Fraser Nelson is a Times columnist and a former editor of The Spectator.
This has become a Christmas tradition for me: watching this extraordinary four-minute film about 25 December 1940. Its narrated by an American – at the behest of the British government, who wished to persuade Americans that our fight against Hitler was worth joining. The script is beautiful, almost poetic. “For the first time in history,
Every Christmas, The Spectator runs a short story but for the first time this year we’re having it read — and by the author. We’re delighted that Susan Hill, whose many books include The Woman In Black and The Mist in the Mirror, has agreed to read her new story, The Boy on the Hillside, which
Earlier on today, I was asked by Angus MacNeil, a Scottish National Party MP if I would choose a Scottish or a British passport should they win the referendum. As he knows, the choice is anathema to those of us who are proud to be both Scottish and British and don’t see any antagonism that needs to
The ONS has today revised upwards its growth for most of 2013, to show a recovery far stronger than it admitted at the time. This fits a trend: in economics, good luck tends to come in waves. And the tools economists have to work out what’s happening are so crude (and often useless) that it
This was supposed to be the year of strife, strikes, misery and more. Instead, to the surprise of Britain’s politicians, things have instead gone badly right. I look at them in my Telegraph column today, and here are the top points:- 1. Crime plunges With the austerity and the unemployment, internal government reports predicted that
It’s 9.30 a.m. on a Friday and David Cameron is about to head for his Oxfordshire constituency and work from home. This is precisely the habit that his Cabinet Office minister, Francis Maude, is trying to beat out of the civil service, but the Prime Minister has a reasonable claim to some downtime. In the
A sneak preview from The Spectator’s bumper Christmas issue, out this Thursday… It’s 9.30 a.m. on a Friday and David Cameron is about to head for his Oxfordshire constituency and work from home. This is precisely the habit that his Cabinet Office minister, Francis Maude, is trying to beat out of the civil service, but
1. Growth has been re-forecast, again (above). This year and next, it’s a lot better than Osborne forecast last time (in the red). A little worse thereafter. 2. The projected deficit is, as a result, smaller than he forecast in March. But still way ahead of his original Plan A. 3. Debt as a share of GDP, Osborne
I’m interviewing the Prime Minister tomorrow – he is a keen reader of Coffee House (or so he says!) and is always happy to take some questions from CoffeeHousers. So please do leave some suggestions below. I’ll choose some, put them to him and report back.
Earlier on this evening, I bumped into John Woodcock who I’ve known since my days at The Scotsman. He’s swapped journalism for politics and is now Labour MP for Barrow and Furness. We met in an ITV studio, and I asked what he was going on to talk about. “Popping pills,” he replied. He has
When George Osborne releases the bumpf accompanying his Autumn Statement tomorrow, I understand that there will be one paper that will be quite unlike anything presented by a previous chancellor. There will be a study on dynamic tax scoring: ie, recognizing that tax cuts stimulate the economy, and that the Treasury can expect to claw back
Today’s Times has a headline designed, I suspect, to make the blood boil. “Idle Britons are allowing Romanians to take jobs,” it says – paraphrasing the conclusion of Mariana Câmpeanu, Romania’s labour minister. This echoes a widespread idea repeated even by some British politicians. Especially those who argue that we need mass immigration to grow the
It’s December, advent calendars are on the wall and being prematurely raided (in my house, anyway). And it’s just ten days until the event of month: the Spectator’s carol concert with the amazing choir of St Bride’s. It’s a stunning church but quite a small one: we only have 200 tickets and most have been
David Yelland, a former Sun editor turned a PR director, is today giving a lecture to Hacked Off’s parent group lamenting what he sees as the absence of proper press regulation. He was invited on the Today programme to talk about it, and they kindly invited me on afterwards. Here’s the audio: listen to ‘David
Where Nairn goes, so goes Scotland. And it’s bad news for Alex Salmond because my old school, Nairn Academy, held a mock referendum on Scottish independence yesterday and the white smoke has just come out. They voted 71/28 to stay in the union with a 64 per cent turnout. This is more than a stunt
The national debt figures are out – £1.2 trillion and rising – and although I hate to say it, the Labour Party has a valid point to make. If you don’t adjust for inflation, Osborne has borrowed more in under four years than the Labour Party borrowed over 13 years. It’s unusual for Ed Balls
It’s tempting to see Nick Clegg as a champion of lower taxes. He’s nudged the tax threshold up over this parliament and in a letter sent out to Liberal Democrat members (while David Cameron is out of the country) he suggests the state should only start to confiscate earnings from people when they hit £10,500
Yet another survey suggests that Britain is booming – this time, it’s from the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee. They’re the guys who kept interest rates too low for too long – creating the last boom. It sees another boom now.”For the first time in a long time you don’t have to be an
Last night, The Spectator won the top gong from last night’s British Society of Magazine Editors awards. It’s a thrill for us here at 22 Old Queen Street – ours was the last of 24 awards and each of them showed the incredible vitality of the British magazine industry. To win the final gong, in
Gordon Brown used to joke that there are only two types of Chancellors: ‘those who fail and those who get out in time.’ Inside this joke lay his strategy: he was stoking a debt-fuelled bubble that was going to burst, but he hoped it would do so after the election or on someone else’s watch.
