Media

We at The Spectator have not had much company in criticising Mervyn King for the failure of his monetary policy. The Bank of England governor has a status like the Speaker used to: someone whose position must command respect, otherwise the system collapses. And yet there are Octopuses with a better track record in inflation forecasting. People have been repeating that the Bank’s independence is a great success for so long that it has become a truism. Why? We’ve just had a huge crash, the result of a credit bubble – fuelled by dangerously low lending rates. And the recipe for restoration? Even cheaper debt, with resurgent inflation. The British

For once, I am in total agreement with Nigel Farage: the best way for Sally Bercow to help her husband is to take a vow of silence. Her recent Cleopatra act diverted attention from the persistent indignity of parliament’s relationship with IPSA, but it has done little to raise the diminutive Speaker’s diminutive reputation.   Flushed with embarrassment, Mrs Bercow spent most of Friday afternoon insisting that the Evening Standard had distorted her. She went into yummy mummy mode, confiding to Twitter that she was baking cakes for her son’s lunch box – nice rather than naughty. She gave no immediate explanation for posing in a sheet; but who doesn’t loiter semi-naked at the

The last few days have given us enough evidence for a new economic rule: the better the news about the economy, the less we’ll see of Ed Balls. As Tim Montgomerie notes over at ConservativeHome, the shadow chancellor was plastered right across the airwaves when last week’s growth figures were announced. This week – when the economic omens have been more encouraging – not so much. On Tuesday, as Fraser blogged, we had a record rise in manufacturing activity. Yesterday, there were heartening figures for the construction sector. And, today, the services sector has followed suit, with its strongest showing for eight months. Here’s the graph for all three: Sterling

ConHome has published its latest members’ survey. Its (admittedly unscientific) findings into respondents’ recollections of floating voters at the last election have reopened the debate about why the Conservatives didn’t win. In a combative piece, Janet Daley insists that the results ‘stand the modernising argument on its head’. These findings look more inconclusive to me. 85 percent of respondents were told that the party and its leadership were ignorant of ordinary concerns, supporting David Davis’ insinuations that the party is out of touch with the common man. There is firm statistical evidence in which to ground these fancies: the Tories did poorly among C1 and DE voters (defined as the

Danny Finkelstein has written an interesting post objecting to Channel 4 referring to the ‘Conservative-led coalition’ last night. Finkelstein’s objection, and a valid one to my mind, is that ‘Conservative-led’ makes a judgment about the nature of the coalition. Of course, this whole spat has been set off by a clever letter from Ed Miliband’s communications director Tom Baldwin to broadcasters objecting to their use of the word ‘coalition’ to describe the government on the grounds that it implies that the government is a collaborative enterprise. I suspect that this whole row will rumble on for a while yet. It is tempting to dismiss the whole thing as absurd, as

I suspect the identity of the Prime Minister’s next director of communications is of far more interest to those who work in Westminster than those in the country at large. But the identity of Coulson’s successor will reveal something about the balance of power in the coalition and at the Cameron court. I’m told that the Tories are in no rush to make the appointment, they’d rather take their time and try and find the right person. Despite what Nick Clegg said on Marr this morning, I’m informed that this will be very much a Tory-run selection process. Those in the know say that as with the Coulson appointment, George

Of the two resignations of the past 24 hours, it is Alan Johnson’s that will change the contours of politics. The appointment of Ed Balls makes the dividing line on the economy far starker. But the Coulson resignation is still a highly significant moment. Those Tories who worked with Coulson are downcast today and will brook no discussion of what the whole episode says about Cameron’s judgment. But there’s little doubt that the PM has been harmed by this episode. Not in any limb-threatening way but harmed nevertheless. Cameron also needs a find to way to organise his operation to both ensure that there is someone at the table who

David Cameron’s interview on the Today Programme this morning was another reminder of what a hard year it is going to be for the government. The bulk of it was devoted to Cameron doing his best to defend and explain the government’s planned reforms to the NHS. Cameron, normally so assured in these interviews, seemed frustrated as John Humphrys kept pushing him on why he was doing it having condemned NHS reorganisations in the past.   Then, the interview moved on to bankers’ bonuses. As he did on Andrew Marr earlier in the month, Cameron implied that action was coming. But there were no specifics set out, and if action