James Forsyth is former political editor of The Spectator.
The emotive list of alleged victims of phone hacking has grown again tonight. To Milly Dowler, the parents of the Soham victims, and survivors of 7/7 can now be added the families of British soldiers killed in Afghanistan and Iraq. It should be stressed that nothing has yet been proved in any of these cases.
There’s only one thing that anyone in Westminster is talking about and that’s phone hacking. But one thing worth noting is that in every conversation I have had on the subject, MPs and Ministers have stressed that the police must not be let off the hook. For some on the Labour side—as John McTernan blogs
The Guardian’s story that News International believes that Rebekah Brooks was on holiday when Milly Dowler’s phone was allegedly hacked will place further pressure on Andy Coulson, who was her deputy editor at the time. This is the second piece of trouble for Coulson in the past 24 hours following last night’s revelations. Some in
The striking thing about the phone hacking debate is that Ed Miliband is sitting on the Labour front bench, a statement of how seriously the Labour leader is now taking this issue. Miliband nodded vigorously when Chris Bryant declared that if Rebekah Brooks had a single shred of decency she would resign. Dominic Grieve is
PMQs today was a taste for David Cameron of what he will have to face over the coming weeks as the scandal surrounding the News of the World continues to grow. Ed Miliband asked him whether he agreed that Rebekah Brooks — a friend of Cameron’s —should resign and then mocked him when he wouldn’t
On the Ten o’clock News tonight Robert Peston reported that News International have allegedly handed emails to the police that show Andy Coulson as editor of the News of the World authorised payments to the police. If this was true, it would be illegal. But it should be stressed that Peston could not reach Coulson
The political plates on phone hacking are shifting rapidly. The story has now ‘gone mainstream’ following the accusations about how the phones of Milly Dowler and the parents of the Soham victims may have been hacked. Politicians are racing to catch up. Ed Miliband is rapidly moving into a more robust position. The Labour leadership
The politics of the phone hacking saga have changed dramatically in the last 24 hours. Up to now, it has been a scandal that has been of huge interest in political and media circles but hasn’t cut through to the public. But that could all be about to change with the allegation that Milly Dowler’s
One of the things about the press that politicians frequently complain about is that papers concentrate more on personalities than policies. But reading the latest extracts from Alastair Campbell’s diaries you see just how much personality matters. Indeed, according to Campbell, Tony Blair excluded Gordon Brown from a discussion about what to do after 9/11
The approach that the Liberal Democrats take to social care over the next few weeks and months will be the best guide we have to how they now view the future of the coalition. If, in the coming all party talks, they effectively ally with Labour and try to score points off the Tories by
Before writing my column for The Spectator this week I asked one of the most clued-up Eurosceptics on the centre right what opt-outs Britain should push for in any negotiation over an EU treaty change. His answer, to my surprise, was “forget that, we should just leave”. This answer took me aback because this person
The news, via a leaked letter, that Boris Johnson now opposes high-speed rail will come as little surprise to the government. Boris has been moving to this position for quite some time and the Department for Transport resigned itself to the mayor coming out against the scheme earlier this week. Recently, one of Boris’ senior
If there’s one phrase that infuriates Tory radicals more than any other, it’s ‘We’re the best in Europe at …’. If there’s one phrase that infuriates Tory radicals more than any other, it’s ‘We’re the best in Europe at …’. The words are used among the bureaucratic establishment as an excuse for accepting the status
There has been much talk about what George Osborne told Alistair Darling about the EU bailout mechanism during those days in May between the election and the coalition being formed. But notes of a conversation between Osborne and Darling released today show that Osborne did urge Darling not to commit to anything that would have
When a Labour press release landed in my inbox saying, ‘Ministers must come clean over attempt to bury bad news on strike day,’ I was expecting quite a story. But the reality of it turns out to be rather underwhelming. Labour’s accusation centers round a shift in direction on charging points for electric cars, not
The news that the case against Dominique Strauss-Kahn is in danger of collapsing is almost as surprising as the initial news of his arrest on suspicion of raping a chamber maid. There had been a general assumption in New York, Washington and Paris that the case against the former IMF president was clear-cut and that
The Foreign Secretary finds himself in the rather unique position today of trying to deal with the consequences of a crisis that he largely predicted. In May 1998, William Hague gave a speech warning that the single currency would lead to social unrest as governments tried to cope with one size fits all interest rates.
In Britain, public sector strikes always bring with them the whiff of national decline. They are a reminder of a time when the country was becoming less and less competitive and the civil service regarded its job as the management of decline, a mindset only broken by the Thatcher government. But today Britain faces
Roy Greenslade’s report in the Evening Standard that The Sunday Times will hand over to Essex Police the tape of Chris Huhne talking to his estranged wife Vicky Pryce that got the speeding points story motoring in the first place has revived speculation in Westminster about the future of the Energy and Climate Change Secretary.
The mini Tory rebellion last night, 15 Tory MPs voted to allow couples to transfer their personal tax allowance, has further strained relations between the whips office and some backbenchers. One complained to me earlier that the whips had been overly heavy-handed in their approach, describing their behaviour as ‘quite terrifying’. Now, these things are