All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
How are you feeling this morning? Muddled and confused? Follow my rule, then: always wait until Thought for the Day has finished before you enjoy your first stiffener of the morning. Lord Stern thinks most of you are muddled and confused, and has said as much. Anyone who doubts man-made climate change is muddled and
It’s obviously excellent news that the five British sailors incarcerated by Iran on Monday night have been released without incident. Exacerbating already strained diplomatic tensions would have been an enormous temptation to the Iranian regime and David Miliband is right to commend their “professional” conduct in this matter. Miliband said: “The Iranian authorities gave us
I sympathise with Alistair Darling and his defence of the City. When he’s not contending with Gordon Brown’s suicidal Tobin tax proposals, Darling has to confront Nicolas Sarkozy’s calculated anti-Anglo popular politics. Yesterday, the Elysees’s Puss-in-Boots delivered a deliberately provocative and economically senseless attack on what he described as the “unconstrained Anglo-Saxon market model.” Sarkozy
I was both right and wrong. When Tony Abbott’s Battlelines came out a few months ago I wrote in these pages that it had many excellent things to say but its thinness on economic policy meant that his Parliamentary colleagues would be unwilling to elect him as their leader. That was wrong. But I added:
So what happens when the news cameras leave and the people who have been flooded out are left to clear up the mess and rebuild their lives? The point is that the news agenda moves on and the people of Cockermouth will just have to get on with it. But where is the record of
The opinion polls are continuing to feed the story that the Tories are in trouble. Tonight’s Politics Home data which shows Cameron’s personal ratings dropping 15 points in the last 10 weeks follows a string of polls where the Tories have failed to break through the forty percent mark. Tory morale has been a bit
It’s all a bit of a puzzle. How will David Cameron incentivise marriage? In an interview with the Mail, Cameron dismisses IDS’s transferable tax allowance scheme. “It would be wrong to say that they are Conservative Party proposals.” Considering the scheme will cost £4.9bn, the pro-cuts Tories can ill-afford an incentive that would
I’m writing about the Swiss referendum for the magazine this week. In lieu of a blog on the same issue I thought I’d direct you to a different blog which reveals the even-handed and objective manner in which the BBC views the vote. Its Islamic Affairs Analyst, Roger Hardy, has described the referendum as an
Britain remains the sick man of Europe. Professor Sir Mike Richards’s report finds that although progress has been made on cancer treatments, diagnosis rates, and therefore the chances of survival, lag behind European standards. A deluge of statistical analysis supports Richards’s findings. The European Journal of Cancer’s recent research into solid cancers, such as breast
Like Yglesias, I guess one ought to have an official “What I Think About Obama’s Escalation in Afghanistan post”. And the truth is that I don’t know. Don’t know whether Obama’s new strategy will work, don’t know if it is wise or enough or too much or just about right. And I’m intensely suspicious of
Oh dear. The Labour leadership speculation is back in full effect, thanks to Paul Waugh’s scoop in the Standard. According to Paul, Andy Burnham is “prepared to throw his hat into the ring” to succeed Gordon Brown, should it all go wrong for Labour in the next election. Apparently, he’s even lined up Tessa Jowell
If you’re still scratching your head over the latest opinion polls, then I’d recommend you read Anthony Wells’ latest post over at UK Polling report. In it, he outlines four potential reasons for the diminishing gap between the Tories and Labour: Cameron’s “reverse” over the Lisbon Treaty; increased economic optimism; Labour performing better; and the
So, here we are then. Another one of life’s harmless little pleasures outlawed by Brown’s nanny state. What will they ban next? You’d think the police would have better things to do than apprehending a bloke simply for enjoying himself and hurting nobody in the process. In the end, they’ll get all of us. Can’t
Another one for the Brown as Nixon folder, courtesy of Rachel Sylvester’s column today: “‘It’s about style of government,’ says one senior figure due to give evidence [to the Iraq Inquiry]. ‘Blair would have a war Cabinet, but a small caucus would meet beforehand. The civil servants were frustrated. Gordon is just as bad. He
The waiting will soon be over. Later today, the President Obama is expected to order around 34,000 troops into battle, including into Helmand province. This surge will be added to the additional 500 troops Gordon Brown committed yesterday and what sources tell me are cast-iron troop offers by another eight countries, including Turkey, Australia, Montenegro,
When I visited Israel last year, various sources there were convinced – adamant, even – that Iran was within a year or two of creating an atomic bomb. That may or may not have been the case, but it’s still ominous that that hypothetical timeline is nearly up. We can all too easily forget that,
My excellent chum Iain Martin observes that seven of the ten most recent polls have put the Tories below the “magic figure” of 40% support. The latest ComRes survey has them on 37%. Perhaps, he wonders, some of the core vote has been scunnered by the Lisbon Treaty shenanigans or perhaps some floating voters are
James is right to say that the Lib Dems’ commitment to increase the tax-free personal allowance to £10,000 trumps any obvious campaigning soundbite the Tories can offer. Isn’t that a problem? Or, to put it another way, what if the Liberal Democrats are right? On balance, I think they are. Whatever one thinks of the
This, from E.D Kain at the League of Ordinary Gentlemen is a good paragraph: Conservatism is not only about limited government, and where it seeks to limit government it does so because it sees government as a force of instability. But what about those times when government is instead a force for stability? Defense leaps
The Chilcot Inquiry is already proving a hundred times more interesting than anyone expected. My only worry is that people already view 2003 as ancient history. There is a tendency to think we already know what we only suspected. I was an agnostic on the intervention. I hoped in would work, but worried that it
An unfortunately timed Accenture advertisement in the Wall Street Journal today: [Thanks to JNS for the heads-up and MF for the image]
The Lib Dem’s policy to make everyone’s first 10 thousand pounds of income tax free is, whatever its imperfections, a significant doorstep offer. By that, I mean it is something that those canvassing for the Lib Dems can say in an attmept to get the voters to listen to them rather than shut the door
Whenever a London bookmaker made odds on Scottish politics, my former colleagues at The Scotsman used to make easy money*. The world of Holyrood, where yours truly served a one year tour of duty, has its own political weather system that it’s hard to understand from a distance – so likelihoods are given very high
Actually, the existence of any such imperial ambitions is generally denied, even though the US has been an expansionist power almost since its inception. The inter-war years of “isolationism” are the great exception, not the natural way of things. At least not in Washington. Still, we are where we are. Two recent columns, by Thomas
So there we have it. Gordon Brown has confirmed what we all expected: that 500 more British troops will be sent to Afghanistan, bringing the total UK presence up to around 10,000. The “surge” will be rounded off when Obama announces something like 35,000 extra US troops tomorrow. Although greater manpower is A Good Thing
The potentially huge exposure of UK banks in Dubai, depreciating some UK bank share prices again this morning, is a reminder of just how much UK bank lending grew in recent years. The above chart shows the growth in external claims of the UK owned banks around the world over the past decade. The sums
Iain Martin has an excellent post on Philip Blond and his Red Tory project. But it occurs to me that Mr Blond could have more concisely explained Red Toryism if he’d simply played Merle Haggard’s Are the Good Times Really Over? True, Merle puts an American spin on matters, but the basic idea seems broadly
During the Tory party conference, I wrote about how the Tories were developing plans to radically cut corporation tax. In recent weeks, the Tories have been dropping plenty of hints about this agenda but giving little detail on it. After reiterating the Tories’ existing plans to lower the rates of corporation tax at the CBI
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
There is a surfeit of arrogance and certitude on both sides, of course. My own position is that I have little doubt that the climate is changing and most of the evidence suggests that it is, in the medium to long term, heading upwards. I suspect, again from the stats, that it is possible we
Ok, so the Age of Austerity means that promises made in sunnier times will need to be forestalled – or even cancelled altogether. But it’s still revealing that Labour are thinking about reversing their plan to raise the threshold at which inheritance tax is levied. After all, this is what Brown regards as The Great
…here are some of the posts made at Spectator.co.uk over the weekend Fraser Nelson considers the Iraq inquiry we should be having. James Forsyth argues that the Tories must develop a three-pronged strategy in light of recent polls, and describes Zac Goldsmith’s tax status as a major embarrassment for the Tories. Peter Hoskin ponders PBR
The Liberal Democrats unveil their tax plans later today, and Nick Clegg insists that his radical plan will “put fairness back into the tax system”. It is expected to be a left of centre plan: don’t expect to hear anything about “savage cuts”. The Mansion Tax is back, albeit in slightly more expensive clothes. The
Dear Alex, Happy St Andrew’s Day! Today you publish your mildly-awaited plans for a referendum on Scottish Independence. Alas, unless the Liberal Democrats can be persuaded to endorse the bill, there’s little prospect of any such referendum actually happening. Such are the traumas of minority government. Of course, you find yourself trapped: if the SNP