All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Peter Mandelson’s memoirs are out in just over a week. Despite being one of the last off the stage, Mandelson has beaten his colleagues to the first full account of the Blair Brown era. Tony Blair’s ‘The Journey’ is not out until September. Indeed, some Blair allies think that Mandelson should have had the good
I read Dan Hannan’s blog about the recent Spectator debate in which we argued about whether or not Britain was so completely knackered that we all ought to leave the place right now. I thought we should, Dan thought we should hang around for a bit longer. Anyway, on his blog Dan made reference to
At last, some will cry, teachers are to be given increased disciplinary powers to moderate unruly children’s behaviour. Rather than tear up the statute book, the measures aim to change perceptions and practices and redress the balance of rights in favour of the teacher. Force can be used to restrain pupils at present, but teachers
Growing inequality is, plenty of people agree, a problem. So what do you make of this chart from a Brookings Institute study from 2009? It’s a US-centric chart of “relative mobility”: This, via Jon Chait, comes from David Frum and is, in many respects, possibly the biggest issue of the age. I don’t think this
I’m not going to write about the Tour de France every day – just as I won’t about the cricket season as soon as anything interesting or significant happens – but this was a great day in the Tour. Commenting on this post, Ronnie was right to suggest that a stage that involved a few
The Ministry of Justice is owed £1.3bn in fines, confiscations and compensation orders, according to the National Audit Office. That is more than a tenth of its £10.1bn primary budget, and the department faces cuts probably in excess of 25 percent. The NAO’s report is damning – the MoJ is hopelessly disorganised. To summarise, there
There’s an snappy little anecdote in Steve Richard’s column today, which bears repeating in these parts: “Clegg is in a similar position in relation to his party as Tony Blair was over Iraq. Blair used to go around telling his colleagues: ‘It’s worse than you think. I believe in the policy.’ Clegg is known to
Francis Maude and Mark Serwotka (the Public Commercial Service Union’s General Secretary) are in the opening steps of a soon to be furious jive. Maude hopes to slash ‘untenable’ civil service redundancy packages and will legislate to introduce caps at one year’s pay for compulsory redundancies and 15 months salary for voluntary redundancies. Maude’s logic
Well, that was quick: after only three months in the role, Alan Budd is to step down as the head of the Office for Budget Responsibility. A shame, too. In a quiet sort of way, he had become one of the defining figures in these early days of coalition government – helping to establish the
Rachel Sylvester is on top form in the Times today, and I’d urge CoffeeHousers to delve behind the paywall (or borrow someone’s copy of the paper) to read her column. Its central point? That ministers are discovering ingenious ways to exploit and undermine the ringfenced health and international development budgets. The Home Office is saying
I suspect Rod Liddle’s analysis of the BBC and, more especially still, the mentality of its top brass is acute and persuasive: My suspicion is that it will become increasingly difficult to justify a license fee when the balance of the BBC’s output is tilted so far in favour of populism and ratings chasing. This
Fabian Cancellara is one hell of a bike rider, but Sartacus blundered today. That’s him on the left and in the Yellow Jersey reminding the peloton that they wouldn’t race one another on the approach to the finish of Stage Two yesterday. This is what had happened: it was cold and wet and on the
Michael Gove’s welcome freeze on Building Schools for the Future will invite tomorrow’s press to claim only that this means 715 various building projects are not being carried out. In fact, what it means is that the fund will be open for the Swedish-style new schools. The budget will be transferred from bureaucratic priorities to
Matthew d’Ancona’s piece in the new GQ on who’ll succeed David Cameron as Tory leader has been much discussed today. Matt says that Jeremy Hunt ‘is the man to watch’. But I think Hunt’s problem is that he is too like the current leader—telegenic, personable and pragmatic—and parties tend to opt for a successor who
Tucked away in Nick Clegg’s statement confirming that the referendum on AV was going to be on the 5th of May next year, was the abandonment of the controversial 55 percent rule for a dissolution of parliament. This has been replaced by a far more sensible arrangement. If the government cannot win a confidence vote,
I bumped into Alan Yentob at The Spectator party last week. A good man who has both produced and presented some of the BBC’s best programmes over the last few decades. If there wasn’t a BBC, we wouldn’t have those programmes, or anything like them; the BBC exists through a sort of moral cross-subsidisation –
Both Tim Montgomerie and Bernard Jenkin report that Boris has not lost the faith: the Mayor of London is opposed to ditching first past the post. This runs contrary to what was reported in the Times this morning. It makes sense: Johnson’s contempt for coalition government is open – it is highly unlikely that he’d
From a completely selfish standpoint, I’m pleased that the BBC has saved 6Music. The decision does, however, raise a pertinent question: why is one of the public sector’s mammoth institutions seemingly impervious to spending cuts? Never mind DfID and the NHS, ring-fencing Sue Barker is simply inadmissible. Mark Thompson, the Director General, has identified the
A droll post from Iain Martin on David Cameron’s murky views on changing the voting system. It is possible, as Iain says, that Cameron’s public position – he’s in favour of keeping FPTP is, shockingly, also his private and unchanging view: Theory Three? Outlandish this one. Cameron is wedded to first-past-the-post, thinking of it as
While we’re on the subject of Boris, this article by the Times’s Sam Coates is worth noting down. It suggests that the Mayor of London has “lost faith” in our first-past-the-post voting system, and has declined the opportunity to campaign in its favour. And while he remains an “agnostic” about the alternative votes system, he
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
This morning’s Times devotes its front page to how the government is borrowing Boris’s ideas for combating the unions. But Spectator readers might remember that James foresaw this situation in his politics column. Here’s what he wrote back in October: “…an agenda is being discussed to curtail the ability of unions to call for industrial
…here are some of the posts made at Spectator.co.uk over the weekend. Fraser Nelson ponders David Cameron re-alignment of our party politics. James Forsyth on the Tories’ move to campaign against AV, and reports on the growing rift between Cameron and Lord Ashcroft. Peter Hoskin says that the Treasury is playing a very smart game,
It’s becoming a familiar drill: another morning in Westminster accompanied by new spending cuts from the government. Today, it’s the schools budget which is being trimmed to the tune of £1.5 billion, with the cancellation of Labour’s plan to rebuild some 700 schools. But there are also reports of cuts to civil service pay-offs, and
Welcome to the Liberal Unionist club, Fraser! It won’t surprise regular readers that I think your latest post is spot-on. While we’re taking names, let’s also add John Rentoul to the list. His Independent on Sunday column this week concludes: This is where I think that Cameron is misunderstood. It seems to be generally assumed
This may be today’s most infuriating “story”: Rugby scrums should be banned in schools to protect children involved in a sport which is “not safe enough” for them, an expert has warned. Professor Allyson Pollock, director of Edinburgh University’s Centre for International Public Health Policy, called for the ban after research into child injuries. The
Like Matt Yglesias and Jonathan Bernstein, I’m delighted that Ulysses S Grant’s reputation is currently being revised and that, consequently, he’s no longer thought of as one of the worst Presidents in American history. The latest Siena College poll of “presidential scholars, historians, and political scientists” puts Grant towards the middle of the pack in
Today is, of course, Independence Day. To mark it the New York Times have, as usual, commissioned some historical op-eds. The one by Adrian Tiniswood is particularly worth reading. Here’s a taste: “It is a fact rarely discussed on either side of the Atlantic that American colonists played a crucial role in the English Civil
A regrettable, discreditable business back in, you know, 1776 And All That. Nevertheless, happy Fourth to you all. To celebrate here’s John Philip Sousa’s Stars and Stripes Forever, performed by Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic at the Albert Hall in 1976.
When the coalition was first formed, I expected it to collapse in months. But, then, I was expecting the type of coalition that I’d seen in the Scottish Parliament when Labour and the Lib Dems kept their distance (and their mistrust). But what has emerged is a far tighter coalition – and one that may
Imagine that we find out on May 6th next year that the Liberal Democrats have taken a pasting in the Scottish Parliament elections, done badly in the Welsh Assembly ones, lost seats in English local government and AV has been defeated. In these circumstances, Nick Clegg would face loud and sustained calls from within his
Picking up David Laws’ axe at the Treasury was never going to be easy – but all credit to Danny Alexander, who seems to be managing it with some degree of gusto. After those extra savings he announced a few weeks ago, the Chief Sec has now written to ministers asking them to identify cuts
When General Petraeus called for a “united effort” on Afghanistan earlier, he might as well have been addressing our government. Between David Cameron’s and Liam Fox’s recent statements, there’s a clear sense that the coalition is pulling in two separate directions. And it’s left William Hague explaining our Afghan strategy thus, to the Times today:
The coalition’s plan for moving claimants off Incapacity Benefit and into work is, at heart, an admirable one. For too long, IB has been used a political implement for massaging the overall unemployment figures, and it has allowed thousands of people to wrongly stay unemployed at the taxpayers’ expense. There is, quite simply, a moral