Fraser Nelson is a Times columnist and a former editor of The Spectator.
The new issue of The Spectator is out today, and here are a few highlights. We’ve led on football, for once, with cover image by Mark Summers of David Beckham in the England away strip. Here are my top five features: 1. The very strange death of English Football. Mihir Bose, former BBC Sports Editor,
I couldn’t let today pass without a response to Danny Finkelstein. We do agree on the ends, but not the means. And, as he says, this debate mirrors one about the methods of reform. So, let¹s go through his points. 1. ‘I am afraid I think Fraser overestimates (a lot) how politically difficult this is
Brown is very lucky to have a friend in Piers Morgan. He did him a great service in the ITV interview tonight – and while it would have made CoffeeHousers nauseous (if they watched it), it will be the best television the PM will get this year and probably ever. Mark my words: the Labour
There’s something about a trip to Scotland that brings out the best in Tories giving speeches, and David Cameron lived up to the occasion the other evening. He reprised his social justice passage – easily the best part of his 2009 conference speech. Listing how Labour has made the rich richer and poor poorer, and
The FT Magazine has a cover boy today: Tim Montgomerie. It’s about how “a small group of Christian Conservatives are rewriting party doctrine,” and has positioned Tim in such a way that there appears to be a halo behind his head with his eyes heavenwards. Something tells me this was not the picture Tim was
Ten days on and Danny Finkelstein still seems to be upset with me for my Keith Joseph lecture, where I said the Tories risked being ensnared by Brown’s ‘investment v cuts’ rhetoric. For reasons that I’m still not quite sure of, Danny hates the idea of cuts. He may have (and I hope he didn’t)
We have Francis Fukuyama writing a cover piece for us this week, revisiting his ‘End of History’ thesis. When he first published it, in 1989, he anticipated what was to become a consensus shared by many, including myself: that autocracy was on the way out. Communism had failed, and was being supplanted by the free
John Rentoul today puts Trevor Kavanagh and myself in the dock for demanding “massive spending cuts” and concludes that if we “had any power” we would be “about as helpful to Cameron as Sarah Palin was to John McCain” but believes Cameron “will hold to his strategic course”. I mean: massive cuts. How crazy is
I’d like to do a final round of responses to comments to my Keith Joseph lecture. It’s easy for debates about Conservatism to be caricatured as being for or against Cameron – and my lecture fits into neither category. I’m a big supporter of Cameron’s, but often wish he’d have more faith in himself: I
I have been gripped by The Guardian’s climate change investigation and reporting these last few days. We do like to tease George Monbiot but he was one of the first to denounce spinning of the data and science by the University of East Anglia’s climate unit. It’s a mark of his professionalism and seriousness: global
Fraser Nelson says that electoral victory is not enough. To be a great Tory prime minister, David Cameron must be bold enough to abandon Labour’s failed agenda entirely and implement his own Winning office is not the same as winning power. To get the keys to No. 10, a politician needs to be skilled in
CoffeeHousers have left some characteristically forthright and thoughtful comments on the blog about my Keith Joseph lecture, and I thought I’d answer them in a post. Tiberius says that I don’t mention voters very much – I talk only about ideas. The voters have been taught Labour ideas: isn’t this something the Tories have
I delivered the Keith Joseph lecture last night, entitled Winning Is Not Enough. My point: that the Tories have adopted so many Labour policies out of tactical considerations that they are in danger of getting to office only to find they have signed up to continuing Gordon Brown’s agenda. The problem is not so much
The debate about cuts so far lacks any numbers, so I thought CoffeeHouses might like some. Contrary to what he claims Darling is planning cuts – but he just didn’t print the spending totals in his Pre-Budget Report (lack of space, one presumes). The Institute for Fiscal Studies, which produces its Green Budget tomorrow, has
I’m afraid I did not detect a “new economic model” in George Osborne’s speech. He has said he will “eliminate “a large part” of the deficit (ie, the amount that debt goes up by) over the next parliament. In questions, he kept repeating this phrase: “a large part” – and which is woolier than Labour’s
There can be fewer more powerful untapped resources in Britain than the desire of parents to place their children in a good school. Every Sunday, pews of school-sponsoring churches are filled with atheist mothers and their kids. You read stories of parents giving up their kids to live with their aunt and uncle just to
It’s striking how Tony Blair, the most successful election winner in Labour party history, is now so despised in the country that gave him three landslides. This matters politically, because he has – I fear – poisoned the cause of liberal interventionism. I look at this in my News of the World column today. Blair’s
What to do with Iain Duncan Smith? The Sunday Telegraph tomorrow says he will be given a Department for Children and Social Justice – an idea that has been in the pipeline for a while now. At first, I was against IDS returning to the front bench given what amazing influence he has had as
The Spectator isn’t in favour of many taxes, but we are calling for a mandatory insurance premium for banks. Depending on which version of the FT you picked up today, it seems the banks are agreeing to this too. But are they agreeing to a tax, or a fee? Even the FT isn’t sure –
If Tony Blair were to go to the newsagents to day to see how his performance is being reported on the front pages, he’d be in for a pleasant surprise. He does not feature – certainly not in the biggest sellers. The extra-curricular activities of John Terry make the the lead story on the Mail,