From ‘News of the Week’, The Spectator, 15 May 1915: SINCE our last issue every day has been to packed with incident and emotion that it is difficult to see events in their right perspective. The diabolical crime of sinking the ‘Lusitania’ is, from a military point of view, of course much lees important than
The party chairman in a general election winning campaign can normally expect a plum job as a reward, especially when that victory was against the odds. Tonight, though, Grant Shapps finds himself not in the Cabinet but a Minister of State at the Department of International Development. Shapps’ treatment is, at first, puzzling. After all,
David Cameron has never been hugely popular with the right-wing fringe of the Conservative Party, yet they tolerated him as long as they thought he was going to win. And win he did. At Monday’s jubilant 1922 Committee meeting, Tory MPs were shocked to see Bill Cash – a key figure of the so called
In this View from 22 podcast special, James Forsyth, Isabel Hardman and I discuss the final appointments in David Cameron’s new Cabinet and what they show about Cameron’s approach to party management. We also discuss David Miliband’s brutal interview about his brother’s term as Labour leader and why Nigel Farage has decided to hang on as
David Miliband has just given a brutal interview to BBC News in which he took a few more words to say ‘I told you so’ about the way his brother led the Labour party. Some of the worst lines were about their relationship, with David saying of Ed that ‘we remain in touch’, as someone
When Liam Byrne departed from the role of chief secretary to the Treasury in 2010, he left a note for his successor which read that ‘there is no money’. The note went on to haunt the Labour party throughout their unsuccessful election campaign, with Byrne recently describing it as ‘the letter I will regret for ever’. Happily, Danny Alexander hasn’t
Mr S previously reported that there were plans to donate the Guardian‘s election sweepstake to a foodbank. The decision was made after the organisers assumed that none of their employees could have possibly correctly guessed that there would be a Conservative majority. Now, word reaches Steerpike that the matter didn’t stop there. In fact, one employee at Guardian HQ was so bold
He’s gone, now he’s back. After four days in the political wilderness, Nigel Farage has returned as leader of Ukip. In a slightly bizarre statement, the party’s chairman Steve Crowther said Farage was ‘persuaded by the NEC to withdraw his resignation and remains leader of Ukip.’ So what changed his mind, after promising to resign ‘within 10 minutes’
Well, when Nigel Farage said he might come back as Ukip leader, we didn’t expect it would be quite so soon. Today the party’s NEC unanimously rejected Farage’s resignation, on the basis that the Ukip membership did not want him to go. Steve Crowther, Chairman of UKIP, said: ‘The NEC also concluded that UKIP’s general
Most of the new SNP MPs celebrated their party’s amazing result in the general election today with a photo call outside Parliament. They certainly looked an impressive bloc of parliamentarians, illustrating just how different this Parliament will look and feel from the last. But one of the interesting questions is how much freedom will these
Warning: The SNP revolution has begun in Westminster. This afternoon Nicola Sturgeon arrived at parliament with her 56 newly elected SNP MPs in tow. However, despite talk of discord between the Scots and English, Mr S is assured that so far relations are remarkably civil. Mhairi Black, the 20-year-old student who ousted Labour’s Douglas Alexander from
From The Spectator, 15 May 1915:
Here we go again. What effect do you think watching porn and video games have on young men? Yup, they rewire the brain. It’s such a clumsy metaphor – the brain isn’t ‘wired’ in any meaningful sense – that you’d think psychologists and neuroscientists would run a mile from it. Unless, of course they’re Baroness
While cases of Moët & Chandon champagne have been photographed making their way to Downing Street in previous years, the new government appears to have developed finer tastes. Sean Clare, a BBC producer, reports that a delivery of Bollinger champagne – the favoured tipple in of Patsy in the BBC’s Absolutely Fabulous – has arrived at Number Ten Downing
A very chipper David Cameron has just given an impromptu press conference to journalists outside the 1922 Committee. He joked that there were more government jobs to go round than he was expecting, and didn’t seem that sad about the demise of the Lib Dems. His priority, he said, was implanting the manifesto, a copy
Seemingly missing the democratic process that returned a Tory government with a majority and an increased share of the vote, the hard left took to the streets of Westminster over the weekend to protest against austerity. However, has ‘austerity’ really hurt all of the protesters who took part? Look closely at the box one used to make their
Welcome to The Spectator’s coverage of David Cameron’s post-election reshuffle. Here are the latest appointments along with analysis. Key appointments: New appointments: Michael Gove (Justice Secretary and Lord Chancellor), Sajid Javid (Business Secretary), Amber Rudd (Energy and Climate Change Secretary), Greg Clark (Communities and Local Government Secretary), David Mundell (Scotland Secretary), Greg Hands (Chief Secretary to the Treasury), Mark Harper (Chief Whip),
The Cabinet reshuffle is now underway, with IDS back in welfare and Michael Gove as Justice Secretary, with a brief to sort out the Human Rights Agenda mess. So David Cameron is opening a new stage in his leadership – and one that moves beyond the weird world of Tory factionalism. I’m hoping that the One
Before I got sidetracked by bogus obesity predictions, I was discussing the equally bogus controversy about whether physical inactivity is linked to obesity. It’s now fashionable to argue that exercising doesn’t help you lose weight. As I mentioned in my previous blog post, this is the line taken by Dr Jason Fung, a Toronto-based kidney specialist
Excerpts from his article in The Times today. Do read the whole thing (here). “I won’t be putting my name forward in the coming leadership contest. It’s not the right time for my family. My eldest kids had a very tough time when they lost their mum [in 2011] and I don’t want them to
