All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
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
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
Michael Wolff’s portrait of David Cameron in the latest issue of Vanity Fair is well worth reading, even it it’s a weird kind of a beast. Wolff concludes – at the start of the piece, as it happens – that he’s “impressed” by the Tory leader. But then spends the best part of 2,000 words
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
As James Kirkup says over at the Telegraph, it’s worth paying attention to the credit rating agency Fitch when it says that the UK deficit will need to be cut quicker than is currently planned – to 3.3 percent of GDP by 2015, rather than 4.4 percent. Throw in similar warnings from the Confederation of
Rod Dreher had a good post riffing on David Brooks column last week which is in turn well worth reading. Brooks argues, astutely in my view, that the Tea Party movement is in many ways the flipside of the 1960s New Left: Members of both movements believe in what you might call mass innocence. Both
What the House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee gives with one hand: “The current situation of indefinite retention of the DNA profiles of those arrested but not convicted is impossible to defend in light of the judgment of the European Court of Human Rights and unacceptable in principle,” the committee says in a report
A quick coda to this earlier post on the Tories and the Northern Ireland peace process: the approach taken by the Guardian (and others) is that the Tories must be a neutral, honest broker for the process, otherwise the whole thing may collapse. And how must the Tories demonstrate their honesty and neutrality? By chivvying,
My gut feeling is that Cameron will win with a majority. But I had a gut feeling that Carey Mulligan would get Best Actress at the Oscars. When Scotland play rugby, I have a gut feeling that they will win. My gut, alas, has a pretty poor track record. But if I look at the
Previously, there were rumblings that Lord Paul was considering quitting the Lords to keep his non-dom status. Today, he has confirmed that he will end his non-dom status and remain in the Lords. If you were being cynical, you might think that there’s been a change of heart so that Labour can ramp up their
If you want a sense of how much work Charlie Whelan and Unite are doing on behalf of Gordon Brown, then I’d recommend you read Rachel Sylvester’s column in the Times this morning. There are the millions of pounds in funding, via the taxpayer, of course. There’s Unite’s “virtual phone bank,” canvassing votes for Labour.
Over the course of the past year some people have, from time to time, been wise enough to remind us of just how difficult it will be for the Tories to win a majority. That’s a consequence, of course, of their past anaemic performances (and a further reminder that the base is far from enough)
I know, I know – there are only so many polls a reader can take. So I’ll spare you the details from tonight’s YouGov poll, or the Opinium poll in the Daily Express. But this Populus poll in the Times is worth highlighting, if only because it seems to be attracting the most buzz. It
Not the least of the entertainments* between now and polling day will be seeing how the Guardian manage to keep up their exhausting warnings of the dire consequences that will inevitably follow any Conservative victory. Nothing but nothing will be too trivial for the paper and that’s fine: free press and all that. The best
After April 6th senior bankers and top hedge funder workers who are based in London will pay a greater proportion of their earnings in income tax and national insurance than their counterparts in any other major financial centre, reports The Wall Street Journal Europe today. This research shows just how damaging Labour’s various soak the
So, the government is tying the taxpayer to £11bn of new IT contracts before the election, making the Tories’ planned immediate IT cuts very expensive. Is this latest example of a scorched earth policy? Or Labour ‘getting on with the job’? With the polls narrowing, I can’t see Labour setting a fiscal booby-trap that they
Ok, so it’s down on the 75 percent achieved in 2005, but it’s still striking – encouraging, even – that voter turnout was at 62 percent for the recent Iraqi general elections. That’s higher than the 61.4 percent for the last UK general election, and, lest it need saying, we didn’t have to deal with
There are many arguments, and many perspectives, when it comes to how much we need to know about Jon Venables’ return to prison. Yes, too much information – and too much publicity – could forfeit his anonymity. But too little, and there’s the risk that some serious questions about the probation service could remain unanswered.
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
Earlier this year, Transatlantic Trends, an annual survey of public opinion on both sides of the Atlantic, was published. Key highlights from the survey included a quadrupling of European support for President Obama’s handling of foreign policy. But what really caught my eye was how badly the relationship between the West and Turkey had frayed.
This is Sarah Pirie, a ballet teacher and television actress, who is accused of abducting a fifteen year old boy and having sex with him at various hotels in Lancashire. How desperately awful it must have been for the lad, who was allegedly subjected to three months of this sort of treatment. I can only
…here are some of the posts made at Spectator.co.uk over the weekend. Fraser Nelson asks what it does it matter if Samantha Cameron voted Labour once. James Forsyth notes that Sir John Major accuses Brown of conduct profoundly unbecoming a Prime Minister, and argues that the Lib Dems’ electoral rhetoric will make it much harder
Fourteen years on from “education, education, education,” Labour seems to have hit upon three new priorities for government: “Ashcroft, Ashcroft, Ashcroft”. Sure, we all knew that they would push this story as hard and as fast as it could go. But it still says a lot about how they will go about their election campaign,
Why does Britain fall for financial spin so often? The question goes well beyond the great confidence trick of Gordon Brown’s ten years in the Treasury. I’m just back from three weeks in Australia. What’s always struck me in the years I’ve gone there is how different the newspapers/news shows/political debates are. They are well
Commenting on this post, Tim Montgomerie writes: Did you actually read what I wrote Alex? Not once did I call for an end to the new Toryism. I advocated blending new and old messages. I did not suggest “banging on” about immigration but as voters’ number two issue it should be part of the mix.
Our plucky friends in the north have done the right thing: Icelanders have overwhelmingly rejected a plan to repay Britain and the Netherlands billions of pounds lost when Reykjavik’s banks collapsed in 2008 Partial referendum results from around a third of the cast votes showed 93% opposed the deal and less than 2% supported it.
To be honest, the leg-flashing that the Lib Dems are doing in front of the Tories and Labour just doesn’t really grab my attention. Their overtures and innuendo may, or may not, turn out to be significant in a few weeks time – but we need a general election before we can judge either way.
John Bercow was on the Politics Show this morning decrying ‘personal abuse’ in politics. This appears to be another issue on which Bercow’s views have evolved. Back in 2005, in a Tory leadership contest that was relatively free of personal abuse, Bercow, a Ken Clarke supporter, chose to attack Cameron’s candidacy in personal terms, decrying
Tim Montgomerie says it’s “time to stop apologising for being Conservative” and calls for an end to this Red Tory nonsense and, instead, a return to “red-meat Toryism”. As a committed Conservative it’s not too surprising that Montgomerie thinks this is the way to stabilise a wobbly Tory campaign. The base always thinks the problem
According to the Mail on Sunday David Cameron, William Hague, Ken Clarke, Michael Gove and Jeremy Hunt will be the faces of the Tory election campaign. Obviously, others will play a role too. For instance, we know that Liam Fox has been charged with going on TV to harry the government. Theresa May is also
On the back of Andrew Rawnsley’s revelations, I decided to write about Gordon Brown’s “bad citizens” for the politics column of the Spectator. Under the magazine’s new online rules, this is only available a week after publication. But now you can read the filth and the fury in all its sordid glory. I have since
So what if Samantha Cameron has voted Labour in the past? When I saw this story flash up on the wires last night, I wondered what the big deal was. But to splash the Mail on Sunday on it? Everyone knows that she is not the stereotypical Tory wife: she has a tattoo on her
There is an excellent piece on the Ashcroft affair from Martin Ivens in the Sunday Times today. He quotes a member of Team Cameron: “Why didn’t David just take Ashcroft out and shoot him? His work is done. What’s the point of him hanging about?” Well said. No one has quite got to the bottom
The problem Scientology has… Let me start again, among the problems with Scientology is that it wasn’t founded a couple of thousand years ago. Had it been it might not seem quite so obviously fraudulent and, well, nuts. Age rubs off the harsh edges and all that and at least permits the creation of a