James Forsyth is former political editor of The Spectator.
David Cameron was in confident form at his press conference this morning. Most of the questions were about the possibility of President Blair and Tory opposition to that. But three other things from the event were worth noting. First, Cameron’s announcement that the Tories will publish their top three or four priorities for each department
I must admit that I despaired this morning when I heard that Nick Stern was arguing that meat eating should become socially unacceptable because of climate change. Those of us who think that climate change is happening and that human activity is a part of it have a big enough case to make without people
John Rentoul rightly flags up the story in this morning’s FT that about 100,000 NHS patients have gone private and had the state pick up the tab, the private hospitals have had to agree to do the work at the NHS price. For those of us who would like to see the NHS move towards
It is being hailed as a diplomatic triumph that Hamid Karzai has agreed to a run-off in Afghanistan’s presidential election. (Who is getting the credit for Karzai relenting is, as Daniel notes, fascinating). But as Dexter Filkins points out in The New York Times, the second round of the Afghan election could be as marred
With the recession and Afghanistan, Iran often drops off the new agenda but the nuclear issue hasn’t gone away. The Washington Post’s article today about the recently revealed nuclear facility at Qom shows that the plant was almost certainly part of a nuclear weapons programme. The paper reports that communication intercepts revealed that Iran only planned
James Forsyth reviews the week in politics. There is a reason why Tory excitement about returning to government is so tempered: it could be war. The simple, grim mission awaiting them is to impose the sharpest cuts attempted by any postwar government while radically reforming many public services. The trade unions can be expected to
If you have any time spare this weekend, do listen to Peter Oborne’s ‘Conserving what?’ series on Conservatism for Radio 4. It is exceptionally good and this week’s episode, based around an interview with David Cameron, is absolutely fascinating for anyone interested in Conservative philosophy. It also gives some intriguing glimpses at what kind of
No one has done more to make the Tories’ new European allies an issue than Jonathan Freedland. He has written about the subject with real passion and, so sources in the Jewish community tell me, played a crucial role in persuading the president of the Board of Deputies to write to David Cameron expressing concern
We can debate the rights and wrongs of the BBC’s decision to invite Nick Griffin on Question Time. But having invited him on the BBC shouldn’t have devoted almost entirely the whole programme to the BNP’s agenda. This must have been the first Question Time ever where there was no discussion of the economy, health
The 1922 committee of Tory MPs is meeting now and the word is that there will be a concerted push to defend the right of MPs to employ their relatives; something that MPs on all sides fear the Kelly review will try to ban. In a Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion way, it is
David Rohde’s account of being held hostage by the Taliban for seven months is a fantastic piece of journalism, I’d urge you to read the whole thing. One point in it struck me as particularly pertinent to the current debate about Afghanistan: “Over those months, I came to a simple realization. After seven years of
Any attempt to use legal measures to keep the BNP off Question Time will only have one winner: the BNP. The more of a fuss that is made about the BNP appearing on Question Time, the better for the BNP—it means that Griffin will get more publicity and if he is clever enough to disguise
Back in early September Coffee House reported that the Tories were considering including repeal of the hunting ban as part of a broader civil liberties bill. Nick Hebert seems to confirm that this is what the party is planning in his Sunday Telegraph piece. He writes that “the Act sits with ID cards, the attempt
It makes senses that David Cameron should be considering bringing Lord Heseltine back. Cameron has long been an admirer of his. Francis Elliot and James Hanning report in their biography of Cameron that his idea that Heseltine should represent the Tories on Question Time caused eyebrows to be raised at Thatcher’s Central Office. But if
Patrick Hennessy and Louise Amistead have the scoop on the government’s plans to get more tax revenue out of the banks in the Sunday Telegraph. One idea under discussion is that, “Banks could also be forced to pay more corporation tax by curbing the system that allows them to offset their losses against tax over
No one really thought that Vaclav Klaus would hold out against the Lisbon treaty until the British general election, but it was a convenient fiction for the Conservative party. It enabled both the leadeship and Eurosceptics to pretend that the current policy remained operative and that any questions about what would happen if the Lisbon
James Forsyth reviews the week in politics. Mud sticks. In politics everyone remembers the charge and not the denials — something Labour has exploited for years. Typically, it would denounce the Conservatives for being heartless, privileged bigots who care nothing for the poor, eat foxes and have no place in modern Britain. But that doesn’t
The MPs who are most likely to defy Legg are those who are standing down. They have little to lose in saying that they won’t abide by the retrospectively imposed caps on various things. The question of whether they could be compelled to pay this money back looks like it could turn into a major
One already hears grumblings from members of the Shadow Cabinet about how much power has been concentrated in Norman Shaw South, the suite of offices where Cameron and Osborne and their teams sit in Parliament. But judging by a report in The Times today the leadership is thinking about centralising power even more when in
David Brooks is the most influential American newspaper columnist and his column today is a paean of praise for George Osborne. He praises Osborne for offering not just pain but a “different economic vision — different from Labour and different from the Thatcherism that was designed to meet the problems of the 1980s.” He goes