All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Andrew Stuttaford says Alexei Kudrin is Finance Minister of the year but, surely, that understates matters? Russia’s finance minister has told people to smoke and drink more, explaining that higher consumption would help lift tax revenues for spending on social services. Speaking as the Russian government announces plan to raise duty on alcohol and cigarettes,
Larry Sabato’s latest forecast predicts that the Republican party could pick up as many as 47 seats in the House of Representatives this November. He also thinks they have an outside shot at retaking the Senate. This is the background to Conservative Cabbie’s post tweaking me for this blog’s previous – and many! – suggestions
Step forward the FT’s Jim Pickard: Some sceptics have often asked why Tony Blair was happy to help rid the world of some dictators and not others. The example most often cited is that of Robert Mugabe, who could have been deposed with even less effort than Saddam Hussein. Blair tries to justify the contradiction
Over at Liberal Conspiracy our old friend Sunny Hundal calls out Tony Blair: It was always obvious that Tony Blair hated the left. His recently published book said nothing new on that front. What’s staggering is how easily he dismisses even close Labour colleagues and ministers. […] What does it say about Tony Blair’s loyalty
News has just broken that three Lib Dem councilors in Cheshire have quit the party in protest at the government’s planned cuts. Now, councilors leave parties on a relatively regular basis and this news is hardly going to shake the foundations of the coalition. But Lib Dem discomfort, and the unbalancing effect it threatens to
Up until today, the Hague-Myers story was confined to scurrilous rumour on Guido’s blog and the occasional cautious article in the Telegraph or the Mail; the rest of the media were uninterested. But, as James notes, Hague’s two extraordinarily frank statements, particularly yesterday’s impassioned denial to ‘set the record straight’, have forced the issue into
Mr Blair’s former breathless lover will form the fully staffed Gordon and Sarah Brown Foundation, paid for by lucrative speaking engagements, which the Spectator revealed some weeks ago. He has accepted three pro-bono appointments – joining Queen Rania of Jordan’s Global Campaign for Education, working on a new programme to bring the internet to Africa
That the three Pakistani cricketers involved in the spot-fixing allegations have withdrawn from the rest of the tour means that the T20s and one day games will now definitely go ahead. If the accused had played, it would have been hard to see how the matches could have gone ahead and if they had, how
This so-called story is fast becoming an ideal case study for any student of politcs and the British press. Neither party comes out of it looking especially good. I’m sure James is correct: the press wins (or loses, if that’s how you view it) either way. If Hague ignores the innuendo then it’s fodder for
Honesty is an attractive though rare quality in a politician, and Alistair Darling’s self-awareness and morose delivery always grabs attention. Last night, the former chancellor told a conference of bankers that the 50 percent levy on bonuses over £25,000 was a failure. The FT reports him saying: ‘I think it will be a one-off thing
This week, for one week only, we are making this week’s magazine available to non-subscribers online, courtesy of Saab 95 Saloon. Click here to access the best written magazine in the English language, featuring Fraser Nelson’s and Bruce Anderson’s verdicts on the Blair memoirs, Ed Smith and Roger Alton on cricket’s latest betting scandal,
The Today Programme this morning demonstrated the problem with putting out an official statement on your private life: it makes the media feel that they have official sanction to discuss the matter. There were three separate discussions of Hague’s statement on the programme this morning. In a classic case of the BBC trying to both
That’s how Bruce Anderson sums up Tony Blair’s book in a caustic piece for the magazine. Here’s the whole review for the benefit of CoffeeHousers: ‘It is bizarre. As he often demonstrated in the House of Commons, Tony Blair knows how to use words. He could also have mobilised a team to help him write
The New York Times Magazine‘s article about phone hacking at the News of the World comes, it must be said, a little out of the blue. It’s over a year since the story last exercised printing presses in the UK – and a year, too, since David Cameron’s communications chief, Andy Coulson, was hauled in
I’m not sure why the New York Times Magazine thinks its readers will be interested in a long piece about the News of the World and its history of phone-hacking but I’m glad that the Times has published this article anyway. Among the most damaging allegations: the suggestion that, for various reasons, the police limited
Say what you like about Blair, but he is something of a political entrepreneur. He detects a gap in the market and fills it: he did with New Labour in the mid-1990s. And he detects a trend in the globalised world: a system where governments don’t matter so much and power is held by a
William Hague has just released this statement: “I feel it is necessary to issue this personal statement in response to press and internet speculation over the last ten days. Earlier this year a Sunday newspaper began questioning whether my marriage to Ffion was in trouble, and last week another media outlet asked whether there was
Michael Gove has announced that 32 schools will open as Academies at the start of the new term. More schools are set to open over the next academic year, but it is a disappointing figure. However, it could’ve been worse – I’ve heard rumours that as few as 10 schools would adopt Gove’s reforms. The
Not just a Prime Minister, not just a global statesman, in A Journey Tony Blair also demonstrates he knows how to treat a girl: CHERIE: “I DEVOURED HER LOVE” “…that night she cradled me in her arms and soothed me; told me what I needed to be told; strengthened me; made me feel that I
The ballot has opened and the Mirror has joined the mounting chorus in favour of David Miliband. They say of Miliband: ‘We believe he has the intellect, talent and experience to take on the Tories – and eventually become PM.’ Their timing is odd, given that Fleet Street and Westminster are currently captivated by Tony
In tomorrow’s papers the reviewers will compare ‘A Journey’ to those “real-life” misery memoirs that seem to be publishing catnip. It is not inaccurate to conclude that this is tale of one man’s struggle in an abusive relationship, and all the more unstatesmanlike for it. The tiny details of the relationship between TB and GB
There’s a remarkable self-certainty about what we’ve seen of Tony Blair’s book so far. Sure, there are the fleeting moments of doubt and insecurity: the drinking that was becoming less a pleasure and more a habit, for instance. But, apart from that, the dominant motif is how His Way was the Right Way. And so,
Even the literary critics have to wait until tomorrow for the Blair memoirs – but the book’s contents are slowing spilling out onto the Internet this evening. A series of extracts has just been published on the official website, and the Guardian has extensive coverage, including an interview with the man himself. So far, there’s
As Pete wrote this morning, the plan to share aircraft carriers with France is controversial. It seems that concerns over sovereignty, job losses and differing strategic interests reduce to the one issue that no government has addressed: the protectionist system of defence procurement, which hampers the operational effectiveness of our armed forces. Typically forthright, Douglas
And Westminster’s Idle Question of the Day is: will Ed Balls be made shadow chancellor under a Miliband leadership? There are good arguments both for and against the proposition – and most of them are made in this blog post by the Guardian’s Nicholas Watt. Even Blairites, he says, are warming to the idea of
A day before the ballot papers get sent out, and the grey corpse that was the Labour leadership contest has suddenly leapt into a crazy jig. Ed Balls is slamming the “soap opera” of the Mili-rivalry, while calling for more social housing. Andy Burnham is insisting that he’s still in with a chance of winning.
Insightful work by the FT’s George Parker, who traces the choreography of the spending review in an article for the paper today. What’s striking is how much the coalition expects to achieve by what Parker calls “peer pressure”. Ministers who get through their spending settlement quickly and successfully will be held up as examples to
…here are some of the posts made on Spectator.co.uk over the bank holiday weekend: Fraser Nelson wonders who governs Britain, and asks whether Labour will boldly go with ‘Red Ed’. Peter Hoskin says that we’re just seeing Same Labour, and watches Alistair Darling exhume Cameron’s Big Mistake. David Blackburn has some bad news for Ken
As austerity measures go, the plan to share aircraft carriers with France is totemic stuff. Not only could it save the Exchequer a heap of cash – by reducing the need for two replacement carriers – but it also says a lot about how our government wants to operate in the world: multilaterally, flexibly and,
New government statistics show that libraries are less popular than ever, with a drop over 5 years of nearly one-third in the number who visit them. Over 60 percent of adults do not use them even once a year. Libraries seem vulnerable. With government striving to make economies and councils made to cut budgets, libraries
Amid all the feverish commotion about cuts, it’s easy to forget that it took the Tories until November 2008 to ditch Labour’s spending plans – and, indeed, that it was barely a year ago when George Osborne first mentioned the c-word in public. Even David Cameron admits that this delay was his biggest mistake. It
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
Whatever happened to Peter Mandelson’s regard for Ed Miliband? A year-and-a-half ago, the Ennobled One was thought to have marked out MiliE as a future Labour leader. But, today, he pulls out the verbal chainsaw and sets about tearing him down. The younger Miliband, Mandelson implies in an interview with the Times (£), would lead
As Tim Montgomerie notes, cuts are becoming more real. Yesterday, the government axed NHS Direct, the telephone health service. Actually it hasn’t been axed but replaced by the more cost effective ‘111’ service. Removing the sacrosanct letters ‘NHS’ from the title of any body is anathema to the opposition, who have mobilised a frantic defence
