Fraser Nelson is a Times columnist and a former editor of The Spectator.
White Christmas, a wartime Christmas no1, sold an distinctly American vision of yuletide bliss. The below video shows what Britain was going through a the same time: short Christmas trees being sold, because tall ones could not fit into the air raid shelters. Toy shops still open, selling Spitfires while dust gathers on the models
An friend of mine in the City just sent me what is perhaps the shortest email I’ve ever received. The text just read “WTF?” with an attachment: the below graph, from today’s borrowing data, showing that underlying state spending was up 5.5pc in the three months November, compared to the same period last year. The
Right now, there are about 60 assorted cases of people trying to sue Britain’s intelligence services. Is that because our spies are unusually wicked, cavalier or brutal? Or because they may be caught in a legal trap with the laser beam of the human rights lobby moving ever-closer to their vitals? I argue the latter
Did the police stitch up Andrew Mitchell like a kipper? I was at a No.10 reception earlier this evening and a section of a room drained when Michael Crick’s extraordinary report about Plebgate came on Channel 4 News.The police claimed that Mitchell’s swearing shocked ‘several members of public’: CCTV footage, released by the Cabinet Office,
Yes, Britain’s employment figures are strong but most of the rise in employment so far under this government is accounted for by foreign-born workers (as was 99pc of the rise in employment under Labour). The recession has not diminished employers’ appetite for immigrant workers and today’s Sunday Times magazine has a long piece asking whether
Remember the Lawson boom? Gordon Brown did not let you forget it. His phrase to describe the Lawson-Major-Lamont era, ‘boom and bust’, was hammered relentlessly into voters’ minds. But only now, five years after the crash, is the full extent of the Brown bubble becoming clear. A note from Citi today throws this into focus
Ever since the issue of gay marriage returned to British politics, we have seen the debate become crazier and crazier. When Tony Blair handled this with his Civil Partnerships Act 2004, he did so with care and discretion, mindful of deeply-held opinions on either side of the debate. David Cameron seems to pursue gay marriage
Standard & Poor’s has delivered its verdict on George Osborne’s mini-Budget. It has reduced its outlook to negative, as per Citi’s predictions (which I blogged about last week). Citi said the S&P thumbs-down would happen in the new year: it took days. S&P now thinks there’s at least a 33pc chance that the UK will lose its AAA rating.
There was something odd about George Osborne offering tax breaks for fracking when it was still banned by another part of his government. The ban has been lifted and exploration can begin again in Lancashire, in what could be the most important piece of economic good news since the discovery of North Sea oil. But
On Monday, I interviewed Michael Gove for the new Christmas double issue of The Spectator. It’s out tomorrow but here’s a longer version, arranged in subheadings so CoffeeHousers can skip over bits they’re not interested in. This is the picture that stands behind Michael Gove’s desk: an imposing McCarthy-era poster which saying: ‘Sure, I want
An email from an Asian friend last night pointed me to a piece in the Telegraph saying: ‘This is the kind of thing they do in Singapore! I’m amazed it’s happening in Britain.’ She was referring to Maria Miller, the Culture Secretary, whose adviser told the Daily Telegraph to be careful about exposing her expenses
Behind Michael Gove’s desk stands an imposing McCarthy-era poster which says: ‘Sure I want to fight Communism — but how?’ In their less charitable moments, Tories may argue that his Department of Education is as good a place as any to start. The strength of its grip over state schools has long been the subject
Britain will lose its AAA rating within 18 months because George Osborne ‘no longer has credible plans to put the debt/GDP ratio on a stable or declining path’ according to Citi. Its verdict is worth reading in full (pdf) and is important because it adds weight to the idea that — as a result of
There was plenty to welcome in George Osborne’s budget, from the proposed corporation tax cut to scrapping the 3p fuel duty rise. But to read Jonathan’s seven-graph summary is to realise that Osborne’s 2010 plan is not now enough. I look at this in my Telegraph column today. Here’s a festive summary of my pain points:- Osbrownism
And while we’re on the subject of scandals in the British media, a pre-Budget ComRes poll just released by ITV News shows that just 6 per cent of the public realise what’s happening to the national debt. You can (and I do) blame politicians who don’t admit that the debt is rising massively – and
At the end of the editors’ meeting in 10 Downing St today, there was an awkward moment when someone asked if the past hour had been on or off the record. There was something odd about the idea of a bunch of journalists keeping something secret, and anyway there was anyway not much to reveal:
Is Nick Clegg lying about what he’s doing to our national debt? The L-word is seldom used in politics, and in spite of their reputation most politicians try to get it right. To lie is to deliberately mislead — but it’s hard to think of any other word to describe what the Deputy Prime Minister
Our honourable members have been busy denouncing the press in the House of Commons. The debate is still going on, but The Spectator has just had an honourable mention from Jim Dowd who read out our latest leading article (PDF here) to MPs. “The idea that you can trust the press is a strange one,”
Being in government has forced the Liberal Democrats to decide whether they are liberal in the British sense of the word, or in the American, statist sense. Nick Clegg leans towards the latter, which is why he wants the state to regulate of the press. But Jeremy Browne, the Home Office minister, is emerging as
The newspaper industry is apparently working this weekend on a new response to the Leveson inquiry. This should be an interesting exercise. Throughout this imbroglio, the British press has proven itself almost comically incapable of collusion; to collectively agree on anything is not in the nature of our fiercely-competitive newspapers. This makes for healthy competition
