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Isabel Hardman

Iain Duncan Smith’s welfare reform is hanging in the balance

‘The Republicans are the party that says government doesn’t work and then they get elected and prove it,’ wrote P.J. O’Rourke in 1991. He might well say the same thing about the Conservatives in 2013. The much-trumpeted reform of the benefit system, the Universal Credit scheme, had a warning sign slapped on it last week

Why Ukip is a party of extremists

Last Saturday I wrote for my newspaper a column whose drift was that it was time for the sane majority of the Conservative party to repel those elements on the Tory right who plainly wish the Prime Minister and the coalition ill, and who would never be satisfied with his stance on Europe, however much

Steerpike: Murdoch ruined Dave’s holiday

  So did Dave enjoy his brief break in Ibiza? Not if Rupert Murdoch could help it. Rupe declared on Twitter that the Woolwich atrocity would be a personal test of Cameron’s leadership. ‘Could save him or finish him if he mishandles.’ Three days later the Aussie ref flourished a yellow card. ‘With UK on terror alert,

The Spectator's Notes

The Spectator’s Notes | 30 May 2013

The website of the Security Service (MI5) says that since the end of the Cold War, the threat of subversion is ‘now considered to be negligible’. Isn’t this a mistake? It seems likely that many Muslim organisations — university Islamic societies, for example — are subverted by jihadists. The infiltrators whip up hatred against the

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