All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Liam Byrne told The Daily Politics yesterday that Labour would reduce the deficit without raising additional taxation to that which is already planned. Iain Martin describes this pledge as being akin to a chocolate fireguard. He’s right. It’s less realistic than a Jeffrey Archer novel. As Andrew Neil notes, Labour plans to reduce £82bn from
Here are some of the posts made at Spectator.co.uk over the past week. Fraser Nelson argues that the government is tough on dangerous dogs but blind to their causes. James Forsyth is clear that the Tories will have a lot of mud thrown at them, and worries that London is becoming anti-competitive. Peter Hoskin examines
I’m aghast. I never imagined that even Griffin and Brons would fall at the first, and eminently negotiable, jump. The Telegraph reports that Nick Griffin and Andrew Brons have given insufficient detail of their expenses, worth nearly £500,000. All other parties provided detailed returns. Griffin stood on an anti-sleaze ticket last June, and successfully exploited
Michael Savage called it right. The LibDems’ campaign slogan (Change that works for you. Building a better Britain) is a wooden, overly alliterative union of Labour’s and the Tories’ respective slogans. All three party slogans are jumbled. ‘A future fair for all’ is mealy-mouthed and grammatically suspect – where will they build this national fairground?
If you listen to the Tory front bench, you’d be excused for believing that Rue des Drapiers, 17-23, Ixelles in Belgium houses a place of unadulterated anti-British evil. What lies at this address? The European Defence Agency (EDA), which the Tory party has pledged to pull Britain out of should they win power. Does this
Three weeks ago, James argued that the Tories’ incoherence emanated from their disjointed campaign management. Steve Hilton, Andy Coulson, George Osborne and George Bridges were not communicating and the stark clarity on the economy and ‘Broken Britain’ was obscured. James urged the Cameroon duma to put its house in order. Cameron heeded some of his
I’d assumed the left was dead, but Mehdi Hasan says otherwise. The left is triumphant. Whilst Hasan defines left with abstractions like ‘progressive’ and ‘empowerment’, I prefer something more concrete. Unionism is triumphant. With New Labour in rigor mortis, the Unions slipped their moorings and struck out for old havens. Whelan, Crow, Simpson and Woodley
If we are going to spend so much time talking about the possibility of a hung parliament, it is worth noting that you don’t actually need 324 MPs to have a majority in the Commons. As John Rentoul reminds us, Sinn Fein MPs do not take their seats as they refuse to recognise the legitimacy
No blogging here until Monday: it’s Calcutta Cup weekend and I’m off to Edinburgh today for the festivities. It’s an odd feeling this, the notion that England aren’t the obvious and heavy favourites. Two average sides will meet tomorrow and it’s quite possible they will produce the worst match of the championship. How grim that
Thanks to Matt Welch for spotting this splendid piece of “What me?” nonsense from the President: As we were driving in, I was saying, boy, it’s just good to be back in the Midwest, this is about as close as I’ve been to home in a while. And part of the reason it’s just good
Think Defence has some fun with this video, suggesting that it’s a British version of The Hurt Locker. But actually, it’s also a mini-exemplar of some of the debates currently being heard in Tory circles. From the perspective of the Tory grass roots and true believers, the officer in charge here not only looks like
The four members are before a magistrate, attempting to clear their names. I’m not sure if it’s more preposterous than it is shaming to claim that conventions protecting free speech apply to false accounting. If only Enron’s lawyers had been as ingenious. In addition to Morley et al’s abuse of parliamentary privilege, Alan and Ann
Watching the news last night, I was struck by how little one had seen of Gordon Brown on TV recently. No wonder the polls have tightened. But the Prime Minister, alas, cannot play McCavity forever. The “bullying” allegations weren’t as damaging as they might have been in other circumstances because, for many, they merely confirmed
The City’s elopement with New Labour has ended violently. A poll of leading financiers, conducted by City AM, reveals that 73 percent think that a Tory majority would be best for the economy; a mere 10 percent support Labour. But the City has little enthusiasm for George Osborne: 23 percent believe he has the mettle
Nick Clegg is the rage of the papers this morning. His interview with the Spectator is trailed across the media and the Independent has an interview where Clegg once again lists the four demands that would be his initial negotiating tests for backing a minority government. They are: – Raising the income tax threshold to
In a splurge of activity, William Hague gave both an interview to the FT and another foreign policy speech at RUSI outlining the views of a Conservative government. It was time for an update on Tory thinking, not least because David Cameron’s description of his policy as “liberal conservatism” and his unwillingness to march into
David Cameron warns the nation to “get ready” for Samantha, who will be interviewed by Sir Trevor Macdonald on Sunday. If Sarah Brown is the damsel in distress, saved by her heroic husband, Sam Cam is the trouser-wearing uber-bitch. Allegedly, she is terrifying: cowering Smythsons’ interns refer to her as Anna Wintour. She never does
There’s a lot to commend in the Lord Adonis proposal for a high speed rail link between London and Birmingham. Trains, it is said, will cover the distance in 49 minutes, at speeds of up to 225mph. The opposition cavils that Labour would be better off spending money improving existing, dilapidated, commuter line seem to
The latest issue of the Spectator is out today, and here are my top five features: Nick Clegg takes to the stage. With a hung Parliament looking increasingly likely, I thought we should pay a bit of attention to the Lib Dem leader in this week’s issue. Interviewed by me, he does his best to
The winner of the education debate on Newsnight was a woman called Lesley from Yorkshire. Her local school is being closed and so she, along with other parents, want to set one up themselves. Her case for why she should be allowed to do this left Ed Balls floundering, wittering on about he sympathised but
I agree with Melanie Phillips that the principle reason there’s no middle-east preace prcess worth the name is the Palestinian’s reluctance to recognise and guarantee Israel’s security. I believe there are other reasons too, mind you, that help to obstruct any path towards a proper and just settlement. Still, since Melanie doesn’t believe there should
A telling anecdote from Andrew Rawnsley’s book: Subjects that interested him [Gordon Brown] – such as welfare reform, employment and poverty- received enormous attention. Ministers in areas which did not engage him, such as financial regulation, barely saw him. Ruth Kelly, a young and abl junior miniter put in charge of the City, was labelled
Daniel Hannan breaks the, sadly, not very surprising news that MEPs have voted overwhelmingly in favour of an EU Tobin tax. The margin: 536 to 80. Only the European Conservatives and Reformist group and a handful of radicals opposed the motion. The EPP, which describes itself as ‘centrist’, voted uniformly in favour. Cameron was right
Nick Clegg has a blue rose in his mouth in tomorrow’s Spectator, serenading readers – and showing his hidden Tory side. I have to say, he puts his heart into it. Not only does the Lib Dem leader say he’ll end the structural deficit with 100 percent spending cuts (not the 20 percent tax rises,
It was like a volcano going off. At PMQs today Cameron was calmly dissecting the prime minister’s underfunding of the Afghan war when he quoted two former defence chiefs who’d called Brown ‘disingenuous’ and ‘a dissembler’. Then someone shouted, ‘they’re Tories!’ Cameron lost control. Instantly, completely. His temper just went. White in the face, he
If you want a flavour of what is going to be thrown at the Tories between now and May 6th, read Jonathan Freedland’s column today. Freedland has a fair point about how Michael Ashcroft should pay tax in this country, in my view no one should be eligible for an honour let alone a seat
Stay tuned for live coverage from 12:00 Memory for Michael Foot and the four servicemen who have been killed in the last week. 12:03: And we’re off. Tory backbencher Richard Benyon wants assurances that soldiers serving overseas receive a postal vote. Brown gives him such. 12:05: Here’s Cameron. He starts with the examination into the
Two weeks ago, David Cameron delivered a brilliant speech. It keyed into exactly what Michael Wolff means by the phrase, ‘Cameron is a politician who quells, smooths, conflates, reassures.’ It offered hope and optimism, a future free of the current morass. In that case, why are the Tories still faltering? Cameron rode on the wake
So now we know. Gordon Brown has just announced that the Budget will be on 24 March – which strongly implies an election date of 6 May. Brown could dissolve Parliament on 6 April, the manifestos would be published on 12 April, and then we’d be into the campaign proper. Which means even more speeches,
Simon Hoggart remains a treasure. His sketch in today’s Guardian begins thus: It’s going to be an awful campaign, awful. Yesterday we were at Labour HQ (they still have a smart new building in Westminster, but after the election they may move to a scout hut in Streatham) to see a video. It was introduced
PMQ’s today bolstered my view that David Cameron will outperform Gordon Brown in the three TV debates. Cameron is simply more confident about thinking on his feet than Brown. When Ronnie Campbell and chums started suggesting that the generals who had criticised Brown’s record on defence were doing so because they were Tories, Cameron changed
It’s ‘dangerous dogs’ season again – but is there more to the story? The Today programme gave this its main 8.10am slot. The BBC sought to interview some chavs to sneer at – the listener being invited to conclude that the law must be brought to bear on them. But Brendan O’Neill was quite right
Astonishingly there remain some people who don’t think that waterboarding prisoners rises to the level of torture. In Dick Cheney’s off-hand formulation it’s merely “dunking in water” – as though the process was some kind of ride at the funfair or comparable to having a bucket of gloop tipped over you in a TV game
It seems there must be discussion about a potential European Monetary Fund, and an organisation to manage Europe’s economies that circumvents Maastricht, to avert future fiscal crises. So much for Lisbon, the treaty to end all treaties. Quite why no one, especially the treaty’s opponents, acknowledged the possibility of a member state’s financial collapse whilst