Fraser Nelson is a Times columnist and a former editor of The Spectator.
George Osborne has today done some massive juggling. It wasn’t a Budget for jobs after all, but a Budget to help people cope with the soaring cost of living. North Sea oil companies and banks were stung for various income, fuel and corporation tax cuts. The Chancellor spotted — immediately — that cost of living
Cutting taxes for the low-paid is the most useful thing Osborne can do in what will, I suspect, be a distinctly unmemorable budget. The Mail and The Sun both have competing figures — £205 and £320 — for the annual rebate. Given that the average Brit is paying £310 more due to Osborne’s VAT rise
The above Japanese video – explaining the nuclear accident to children — makes a lot more sense than many of the hysterical reports we have been reading in the last few days. The figures are not out yet, but it’s likely that tens of thousands were killed by the tsunami. Yet the newspapers were all
Unwelcome news for George Osborne: he will tomorrow present his Budget against a backdrop of the highest inflation for 20 years. The RPI index — what the nation called “inflation” until Brown changed the definition — is 5.5 per cent. It hasn’t been this bad since the aftermath of the ERM crisis, an unhappy comparison
I’m hearing more reports about the rather peculiar behaviour of Nicholas Sarkozy, and how he is playing the Libya campaign thus far. Obama wants to hand over leadership of this mission quick. He was never really into it, but the US Navy was overwhelmingly the best placed to do the first phase of the mission
Spare a thought for George Osborne and Danny Alexander. They had their own budgetary magic show planned for Wednesday, and were yet again planning to be the Paul Daniels and Debbie McGhee of British politics. Now, it looks like they’re going to be competing with exploding Libyan MiGs for the national attention. This Budget was, as
Just last month, David Cameron declared that you “can’t drop democracy from 40,000 feet.” He’s right. It’s more like 400 feet: this is the cruising altitude of the 112 Tomahawk missiles fired from British and American submarines earlier this evening, low enough to dodge Gaddafi’s radars and take out some 20 targets. Given that Obama
It’s a funny old world. I have now been contacted by two journalists informing me that Bedfordshire Police are investigating The Spectator. Why? Because of the Melanie Philips blog where she referred to the “moral depravity” of “the Arabs” who killed the Fogel family in Israel. CoffeeHousers can judge for themselves if they agree or
The latest issue of the Spectator is out. Here, for the benefit of CoffeeHousers, is a selection of five pieces from it. 1) How did David Cameron mutate into a hawk? The last few weeks have been like a political version of a Manimal* transformation sequence. Daniel McCarthy, editor of The American Conservative, looks at
Libya is not the only scene of conflict today. Nick Clegg has just won a powerful victory over the Conservatives, appointing a Bill of Rights commission which is certain to leave the ECHR intact. When you see the names Philippe Sands, Helena Kennedy and Lord Lester on the list — even alongside Tories — you
Today’s OECD Economic Survey of the UK (download the complete pdf here ) contains some devastating passages about our education system. As it’s 148 pages in size, we thought CoffeeHousers might appreciate some highlights. Here’s your starter for ten: “Despite sharply rising school spending per pupil during the last ten years, improvements in schooling outcomes
The Japanese tsunami is exposing the shortcomings of the Foreign Office. Embarrassingly, a team of British rescuers has been thwarted because the British embassay in Tokyo failed to process the right paperwork – so they are now flying back home. The words of Willie McMartin, head of the Grangemouth-based outfit, speak best for themselves: ‘The
I do feel for Nick Clegg. He’s taken an oppositionalist party into government, and they hate it. He is politically and psychologically prepared for what goes with power; grassroots LibDems less so. And this brings problems. Yesterday, he was complaining that his party is “too male and too pale”; but his main problem is that
Slowly, David Cameron seems to be mutating into a hawk over Libya. I’ve been increasingly impressed with the way he has made the case for a no-fly zone – knowing that it is an unpopular cause outside of the Arab world. Since the evacuation chaos, which he apologised for, he has pretty much led calls
The gulf between state education and independent schools grows wider every year, says Fraser Nelson – just look at the results Why choose private education? For years — including five long ones spent at boarding school — I was convinced there was no good answer to this question. For my family, it was an obvious
Prince Andrew’s follies have shown the royal family who its friends are To enemies of the monarchy, Prince Andrew presents the perfect target. He has an array of vices: a love of the high life, a weakness for unsavoury company, a painfully short list of achievements and a talent for finding his way into newspapers.
Today’s decision to leave base rates at an emergency 0.5 per cent — the lowest since the Bank of England was founded in 1694 — shows how Britain is running out of options. Not even Mervyn King would deny that Britain has an inflation problem: global prices may be up, but the UK seems to
Curiouser and curiouser. We in Coffee House have been saying for some time now that – whatever Mervyn King thinks – Britain has the worst inflation in the Western World apart from Greece. An OECD report out today shows we’ve got it worse than most eastern countries too. Korea, Turkey and Estonia are the only
George Osborne’s budget, due in two weeks’ time, will be billed as an agenda for growth. This is welcome, but a year late. The burning agenda now is the cost of living. It was our cover story for The Spectator last October: why fret about mild 1 percent-a-year cuts, we asked, when the real killer
Is Queen Rania of Jordan turning into the Marie Antoinette of Jordan? She is loved in the West, and seen as the very model of a modern Muslim monarch. But in Jordan she’s viewed with increasing resentment. As the Arab Spring shakes thrones all over the Muslim world, Mary Ann Sieghart jetted off there to
