Tomorrow, MPs will debate whether to prevent abortion providers from counselling women seeking an abortion. The motion – put forward by Tory backbencher Nadine Dorries as an amendment to the Health and Social Care bill – is being opposed by the government, and pro-choice groups are backing a rival amendment, which reinforces the status quo.
His presidential campaign is just a fortnight old, and already Rick Perry is soaring in the polls. The three major national surveys conducted since his announcement all give Perry double-digit leads over previous frontrunner Mitt Romney. He has also, importantly, taken the lead in Iowa and is now odds on to win both there and
“They’ll like us when we win,” the West Wing’s Toby Ziegler said of the Arab world. David Cameron might have said the same when public opinion was turning against the intervention in Libya. And, judging by today’s YouGov poll, he’d have been right. Public support for military intervention has mirrored the public’s view of how
As Fraser has already observed, annual CPI inflation rose to 4.4 per cent in July, from 4.2 per cent in June. This means that it has been 4 per cent or more throughout 2011 and expectations are for it to reach 5 per cent before the year is out. Even stripping out tax increases (such
This is perhaps the biggest weekend yet in the race for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. The candidates clashed on Thursday night in their third televised debate, and will contest the traditionally important Ames Straw Poll in Iowa today. In truth, as Alex says, neither the debate nor the straw poll will have that big
Judging by today’s YouGov polls, the riots have pushed crime sharply up the national agenda: it now ranks second, behind only the economy. In all, almost half of Brits think crime is one of the top three issues facing the country, more than double the number who said so a fortnight ago. The effect has,
A credit downgrade, unemployment at 9.1 per cent, spluttering growth — the economic cards are certainly stacked against Obama for his re-election in 2012. But here’s the thing: American punters still think that he’s more likely to win next November than not. Perhaps that’s because, contrary to Clinton’s famous slogan, it’s not actually all about
Thanks to Guido and his co-conspirators, capital punishment is back on the political agenda. Here’s what The Spectator, under the editorship of Ian Gilmour, wrote about the hanging of Ruth Ellis — the last woman to be hanged in the UK — some 14 years before the abolition of the death penalty in Britain: The
…or why the US cuts are actually faster than, and just as deep as, ours. Dear Will, We hope you don’t mind us writing a letter-form response to your latest post on Left Foot Forward, which argues that the “coalition government’s cuts are deeper and faster than the Tea Party’s”. But, as we see it,
It is 55 years, this week, since Egyptian forces under President Nasser siezed and nationalised the Suez Canal – and triggered the eventual Suez Crisis in the process. Here is The Spectator’s leader from the time: Safeguarding Suez, 3 August 1956 Colonel Nasser’s seizure of the Suez Canal provides a fitting climax to the disasters which
A cracking, little story that we arrived at via the Daily Mail website: thanks to an FoI request put in by the Taxpayers’ Alliance, the Department for Transport has revealed which websites its staff visited on work computers between January 1st and May 31st this year. The full list is here, and there are some
Boris may think next year’s London Olympics will be “the most exciting thing that’s happened in the eastern part of the city since the Great Fire”, but – according to a slew of new polls – he’s got some way to go to persuade the rest of the country. Here’s an opener from YouGov:
There’s a new favourite in the race for the Republican nomination to take on Barack Obama in 2012. Yesterday saw Mitt Romney hobbled from his number one spot – on betting website Intrade at least – by Texan Governor Rick Perry. Romney had been seen as the candidate most likely to secure his party’s nomination
There’s been a lot of fuss about this morning’s GDP numbers, but if David Cameron has his way we’ll soon be fretting about an entirely different set of statistics. The Prime Minister has given the data-crunchers at the Office for National Statistics a new mission: measure the nation’s well-being. The idea is to create new
No Labour bounce, no drop in approval for Cameron or his government. That’s the impact that two weeks of front pages dominated by the phone hacking scandal on the opinion polls: Ed Miliband’s numbers have improved, which will come as some relief to the Labour leader who suffered a terrible month of polls in June.
With the European financial crisis rumbling on, anti-EU sentiment in Britain is deepening. Two polls — one by YouGov for PoliticsHome and the other by Angus Reid — show that 50 per cent of the public would vote for Britain to leave the EU if there was a referendum. Of course, this is nothing
For years, teachers have been increasingly reluctant to restrain unruly pupils — for fear of being slapped with a lawsuit. But now, it seems, the government is trying to ease those concerns. Its guidance today may not change any laws, but it does encourage schools to change their approach. Among the directions is that “schools
We haven’t dwelt on the polls very much on Coffee House recently, although we have flagged up some nuggets on Twitter. Here are some of the measures of public opinion that provide an interesting backdrop to Westminster’s machinations: Labour in trouble despite poll leads Two weeks ago I reported on a poll that showed the
Andrew Mitchell was recently informed that the public is split 50:50 for and against increasing the international aid budget to £12 billion in 2013. A YouGov@Cambridge poll for Politics Home suggests that he should get some better advice. The poll shows that while the public is indeed split fairly evenly on the general principle of
So it turns out the candidates vying for the Republican presidential nomination don’t like Barack Obama, his health care reforms, government bailouts, unions or abortion rights. Who knew? But it seems they do like tax cuts, states’ rights and… each other. The beleaguered Newt Gingrich didn’t even wait for the first question in last night’s
