All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
How things change. A few months ago, Alistair Darling would only go so far as to not rule out a public sector pay freeze. By the time of the Pre-Budget Report, that became a 1 percent cap on pay rises. And now, in an interview with the Sunday Times, he’s talking explicitly about public sector
At the very least, I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised by this sort of caper anymore: Police in the UK are planning to use unmanned spy drones, controversially deployed in Afghanistan, for the ”routine” monitoring of antisocial motorists, protesters, agricultural thieves and fly-tippers, in a significant expansion of covert state surveillance. The arms manufacturer BAE
It’s only a small thing, but does anyone else find this detail from today’s Times interview with Alastair Campbell a little, erm, peculiar: “On the [Campbell] fridge is a Christmas card from David Miliband, a clipped photo of George Osborne in the Bullingdon Club shooting pheasant, a GCSE revision schedule. It is the type of
Ok, ok – so PMQs may be of more interest inside Westminster than out. But, love it or loathe it, it’s still one of those things which affects the mood music of politics and how it is reported. Far better for a party leader to do it well, than to be bludgeoned by his opponent
As Ben Brogan outlined in his Telegraph column last November, there are plenty of Tories placing a good deal of emphasis on the London Olympics. By the time it comes around, they may well have spent two years cutting spending, raising taxes, and generally struggling against the fiscal problems that Brown has hardwired into our
When I was writing my column this week on the Tories’ education policy, I realised that there’s a new test for policy: will it be so successful that the devolved administrations end up adopting it. Michael Gove’s plan for a supply side revolution in education – allowing any group of people to step up schools—promises
I have just received what I hope is the last of a series of letters from the parliamentary commissioner, John Lyon. He has informed me that a complaint against me has finally been resolved, which is something of a relief. When I first heard from him I must say I was irritated. Someone called Mark
FDR was plainly confident when he indicted the “practices of unscrupulous money lenders” during his 1933 inauguration address; Obama’s speech yesterday was scented with desperation. He exchanged eloquence for provocation. “If these folks want a fight a fight, it’s a fight I’m ready to have.” Bankers do not want a fight with a President seeking
On Wednesday, Baroness Kinnock told the Lords that a number of Foreign Office departments had been hit been hit by an estimated £110 million budget shortfall, and that an anti-drug program in Kabul has been cut. Coming after British dismay at President Karzai’s desire to put Afghanistan’s former (and widely-discredited) Interior Minister, Zarar Ahmad Moqbel,
Here are some of the posts made on Spectator.co.uk over the past week: Fraser Nelson warns that the EU is slithering onto the world stage. James Forsyth says that the Obama presidency is in big trouble, and wonders what Labour will do with their extra £1.5 billion. Peter Hoskin watches Alistair Darling struggle for consistency,
We’ve been rather starved of opinion polls over the past week, which is probably no bad thing. But this PoliticsHome poll on the economy has come along to give us at least something to mull over. And its findings aren’t good news for Labour. First, only thirty-four percent of repondents think that the economy has
Proof positive that Brown listens, sometimes at any rate. The Prime Minister will give evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry before the election. Chilcot has been resolute in his wish to keep politics out of the probe, which suggests that No.10 may have put in a call following the mounting clamour for Brown to appear. Brown
The Edlington case is shocking and depressing to think about. But I would urge you to watch Gavin Esler’s interview of Ed Balls on Newsnight where he challenged Balls over his reasons for not publishing the full case review. Newsnight, who were leaked a copy of the full case review in the Edlington case, pressed
Oh dear. After Massachussetts, it seems like the usual sneering about “populist” politicians, and about voters who aren’t happy with the bankers, is back. So here are a few facts of life for those knocking people who think the banking sector could still do with a lot of fixing: 1) The financial performance of the
I think Chris Morris’s new film Four Lions is probably the (English-speaking) world’s first suicide-bomber comedy. So it’s all but guaranteed to offend just about everyone. Splendid. Doubtless it’s a sign of terrible, even craven decadence to admit to looking forward to seeing it… Here’s a clip, anyway:
All American Presidents are elected on a platform of hope and change. Each arrives in Washington promising to be, in the words of George W Bush, “a uniter not a divider”. But few took possession of the White House quite as heavily weighed down by the burden of expectation as Barack Hussein Obama. The hopes
There are two big chunks of child-related outrage in our newspapers today (and tomorrow, I’d guess). The first is the story of a woman with learning difficulties who fled the country with her baby daughter because the local social services department argued that, effectively, she was too thick to bring the kid up. She has
The Tories are bracing themselves for an election campaign of smears and dirty tricks. Today the sniping begins. Attack dog Liam Byrne has criticised Cameron’s ‘Broken Britain’ speech in the following terms: “I think when people read what Mr Cameron is saying today they will see that it is quite an unpleasant speech…Mr Cameron is
In his Telegraph column today, Ben Brogan asks one of the most important political questions of all: do the Tories have a plan for dealing with the mess they face in government? They talk tough on debt and spending, for sure, but the details are still kinda lacking. Is there anything behind the rhetoric? And,
The government broke off relations with the Muslim Council of Britain over Daoud Abdullah, its deputy secretary-general, signing the Istanbul declaration, which the government believed encouraged attacks on British forces if they attempted to enforce a weapons blockade on Gaza. Last week, the government retreated; inviting the MCB back in despite Daoud Abdullah’s signature remaining
For some time, Labour has been trying to push the line that behind the Cameron facade there’s an old-school, “nasty” party waiting, drooling, for an opportunity to engineer the country as they see fit. Over the past couple of days, it’s become clear that they’ve struck on a new variant of that attack. Yesterday, we
Seriousness comes naturally to Gordon Brown and yesterday he gave a speech detailing how Britain is defending itself by striking at the heart of the ‘crucible of terror’. What Brown has in seriousness of delivery, he lacks in realism. Britain has not fought for such a sustained period since the high-water mark of empire; but
He may be a chateau-bottled shyster, but there is no better communicator of policy than Alastair Campbell. He has penned an article in the FT arguing that the lesson that should have been learned from the Iraq war was how to communicate strategic ideas and objectives. The lack of clarity that came to define Iraq
The latest issue of the Specatator is published today. If you are a subscriber you can view it here. If you have not subscribed, but would like to view this week’s content, you can subscribe online here, or purchase a single issue here. A selection of articles from the latest issue is available for free
I wouldn’t normally start the day by linking to a public sector website – but this one is actually worth your time. It’s the launch version of data.gov.uk, created with the help of Tim Berners-Lee among others, which aims to present statistics about government performance in a straightforward, easy-to-access way. You’ll get a sense of
Some observations on the Bay State Shocker: Candidates matter, don’t they? Yes they surely do. Martha Coakley’s campaign was so staggeringly inept, complacent, arrrogant and stupid that she threw away a Senate seat in a state Barack Obama won by 26 points a year ago. Yes, Republicans have won statewide before in MA but this
Labour’s tax on banks that pay big bonuses was budgeted to yield £550 million. But because the tax has failed to change behaviour it is going to bring in far more than that, at least 2 billion according to recent reports. This raises the question of what will Labour do with the extra 1.5 billion?
An idea that has received little media attention in Britain, but is giving Foreign Office diplomats sleepless nights, is David Miliband’s push for a “regional stabilisation council” involving Pakistan, India and Afghanistan, to be unveiled at the international conference scheduled for January 28. The idea is seen as an innovate way to bring the three
More on Massachusetts later, but Conor Friedersdorf makes a necessary point that applies to pundits from all quarters most of the time and not just to this election in the Bay State: It is particularly amusing to see folks call the outcome stunning in one breath and aver in the next that they can explain
Here’s a phrase. Dave blew it today. That’s a harsh verdict because he used PMQs to focus on Haiti and the Doncaster torture case. Naturally Haiti dominates the news and we all know that vulnerable kids have a very special place in Dave’s heart. But this is a political scrap and he needed to show
Here’s a surprise: a rather good speech on civil liberties and the government’s (English) DNA database from Chris Grayling. Later in the debate, however, David Davies, Tory MP for Monmouth and a man who really should not be confused with David Davis MP, made this contribution: “Most of the Bill’s provisions ultimately come down to
Another snippet from Jonathan Freedland’s column which deserves a separate post: “Labour has a harder task [on the economy], pressing voters to engage with the abstract arguments, asking them to accept that the deficit is not the only threat that matters. That effort is undermined by interviews like Alistair Darling’s with the FT [yesterday], in
Stay tuned for live coverage from 1200. 1200: Still waiting. You can watch live coverage here. 1202: And here we go. Brown leads with condolences for fallen soldiers, as well as for those affected by the earthquake in Haiti. 1203: First question from Danny Alexander on rural Britian losing out on broadband services. Brown says
How do politicians achieve that “unspun” look? Why, by emulating the spin of a soft drinks company, of course. This from Jonathan Freedland in the Guardian: ‘[The Labour campaign team have] taken a look at the branding of Innocent smoothies, hoping the authentic, unspun look might fit their own ‘unairbrushable’ product, G Brown. They were