Fraser Nelson is a Times columnist and a former editor of The Spectator.
‘Hello. I’m lesbian threesome,’ the young lady tells Taki. ‘And I’m Mongolian rampage,’ says the young man beside her. We’re at Jeremy Clarke’s book launch in the Spectator’s back garden, to which he invited a dozen Low Life readers chosen for submitting the best stories of drunken debauchery. Some were summarised in Jeremy’s column last
In today’s Observer, Will Hutton unwittingly highlights the poverty of the inequality debate in Britain. Gifted writers like him bang on about private schools the whole time rather than look at the far greater problem: inequality within the state system. He devotes a column moaning about the schools which, I suspect, will supply a good
For most of my adult life, I’ve heard people say that Scots are – politically – different to the English. Not small differences, but fairly fundamental ones. This never rang true to me; I grew up in or around military bases which bring families from all over the UK together and never noticed any difference.
“Inequality has gotten much worse in the United Kingdom,” declared the Nobel laureate Joe Stiglitz when he was on Andrew Marr’s Start the Week last month (clip below). It’s one of those things that ‘everyone knows’ which is (to put it politely) not supported by the data. The latest inequality data came out today, taking
The Labour leadership contest is compulsive watching for conservatives with a taste in schadenfreude. Jeremy Corbyn’s inclusion reminds everyone how the party may have succeeded in expelling the electable Blairites, but not the unelectable lefties. Corbyn pulled out of being interviewed by Andrew Neil for BBC Sunday Politics today, citing a last-minute emergency. But we were treated to Diane
Pluscarden Abbey, just outside Elgin in northeast Scotland, is one of the most beautiful places in Britain. But to those who have visited in winter over the years, it has also felt like one of the coldest. After the war, when Benedictine monks arrived to restore what was a medieval ruin they slept with no roof, let
Reports of deflation’s death are exaggerated – sure, the CPI index has risen from -0.1pc in April to +0.1pc in May. But many important things are still getting cheaper: food, for example, costs 1.7pc less than this time last year. And the prices of larger-ticket items, the so-called ‘consumer durables,’ fell an average 2.6pc in May – the sharpest year-on-year
There should always be celebration when a sinner repents, and so it’s great to see George Osborne’s belated conversion to the cause of budget surpluses. As the above graph shows, he has not seemed in a rush to hit surplus himself – giving him many more years of increasing the national debt. James Forsyth summed
As the Chancellor prepares his post-election Budget, he faces an obvious opportunity. Throughout the last general election campaign, we heard from a great many people advocating higher taxes. And it’s not all vindictive: many, like the writer Polly Toynbee, would actually be liable for a higher tax on the 1pc. A significant number of wealthy people in Britain
Summer’s coming, and we’re looking for some specialist research help at The Spectator. We like to answer the questions other publications don’t, which means digging beyond the available social data and widening the parameters for debate. And we’d like some help, ideally from a specialist. You could be a PhD student looking for a few hours’ extra
So when Nigella Lawson popped up on television to give Britain’s results, what had Britain decided? The UK vote is a 50/50 split between jury and televoting – and the Eurovision authorities have just given the breakdown. They show that British televoters went for the cute, joyful Lithuanian duet. Our second choice was Poland, whose rather lovely Monika Kuszyńska did pretty
“Over the past five years, Britain has produced some of the biggest chart-topping acts on the planet from Adele to One Direction, Ed Sheeran, Sam Smith. But in nearly two decades, it has failed to produce a single winner of Eurovision.” – BBC 1 News, 24 May 2015. That’s one way of putting it. Another way is
‘Let me give you a Californian hug,’ says Steve Hilton, and I try my best to give him a Scottish one. We have met a few times before. He served as David Cameron’s chief strategist and his job was to keep out of the headlines and newspapers. In government, he took on a near-mythical status
“I’m the change candidate,” said Andy Burnham, settling down to the consolidation phase of his leadership bid. Chuka Umunna is out, so he is now the bookies’ favourite. He faces a conundrum: the brains of Labour want to tack to the centre, the money (ie, the unions) want to keep it to the left. So
David Cameron still has much to learn about dealing with nationalists. Theirs is a very different kind of politics – one where flags, language and choreography matters. Nicola Sturgeon is hawking a false premise: l’Ecosse c’est moi. That Scotland is her country, that David Cameron can visit (as he does today) in the same way
I was at the IEA/Taxpayers’ Alliance post-election conference yesterday, listening to Lord Ashcroft giving facts and figures about why voters chose the Tories. Given how wrong all of the pollsters were, I did find myself wondering whether it was worth listening to this. A Tory majority government has just been elected, confounding every single bookmaker and pollster in
David Cameron realised rather late on that the job miracle, rather than George Osborne’s dubious claims about deficit reduction, was the main economic boast of the last few years. And rightly: he is the first Prime Minister in the history of these islands to have presided over the creation of 1,000 jobs a day. His detractors argue that this
The Cabinet reshuffle is now underway, with IDS back in welfare and Michael Gove as Justice Secretary, with a brief to sort out the Human Rights Agenda mess. So David Cameron is opening a new stage in his leadership – and one that moves beyond the weird world of Tory factionalism. I’m hoping that the One
At first sight, it may seem odd to make Michael Gove the new Justice Secretary. But he has had experience – all too much of it. His job will be to clean up the mess of the Human Rights Act. In the Department for Education he saw for himself how the rule of law was degenerating into
Firm, but unfair – that’s the motto of Westminster’s first-past-the-post voting system and Conservatives will today be raising a glass to it. But the House of Commons is now a very poor reflection of Britain’s political sympathies. It took just 25,970 voters to return an SNP politican to parliament. This compares 34,240 for a Tory
