference. David Cameron goes to Birmingham this week
Vince Cable was on best behaviour at the European Parliament yesterday afternoon. The twinkle of opposition was back, and he assured his audience that they would not be receiving one of those dour Hibernian lectures of blesséd memory. He had come, he said, merely to explain the coalition’s government’s European business policy. Europe is
The election of a new Labour leader means that proper politics has resumed. David Cameron now knows who he needs to beat to win the next election. As I argue in the magazine this week (subscribers), if the Tories are to secure a majority in 2015, they’ll need to do better among those in households
I had expected Ed Miliband to do pretty well in the polls. He’s unknown, and voters haven’t had a chance to dislike him yet. That’s not an insult – familiarity breeds contempt in politics, and the public are normally quite quick to give a new guy the benefit of the doubt. Witness the Clegg bubble.
Amongst BBC political staff, there’s mounting concern about the plans for a strike during Tory conference. One of them said to me at Labour conference that they just didn’t know what to do, they had been put in an impossible position by the decision to call the strike on such politically important days. These journalists
Exactly as the headline says, really. Interviewed by Mehdi Hasan in this week’s New Statesman, Sayeeda Warsi claims that the Tories “lost” at least three seats in the election because of electoral fraud. The article observes: ‘This is the first time a senior minister has made such a blunt and specific allegation about the impact