Fraser Nelson is a Times columnist and a former editor of The Spectator.
Ed Balls’s announcement today of 100 co-operative schools deserves to be taken seriously, as it shows sign of Brown responding to Cameron’s “choice” agenda in schools. First, Brown dismissed choice as he had done under Blair. Now, he realises he has to respond to it and today’s move is, as Joe Murphy says, a “battle
I almost feel sorry for the Tory Ten in Tatler. Great to get the profile, of course, but there’s no greater curse in politics than being tipped as the Next Big Thing. And the spread even assigns them all Cabinet positions (“tipped as a future Chancellor of the Exchequer” etc). The media mood has swung
Gordon Brown’s boast of having created “three million new jobs” has always had to come with the major unspoken caveat that (according to the Statistics Commission) 81% of these “new jobs” in this working-age population are accounted for by immigration. Yet for my cover story on immigration tomorrow I asked the Office for National Statistics
The PM’s claim to have created three million British jobs is a grave deceit, says Fraser Nelson. Strip out immigrants from the picture, and Labour has barely dented the problem of British worklessness. Over to you, Mr Cameron If there were to be a British Statue of Liberty, it should be erected at Victoria coach
I have today been unmasked as a racist. Johann Hari of The Independent has managed to peer into my psyche and diagnose me. You see in my News of the World column (now online) I called Barack Obama “uppity”. Except, of course, I didn’t – I said that this was the charge being levied against
Two analyses of the economy today, one fanciful and one spot-on. Gordon Brown says “I am confident that we can get through these difficult times and meet these challenges a stronger, more secure and fairer country then ever before.” Why is he confident? The cure for this will require the precise opposite to his policies
Poor Ivan Lewis. Previously we only heard from this health minister when he cropped up to criticise Gordon Brown through some coded newspaper article. Now he’s on the front page of the Mail on Sunday, exposed for sending inappropriate texts to a former female aide. So where did this story come from? Strikingly absent from
I’m back in Britain now, and had not prepared myself for the reaction to Sarah Palin. The Guardian has a piece softly sneering at her Christianity (Headline: “This person loves Jesus”) and questioning her experience. In America, the feminists have kept quiet, knowing they can’t question her experience and not Obama’s. Why demand that a
For his speech last night, John McCain had a walkway built into the floor – perhaps to remind him of the town hall settings he’s most comfortable with. He’s not a great platform speaker, and proved this yet again yesterday. He did not eclipse Palin. But the text was interesting, and here’s my take on
I was sitting about 30 metres away from Sarah Palin when she walked on stage, and lost all remaining objectivity at that point. She looked bashful and nervous, as well you might if you had 20,000 boisterous Republicans roaring at you. I don’t normally feel sympathy for politicians but there was something about this tiny
I’m now in the BBC suite in St Paul stadium with my former Spectator colleague Emily Maitlis. She’s off air and we’re all waiting for Sarah Palin – I’m due to do a Five Live phone-in on whether her personal life is fair game but the tennis may displace us. Both CNN and Fox are
The stature of the blogs is a striking feature of the American elections. There are more of them, and some of the best journalists now working exclusively online (which means there are several news cycles in a day, and newspapers are outdated by 9am). Sites like Politico have done a talent swoop; the Drudge Report
As Gustav fades, the first real night of the real convention has started. The signs, funny hats, even hesitant dancing (to Johnny B Goode). Guests were there: George HW Bush, his wife and Cindy McCain, to whom the cameras kept going back. She sat there looking like she’s escaped from a Stepford Wives remake. She
There is something wonderfully Scottish about the way in which Alistair Darling made his move against Gordon Brown. Rather than stage a dramatic ambush in the Commons, as Geoffrey Howe did to Margaret Thatcher, the Chancellor invited a newspaper interviewer to spend two days with him at his family home in the Outer Hebrides. From
1) Gustav has been downgraded to a Category One hurricane. No levees were breached. So no disaster – and McCain may deliver convention speech in person after all. 2) To an extent, Gustav may atone for Katrina in showing lessons were learned â“ and that McCain is a decisive leader who didn’t dither about the
The Republican Convention, Minneapolis, Minnesota Word that Sarah Palin is to become a grandmother, aged 44, is spreading rapidly through Minneapolis. Should it matter? James says no, but personally I can’t see how it can avoid being an issue. Just three days ago, Palin was on a stage introducing her entire family to America. The
I’m in Denver airport waiting for what a Republican friend in St Paul has just informed me is likely to be a one- or two-day convention. Even if Hurricane Gustav does not cause the destruction expected, it may yet blow away McCain’s chance of victory. The Republicans are acutely aware that this brings back memory
Denver, Colorado Just as high street stores send spies to the Paris fashion shows in order to copy all the latest designs, so British political parties send agents to American conventions in search of ideas and inspiration. Several Brits were skulking around the Democratic National Convention in Denver this week, carefully noting the new soundbites
Fishing in Utopia: Sweden and the Future that Disappeared by Andrew Brown Sweden holds a powerful allure for British men, which I used to see for myself every Friday in a departure lounge of Heathrow airport. I was part of a group of weekend commuters who met for a beer, en route to see our
When John Kerry got up there to speak with his insomnia-curing drawl, I thought I’d watch the old loser just from a sense of schadenfreude. But then his attack came out. It was interesting, potent and it had Michelle Obama rising to her feet. In fact, it struck me as the punchiest, hardest-hitting speech of
