All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Chris Grayling, the Shadow Home Secretary and former attack dog, seems to have been cast into outer darkness. As with Oliver Letwin’s disappearing act in the 2001, Labour is toasting this unofficial scalp. Denis MacShane has been adding poison to the potion this morning. The Tories are paying a heavy price for Grayling’s B&B gaffe,
Spectator Live – the Spectator’s new election microsite – has had a busy weekend. Click here to access the homepage. Read new contributions from our panellists Gaby Hinsliff, Tim Montgomerie and Rory Sutherland. Or check out our latest poll results. Here’s what happened across the rest of Spectator.co.uk: Fraser Nelson takes The Times to task
Does anybody understand the Labour cancer leaflets story? I’ve listened to be about five BBC News reports and am no better off as a consequence. Labour apparently sent 250,000 cards out to women voters warning them that the Tories would renege upon Labour government promises for cancer tests. The question comes down to how those
You know it’s the day you’ve all been waiting for, CoffeeHousers – the day of Labour’s manifesto launch. Last Thursday, Douglas Alexander described the document as a “progressive programme worthy of these testing times”. So, well, it must be good, mustn’t it? Problem is, this manifesto risks going the same way as the Budget. So
David Cameron takes a few journalists with him on each of his one-day tours, and it’s my turn tomorrow: 6am start. I should be able to get half an hour or so with him, to do an interview for The Spectator. As is customary, I’ll try and ask him some questions on behalf of CoffeeHousers
The transformation of Nick Clegg from moderate Europeanist to a populist continues apace. The Lib Dem leader is very serious about capturing the anti-politics mood among the electorate – no easy feat for some who looks as Establishment as the rest. Though he will likely be pleased with today’s Observer interview, I wonder whether he
This poster by the LibDems is perhaps the most dishonest one of the campaign so far – and Vince Cable has pretty well admitted it to Jon Sopel on the Politics Show. Here’s the exchange. Jon Sopel: I mean let’s leave aside whether or whether not there is a black hole in the Tory’s finances.
This week of the election campaign is going to be dominated by the first leaders’ debate. The debate format means that these might well turn out to be stilted encounters that don’t sway many voters either way. But given how many people will tune in—the broadcasters are confidently predicting an audience of ten million plus—the
Underneath the IoS poll which David mentioned earlier there’s a set of election predictions from professional pollsters. Differing margins of victory aside, seven-out-of-eight of them foresee a Tory majority in a few weeks time. I mention this not just because it’s worth, erm, mentioning – but because a poll of readers over at our new
Lying is a politician’s occupational hazard. The Independent on Sunday has published a Com Res poll confirming that truism. The majority of voters do not believe that David Cameron and Gordon Brown are being honest about how they will tackle the deficit. We voters resent being taken for fools. If Brown and Cameron are being disingenuous about
I think we all expected this election campaign to be fought a few inches below the belt. But, as Iain Dale and Dizzy say, Labour’s tactic of mailing scaremongering leaflets to cancer sufferers is some new kind of low. I mean, just imagine how it would feel to receive, as a cancer patient or an
The News of the World has its expensive and much-awaited ICM poll of the marginals tomorrow. There is some good news for Cameron, and some not-so-good news. First: 66 percent of voters in the marginals agree with the message “it’s time for change”. Bad news: a surprisingly large number think that Nick Clegg represents that
Since The Times moved its leaders on to page two, they’ve also taken on a new vitality. For years, they were the voice of solid good sense. It was pretty difficult to disagree with them. Now, they are more polemical, more risk-taking – and more wrong. But I’m not complaining: I far prefer reading a
I expect that the Labour machine will be absolutely delighted with Gordon Brown’s interview in The Times magazine today. The interviewer concludes that Brown has more of a common touch than Blair or Cameron and that Brown’s press team are more relaxed than Cameron’s. The interview even goes into what Brown’s favourite love poetry is.
Polish President Lech Kaczynski, his wife and a number of top Polish officials, including the Central Bank president, the Polish ambassador to Moscow and an Army chief, were killed when the presidential plane crashed near an airport in western Russia. The tragedy – the worst in modern Polish history – ends an extraordinary career for
Sunday, Bloody Sunday. Someday the Bloody Sunday Inquiry will be published. It has taken 12 years to conduct and it has cost £200 million (about the going rate for state sponsored marriage, or Aston Villa). £2.50p per head is extortionate, so I’d quite like to see Lord Savile’s findings. I don’t expect to enjoy the
Why vote for Cameron? The reasons for voting against Gordon Brown are so numerous that the positive pro-Tory reasons for voting are often lost. This week’s Spectator gives you all the ammo you need to win around wavering friends, colleagues and family. We have restricted ourselves to the ten most compelling points. I summarise them
This morning, we’ve already seen the two primary attacks which will be used against the marriage tax break outlined by George Osborne in the Times today. The first came courtesy of Vince Cable, who said it represents a “derisory” sum of £3 a week for those who benefit from it. And the second was from
Stuart McLennan, Labour’s candidate for Moray, has resigned over his Twitter stupidity and quite right too. What a repellent individual. And how obvious he made the fact by tweeting his every last small-minded thought. So what of Battersea MP’s Martin Linton’s outburst warning about the “tentacles” of Israel that were buying the election? As I
Although it does not really make any difference to my original argument (which was about political quick thinking rather than the origins of the thought), it does seem that David Lammy has every right to be irritated that the idea of civic national service ended up as Tory rather than Labour policy. He first wrote
Tonight’s YouGov poll has the Tories on 40, Labour on 30 and the Lib Dems on 20, rounding off a good week for the Tories, The Tory marriage tax proposal has also just been unveiled. It will allow people who are in a marriage or a civil partnership who don’t use all of their personal
A copy of a letter that George Osborne sent to Alistair Darling today: Alistair Darling The Labour Party 39 Victoria Street London SW1H 0HA 9 April 2010 Dear Alistair, In the course of today, the Labour Party’s economic policy has collapsed in a heap of contradictions. In the morning, you attacked our efficiency plans on
This week The Spectator endorsed the Tories and David Cameron. Our cover headline read, ‘Give Cameron the keys.’ Now, I doubt that Gordon Brown was too surprised to miss out on The Spectator endorsement. But I must admit to being rather amused to hear that a copy of The Spectator was provided in every seat
Spectator Live new.spectator.co.uk/live, the Spectator’s election bulletin board, launched today. Here are some of the posts made at Spectator.co.uk over the past week Fraser Nelson uncovers the real truth behind Brown’s British jobs for British workers, and reveals the true cost of Brown’s debt binge. James Forsyth watches Cameron launch the modern Conservative alternative, and
The witterings of Phil Woolas about immigration yesterday – where he accused The Spectator of contorting immigration figures and double-counting immigrants – have landed him in plenty trouble. Stephen Timms was on the Daily Politics today and conceded that Woolas was talking out of his hat. They weren’t our figures, they were from the ONS
The Civil Service is readying itself for a new government. The BBC has already reported a discussion of efficiency savings among senior officials. In another part of Whitehall, work is a foot on how to set up a National Security Council should the Tories win. I have in the last few weeks been interviewing ex-ministers
Just to flag up to CoffeeHousers that we’ve launched a separate area to the website: Spectator Live. Going to new.spectator.co.uk/live will open up what we hope will be your bulletin board for Election 2010. It collects all election-related content from around the Spectator website – so posts from Coffee House, from our team of bloggers,
Curious exchange of the BBC, Alistair Darling admitted that the Tories were winning the opening stages of the campaign: “They might have got their political tactics right for the first day or so but their overall judgment is just plain wrong.” Ben Brogan has more details. This looks remarkably like an admission of defeat on
So much for Jim Murphy’s words of support two hours ago, the Labour candidate for Moray Stuart MacLennan has now been sacked. As soon as one saw what MacLennan had tweeted–the desire for a ‘slave-grown’ banana, the remarks about pensioners and the like–it was clear that MacLennan was going to have to go if this
Little blogging here for the next couple of days as I flee this soggy island for an even soggier one. Am weekending in Dublin and Sligo commencing with this evening’s Heineken Cup quarter-final between Leinster and Clermont Auvergne which could be a mighty tear-up, not least since, in my view, they’re the two best teams
Labour can’t lay a finger on the Tories over national insurance. And desperation has morphed into hysteria. Alistair Darling has just told Sky News that David Cameron contradicted George Osborne and that the Tory plan is “unravelling”. “He is going to have to find deeper cuts, some experts are saying tens of thousands of jobs
Gordon Brown is heading to Scotland today and it is hard to see how he can avoid the story of the Labour candidate for Moray and his Tweets. Forget Stuart MacLennan’s foul language, it’s the mindset that his messages reveal that is truly shocking. Take this one from July 8th:“God this fairtrade, organic banana is shit. Can I
Another day, another party leader on the Today Programme. This time it was David Cameron, and his interrogator was Evan Davis. My quick capsule review would be that the Tory leader did quite well, sounding measured and reasonable for most of the twenty minutes – which is certainly better than Brown managed yesterday. But for
A new cricket season is upon us and something to take our minds off this election caper. Happily this also means it’s time for another lovely piece from Frank Keating, still the doyen of British sportswriters. This time he’s strolling down Shaftesbury Avenue, compiling an XI of playwrights who have played and loved the noblest