All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Terrific piece by Douglas Murray in the latest edition of the magazine. He explains how he was reported to the Press Complaints Commission for having repeated an Irish joke made by a councillor (who was forced to apologise for it) and called for readers to send in more Irish jokes by way of protest. One
Eric Pickles’ decision to scrap the Audit Commission is further evidence that Pickles is the minister prepared to move quickest on the cuts agenda. It is a bold decision and one that is going to come under heavy attack. The Audit Commission’s supporters will claim that it is self defeating to scrap the watchdog that
The European Union’s creeping barrage continues. Brussels has appointed the urbane looking Joao Vale de Almeida as ambassador to Washington; Vale de Almeida hopes that Henry Kissinger will call him if the old campaigner wants to talk to Europe. It is perverse that Britain is saving money by closing embassies and downscaling around the globe
Here are some of the posts made at Spectator.co.uk over the past week. James Forsyth argues that the government must resist the EU’s latest attempt to raise tax, and says that IDS’ resignation would be a catastrophe. Peter Hoskin welcomes the government’s transparent approach to worklessness, and introduces the questions surrounding Cameron’s benefit crackdown. David
There’s an intellectually enriching debate going on at the moment between Ross Douthat and Andrew Sullivan over gay marriage. It was all started by an eloquent and heartfelt column by Ross arguing that the idea that “lifelong heterosexual monogamy at its best can offer something distinctive and remarkable — a microcosm of civilization, and an
This week marked the 38th anniversary of the American ground withdrawal from Vietnam. At the time The Spectator ran the following leader, condemning the Pentagon’s often inhuman conduct of the war, which it deemed counter-productive. Reading the piece, it becomes plain that the conduct of war has changed beyond recognition. Modern strategists have dispensed with
Danny Finkelstein’s typically excellent column (£) this week argued that Blairism is dead and buried in the Labour party, not least because none of Blair’s followers remain in any position of authority in the party. Blair, he suggests, was a one-off and the party leadership contest has been, if not a sprint, then a trundle
One of the challenges facing the next Labour leader will be what to do with Ed Balls. Balls, as he demonstrated in the last few months, has the right mentality for opposition. Labour will need his appetite for the fight in the coming year. But if a new leader makes Balls’ shadow Chancellor, he’ll have
Sure, if you were running a terrorist network you might think it worthwhile to smuggle pregnant women into the United States to ensure that their offspring, thanks to the 14th Amendment, could have American passports and be sent back to the US 20 years down the line to carry out their terrorist mission. But you
An eyecatching claim from Ed Miliband, interviewed by Channel 4’s Krishnan Guru-Murthy: “I don’t think our spending was irresponsible.” And here’s a graph in response: I’ll let CoffeeHousers draw their own conclusions.
A curious, intermediate kind of speech from Liam Fox this morning. The general emphasis on streamlining the armed forces, and shifting power away from Whitehall and towards the military, was welcome. But we’re going to have to wait for a trio of reviews before we know what that will look like in practice: the Spending
The Times (£) is reporting that ISAF has made a significant progress in pacifying the death circle around Sangin. The key, it seems, is driving a wedge between the tribal insurgents and religious insurgents foreign to Helmand: ‘British commanders believe that they are close to achieving a significant tribal uprising against the Taleban that could
Handbags across Whitehall this morning, as Vince Cable responds to the government’s appointment of Sir Philip Green as an efficiency adviser in a disgruntled, if evasive, manner. He tells City AM: “There’s a lot I could say on this, but I’d better miss this one out … I’m tempted to comment, but I think I’d
At Labour Uncut, Dan Hodges has written a very good, very interesting piece on the demise of the Brownites and how, when the end came, Brown was compelled to rely upon Peter Mandelson and Alistair Campbell to scramble a strategy by which Labour might miraculously cling to power. As Hodges portrays it: As the battlements
The Iran issue has dropped down the news agenda in recent months. But that doesn’t mean it has gone away. Even with the difficulties that Iran’s nuclear programme has faced, any decision on whether to try to use force to stop Iran becoming a nuclear-ready power will have to be taken in the next year
John Redwood has entered the debate with a unique argument: spending isn’t being cut. He points to figures in the Budget which show “current” spending rising from around £600 billion now to around £700 billion in 2015. As Alex says, that suggests an increase of 15 percent over five years – hardly what anyone would
One of the issues on the horizon that has the most potential to cause problems for the coalition is how to fund higher education. The Liberal Democrats are opposed to fees and the Tory MPs and press loathe the idea of a straight graduate tax. As Ben Brogan notes in his Telegraph column today, Vince
Sunny Hundal says this YouGov approval tracker is “the graph that has the coalition worried”. Up to a point. It would be worrying if there were an election this autumn. But there isn’t and there won’t be. If, as the coalition hopes, we’re four and a half years away from an election then this polling,
I think it’s fair to say that Eric Pickles doesn’t look like a pioneer of the Cameroonian “Post-Bureaucratic Age”. But that’s exactly what he is, as his department becomes the first to publish data on all its spending over £500. At the moment, the document provides plenty of ammunition for – rather than against –
Government wants to steal milk from children! Coalition wants to ban playgrounds! When-oh-when will the government call off its War on Kids? Well, that’s been the hysterical tone of much of the coverage in recent days. Even allowing for the feather-headed excesses of August this is becoming silly. No-one disputes that there will be some
I can’t work out what’s stranger: that anyone, let along the author Ken Follett, should donate £100,000 to Ed Balls’ leadership campaign, or that the Liverpool footballer Jamie Carragher (“Mr Liverpool”) should give £10,000 to the devoted Evertonian Andy Bunrham. Either way, they’re probably the two stand-out entries in the latest list of Labour leadership
Twenty years ago, students typically took low skill “summer jobs” simply to earn money. Now, most offices and organizations feature youngsters putting in unpaid time for work experience. It might be a week or two, or even half a year. The practice has its critics. Union leaders are decidedly edgy about free labour competing for
Politicians often get nervous around alcohol – and not just because, in these straitened times, a glass of champagne can broadcast the wrong image. No, the real concern is the more basic, fiscal one: how should it be taxed and priced? There’s a difficult trade-off involved. Pushing up the cost of alcohol could halt the
How many Americans know anything about David Cameron? Well, back in early July not many of them – or at least not many of those sampled by Pew – could identify the Prime Minister of Great Britain*. On a multiple choice question. When the other choices available were: Richard Branson, Tony Hayward or Angela Merkel.
The Labour party’s very own Vicar of Bray has made his choice. Jack Straw is backing David Miliband for leader. Straw is a politician who has always had a canny sense of which way the wind is blowing. Barbara Castle, who Straw worked for as a special adviser, once famously said that she hired him
You can often achieve a lot more by doing things a bit at a time rather than attempting one bold and sweeping reform. In the 1970s, for example, the trade unions had extraordinary legal privileges; strike votes were done on a show of hands at works meetings (usually late at night when everyone except the
Here’s one divergence between the US and the UK where we can all get behind our American brethren. Yesterday, Barack Obama signed into law a provision blocking his country’s thinkers and writers from foreign libel laws. The target is “libel tourism,” by which complainants skip around the First Amendment by taking their cases to less
Meanwhile, in other Glasgow news the city’s evening paper makes its readers an offer they can’t refuse. I believe this exhausts my annual quota of posts making gentle fun of Glaswegians. [Hat-tip: Kevin Schofield]
Following this morning’s coalition press conference, the Tories’ have released this video: Labour’s Legacy. It’s effective, especially in view of Labour’s continued refusal to acknowledge that Gordon Brown did to Britain what Peter Ridsdale did to Leeds United, albeit on a grander scale.
If Jimmy Reid, who died overnight aged 78, hadn’t existed he might have had to be invented. For 40 years now he has been the image of a certain Scotland. The “dignity of labour” is a much abused phrase that often drips with sentimentality, but you didn’t have to share Jimmy Reid’s political views
The joint Tory Lib Dem press conference to attack Labour’s legacy was a sign of how comfortable the two parties are becoming together. Chris Huhne and Sayeeda Warsi’s message was that the ‘unavoidable cuts that are coming are Labour’s cuts’ and that Labour is ‘irrelevant’ until it admits its responsibility for the deficit. The message
The prospect of taxes being levied directly by the European Union is one of those stories that pops up on a fairly regular basis. It is never likely to actually happen as national governments won’t want to cede the power of the purse strings. But the great Hamish McRae makes a very good point about
This follows very neatly on from the previous thread. If there is one industry where the staff are suffused with an endless sense of self importance and a determination to (literally in some cases) bugger the public, then it is the airline industry. Since 9/11 trolly dollies and whatever name is given to their gay
Sometimes hope lies in the details. Take this morning’s press release from the DWP, for instance. On the surface, it is a response to today’s encouraging employment figures. But what it really is is a new way of approaching the problem of worklessness in this country. And all because of its headline: “Figures reveal five