Fraser Nelson is a Times columnist and a former editor of The Spectator.
How Brown must have loved reading out his day’s business at PMQs: meeting with President Obama, then his counterparts from Russia, China and Japan. For months, he will have been dreaming about today like a four-year-old dreams about Christmas. All the world leaders, all here in London – and Brown playing the statesman. Then Edward
Given that Jacqui Smith is almost certainly toast, who will replace her? I’m dismayed to hear James Purnell’s name mentioned – dismayed because we need him doing welfare reform, and because the Home Office is the graveyard of political ambition. I’d quite like Purnell around long enough to be Opposition leader, keeping Cameron on his
Why are so many intelligent people taken in by the climate change argument? I have long (and genuinely) suspected I’m missing something. So I tuned in to Start The Week to hear Sir Nicholas Stern back with a new book on climate change – which (surprise, surprise) he says has grown far worse since he
Might the collapse of Dunfermline Building Society turn into a political scandal? Tonight, Channel Four news has an interview with Jim Faulds, its chairman, who appears to be saying the Treasury have been lying about him. He didn’t want a bail out, he says, just a £20m loan (the spin had been that he wanted
As Brown left Argentina, he might have thought “at least nothing else can go wrong now.” After all, Dan Hannan had started a Mexican wave of derision with his now-famous speech in Strasbourg; then Brown was introduced in New York as a man who became PM in 2007 “and it was all downhill ever since”;
To comprehend the scale of the sickening task awaiting George Osborne if he becomes chancellor, consider the following. If he were to raise VAT to 25 per cent, double corporation tax, close the Foreign Office, cancel all international aid, disband the army and the police, release all prisoners, close every school and abolish unemployment benefit
For a while it looked like Brown was about to go to a country without some comic mishap. But he didn’t let us down. Michelle Bachelet, the Chilean President, noted at her joint press conference with Brown how her government had been able to introduce a significant fiscal stimulus because of their “decision during …
I was on the Today programme this morning (here) defending bankers, up against Michael Meacher who has drafted a private members’ bill imposing a punitive retrospective tax on bonuses. This, of course, is simply vengeance – the political equivalent of smashing Fred Goodwin’s windows. And for such a bill to be even before Parliament sends
Seeing Fred the Shred’s house being trashed in Edinburgh gives a glimpse of the nastier elements of the hang-a-banker mood out there – not just in Britain but internationally. Here is a remarkable opportunity for the Conservatives. World over, there are votes to be gained in threatening to tax or regulate the bejesus out of
Is the Government about to go pop? If Britain does go to the IMF it would be because the Government fails to find buyers for its debt. And this morning, for the first time in seven years, this happened. It could be a one-off, it could be for technical reasons as yet undisclosed. But given
I had a text a while ago saying “you doing Gordon Brown’s work for him then?” and that was from someone who had not the seen graphic which the News of the World designed to go with my column today. I know many CoffeeHousers will take it as prima facie case of treason, but I’m
It has taken five months but George Osborne has finally fallen into the trap Gordon Brown set for him when he proposed a new 45p tax on the richest. Without prompting on The Today programme this morning, Osborne said: “If you look at the proposal to increase the top rate of tax for people earning
Once a week, about half of the Cabinet make the rather pointless journey into an underground bunker in Whitehall to learn just how quickly the British economy is disintegrating. This is all to humour Gordon Brown, who calls them his ‘National Economic Council’ and has them meet in the nuclear-proof room as if they were
One of the biggest dangers posed by the credit crunch is the instinct to introduce regulations that would stifle any economic recovery. Those whose memories only really cover the boom years might think the mistake was light-touch regulation and that you now need heavier regulation. That’s why the debates in the Lords on this subject
Lord Lawson has answered your questions on the recession – and then some. He warns that David Cameron will “have to do what we did initially, both cut back on spending in particular but also raise taxes”. He also explains how his Board of Banking Supervision – which Brown abolished in 1997 – would have done
All of us in 22 Old Queen Street are admiring the New Statesman this week, guest edited by Alastair Campbell. He’s evidently put a hell of a lot of work into it and ransacked his contacts book: diary by Sarah Brown, interview with Alex Ferguson (Pete, a dedicated Man Utd fan, says it’s one of
Is there such a thing as the collective wisdom of Coffee House? By the end of The Spectator Inquiry into the recession, we’ll find out. It’s now live and with its own wiki site – http://spectatorinquiry.pbwiki.com. We’re very much playing this by ear, so I’d be grateful if a few CoffeeHousers could head over there,
This is not even the end of the beginning. Unemployment is rising at the fastest rate since monthly records began, but it will keep rising for two more years. Every month we’ll get this. Every month, Cameron will say “your ‘help’ isn’t working,” and every month he’ll be right. I have two graphs below that
After PMQs, the burning question around Westminster is this: did Cameron overstep the mark when he shouted at Brown, “What a phoney”? Good point well made, I thought, but to other kinder souls it may come across as a bit harsh. Alan Johnson talks about Cameron coming across like Harry Flashman at times. That’s because
My, but David Cameron was good today. Assertive, contemptuous, energetic and all over Gordon Brown. Today’s unemployment rise is the highest since records began (in 1972) so he had plenty of ammo. His point was strong and simple: nothing Brown has done is working. Unemployment is getting worse, all the time. Did this not show how
