All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Paul Goodman wrote a thought-provoking article for ConHome last week, in which he suggested that “authenticity vs artificiality” will be one of the key battles of the forthcoming election. Not only do voters crave authenticity after years of spin, deception and malice on the part of politicians, wrote Goodman. But, also, this election is specifically
The BBC is reporting that the chief whip and the chief executive of the party took the decision after seeing the full Channel 4 programme tonight. There’s also a BBC story tonight about MPs breaching the rule surrounding foreign trips. PS The YouGov tracker tonight has the Tory lead down to four. The Tories are
Historical analogies are always fun! Health Care reform was going to be, as Senator Jim DeMint argued, “Obama’s Waterloo”. Now that it haspassed conservatives are having to rethink that. The eternally optimistic Bill Kristol winds the clock back a bit and argues that, actually, HCR is Obama’s Borodino*: Last night’s victory was the culmination of
Cabbies have a reputation for telling tall tales, but Stephen Byers could be in a league of his own. Lords Adonis and Mandelson have stated, categorically, that Byers is lying: he did not alter government policy. If so, why on earth did he liken himself to (though I would use a more lurid epithet) a
Samantha Cameron is pregnant and is due to give birth in September. We wish her a safe term of pregnancy.
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
Presidents have been trying to cover the uninsured since LBJ sat in the Oval Office. None have succeeded. Until now. It doesn’t matter whether one approves of the bill or thinks it likely to work or not, one should be able to recognise the legislative achievement and, hence, the scale of this Democratic victory. It’s
In the News of the World today, I propose a new tax on the rich: specifically, on ex-ministers who go on to earn a crust advising companies how to avoid the regulations with which they have saddled the British economy. I proposed this before the news broke about Byers and Hewitt etc, but their appalling
Buried deep in the Sunday Times is the Tories’ answer to the problem that is Lord Ashcroft. James Tyler is a fund manager who has donated £250,000 to the Tory party since 2007. He is that rare creature: a multi-millionaire who is both resident and domiciled in merry old England. Tyler’s chief attraction for the
George Osborne must have changed breakfast cereals, or something, because he’s suddenly a different man. After the Tories muddied their economic message to the point of abstraction a few weeks ago, there’s now a new clarity and directness about the shadow chancellor’s languange. Exhibit A was his article in the FT last week. And Exhibit
Busted. Yep, that’s the word which first sprung to mind when I read the Sunday Times’s expose of MPs and their dirty lobbying work. Hoon, Hewitt, Byers – they’re all revealed as providing influence and access for cash, and a lot of cash at that. But it’s Byers who comes out of it the worst.
Imagine if Durham University were to decide that for courses heavily over-subscribed with qualified applicants it would reserve a small percentage of places for would-be students hailing from within 50 miles* of the university. Would anyone raise an eyebrow? I doubt it. Yet when Edinburgh University adopts precisely this approach – for some of the
It looks almost certain now that Barack Obama will get a healthcare bill to sign. The House appears set to vote in favour tonight and then the Democrats will only need 51 votes in the Senate to send it to the president’s desk. There are a couple of things that jump out at me about
The rugby wasn’t always vintage and the set scrum (or rather its interpretation by referees) remains a terrible mess but there’s still something very splendid and very special about the Six Nations championship. France were the class of the field, even if they produced their most indifferent performance of the season when clinching Le Grand
George Boateng, Alan Milburn and Andrew Smith have written a letter to George Osborne, calling him to task over the contradictions in his policy. ‘It is not clear to us whether these mixed messages are a deliberate attempt to obscure your plans or a symptom of a confused approach to policy but either way the
We have just witnessed a fascinating glimpse of the use of the internet in elections. This morning, Cameron proposed a unilateral bank tax – moving, I suspect, ahead of what he believes Darling will announce in next week’s budget. Next, at 1.19pm, Will Straw digs up a selectively-edited version of Chris Grayling speaking in his
Everyone has been guessing at what Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats would do if the voters return a hung parliament after the next election. The Lib Dem leader has sent all kinds of mixed signals. But if there is one person worth listening on the party’s intentions it is Julian Astle, the head of
Ed Miliband certainly isn’t one for holding back, is he? In an interview with today’s Guardian he discusses what we might expect from the Labour manifesto, and there’s some pretty noteworthy stuff in there: a People’s Bank based around the network of Post Offices; an increase in the minimum wage; a reduction in the voting
Anyone who cares about political debate should read the essay by the historian Tony Judt in today’s Guardian. It is an astonishing piece of work which argues for a renewal of social democracy in response to the failure of the New Labour experiment (which Judt considers as evidence of the redundancy of the philosophy of
At Tory conference last year, I asked a senior Tory adviser where the party would deliver substantive change and he replied ‘where we take on the vested interests.’ This analysis is correct. You can’t change things if you aren’t prepared to take on the status quo. So, it is encouraging to hear David Cameron defining
An eyebrow-raising passage from the Pope’s letter to the Irish church: In recent decades, however, the Church in your country has had to confront new and serious challenges to the faith arising from the rapid transformation and secularization of Irish society. Fast-paced social change has occurred, often adversely affecting people’s traditional adherence to Catholic teaching
Hats off to my good friend Julia Hobsbawm for sparking a debate over delivery in the public sector via her Editorial Intelligence organisation. I had the pleasure of chairing a discussion as part of her D4Deliver campaign on Thursday and you can listen to the podcast here. The top-notch panel included Mary Riddell of the
As David says, Philip Blond has charmed David Brooks (who, in turn, has not impressed Matt Welch). I wasn’t terribly impressed with Blond last November and am not sure I’ve really changed my mind. Anyway, that post can be found here. Bottom line: Sometimes, if I understand him correctly (not as simple a task as
Week two and the US-Israeli spat has calmed. More than a dozen Republican and Democratic Congressmen have pressed the Obama administration to tone down its criticism, following initial outrage of Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to build 1,600 homes in the disputed East Jerusalem territory – announced during Vice President Joe Biden’s visit. Claims that the US-Israel
Listening to BBC news, it’s striking how they are still using Labour’s politically-charged vocabulary. When the universities are kicking off about their budgets being cut, the BBC newsreaders are told to talk about “investment” in higher education, rather than spending. Why, though? An “investment” would be to put £1 billion of taxpayers’ money into an
It is rare that a political party is handed an issue that enables it to rally its base, appeal to swing voters and put the other side on the back foot. But that is how much of a gift to the Tories these strikes are. There has been a bit of an enthusiasm deficit amongst
Here are some of the posts made at Spectator.co.uk over the past week. Fraser Nelson says that age is no impediment to wit and intelligence, and argues that Cameron has to win outright. James Forsyth watches Cameron kick-off his campaign, and says there is growing confidence among Tory ranks. Peter Hoskin asks if the Tories
The Times’s Sam Coates first posted this image, relating to this news story, last night – but it’s worth repeating here. One thing to note is that there’s no mention of immigration:
Yep, it’s that time of the year again – when the government starts briefing about the contents of the Budget. First up, there’s the news that Alistair Darling may cut projected borrowing figures by £5-10 billion, thanks to higher-than-expected tax receipts. And then there’s Peter Mandelson’s claim that new tax rises would have to be
The Red Tory, Phillip Blond, is spreading the faith in the States. The New York Times’s David Brooks is impressed, very impressed. In fact, he is a proselytising convert. ‘Britain is always going to be more hospitable to communitarian politics than the more libertarian U.S. But people are social creatures here, too. American society has
So there we have it: talks between the BA management and Unite have collapsed, and the strike is back on for midnight tonight. Throw in the news that railway workers have also voted in favour of strikes, and it looks like there will be more transport trouble ahead. Politically-speaking, the government won’t enjoy operating against
Until today I had not known that Adolf Hitler played cricket. Once. Apparently. This is, actually, reassuring since it seems that cricket found him out and, as it is wont to do, smoked out the essential elements of Hitler’s character. Ben Macintyre has the story: Adolf Hitler played cricket. He raised his own cricket team
Nikhil Arora at the ASI makes a good and necessary point in response to the mephedrone moral panic: Realising the danger that ‘legal highs’ pose to their core market of young night-clubbers, cocaine and ecstasy dealers mobilised every lawyer and lobbyist at their disposal to ensure that their rivals’ products are outlawed as quickly as
These days, when one looks back at the stratospheric rates of income tax levied in the 1970s it’s commonplace to sympathise with those who sought to avoid such punitive taxation. If you were subject to such rates then you’d do your best to limit your exposure to them wouldn’t you? Of course you would. Something