All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Open any mass-circulation newspaper and you will find plenty of insider’s information about the Tory party. But precious little is known about their coalition partners, the Liberal Democrats. After decades in the political wilderness, most editors reasoned that it wasn’t really worth their while finding out what the party thought. After all, what difference did
The cold war in Britain’s localities is warming up. Buried in the Telegraph and the Financial Times is the news that councils are cutting local bus services, and central government is being apportioned blame. An organisation called Better Transport has launched a campaign titled Save Our Buses. It claims that straitened councils have been forced
Did you know: Britain trails well behind other countries such as the US, Germany and Poland when it comes to educating its workforce? Did you know: the number of young people not in employment, education or training has risen by around 40 per cent over the last decade? Did you know … oh, you get
You know, when you see that Neil Clark has written a piece for the Guardian arguing that, from his perspective, this government is even worse than Margaret Thatcher’s you might expect to be entertained but you don’t anticipate him making sense. But, lo, here he is: […] Clegg, and his fellow Orange Book Liberals, are
I don’t have much sympathy for a regime that unleashes its own goons against peaceful protestors in an attempt to foment chaos as part of a strategy designed, one imagines, to leave the “silent majority” craving something, anything that restores order and “stability” to Egyptian society. But it seems that’s just another example of political
Michael Lewis’s Vanity Fair piece on the Irish collapse is less entertaining than his trips to Greece and Iceland. Perhaps that’s because it’s closer to home. It’s still good, however, and worth your time even if much of it will be familiar. On the other hand, this passage is worth a raised eyebrow or two:
David Frum is doing a great series on the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission report. The report is, obviously, US-centric but its argument that the problem was not with the regulation but the regulators strikes me as highly important: “[W]e do not accept the view that regulators lacked the power to protect the financial system. They
Egypt has made al-Jazeera English. The Qatari satellite channel has been the “go-to” channel; it has had more reporters on the ground than the BBC and CNN; and it has used technology in ways that make Western media look like they belong to a different era. Newspapers from the New York Times to the Wall
Councils are in the dog house again, following the publication of a report claiming that £7bn is wasted through ineffective land and building use. Chairman of the report, Matthew Hancock MP, and Vice-Chairman of the Local Government Association Richard Kemp debated the issue on Today and they revealed why the revolution in local government has
Downing Street have announced that the BBC’s Craig Oliver will be Andy Coulson’s replacement. Oliver, who has been editor of both the Six and Ten o’clock news, will bring a broadcasting perspective to Downing Street. Former BBC colleagues stress that he knows how to tell a story in pictures and, in contrast, to Coulson is
One yawn every minute. That’s how PMQs felt today. Foreign affairs dominated the session as Ed Miliband and the Prime Minister exchanged lofty words about the Cairo demonstrations and the spread of democracy around the world. Doubtless they felt they struck a suitably elevated tone but to the viewers they came across as a pair
An exciting day for policy freaks and numbers geeks: the Institute for Fiscal Studies has released its latest Green Budget, an annual survey of the state of the public finances. But if you can’t face wading through the complete 329-page document, here’s our quick ten-point summary of its main conclusions: 1) IFS forecasts “slightly lower”
A very different PMQs this week: six questions on foreign affairs and almost total consensus between Cameron and Miliband. Miliband’s office had given No 10 advance warning of the topics they wanted to raise and the two agreed on pretty much everything. Miliband argued that ‘the best route to stability is through democracy.’ Cameron agreed
VERDICT: What a refreshing change that was. After several weeks of Punch ‘n’ Judy rivalry, the two party leaders finally put down their batons and stumbled upon a new way to do it. Much of the credit must go to Ed Miliband, for asking pacific questions about Egypt and Afghanistan in the first place. But
From the start of the financial crisis, the Conservatives have argued that when a country¹s finances are in a mess, the best way to manage demand is through monetary activism and fiscal responsibility. Going into this crisis, Britain¹s finances were indeed in a mess. We had the biggest structural deficit among major developed economies (according
Israel is in a right state over Egypt’s incipient revolution. Israeli politicians talk openly about the threat from an Islamist takeover, the greatness of Hosni Mubarak, and have even taken to sneer at the West’s hopefulness. Now that President Mubarak has announced he will leave, the Israeli leadership will be looking on in horror. They
The wires are buzzing with uncomfirmed report that Mubarak will tonight say on Egyptian TV that he won’t run for re-election in August and will stand down then. Update: The New York Times is now reporting that President Obama has pushed Mubarak to say publicly that he won’t run again. The end game appears to be
Alastair Beach is on the ground in Cairo. Here is his report for Coffee House: As the imam rounded off his midday Friday sermon, the ring of more than three hundred riot police encircled the worshippers. It was no ordinary congregation. A stellar assortment of Egyptian directors, actors and political bigwigs were assembled in an
As several seemingly permanent Middle Eastern autocracies tremble, Colonel Gadaffi’s Libya rolls on. So far, there have been reports of minor protests in the localities about housing shortages, nothing more. With unemployment standing at 30 percent, the Libyan people are just as impoverished as those in neighbouring Tunisia and Egypt. Gadaffi’s dictatorship is scarcely benevolent,
It will have been a quiet morning in the Balls household. Fresh economic indicators suggest that the British economy is not in some cuts-induced recession but, instead, doing rather nicely, thank-you. As I said last week, economic health is assessed by all manner of indices – and the ONS (which is forever having to tear
The Middle East is being rocked to its authoritarian core, as pro-democracy protesters defy Hosni Mubarak’s regime for the eighth day in a row. They want an end to his 31-year-rule and, to judge by their continued defiance, are unlikely to accept anything else than his departure. The events, however, have placed European governments in
Yesterday’s polls may seem like yesterday’s news – but it’s actually worth returning to YouGov’s effort from, erm, yesterday. It contained some distinctive questions, and results, all set around the left-right spectrum. How left wing is the Labour party? How right wing is David Cameron? That sort of thing. Of course, as Anthony Wells has
No doubt about it, George Osborne is being pulled in two directions ahead of the Budget. There are those, such as the Lib Dems, who would have him reduce taxes for the least well-off. There are those, such as Boris, who would have him reduce taxes for higher earners. As I suggested yesterday, this debate
Crime maps have formally reached England and Wales. The Home Office has unveiled www.police.uk and citizens can examine incidences and trends of crime in their local area. Naturally, the website is broken at the moment. Nick Herbert, the Policing Minister, told the Today programme that the site crashed under the weight of 4 million users
These two posts by Melanie Phillips on the situation in Egypt are very useful. Clarifying, even. They merit a response not because it’s Melanie and she’s a neighbour but because she publishes a view that’s more widely held than you might think if you only consulted the broadsheets and the BBC. It may, I think,
Perhaps Glenn Beck can ask this girl, interviewed in Tahrir Square, if she is just a stooge of the Muslim Brotherhood. Perhaps the “Realists” can ask her that too. Hopey-changey bullshit? Well, maybe. Perhaps the young and the liberal and the educated will receive a desperate, chilling awakening. But this is not set in stone.
Even by our good friend Mr Beck’s standards this is an impressive, virtuoso display. Twelve minutes out of your day but worth it, I promise you. Pick your own favourite moment. I’m torn between his wondering if Russia might invade western europe (perhaps Putin could run Belgium?) and his suggestion that protests in the UK
I don’t know who is editing the BBC’s PM programme these days – I’ve lost touch with my old corporation mates – but whoever it was deserves a word of praise for the manner in which the show covered the death of the composer John Barry. A long montage of the man’s most gilded, and
If the AV referendum is to take place on the 5th of May, the legislation paving the way for it needs to have passed by the 16th of February. But this bill is currently being held up in the Lords where Labour peers are objecting to the ‘Tory part’ of the bill which reduces the
One of the most wonderful of many wonderful aspects of the anti-totalitarian uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt is that they have nailed the myth that Islamism represents the “authentic” voice of the Arab street. This was always a pernicious nonsense and the diversity of those demonstrating across the Maghreb and Egypt has been one of
As Cairo smoulders, it’s easy to forget about one of the most combustible ingredients in the Middle Eastern cocktail – Iran. Yet the threat still exists, as Tony Blair and Liam Fox have been keen to remind us. James Kirkup reports that the Defence Secretary has warned a Commons committee that Iran could have a
This has been rumoured for some time but it still doesn’t make any sense: Jon Huntsman, former Governor of Utah and currently US Ambassador to Beijing, is preparing to run for the GOP’s presidential nomination. Maybe. Politico has the latest on this madness. Madness? Well it’s certainly rum. If you think Mitt Romney is going
At last we have it: a defence of the coalition’s NHS reforms that is worthy of the name. It came courtesy of David Cameron, speaking on BBC Breakfast earlier, and you can watch it in the video above. Suffice to say, the Prime Minister dwelt on the endemic waste and excessive bureaucracy of the current
The year before I was born fewer than one in three countries in the world could be considered properly free. Today, according to Freedom House, nearly one in two can be classified as free. Despite the grinding stupidity and tedious witlessness that so often dominates our domestic politics we should remember that this is a