All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
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
Tonight’s YouGov poll has Labour up one and the Tory lead down to five points. There’s also a BPIX survey in the Mail on Sunday which suggests that the Ashcroft operation might only net the Tories an extra 13 seats. While the News of the World reports on a Unite-led campaign to boost the Labour
An ICM poll for the News of the World has the Tories above the psychologically important forty percent mark. After a week that has been dominated by the controversy over Lord Ashcroft’s tax status, the Tories will be delighted to see a poll showing their lead growing; they are nine points ahead in this poll
In a striking move, John Major will tonight accuse Gordon Brown of “using the Armed Forces as a Party Political prop.” This isn’t the first time that Major has been critical of Brown. He was one of the people who, rightly, criticised Brown’s trip to Iraq during the Tory conference in 2007 and just last
Just a quick post to encourage CoffeeHousers to read David Cameron’s speech to his party’s Welsh conference today. It’s not just the clearest, and most sensible, exposition of the Tories’ economic message that I’ve come across so far – it’s also the finest overall speech that I can remember Cameron giving for some time. Plenty
Living in a three-way marginal, I get a bunch of election literature. The latest Lib Dem flyer caught my eye because it is the mirror image of the Tories vote yellow get Brown message: ‘In areas like this, the only way to get real change is to vote Liberal Democrat. Voting Conservative could just help
Yesterday, Gordon Brown argued that he curbed defence spending to prevent the public finances from spiralling out of control – but added that he had still given the MoD everything they had asked for. So, when it’s anything but defence spending, he boasts of all that extra “investment”. But when it comes to defence, he
This, from Roger Alton in this week’s Spectator Sport: “Manchester United and Aston Villa players are moaning about the state of the Wembley pitch for last Sunday’s Carling Cup Final. Give over, lads. Football’s not billiards. A harsh winter’s just a fact of life, and your skills have been flattered by manicured surfaces for too
Iain Martin and Tim Montgomerie are both reporting that the Conservatives have hired YouGov to do polling for them. This might seem like the ultimate Westminster insider story but it will actually have ramifications for the election campaign as a whole. I understand that the Tory deal with YouGov will mean that they will get
Here are some posts made on Spectator.co.uk over the past week: Fraser Nelson explains why the Tories should talk about immigration, and faces the protesters. James Forsyth wonders whether the Tories are over the worst of their wobble, and welcomes Michael Gove’s efforts to restore the educational gold standard. Peter Hoskin says that any fallout
The small crowd of demonstrators from a group calling itself the Anti-Academies Alliance who gathered outside the Spectator conference on The Schools Revolution yesterday gave an indication of the opposition that Michael Gove and the Conservatives would face, were they to win the election and attempt the radical overhaul of which the British education system
Poor Armenia. Just about the only time that wee country gets a mention in Washington is when the perennial Recognise-the-Genocide issue comes up. As tradition demands, the Secretary of State lobbied Congress to avoid passing anything resembling or hinting at any such thing. Nevertheless the Foreign Affairs Committee voted 23-22 in favour of the annual
Like Mr Eugenides, I’m on record opposing the disgraceful ban that prevented Geert Wilders from entering the United Kingdom. So in that sense it’s a good thing that he’s in London today to show his little film to Lord Pearson and his pals. What I don’t understand, like our redoubtable Greek friend, is why UKIP
Transparency is one area where the Tories are committed to being truly radical. The changes they are already committed to ushering in—publishing government expenditure and contracts online—will create far greater scrutiny of government. In time, this will lead to money being saved. and are unlikely to ever be reversed. Their announcement today on local government
One story which has been rumbling along in the background of Ashcroft and Chilcot – and, indeed, over the past few months – is the fallout from Andy Burnham’s claim that NHS bodies are now the state’s “preferred provider” of healthcare in this country. With those two words, in a speech last September, the Health
I just took a quick stroll around the block from Old Queen St, to check out the situation on the ground outside the Chilcot Inquiry. The most striking thing is how few protestors there are – about ten at most, I’d say, and a fraction of the number that marched out against Blair a few
Might Gordon Brown get away with it at the Chilcot Inquiry today? I suspect so. The media seems obsessed with the run-up to war, whereas the real crime was the betrayal of Basra. Brown made false claims to Parliament about the fall of violence in the city which, as he would have known, was being
Tick, tick, tick … there’s only an hour or so to go before Brown’s appearance in front of the Chilcot Inquiry. And, athough I generally feel that this whole process is a waste of time, effort and newsprint, there’s still something grimly fascinating about today’s proceedings. Brown has, after all, always tended to keep a
Sadly this is a safe Republican seat so Ms Rogers won’t be going to Washington any time soon. Still – memo to David Cameron – this is what you can get when you have real* open primaries. Anyway, we’ve been rumbled! The victory in the 22nd Congressional District yesterday by LaRouche Democrat Kesha Rogers sent
One of the refrains made in response to the recent spate of opinion polls is that they don’t really capture what’s going on in the marginals – the real battlgrounds where the election will be fought. Well, now we have a YouGov/Channel 4 poll which specifically covers 60 key marginal sets, and it provides more
Although the heat seems to be coming off Lord Ashcroft himself, attention is now rapidly focussing on the Tory leadership. I mean, it was one thing when William Hague admitted that he didn’t know about Ashcroft’s tax status until a few months ago – but quite another when it emerges that David Cameron only found
The latest issue of the Spectator is out today, and here are my top four features: 1. Britain on the brink. Allister Heath, the editor of City AM, blogged about his cover story earlier. But the full article really is a must-read: it explains just why hung parliaments don’t work in Britain and why the
The Beeb were reporting it an hour or so ago, but now it’s been confirmed: the Electoral Commission has cleared the Tories and Lord Ashcroft of any wrongdoing over £5.1 million worth of donations from his company, Bearwood Corporate Services Limited. Sure, there are still questions surrounding this whole affair – most of them to
… this September: Tony Blair’s memoirs, entititled The Journey. Question is, what does this say about his hopes for a Labour victory? Or will all the juicy Blarite-Brownite stuff be cut out? Either way, the cover will be what you see on the left.
While we’re talking about countries on the brink, it’s worth taking a look at Greece – which has probably passed beyond it. The government has published its package of austerity measures – aiming to reduce its deficit to 8.7 percent of GDP by the end of 2010 – and the markets are deciding what they
It is a calculation that should fill all of us with an immense sense of dread: there is now a 72.2 percent chance of a hung parliament. Or so says Michael Saunders, Citigroup’s chief European economist and the one man in the City everybody listens to when it comes to the interaction between parliamentary politics