Fraser Nelson is a Times columnist and a former editor of The Spectator.
The first serious Tory defection will be detailed in tomorrow’s News of the World. David Freud, the architect of the Purnell welfare refrom that we’ve been admiring in Coffee House, is to become a Conservative peer and shadow welfare reform minister. So someone with genuine expertise will be in the DWP driving through a desperately-needed
Opposite Alan Johnson’s desk is a plaque from the Chinese health ministry — a gift that must, at times, seem like a taunt. The Health Secretary controls 1.3 million staff, more than anyone bar the commander of the Red Army. His £120 billion budget is greater than any government department in Beijing. The Chinese economy
It cannot be much fun to interrogate men who are already broken, but the Treasury select committee had assembled on Monday for a show trial rather than a genuine cross-examination of witnesses. Sir Fred Goodwin, former head of RBS offered a ‘profound and unqualified apology for all the distress that has been caused’. And how
Most of the stuff we do at Coffee House is for a laugh – but our wiki-investigation into the recession is deadly serious. We urgently need to find out what went wrong, and the thinking of the Westminster village consensus won’t do. We need you, your insights, your suggestions, your criticisms. If you have friends
There was a kind of grand jury feel to Gordon Brown’s appearance before the select committee chairs today. “I’m not sure I can make my hearing as exciting as the one you’ve had in the last two days,” he said. “Get started,” said John McFall. Brown has a great genius in neutralising hostile questions by
We need your help. The Spectator is to launch an inquiry into the causes of the 2008 recession, and it is to be a wiki-inquiry: one that will be directed by you, report regularly back to you, and be moulded by your collective wisdom. It will live or die by your input. Finding out just
How high will unemployment get? In his interview with me in today’s Spectator (an extended, web version here) Alan Johnson says – towards the end – that we’d best prepare for two years of downturn. He was being optimistic. During the last three recessions (mid-70s, early 80s, early 90s) it took three years for the
In PMQs today Gordon Brown said there are 500,000 vacancies in the economy – a revision from his recent 600,000 claim. But this morning’s unemployment data show that even this is out of date. The number of vacancies is collapsing way below the half-million mark – so these British jobs are becoming even more scarce.
Just as you thought the British Jobs for British Workers imbroglio has died down, the ONS issues an update to its migrant v native workers figures and it shows just who the recession is hurting. In the last three months of last year there were 278,000 fewer British-born people in work. Over the same period there were 214,000
It’s hang-a-banker season, so David Cameron had an open goal: Sir James Crosby, the former HBOS chief who allegedly sacked a whistle-blower, and who has today resigned his role at the FSA. The Labour whips planted a question with Khalid Mahmood about Crosby, as if to shoot the Tory fox. “They can even plant questions at short notice,” started
Every Wednesday, a new and rather sadistic ritual takes place at Prime Minister’s Question Time. David Cameron will ask Gordon Brown to admit he got something – anything – wrong and the Prime Minister will refuse. Mr Cameron is lowering the bar each time: last week, Brown was asked to confirm if there was a
Opposite Alan Johnson’s desk is a plaque from the Chinese health ministry — a gift that must, at times, seem like a taunt. The Health Secretary controls 1.3 million staff, more than anyone bar the commander of the Red Army. His £120 billion budget is greater than any government department in Beijing. The Chinese economy
Good piece by Piers Morgan in today’s Daily Mail about the British talent doing well in America. He quotes an American film director saying our actors are more likely to be formally trained – and then, to America, for the big bucks. From The Wire (McNulty’s from Yorkshire) to Gossip Girl (Chuck Bass is from
We have a new signing to reveal today: my old counterpart at the New Statesman, Martin Bright. We have long admired his writing here at Coffee House, and we’re delighted that The Bright Stuff will be joining Melanie Phillips, Clive Davis and Alex Massie under the heterodox, multicoloured Spectator e-umbrella. It’s not just the sharpness
Ever noticed how the debate on African development is colonised by white men? I’ve just finished a book on the subject by Dambisa Moyo, an African woman, and it’s a brilliant indictment of the aid industry which, she agues, does more harm than good in her native continent. Moyo is Zambian born, bred and educated
A long, long time ago, when it was still quite unlikely that the Conservatives would form the next government, George Osborne made a promise that, at the time, I thought he’d come to regret. He said a Tory administration would publish online every item of government expenditure over £25,000 – an idea from the Taxpayers’
The Wall St Journal is a joy to read because it’s a business newspaper which is also proudly free market (and explicit about its philosophy). In contrast, the FT leader column seems to think it is being all clever and counter-intuitive by bashing capitalism now and again, and applauding the more naive schemes of the
It takes more than an inch of snow to stop the wheels of Scottish democracy. The devolved parliament was hard at work on Monday morning, eight of its members engaged on a most sombre business: a motion formally denouncing a rogue political columnist. It reads as follows: “That the Parliament notes that the journalist, Fraser
Today’s Andy Davey cartoon in The Sun (click at the bottom of this link to see it) deserves to go on Darling’s fridge. Because two more pieces of data have just come out which can be confused for good news. One is that personal insolvencies are at a lower level than 2006 and, next, that manufacturing prices
So, Tom Harris and I had our duel on Radio Scotland this morning. His line of attack was straightforward: that when I said “scummy estates” – a charge for which I’m being denounced in the Scottish Parliament – I could only be referring to the people who lived in those estates. I thought back to