All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
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
It is 25 years since The Spectator first began to recognise our better politicians with the annual Parliamentarian of the Year Awards. The inaugural winner of our main prize, the Parliamentarian of the Year award itself, was David Owen. Since then, the roll call of victors has grown to include John Smith, Nigel Lawson, Robin
Next time you hear a Labour politician arguing that the markets are punishing Ireland despite its austerity drive (and therefore Britain should not rush to cut its own deficit) you might kindly point out that, because of the horrors at Anglo Irish and elsewhere, you can certainly argue that there hasn’t actually been an Irish
Has to be: Human foot found in Cleethorpes matches another in Holland. It gets stranger still: Humberside Police said a right foot found on Cleethorpes beach on August 11 belongs to a man reported missing from the South Yorkshire area in December 2008. A spokesman said: ”Humberside Police has also been liaising with the Netherlands
After Fern Britton’s triumph over Gordon Brown a couple of years ago, we should know that This Morning interviews can have a certain bite to them. But if you needed more convincing, then how about David Cameron’s appearance on the show this morning? Lurking behind all the talk of baby Florence and the Obamas, was
Those earnest, pale and dimpled young men who staff the Labour party need to watch their drinks: Ed Miliband’s ‘New Generation’ is a haven for a well-heeled cougar. Inspired by Lady Bercow of Easy Virtue, Harriet Harman closed the Labour conference with a soliloquy in lust. A cynic would say it was HRT talking,
Nick Boles’ Which Way’s Up? is gaining a quiet cult following in Westminster, and John Redwood has unearthed Boles’ radical approach to immigration. Boles dissents from the view that happiness in Sweden’s utopia rests on pay equality; he observes that it is a homogenous society that has controlled mass immigration. He writes: ‘We will not
Liam Fox is sombre rather than sombrero. A man to reckon with, you’d have thought – determined to fight dangerous cuts to Britain’s over-extended defence budget and an apostle of the Tory right. Which makes yesterday’s leak all the more extraordinary. The question is not who leaked this incendiary letter, but why Fox wrote it.
With the merry dance of shadow cabinet elections upon us, it’s a good time to look back on the last time Labour went through all this. There’s a useful list of all the results from the 1992 Parliament here, but here’s my summary of some of the more eyecatching outcomes: 1) Gordon Brown, from hero
Andrew Sullivan suggests my concerns about the Obama administration’s belief it need not justify the assassination of American citizens are overdone: [A] single American al Qaeda terrorist in a foreign country actively waging war against us seems to me to be a pretty isolated example. And Obama always said he would fight a war against
There we have it, David Miliband has announced that he is standing down from frontline politics. In his statement just now, he fluted all the anticipated notes. “The party needs a fresh start from its new leader,” he started, before adding that, “I genuinely fear perpetual, distracting and destructive attempts to find division where none
Thursday is an important day for Ireland and, in the end, another reminder that Ireland’s economic woes and the measures taken to alleviate them don’t offer much of an example for other countries or their governments. The Irish government is going to have to announce its plan for bailing out (or not) Anglo Irish Bank’s
David Miliband’s logic is difficult to fault. If he stayed, he would be treated as the torch bearer for those disgruntled Labour members who feel they were robbed. Without him, such people have no one to turn to. New Labour will now dissolve. ‘Progress’ – supposedly for the next generation of Blairites – held their
Predictably, commenters criticised with my aversion to the Obama administration’s view that not only may it declare any American citizen an enemy combatant anywhere in the world but that it may also assassinate that American without having to give any grounds for doing so. Predictably, I say, because one thing we’ve learned, or been reminded
The list for the shadow Cabinet elections shows that no David Miliband supporter who was going to stand for the shadow Cabinet has decided not to run following Ed Miliband’s victory. It’ll be intriguing to see what the party balance of the shadow Cabinet is following these elections. There is an expectation that Yvette Cooper
Perhaps ‘Red’ Ed deserves his moniker for the backing he received from Labour’s Unions but, whatever the reality of his supporters, I am struck by the similarities between the language and instincts of the two Miliband brothers. So here, very quickly is a comparison of the themes in Ed’s first speech as leader and David’s