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My man in Dublin calls with joy in his voice to tell me ‘the Troika’ — the combined powers of the EU, the European Central Bank and the IMF — have signed off Ireland as fit to leave their bailout programme and return to economic self-determination. This is a remarkable turnaround in just three years since I visited the Irish capital in the midst of rescue talks — to find a nation in shock, staring at an €85 billion emergency loan facility that equated to €20,000 per citizen, a collapsing banking system and a landscape scarred by delusional, never-to-be-finished property developments. In the special Irish way, almost everyone I spoke

Ed Miliband stole the show at this year’s Spectator Parliamentarian of the Year awards. The Labour leader, who won a new prize called Political Speech of the Year (for the energy freeze pledge, which ‘transformed his fortunes’), took the chance to read out a Sunday Sport story which accused his ‘Belgian communist’ father of ‘killing a cat’ when cycling through the British countryside during the war. Ed charmed the crowd by being funny, good on camera and, you know, normal. Home Secretary Theresa May, who took the Politician of the Year award, despite her recent burka-related difficulties, was a hoot. Ms May ended her amusing speech by saying that the Spectator archive proved that we had been saying

No, not Tony Blair in a big tent in the desert, but our man Taki in the Big Apple. In tomorrow’s Spectator, Taki writes, with characteristic tact, on the Middle East. Mr Steerpike particularly liked this snippet: ‘My friend Saif Gaddafi… was ‘detained’ while fleeing [Libya] and is held by some nice guys south of Tripoli. I call him my friend because we were introduced in New York four years ago and I mistook him for a coke dealer and politely asked if he had anything good.’  Apparently, he did not. The poor little Greek boy claims that Saif’s gear was ‘lousy’. Subscribers will enjoy this and more tomorrow. Non-subscribers

Jo Johnson is now in situ, Christopher Lockwood has started his two-year sabbatical from the Economist and David Cameron’s new policy unit is in in place and ready to go producing ideas of how to win the 2015 election. But word is that they’re not entirely overflowing with ideas, and believe it will be tough to improve on the inherited agenda. This is true to an extent, as the Coalition Agreement was pretty radical. Then, ministers wanted to achieve a Moore’s Law-style expansion of Free Schools, elimination of the deficit and reconstruction of a dysfunctional welfare state. Any one of those three would have been more than Labour achieved in

Nick Robinson came under attack last week after quoting a government source’s description of the Woolwich bombers’ appearance. Writing in tomorrow’s Spectator, Robinson recalls the storm: ‘A glance at Twitter revealed, however, that those words — despite being a quote — had outraged some who thought they revealed a prejudice that all Muslims look the same. One witty tweet asked if the man playing at Wembley in Bayern Munich’s no. 7 shirt looked Muslim. Franck Ribéry is French, he’s white and he’s Muslim.’ You might have thought that there were bigger fish to fry last week; but the easily-offended, on both sides of the aisle, busied themselves by taking offence: ‘The next

The EU has said it will not renew an arms embargo on Syria which ends this Saturday. That should pave the way for countries wanting to arm the rebels, something both Britain and France have been saying they will consider. It is a tired truism, but nonetheless one still worth restating, that not all the Syrian rebels are jihadists. This is precisely what has motivated Britain and France to explore ways of working with the rebels, although there are currently no plans to supply them with arms. But arming the rebels would be a mistake. It is clear Assad must go and that a future Syrian state will need to

No publication understood the Thatcher project better than The Spectator. We backed her for the leadership in 1975 when no other national publication would. We understood her opportunities, foibles and genius when many of our rivals were baffled by this coarse-sounding lady and her popular appeal. We have put together 21 essays from the period into our first-ever ebook: Margaret Thatcher in The Spectator 1975 – 1990. It’s available today on the Kindle, for just 99p. It begins with Patrick Cosgrave advocating Thatcher as Tory leader, then gives a six-month and one-year progress report. Ferdinand Mount describes the uneasiness that followed the 1979 triumph. Then, as now, The Spectator was

From tomorrow’s Spectator. Downing Street aides nervously run through the symptoms: a flat economy, poor press, leadership mutterings. Then they say, ‘It’s just mid-term blues, isn’t it?’ A second later, they add nervously, ‘It’s nothing more serious than that, is it?’ The truth is, nobody can be certain. There’s no reliable way of distinguishing mid-term blues from something politically fatal. Part of the problem is that few Tories have anything to compare their current mood with. After 13 years in opposition, only a handful of them have been in government before, let alone in the mid-term doldrums. When I put this argument to one veteran of the Thatcher years, he

On Wednesday evening, Andrew Neil, Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth presented The Spectator’s Budget Briefing at the Savoy Hotel. Here is the handout that accompanied their presentation: Here’s the presentation with accompanying audio (click here to view full screen):

It was a clash of the Euro titans at our latest sell-out Spectator debate: “Britain’s future lies outside the EU”. Nigel Farage led the team for the motion and the former president of France, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, led the opposition – with Andrew Neil in the chair. Patrick Minford and James Delingpole supported team Farage, while Steve Richards and Richard Ottaway MP spoke for the EU. And there was all to play for.  On the way into the debate, the vote was: For: 196     Against: 105     Undecided:  99 After the speeches – and Q&A – there were no more undecideds and the votes fell as follows:- For: 247     Against: 123      Everyone came

The Spectator hosted a sell out debate on Thursday night on the motion ‘Leveson is a fundamental threat to the free press’, and you can now hear what happened. As Fraser reported yesterday, it was a lively affair, with the motion carried albeit with a significant swing to those speaking against. Although the quality is not as good as we had hoped, you should still be able to follow what happened.  You can hear the individual speakers at: 2:30 – Richard Littlejohn (for) 11:25 – Chris Bryant (against) 23:26 – Guido Fawkes (for) 32:21 – Max Mosley (against) 40:44 – John Whittingdale (for) 51:50 – Evan Harris (against) 1:05:13 – Questions

Justin Welby, the nominated Archbishop of Canterbury, accepted his Spectator award for Peer of the Year (in recognition of his work on the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards) by conceding that, after the General Synod rejected women bishops yesterday, he has achieved the rare distinction of losing a vote of confidence without having assumed office. This joke was the start of a masterful comic performance in what was, clearly, an off-the-cuff speech. listen to ‘Spectator Parliamentarian of the Year – Justin Welby speech’ on Audioboo

The Prime Minister presumably believes we face a critical shortage of airport capacity in London. Why else would he signal a possible U-turn on what was a headline pre-election promise? He knows that one reason west London voters backed the Conservatives in the last general and local elections was his decision to rule out any prospect of building Labour’s 3rd runway at Heathrow. But if that is how he feels, why on earth would he commit to doing absolutely nothing for three years? I am yet to meet anyone who believes an airport review should take anything like so long; indeed the majority of options have been studied to death.