All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
One of the Tories’ favoured lines recently has been that they are acting like a responsible government while Labour is behaving like an irresponsible opposition. But I wonder if this attitude is entirely healthy for an opposition, or whether it ends up blunting its campaigning edge. For example, the Tories’ refusal to say for definite
The latest issue of The Spectator is released 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 are available for free
Hold your breath, the ‘Zac’s filthy rich’ furore is coming to a front page near you. In addition to scurrilous insinuation about his tax status and the fact that he has spent Walpolean sums on campaigning in Richmond, Paul Waugh breaks the news that the Electoral Commission intends to investigate an allegedly impermissible donation Zac
Rabble-rouser and bruiser-in-chief Charles Clarke has taken a hatchet to the government’s highly political Pre-Budget Report. Writing on his blog, Clarke argues: ‘He (Brown) felt that the main purpose of this pre-election Pre-Budget Report was to recycle his old political dividing lines. This weakness can only come from fear of discussion of our past
Of all the findings from today’s ICM poll for the Guardian, I imagine this one will concern the Tory leadership most: “Just two months ago, 49 percent of voters said they thought Cameron and Osborne would do better than Darling and Brown, but that figure is 38 percent today.” They’re still ahead of Brown and
Coffee House readers sometimes complain that we do not talk enough about Muslims and Islam. I have certainly shied away from the subject, fearing that emotion and prejudice, rather than argumentation and empirical data, would dominate the debate. I don’t write about Christians, Jews or Buddhists, so why focus on Muslims? At any rate, I
An argument put forward by some Labour types is that we’re not really facing a debt crisis at all. “Yes, the national debt levels are bad,” they say, “but we started off at a low level in comparison to other countries, so we can absorb the deficits we’re racking up.” Well, you can take issue
Shocking news – a big concert to raise money for the Mary Seacole Statue Appeal last week was cancelled at short notice, no reason given. I’ve tried to find out why from the Mary Seacole cheerleader-in-chief, Mrs Elizabeth Anionwu, but have not heard back from her yet. But still, on the positive side, a “miniature
Today’s Guardian has an interesting story on the success of the New School Network, an organisation set up to get parents’ to take up the opportunities offered by the Tories’ planned school reform. The Guardian reports that 200 parents groups and 100 groups of teachers are interested in setting up schools. I suspect that take
As Andrew Sparrow says, it’s well worth reading Iain Dale’s interview with John Bercow in the latest issue Total Politics. It’s a fun read, mostly because the Speaker is remarkably candid – a quality that’s normally to be admired in a politician. But I can’t help thinking that he made a mistake in admitting this:
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
It’s said that every newborn either looks like Winston Churchill or a pound of mince. But this gorgeous, wee creature, I’m sure you’ll agree, looks like neither. Born at 5.52am this morning, after a wait of what felt like an eternity, he weighed in at 9lbs 1 ounce. The staff at the hospital (Kingston-upon-Thames) were
…here are some of the posts made on Spectator.co.uk over the weekend: Fraser Nelson lambasts the government for playing politics with the public finances, and reports on some mixed poll results for the Tories. James Forsyth spots the signs that a fourth term Labour government would be even more fiscally irresponsible, and Labour fell between
Oh, look, Ed Balls is talking about “investment” again. This time it’s an address on the Government’s Children’s Plan, and, judging by the preview in today’s Independent, it’s all going to be about how much more money his department is spending. I doubt Alistair Darling will be impresssed – especially as much of that money
I was struggling towards an analysis of the true meaning of the PBR in Friday’s post, but a couple of the Sunday commentators were a little closer to the mark. John Rentoul, in an article with the provocative headline Labour is Unelectable Again the Independent on Sunday’s chief political commentator has finally announced the death of
So, who was responsible for the illegal hacking of those Climategate emails? I’m a bit out of my depth here; in the cyberville school I’m in the special needs class, possessed of no understanding or ability. But it would be good to find out, wouldn’t it? Or do those ultra-sceptics among you not give a
It has started. The Labour attack unit is out today talking about a “Tory VAT rise” – as per Paddy Hennessy’s scoop. Osborne stated his (to me, relatively paltry) position on the deficit: that he’d reduce it faster than Labour but can’t say how much. The Labour attack unit keeps partying like its 1999 with
Patrick Hennessy has the scoop in The Sunday Telegraph that Gordon Brown plans to make a pledge not to raise VAT a key dividing line with the Tories at the next election. A senior Labour source tells Patrick that the Brownites rebuffed Treasury effort to raise VAT in the PBR because it “was all about
David Cameron has been on Sky News this morning pushing the idea that the most likely date for the election is March 25th. Cameron’s comments are part of a coordinated Conservative attempt to ramp up speculation about a March poll. The aim is to both gin up Tory activists and to create a narrative where
Considering the fiscal crisis we face, this revelation in Andrew Rawnsley’s column is particularly dispiriting: “[Gordon Brown] has been egged on by Ed Balls [to make more spending promises], partly because the schools secretary is also obsessed with that old dividing line, partly because he wanted to be able to boast that he had won
Two polls out tomorrow: one (ComRes/Sindy) showing 17 point Tory lead and other (YouGov/Sunday Times) showing a 9 point lead. This is the difference between a comfortable majority and a hung parliament. ComRes shows that the Eton class war attack backfires (I hope Balls/Ian Austin etc are reading) with 70% disagreeing that it makes any
Major bad language warning on the video below, but this incident in the Irish Parliament yesterday is too extraordinary not to post. Maybe the Tories will take notes for their new, more aggressive approach… Hat-tip: Tim Montgomerie
There were two possible strategic approaches Labour could have taken to the PBR. One option was to surprise everyone by actually making cuts. They then could have said, “we’ve made all the cuts we can. Anything else would really hurt frontline services”. This would have put them in position to challenge the Tories as to
Does anyone remember the England cricket team? Roger Alton makes the very good point in his Spectator sport column this week, while flicking through the runners and riders for this year’s Sports Personality of the Year, that really the England captain Andrew Strauss should win: “…but it seems we’ve almost forgotten that we regained the
For any Kremlinologists among us, Peter Oborne’s latest column in the Mail sure is a juicy read. It claims that Mandelson and Brown are “at war again” – only, this time, insiders say the damage to their relationship is “irreparable”. The Business Secretary is said to be “bitterly unhappy” with Labour’s class war strategy, and
So the protracted, wheezing death of ID cards continues, with Alistair Darling admitting in today’s Telegraph that: “Most of the expenditure is on biometric passports which you and I are going to require shortly to get into the US. Do we need to go further than that? Well, probably not.” The government are letting it
It has taken eight years, but Tony Blair has finally leveled with the British public and admitted that the WMD thing didn’t really matter: he wanted to depose Saddam Hussein anyway. That’s what he has said in a BBC interview, presumably to pre-empt his appearance before the Chilcot inquiry. His chosen confessor: Fern Britton. His
Six years ago I wrote a review for the Observer about Paul Berman’s Terror and Liberalism, a quite brilliant polemic about the way the legitimate liberal desire to overturn the conventional or the bourgeois can so often turn to murderous terror. I recognised at the time that it was an extraordinary book, but I couldn’t
Analysts analyse, reporters report and politicians, well, they are meant to make decisions. When in power, they are meant to decide things; when in opposition they are meant to set our alternatives to government policy. But not, it seems, when it comes to defence policy. Or at least not always. I have just sat down
Here are some posts made on Spectator.co.uk over the past week: Fraser Nelson says we shouldn’t worry about the tax on jobs, and reveals the hidden cuts in the Pre-Budget Report. James Forsyth wonders whether Labour has u-turned on defence spending, and says the Tories should attack the national insurance increase. Peter Hoskin gives his
Is it just me, or have the Tories developed a slightly harder edge in the couple of days since the Pre-Budget Report? We had an unusually acidic address from David Cameron yesterday, in which he likened Brown ‘n’ Darling to “joy-riders in a car smashing up the neighbourhood,” and criticised the PBR for its “irresponsibility,
We all know how bureaucratic and convoluted a lot of Parliamentary practice is, but this reminder from Heather Brooke of the bodies involved in reforming MPs’ pay and expenses is still pretty astonishing: “Currently we have: the senior salaries review body (which makes recommendations on MPs’ salaries and pensions); the committee on standards and privileges
Well, it seems like Paul Richards – a former aide to Hazel Blears – wants to corner the market in quietly persuasive demolitions of his own party’s strategy. If you remember, he wrote a perceptive piece on Labour’s shortcomings in the aftermath of the Norwich North by-election, which we highlighted here on Coffee House. And,
A few weeks ago Michael Heseltine wiped the floor with the rest of the Question Time panel. Last night it was Paddy Ashdown’s turn to do the same. It helped, of course, that much of the programme concentrated on defence issues, about which Ashdown really does know something. But it was still an impressive performance,