Fraser Nelson is a Times columnist and a former editor of The Spectator.
I’m in Edinburgh right now, and read the morning press with suspicion. It’s full of quotes from Wendy Alexander’s friends saying she would not stand down at all. Hmm. What summed it up for me was a brilliant piece by Angus Macleod (my successor) in The Times. After the complaint against Wee Wendy declaring her
Tom Harris says I was “predictably cruel” to Khalid Mahmood who (perhaps deliberately) died on his feet at PMQs. How hard is it to ask a question, I said. “Well, you’ll never know the answer to that, Fraser, but believe me, it’s a lot harder than it looks, and certainly a lot harder than sitting
This is the third in our series of posts looking at where it all went wrong for Gordon Brown. The first and second are here and here, respectively. Assessing Gordon Brown’s biggest mistake is like trying to name Elton John’s worst record. There are so many to choose from. But set aside the strategic blunders
James Purnell has again repaid my faith in him. What he is proposing is a much needed expansion in the part-privatisation of the benefits industry. As I say in tomorrow’s magazine, the task is not so much welfare reform as regime change. The DWP boasts that it spends more money than the economic output of
I had thought it impossible to pay tribute to our servicemen in a more garbled way than Brown did last week. But Khalid Mahmood proved me wrong. He stuttered, gasped, looked at his papers. How difficult can it be to ask one question? When he sat down, I thought he’d be mortified. But he smiled broadly,
At 9 p.m. on the night before Tony Blair became Prime Minister, he was lying alone on his bed staring at the ceiling. He didn’t want to join his family, watching television, but was eventually dragged down for the News at Ten. ‘No,’ he said, when he heard its exit poll. ‘I accept that we’re
The problem with charting Gordon Brown’s economic slowdown is that the phrase “record low” is not enough. Take today’s data from the British Bankers Association. Its mortgages approval was 27,968 in May – a record low. But the month before, 34,752 was also a record low. And March, at 36,788 was the lowest since 1997.
Unlike Iain Dale, I do believe Boris was right to accept the resignation of his political adviser James McGrath earlier this evening. Like Patrick Mercer, McGrath made a remark which could easily have been misrepresented as racist, even though it was not. Here are the specific words he used in an interview. “McGrath was
At a dinner party in central London a few months ago, David Davis made an extraordinary confession. He had become disenchanted with David Cameron, he said, and was considering quitting politics. ‘I believe in certain things,’ he claimed, ‘and I do not believe the next Conservative government will implement them.’ He wondered if he should
My, British politics is becoming litigious. First Shami Chakrabarti threatens to sue over “smears” about her and David Davis, and now David Cameron is talking about suing the Liberal Democrats over the contents of their Henley literature. There is an instinct to say ‘grow up, it’s only politics’ but its about time the Tories started
A few months ago, I was told that David Davis had confessed at a dinner party that he didn’t believe the next Cameron government would be very Tory, and didn’t see the point in staying. I put this to both Mr Davis and a few of his friends. All laughed it off. Mr Davis said
With four more troops dead in Afghanistan, the campaign in Helmand led PMQs. Gordon Brown wished to pay tribute, and I’m afraid it did not go well. “The freedoms that we have in Britain are in no small part due to the fact that we have taken on the Taleban in Afghanistan and refused them
At a dinner party in central London a few months ago, David Davis made an extraordinary confession. He had become disenchanted with David Cameron, he said, and was considering quitting politics. ‘I believe in certain things,’ he said, ‘and I do not believe the next Conservative government will implement them.’ He wondered if he should
Andy Burnham is quite right to dismiss Scotland’s planned ban on alcohol advertising as “a bit silly”. Simply because the lager adverts have for years been the most amusing and intelligent thing on Scottish television. For the uninitiated, I’ve embedded my favourite Tennent’s Lager advert above – it’s a spoof of the immortal Ealing film Whisky Galore. And if you have
If looked as if Alistair Darling were stuck on a groove on his Sky News interview. Michael Howard was famously asked the same question 13 times – Darling seemed to give the same answer as many times. I suspect his message was programmed by No10 because it has Brown’s fingerprints all over it. Here’s that message –
The Irish “no” vote just gets better and better. The Plan B, as Wolfgang Müünchau says in today’s Financial Times, probably is to carry on without Ireland and create what many countries have wanted for some time: a two tier Europe. So the obvious question is: how do we sign up? Suddenly, Brown’s decision to
Is Davis’ action really unprecedented? The latest issue of The House magazine has a piece by Vernon Bogdanor, perhaps the best politics academic in Britain. He names all previous by-election candidates, almost all of which changed party and believed they had a moral duty to seek a new mandate (Quentin Davies take note). Duchess of Atholl,
Eight decades ago, Britain gave Ireland back her sovereignty. Today, it seems the people of that glorious country have returned the favour. It’s too soon to know for sure if the “no” vote has prevailed, but all indications appear so. Yet again, the EU project has failed; unable to pass the tiniest bit of democracy
I am just out of doing BBC news interview, where they were discussing the public reaction to Davis. Eveyone in Westminster thinks Davis is mad, loopy, gone off on one, etc. But 95% of the comments to the BBC’s extensive listener and viewer response says this is a very welcome break from the tired identikit
I hear it is now almost certain that Labour will definitely not put a candidate up against Davis, to deny him the battle he seeks. Logic is to make him look like a mad bloke in the pub touting for a fight at closing time. So it will be him, UKIP, BNP, monster raving loonies,