For a long while, the Conservatives have been puzzled about their lack of popularity among immigrants. In theory, the Conservative party should be the natural home of new voters who are ambitious, entrepreneurial, hard-working and family-orientated. The immigrant vote — to the extent it can be considered a coherent block at all — ought to
Home In a Budget intended to have ‘no gimmicks, no giveaways’, George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, offered pensioners with annuities the chance to cash them in and blow the lot. Borrowing in the coming year would be a fraction of a billion less than feared and the annual deficit was to be eliminated
It’s dangerous, in my line of work, to promise you’ll be anywhere by 8 p.m. I made this mistake recently, saying I’d turn up to a dinner after a Budget discussion — a ‘quad’ meeting, where I sit with the Prime Minister, George Osborne and Nick Clegg. We’ve been doing this for five years, so
A ‘prominent liberal cleric’ in London has held an Islamic prayer service in his church, St John’s Waterloo. ‘We all share these traditions,’ he announced, ‘so let us celebrate our shared traditions, by giving thanks to the God that we love, Allah.’ How deliciously pagan of him. One way ancient Greeks tried to make sense of
Cooking statistics Ed Miliband was photographed in a miserable kitchen, but it turned out to be only a snack preparation room which he has in addition to a large kitchen downstairs. What is the state of the nation’s kitchens? — The average size in England, according to official data, is 11 square metres. Five per
From ‘Unofficial News’, The Spectator, 13 March 1915: The exclusion of war correspondents from the firing line has greatly reduced the volume of unofficial news available for the enlightenment of the general public. What remains, moreover, has to run the gauntlet of the Censorship. How some of it manages to get through is a mystery which
The Goldsmith effect Sir: Much as I admire filial loyalty, I cannot allow Zac Goldsmith’s article about his father to go uncorrected (‘My dad saved the pound’, 28 February). Sir James Goldsmith was a formidable campaigner against the European Union and the euro currency, but at no point did he alter government policy. Zac Goldsmith
