All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Vince Cable has joined the cuts debate, arguing that the “time for generalities is over” and that “politicians must not shy away from explaining in detail how they will tackle the problem of deficits and debt”. He identified 9 areas for specific savings: public sector pay and pensions, centralised education, family tax credits, defence procurement,
So, spite, then: is there anybody in Britain with a more exalted opinion of themselves than George Monbiot? His entire column in today’s Guardian deals exclusively with the one subject which has obsessed the man for many years, and bored the rest of us: himself. In particular, he is outraged that the scientist Ian Plimer
George Osborne has just announced at The Spectator’s inaugural conference, Paths to Prosperity, that there will be an emergency Budget in June or July of 2010 if the Tories win the election. Osborne told Andrew Neil that the aim of this Budget would be to reduce borrowing for fiscal year 2010-11, which will already be
From the write up in The Times of the latest Populus poll: “Almost half of voters think that anyone would do a better job than Gordon Brown as Labour leader. Nine months at most from a general election, a Populus poll for The Times suggests that 48 per cent of voters believe that “literally anyone”
I did Lord Myners a disservice by suggesting he’d gone off message by saying that spending would continue until recovery was “firmly rooted”. Peter Mandelson’s cuts speech yesterday supported that line, renewing the cuts versus investment dividing line. Steve Richards argues that the government’s approach is correct and Tory policy is a recipe for disaster.
The Daily Telegraph reports today that Cherie Blair will campaign for Gordon Brown at the next election. She told Tim Walker that “I will personally get involved in the electoral campaign”. The idea of Cherie campaigning for Gordon is rather comic. Relations between the two were famously tense. At Tony Blair’s last conference as Labour
…comes courtesy of one Gordon Brown, in interview with Robert Peston: “Well, I’ve never been someone who myself has been interested in running up personal debts or borrowing huge amounts of money.” Ahem.
Scoopmeister Paul Waugh has a cracking developing story over at his blog. He revealed earlier that Harriet Harman’s people have been canvassing Labour party members with questions like: “Who do you think is the best person to sell the Labour party?” “On a scale of 0 to 5, how do you rate Harriet Harman?” But,
I suspect that union leaders have always believed that they ought to drive the Labour party’s agenda. But now, after a year of economic misery and electoral disasters for the centre-left party leadership, the old left’s confidence is back and ought implies can. In a blatant assault on Blairism, rabble-rouser-in-chief Derek Simpson branded Peter Mandelson,
How worried should we be about national debt? I just had a rather enjoyable spat with Will Hutton on Simon Mayo’s Five Live programme. The situation is atrocious, I said. And that set him off: why did I use such a word? I replied that we are spending more in debt interest than educating our
I’ve become obsessed with a woman. I think she is going to crop up in this blog quite often because I can’t get her out of my mind. She is the last thing I think about before I sleep at night. I wake with her name on my lips. I feel shivery and bereft when
I’ve always rather liked the idea of blogging, as it seems – from the available evidence – to be motivated by two qualities I have a lot of time for: narcissism and spite. So I hope that this new blog of mine comes, in time, to be the very apogee and spitefulness and narcissism, on
Peter Mandelson got rather badly caught out on the Today Programme this morning. Mandelson tried to deny that the Labour line was shifting, saying: “You know, I did ask [Robinson] recently when exactly the prime minister had defined this simply and crudely as Labour investment versus Tory cuts, and Nick was unable to [put] his
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
A very nice piece from Ian Burrell in today’s Independent about my new appointment at the Jewish Chronicle. Regular readers here will perhaps be surprised that I am worried about being seen as making the journey from left to right. Here are the key bits: Martin Bright starts work today as the first non-Jewish political editor in
…here are some of the posts made at Spectator.co.uk over the weekend. Fraser Nelson believes the politics of decline are back. James Forsyth argues that the government’s child protection initiative does more harm than good, and wonders if Brown will last until December. David Blackburn finds Lord Myners not toeing the party line over cuts,
Derek Simpson’s complaint that Labour has failed to keep in touch with its core vote and his half-threat to withdraw Unite’s support over cuts feature prominently across the papers this morning. Simpson’s observation concurs with the consensus that Labour’s disastrous showing in June’s local and European elections and the Norwich by-election was the consequence of
Alsadair Palmer neatly sums up the absurdity of the government’s new child protection plans in the Telegraph: “Once it receives your application, the ISA will invite people to submit information about you. The ISA’s officials will be looking for any claim to the effect that you have done something which might have caused “physical, emotional,
Perhaps Lord Myners hasn’t seen the cuts memo because he appeared on Sky News this morning trying to convince the world that Britain can and must maintain its current spending levels. Despite concerns over the budget deficit, a reality that even the Prime Minister acknowledges, Lord Myners said: “We’re keeping people in their jobs we’re
xxx New template: Six templates: 3. Line chart, no nav, decile x-axis: ywulob 6. Date x-axis, with navigator: efubow 7. Area chart: azuseb 8. Column chart, no nav, disappearing values above each bar: ekusyq 9. Line chart with linked series: opigab 10. Bar chart: orekyg GRAPH 3. Line chart with decile x-axis. Code: ywulob Click here to edit: https://cloud.highcharts.com/charts/ywulob Could you
With the TUC conference coming up, Derek Simpson, leader of Unite, flexes his muscles in an interview with The Independent. He tells Jane Merrick that Labour couldn’t fight a proper election campaign without Unite’s financial backing: “What are the consequences of us not giving Labour money? That will really impair, fatally damage, any chance of
It’s the perennial problem: platform or no platform, anti-Nazi campaign versus no oxygen of publicity. You’d have thought we’d have sorted this one out by now. I agree with David Blackburn that John Denham’s comments comparing the English Defence League to Mosley’s Black Shirts risk overstating the significance of this “organisation”. It is always tempting
The question of Gordon Brown’s leadership won’t go away, but there’s a feeling that nothing will happen for a while yet. Andrew Grice writes in The Independent today that the coup might come in December: “Labour’s hard left and the trade unions are the dogs that have not barked. The assumption is that they stick
Communities Secretary John Denham has compared the English Defence League (EDL), the group that has organised protests against what it describes as the ‘Islamification of Britain’, to Oswald Mosley’s Union of British Fascists. Whilst announcing that the government plans to re-engage predominantly white working class voters who are being seduced by the BNP, Denham said:
There’s a good article in the New York Times today about how little has changed in the way Wall Street does business since the collapse of Lehman—employment in the sector is only down eight percent, Goldman employees will earn on average $700,000 this year and derivatives are still not being traded on an open exchange.
David Cameron doesn’t give much away in his interview with the Telegraph. He again commits the Conservatives to making cuts and implies that taxes will have to be raised. But there are no specifics given. On the one hand, the lack of detail is frustrating—surely the party would have more of a mandate in government
Here are some of the posts that have been made on Spectator.co.uk over the past week: James Forsyth analyses Jon Cruddas’s intervention, and reports on Alistair Dalring’s public spending speech. Peter Hoskin says it’s mission accomplished for Cameron’s cost-cutting speech, and claims that Labour will struggle to outflank the Tories on reform. Daniel Korski wonders
There’s a great post on the Telegraph website highlighting 50 things the internet is killing off. Hand-writing, desk diaries, things like that. But what about those precious activities and institutions the internet was supposed to destroy and hasn’t? Here are six to get the ball rolling: Bookshops Each time I pass a bookshop, especially the
That the news that the government wants everyone who gives children a lift anywhere to be CRB checked broke on the same day that it emerged that Haringey council had sent a child to live with the ringleader of the airline bomb plotters is beyond satire. How have we got to a state where parents
There’s an intriguing story in today’s Times suggesting that the Tories may “backtrack” on some defence spending commitments, and are thinking about shelving the Trident replacement. Here’s a snippet: “Liam Fox, the Shadow Defence Secretary, pledged last year to protect the three most expensive equipment programmes: aircraft carriers, an armoured vehicle system known as FRES
I’ve a piece up at the Daily Beast arguing that Congressman Joe Wilson shouldn’t have apologised for heckling Barack Obama during the latter’s campaigning health care speech the other night: Trivial though it may seem, this brouhaha highlights a great flaw in the American system: You elect a monarch. In olden days and on the
“What did he mean by that?” is the question one is left with after reading Derek Simpson’s interview with the Mirror. Simpson tells the paper that New Labour is dead and that “if you could convince me there is somebody who could take over and go down the Old Labour route without hesitation I’d share
Last night’s “tribute in light” for the victims of the World Trade Center attack on September 11th, 2001.
A neat little anecdote in Steve Richards’ column this morning: “When David Cameron bumped into Charles Clarke at the end of the summer, the former Cabinet minister told the Tory leader in relation to the attempted coup: ‘Don’t worry… we’ll be back’. Cameron replied to him only half jokingly: ‘That’s exactly what I am worried