Fraser Nelson is a Times columnist and a former editor of The Spectator.
The big question is what changed Michael Martin’s mind. I suspect that both Brown and Cameron withdrew support. But I’d argue that Cameron should have done so last weekend in public as Nick Clegg did. And, come to think of it, I agree with the LibDem proposal that all capital gains on property bought with
So will David Cameron ride the wave of anti-politics or be crushed by it? I have for years thought that trends towards people power and away from hierarchies – in every sphere of life – shows the world is moving the conservative way and that the idea of a big government belongs in the last
If our MPs keep paying back the expenses they claimed at the current rate we’ll have the national debt down in no time. What strikes me about ex-Labour chairman Ian McCartney is that even the prospect of having his claims made public led him to reach for his cheque book and refund £16,000 of our
As soon as I saw Norway’s entry on Eurovision last night, I knew what the vikings were up to: doing a Blair. Here in the land of fjords and A-Ha, their entry was a Minsk-born Russian with cossack-style dancers in a naked pitch for slavic votes. And what a success it was: the full 12
Damian McBride may be gone, but his spirit lives on in Labour’s latest party political broadcast (watch it after the jump). It features a young chap in a suit (boo! class enemy!) who goes into an empty room and starts hitting a punchbag. Then it comes up with all sorts of claims that could have
What a weird day. I’m blogging this, crouching below a camera on college green, about a metre away from Nick Brown being grilled by the BBC’s Jon Sopel over Elliot Morley. Brown is a chief whip who seldom talks, but he has just admitted to BBC News that Morley ‘fessed up to this days ago.
How significant is Andrew MacKay’s departure? A few weeks ago, I did a column on his weird Rasputin-like influence over David Cameron. His role is to sniff the air, see which tribes of Tory MPs are gathering where. To advise, say, if David Davis is up to mischief on the backbenches. To be a shadow
Brown looked dejected, buffeted and battered by events. Cameron looked confident, in charge of them. The Tory leader kicked off asking why all new claims can’t be put online? (Ben Wallace did so ages ago, and was hated by many in his party, but Cameron backed him). Brown’s response was in auto-garble, speaking as if
Fraser Nelson says that the scale of public disgust at the MPs’ expenses scandal presents the next Prime Minister with a huge challenge — and a huge opportunity. If Cameron devolves power to voters, he will be rewarded. But if he fails, the punishment will be swift It will be a brave parliamentary candidate who
Ben Wallace has just called for the Speaker to resign, joining Douglas Carswell’s call. This doubles the number of MPs who have broken the parliamentary protocol and are openly calling for the Speaker to go. Wallace explained his rationale on Channel Four news: from 2001 when Freedom of Information legislation was passed, it was clear
Michael Martin has just exploded. Kate Hoey raised a point of order: doesn’t the Metropolitan Police have better things to do than investigating leaks? You often get the feeling that Martin is just waiting to snap “You can’t handle the truth!” à la A Few Good Men. Hoey seemed to tip him over the edge.
So has Michael Gove been caught home flipping? What I heard about the latest revelations, it struck me that he mentioned his home moving in an interview with The Spectator back in September last year. The write-up is here, but in the magazine piece I left out his full explanation behind his house move. Here it
How, you might ask, do these MPs with their snouts in the trough justify it to themselves? Margaret Moran, the Luton MP who has claimed for her partner’s home in Southampton, gave her rationale to BBC1’s Politics Show earlier. MARGARET MORAN: My partner works in Southampton. He has done for twenty years. If I’m ever
So, no Ed Balls in the Sunday Telegraph tomorrow, no Shadow Cabinet. But we do get Sinn Fein (of which, more later) as well as Kitty in the City, aka Kitty Ussher who succeeded Balls as City Minister and is now benefits minister. Anyway, she spent £22,000 of taxpayers’ cash doing up her terraced house
The bottom has again dropped out of the Labour party. A BPix/Mail on Sunday poll shows its popularity has slumped to its lowest level since polling began in 1943. Its 23 percent, just below the 23.5 percent it polled at Michael Foot’s nadir. Meanwhile a YouGov/Sunday Times poll puts Labour down 7 to 27, yielding
Some secrets are too vulgar to be disclosed by any political party. Gordon Brown’s radical cuts agenda, encoded in the small print of the Budget, is one such secret. The Prime Minister doesn’t want to admit to it, as it contradicts his pious claim that ‘you can’t cut your way out of recession’. David Cameron
Plato had it right on MPs’ expenses. This from The Republic: “We also have to make sure the guardians do not become like sheep dogs that turn into wolves and abuse their power to harm their fellow citizens. Therefore the guardians will have no private property, they will live transparently, they will be provided for
So how damaging is the expenses scandal? Harriet Harman has told Sky that it is all within the rules, and I’m sure that’s true. But that’s not the point. To the public, this will look like plunder pure and simple. Straw claiming his council tax back, etc. Ministers had best calibrate their response very carefully,
Blackberies are buzzing all over London: The Telegraph seems to have got its mitts on the story everyone wants. The disc with MPs expenses is out – and finally we see the Cabinet’s expenses. My favourite is that Gordon Brown has paid his brother Andrew £6,570 for “cleaning services”. Second favourite that Jack Straw claimed
When JK Rowling’s gives her endorsement of Gordon Brown in this week’s edition of Time magazine, she writes that the Dear Leader’s policies saw 600,000 children “raised out of poverty”. This particular piece of fiction that deserves some exploring, and not just because figures out today show it’s actually 400,000 and falling. This use of