All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
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
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 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
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:
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
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
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
It is difficult to imagine two more unappealing characters than Michael Ashcroft and Charlie Whelan. Just when you thought the Westminster culture couldn’t get more decadent, these two great toads come forward to squat on the body politic. The sight of senior politicians lining up to trade insults about which of the men is more
Of course, it’s important to remember that the United States has always been under threat and that there have been many un-American plots designed to yoke the populace to the government. Consider this flier produced in 1955 by the Keep America Committee: I’ll grant that insuring the uninsured – at doubtless considerable and as yet
I’ve just come back from the Guardian’s “changing media” conference, speaking about the future of our industry and The Spectator’s intrepid adventures into cyberspace. I had a few gags in my wee speech, but the biggest laugh was when I said that the average reader of Spectator.co.uk is pushing 50 years old. That took me
So this is it. The long international nightmare (for anyone who follows American politics and wishes the conversation could move on to something, anything, other than health care) is finally coming to an end. It looks as though there will be a vote in the House on health care reform on Sunday. The process has
The gods are smiling on George Osborne. On Monday, he wrote an excellent article in the FT, explaining why he opposed the government’s fiscal plans and giving a brief sketch of his alternative vision. It was a short, sharp, shock article that contrasted with the tentative and nebulous announcements that characterised the Tory post-New Year
So has the Lord Ashcraft saga fouled the Tories’ reputation? Well, looking at this One Poll survey in PR Week it would seem it has. 52 percent of respondents feel that the party’s reputation hasn’t improved since the start of the year – and 37 percent think that the Ashcroft revelations are the biggest contributing
American readers may (or may not!) be comforted to know that the newspaper responsible for this masterpiece (written, I’m pleased to see, by Andrew Malone) is one of the two most powerful papers in the country. Even by the Daily Mail’s lofty standards, this is a classic, and I’m indebted to John Rentoul for bringing
The admirable Hopi Sen thinks the Tories will blunder if they continue their Unite-bashing. Childish, playground stuff he calls it: The idea that Gordon Brown is in the pocket of the Unions because errr, he keeps going around condemning them, and (in the case of the RMT) designs business models that make them so angry
What a difference two weeks make. When the Ashcroft story first broke, the Tory response was equal parts sloppy and defensive. Now, their operation seems altogether more incisive. William Hague kicked off his Today programme interview by saying that leak of Cabinet Office papers to the BBC was proof of Labour’s “culture of leak, half-truth
Last week, Nick Clegg was singing the blues. But, this week, it’s clear that he’s doing as much as possible to distinguish his party from the others. Indeed, his performance in PMQs yesterday was a case in point: he went out of his way to attack both Brown and Cameron, and positioned his side as
The latest issue of the Spectator is out today, and here are my top five features: Might Cameron face a general strike? Pick up today’s papers, and you read more and more unions planning to strike to protest against utterly necessary and inevitable cuts. Dennis Sewell points out that Greek trade unionists have started to
So the Lord Ashcroft story is back on the airwaves, courtesy of a document leaked to the BBC. That document shows William Hague was “satisfied” with the discussions about Ashcroft’s undertakings in 2000 – so the Tories wheeled the shadow foreign secretary onto the Today programme to explain himself to Evan Davis. Three things struck
Why aren’t more people talking more about Andrew Rawnsley’s book, The End of the Party? It’s full of fascinating, appalling stories! Again, the Tories (and the Lib Dems) should be producing a Rawnsley Dossier on Brown. There’s nae shortage of material that’s for sure. Here’s a bit from page 305: The scene: Anthony Minghella has
I don’t, alas, believe for a second that this magazine cover is real but, my, how I really, really wish it were. Anyway, it seems that Mike Tyson is going to be appearing in a new reality TV show about, yup, pigeon racing. Really, right now, I’m pushed to come up with a better TV
Gordon Brown has been shameless in using the tools of state to advance his party political objectives – to him, government is electoral war by other means. Anyone who has turned on a commercial radio station recently will have worked out his latest trick: a mass propaganda splurge before an election campaign. Get on a
But if you want to see something that really is antithetical to the idea of the American Idea then this, from Glenn Greenwald, should dp the job nicely: [T]he bill recently introduced by Joe Lieberman and John McCain — the so-called “Enemy Belligerent Interrogation, Detention and Prosecution Act” — now has 9 co-sponsors, including the
It is worth pointing out, because it is so different from what was happening a few weeks back, that the Tories are having another good day today. Gordon Brown has been forced to admit at PMQs that he had got his defence statistics wrong when addressing both the Commons and the Chilcot inquiry, the Unite
Matt Yglesias and Jonathan Chait have some fun with Charles Krauthammer’s argument that resistance to Obama’s health care plans is rooted in a certain concept of American exceptionalism. Here’s Dr K: This spirit of being independent and not wanting to be controlled by the government is something that is intrinsic in America. It’s the essence
…when it comes to the Lib Dem’s offical election song, performed by the Liberal Democrat Community Choir: You can, er, buy it on iTunes if you like. Hat-tip: Guido
So, we have a date for the Chancellor’s debate. Channel 4 News will host Darling, Cable and Osborne on Monday the 29th of March at 8pm. I have a suspicion that George Osborne will come out of this debate rather well. He doesn’t have an expectations problem, unlike Cable, and is quick on his
If two things fuelled the rise of the BNP last year, then they were probably the mainstream parties’ reluctance to talk about immigration and a general disillusionment with Westminster politicians in the wake of the expenses scandal. There are tentative signs that the parties are getting their act together on the first. And, now, Nick
Is Piers Morgan going to be an MP? I suspect that this is one of those questions to which, as John Rentoul would tell you, the answer is no. (UPDATE: Indeed it is!) So Fraser has to be joking, right? I mean Piers Morgan is ubiquitous enough as it is without raising the chill prospect
Could you vote for Piers Morgan? In an interview with Freddy Gray in The Spectator tomorrow, he says he’s tempted to stand for Parliament – and it’s not such a surprise. He has weirdly inserted himself in the political process in recent weeks, defining Nick “no more than 30” Clegg and giving Gordon Brown probably