All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Given the very real prospect that the BNP will make some sort of mark on next month’s elections, I’d recommend you read Martin Fletcher’s article in the Times today. He offers not only an effective portrait on a recesson-hit town – in this case, Barnsley – but an insight into how the disgusting nationalist group
The South Bank Show has been going for a very long time – since January 1978 – and now, after being pushed further and further into the dimmest reaches of the late-night schedules, it’s being axed altogether. This might not be such a cause for dismay if one could feel convinced that anything even approaching
Today is one of the biggest days in David Cameron’s time as Tory leader. If yesterday’s expenses revelations were bad – and they certainly were – then today’s are probably even worse. Despite a well stage-managed Tory response to the scandal so far, there’s a clear sense that something more needs to be done. The
Way back in February I suggested that Geert Wilders should have been allowed to show his wee film Fitna in Britain and that it was a mistake to deny him entry to the United Kingdom. But I also suggested that he was no sort of champion of freedom or free speech or any liberal sense
The Tories have had a bad night. First a poll put them below the 40 percent mark and now the Telegraph’s revelations have caused serious embarrassment to the party without providing David Cameron with a case where he can expel an MP from the party without suffering the call to remove several others on the
We blithely say that politicians are despised even more than journalists. But those who work closely with MPs generally end up thinking they are a pretty decent lot. The revelations of the past week have changed all that. Speaker Martin’s intervention today was a new low point. Beyond embarrassing, it verged on the seriously chillling. Poor Nick
Ben Wallace has just called for the Speaker to resign, joining Douglas Carswell’s call. This doubles the number of MPs who have broken the parliamentary protocol and are openly calling for the Speaker to go. Wallace explained his rationale on Channel Four news: from 2001 when Freedom of Information legislation was passed, it was clear
Gordon’s “Sorry” looks and sounds like catch-up – for the good reason that this is precisely what it is. In my Sunday Telegraph column yesterday, I argued that the British polity had slipped backwards on the moral evolutionary path from a “guilt culture” (governed by moral conscience) to a “shame culture” (governed only by fear
Here are some of the posts made on Spectator.co.uk over the weekend: Fraser Nelson reports on MPs getting away with everything they can, and sets out the Margaret Moran doctrine. James Forsyth picks up on another blow to the Budget’s credibility, and suggests that the Tories are also tainted by the expenses revelations. Peter Hoskin
Like any sensible person I’ve been thoroughly amused and appalled by the scandal of MPs expenses. Appalled because the extent of MPs’ avarice is sufficient to shock even an iron-souled cynic; amused because watching MPs try to justify their gluttonous appetite for taxpayer-funded freebies affords a certain pleasure that one might consider vindictive if only
Polly Toynbee, once a great Brown cheerleader, pulls no punches in her column calling for Labour to get rid of the Prime Minister. Here’s the nub of her argument: “It’s all over for Brown and Labour. The abyss awaits. As long as he remains leader, there is nothing that wretched Labour candidates can plausibly say
Today can’t go by without a Coffee House mention for the Sun’s front page story – about how a Downing St aide left a document outlining Gordon Brown’s “make-up routine” in the back of a cab. The paper have published full details, and we learn that our Dear Leader’s slaps on “terracotta Guerlain” bronzer and
Michael Martin has just exploded. Kate Hoey raised a point of order: doesn’t the Metropolitan Police have better things to do than investigating leaks? You often get the feeling that Martin is just waiting to snap “You can’t handle the truth!” à la A Few Good Men. Hoey seemed to tip him over the edge.
I would never have predicted this but a Politics Home poll says the public is more interested in the Gurkhas than the expenses issue: “Joanna Lumley’s meeting with Gordon Brown to discuss a Gurkha settlement and her heated public exchange with immigration minister Phil Woolas was the story that the public were most interested in
The question of the timing of Brown’s apology is one of those rare moments when I find myself disagreeing with Pete. The obvious political thing to do would have been for Brown to say sorry on Thursday night, framing the way that the rest of the media would follow up on the Telegraph’s mega-scoop. But
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 – provided 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
Paul Waugh reports that Michael Gove and Andrew Lansley will be doing interviews with the BBC about their expenses later on. This suggests a confidence on their part and that of Andy Coulson that their cases are explicable. Both seem to have genuinely changed which one was their first home for real life reasons rather
Here is a quick take on some of the questions being discussed in Westminster right now: Are the Telegraph done when it comes to Labour and Tory frontbenchers? The Tories seem confident that there is no more to come out about their top team. The situation on the Labour side is less clear. How will
Is Gordon Brown playing catch-up, or is his belated apology over the expenses scandal all part of some cynical plan? Sure, Cameron dropped the S-word yesterday, so Brown may be scrambling to prevent the Tory leader taking an unassailable lead on the issue. But it does strike me as odd that he’s waited for the
If you thought your opinion of Parliament couldn’t sink any lower, then think again. This morning’s papers contain a couple of grim revelations about how MPs are responding to the expenses scandal, and they certainly fit in with the sorry pattern of denial and evasion that we’ve witnessed so far. Take the email sent out
There is a danger with these expenses stories that we get inured to them, that nothing shocks us any more. For this reason the shadow Cabinet is benefiting from being featured fourth not first in the Telegraph’s series. The revelations are bad. The actions of Francis Maude and Chris Grayling strike me as most serious.
So has Michael Gove been caught home flipping? What I heard about the latest revelations, it struck me that he mentioned his home moving in an interview with The Spectator back in September last year. The write-up is here, but in the magazine piece I left out his full explanation behind his house move. Here it
So the truth is now out on the shadow Cabinet’s expense claims. Alan Duncan claimed £4,000 of gardening costs. Gove and Lansley are alleged to have “flipped” their second home designations, as well as spending £1,000s on home furnishings and renovations. Francis Maude and Chris Grayling have tidy property portfolios going. And Cheryl Gillan claimed
I know defending MPs is a hard sell right now, but Michael Gove seems to be getting an unfair rap in the coverage. He is under fire for having flipped his second home designation but he did so because he moved homes. In other words, the property that was his second home genuinely changed. Gove
The Telegraph has posted a preview of its coverage of the shadow cabinet’s claims, which will feature in tomorrow’s paper. Here are the key points: “Tomorrow the Telegraph will disclose instances where Conservative MPs have gone to great lengths to ensure their country properties are maintained at taxpayers’ cost. One shadow minister has had piping
How, you might ask, do these MPs with their snouts in the trough justify it to themselves? Margaret Moran, the Luton MP who has claimed for her partner’s home in Southampton, gave her rationale to BBC1’s Politics Show earlier. MARGARET MORAN: My partner works in Southampton. He has done for twenty years. If I’m ever
The expenses scandal is becoming more depressing all the time. There are no apologies forthcoming and too many politicians want to circle the wagons against any kind of scrutiny. As Jonathan Isaby notes, Theresa May is refusing to say any MP has behaved immorally and is instead “blaming the culture that has grown up in
Ok, I know – deckchairs, Titanic, and all that. But a reshuffle rumour in this morning’s papers is still worth mentioning. Both the Sunday Telegraph and the Sunday Mirror are reporting that Brown could take the “nuclear option” of moving Alistair Darling to the Home Office, and installing someone else as Chancellor. As the Telegraph
Unsurprisingly, expenses stories dominate the Sunday papers. But an interview with Peter Watt, the Labour Secretary General during the Blair-Brown handover who had to resign over the Abrahams affair, caught my eye. Watt’s main point is that he was left hanging in the wind by Brown but his comment about the election that never was
So, no Ed Balls in the Sunday Telegraph tomorrow, no Shadow Cabinet. But we do get Sinn Fein (of which, more later) as well as Kitty in the City, aka Kitty Ussher who succeeded Balls as City Minister and is now benefits minister. Anyway, she spent £22,000 of taxpayers’ cash doing up her terraced house
The bottom has again dropped out of the Labour party. A BPix/Mail on Sunday poll shows its popularity has slumped to its lowest level since polling began in 1943. Its 23 percent, just below the 23.5 percent it polled at Michael Foot’s nadir. Meanwhile a YouGov/Sunday Times poll puts Labour down 7 to 27, yielding
The real question for Labour now is how the party will rebuild itself. This has important democratic implications: we have witnessed how an over-mighty government can operate without the scrutiny of a strong oppoistion over the past decade and it is often not a pretty sight. But there is a serious problem for the Labour
Anthony Wells has news of a snap ICM poll for the News of the World on expenses. It does seem that Gordon Brown has been hurt by Friday’s headlines as much as we thought he would be; 68 percent say their opinion of him has been damaged. (I’m not sure if the poll contains this
Do read Alasdair Palmer’s provocative and tightly argued case for a DNA database. The nub of his argument is that there’s no the difference between the state having a photo of your face courtesy of your passport and one of your DNA. He writes: “Most people react to the state’s photo database with a shrug: