Fraser Nelson is a Times columnist and a former editor of The Spectator.
To those of you who are discovering our new website: welcome. The aim is for it to be leaner and faster, but in the rejig we have had to drop some items that we’ll miss. One I will particularly miss is Night & Day, the Spectator Arts Blog, which was brilliantly run by Simon Mason
Can George Osborne recover? Much depends on how the Chancellor confronts the twin crises he faces: the lack of economic growth (or any prospect of it) and his personal reputation for competence after his shambolic Budget. Today, we have alarming news. The Independent says that Osborne is offering ‘growth bonds’. These appear to be a
‘Ten years ago, if you’d been asked what Gary Barlow would be running now, you’d have said a Little Chef off the A32.’ This, from Lee Mack, was one of the best gags of the night, which isn’t saying much. The music outstripped the comedy but Mack raises an important question: did Barlow get it
The rain makes today’s Jubilee celebrations a truly British event. We didn’t want any of this continental sun, anyway. The flotilla is making its way through the drizzle, and as we have to celebrate indoors due to the weather then there’s the perfect accompaniment: the new Spectator double issue, out today, which is overflowing with
This picture, to me, sums up today’s Jubilee flotilla: drenched Royal College of Music students cheerfully singing Land of Hope and Glory at the end of a spectacle attended by over a million people. The rain, far from ruining the event, made it even more memorable and didn’t seem to deter the crowds. As the
Here’s a U-turn that we can all welcome: felling the wind farms. Matt Ridley described, in a Spectator cover story some while ago, how George Osborne has turned against them. Today, the Observer has more details, saying that Osborne is: As Ridley argued, wind farms are a ‘monument to the folly of mankind’, representing the
A visibly relieved David Cameron gave a statement outside No. 10 earlier today about the successful rescue of four aid workers from a cave on the Afghan/Tajikistan border, including a Northern Irish aid worker, Helen Johnston. The Prime Minister said he had personally authorized the operation, which must have been some decision given the recent history
We baristas at Coffee House tend not to write about each other, but today I’d like to make an exception and say a little about Pete Hoskin, who is going freelance after four years running this blog. Regular CoffeeHousers will know about his rare combination of insight, humour and his gentle writing style which only
It’s tempting to see comedy in the government’s 30th U-Turn, but there’s a more serious side to this. It fits a pattern: act first, think later. The lack of special advisers in government is part of the problem. Even in the Labour days, I argued for more and better political appointees to help a reforming
Further to Pete’s blog on the new rules about pasties and VAT, the below graphic from today’s City AM sums it up perfectly. It does, of course, make the case for tax simplification — which is what George Osborne was trying to do in the first place. Hat-tip: Juliet Samuel
There are calls for Britain to pull out of the Eurovision Song Contest, after Engelbert Humperdinck finished second-last on Saturday, with Norway bottom. The Mayor of Leicester has today denounced Eurovision, saying: ‘The politics of Europe — which countries are friendly with which others — has a lot more to do with it than the
How best to help British business? More debt, of course — varieties of this answer come time and time again from this government. This time it’s Lord Young proposing £2,500 loans for young people, copying a successful model of the Prince’s Trust. The latter point should give reassurance, as the Trust has quite a striking
Heathrow Airport’s passport control already offers a notorious welcome to Britain, but Gatwick is now offering hot competition. Gatwick Express, the rail artery connecting the airport to London, installed new ticket gates at the airport a few months ago ending the old system where you could buy a ticket on the train. But they failed
The Eurozone is a kind of lunacy if you look at it as an economic project. But this isn’t about economics, or rationality — it’s about emotion, as the leader in today’s Telegraph says. The Brits and Americans often fail to understand this fully because we judge a currency union in terms of its economic
In my Telegraph column yesterday, I quoted a senior adviser to the Prime Minister saying that he ‘spends a crazy, scary amount of time playing Fruit Ninja’ on his iPad. It seems No.10 has been denying it — telling The Times (£) that ‘the real culprit’ is ‘his six-year-old son’. Now, all fathers will immediately
Next week, the Institute of Directors and the Taxpayers’ Alliance will release what I humbly suggest will be the most powerful summary of the case for radical supply-side reform in a generation. The report of the 2020 Tax Commission runs to 417 pages, choc full of academic literature showing how big government chokes growth, and
Does it matter that academy schools are defying Jamie Oliver’s fatwa against sweets? An organisation called the School Food Trust has found 89 of 100 academies guilty of harbouring tuck shops. Selling crisps, chocolate and even cereal bars. The Guardian is shocked and has made the story its page two lead. Schools with tuck shops,
For some time now, a growing number of Tory MPs have been quietly informing the whips that they will not be voting to support gay marriage. They’ve been getting letters from their constituents, and even those in favour of the idea know that they can’t afford to support it. When a cabinet member spoke to
Does it matter if the Prime Minister and his deputy mislead the country about what they are doing to the national debt? Neither of them seem to think so, if today’s Essex Relaunch today is anything to go by. First, Cameron: ‘The problems of over-spending and too much debt can’t be solved by even more
While David Cameron has good cause to be glad of Sarkozy’s defeat, he has even better cause to be nervous about this trend of lefty nerds being elected. Much of the Cameroon’s re-election hopes are pinned on the idea that their boss will trounce the geeky Ed Miliband. Nowadays, the argument goes, these ex-special advisers
