Ed Miliband began the first 15 minutes of his NHS day talking about trust and the deficit. In a feisty interview on the Today programme, the Labour leader again did not apologise for borrowing too much when his party was in government. Instead, he argued it was a failure of banking regulation that lead to Britain’s financial
Labour MPs who spoke at Satruday’s sex-segregated rally in Birmingham don’t seem too keen on explaining themselves to The Spectator. Siôn Simon, now a Labour MEP for the West Midlands, proudly tweeted a picture of a Labour rally in Hodge Hill, in which seven Labour representatives spoke at a packed Islamic community centre. Only problem? The
The Tories were less than pleased last week when Danny Alexander revealed confidential communications between the coalition partners regarding child benefit to a paper, as part of an election campaign ambush. The disclosure brought back up old tensions in the coalition, with Michael Gove claiming that it simply served as a reminder of the party’s true colours. ‘I don’t think it
From ‘News of the Week’, The Spectator, 8 May 1915: The papers of last Saturday published a particularly vivid account by the Canadian Record Officer of the stand of Canadians at Ypres. Such heroism as is revealed in this narrative deserves even more than the tribute we paid to the Canadians last week, Their feat
With polling day less than a week away, it was a case of no rest for the wicked this weekend as politicians took part in some last minute campaigning. While Ed Miliband dreamt about erecting an 8ft 6in stone in Number 10, other members of the Labour party attended a campaign event. Organised by councillor Ansar Ali Khan, Labour
I thought Ed Miliband did rather well in that last debate. Insofar as it matters. In both of the last two debates he’s come across significantly better than much of the press would have you believe, to my mind. Insofar as it matters, again. But then I suspect that almost everyone gleans what they want
In today’s election special podcast, James Forsyth, Isabel Hardman and I attempt to explain why Ed Miliband unveiled a stone engraved with Labour’s six pledges today. Will anyone notice what the pledges are or just discuss the fact they are appearing on a giant stone? We also look at how the stage is set for a last minute Tory
The prospect of government by short-term deals and extortion is so depressing that you can see why Ed Miliband has said he won’t go in for that kind of thing, and why David Cameron and Nick Clegg have finally started laying down some red lines. But there’s no getting away from the electoral mathematics, as
One of Britain’s great traditions is the open garden afternoon: an opportunity for folk revelling in being both middle-aged and nosy (like me) to wander around other people’s plots and peer at what they’ve planted while scoffing large slices of cake. The National Gardens Scheme and Open Squares are two of the most popular, and
The Guardian/Observer website is running with this story headed ‘Britain set to face weeks of political paralysis after election poll’. That’s a safe prediction. But what’s intriguing is that the article – by Daniel Boffey, Toby Helm and Ashley Cowburn – is entirely devoted to the prospect of an extremely shaky Conservative-Lib Dem coalition, harassed or indeed
So, here we are. In 100 hours time, we’ll be half-way through election-day. But at the moment, the polls still remain deadlocked. Yet, there remains a sense that there’ll be some kind of late shift towards the Tories. Is there any grounds for this? Well, I argue in the Mail on Sunday that there are
Ed Miliband has woken up to ridicule this morning after the Guardian unveiled his latest election accessory. No longer content with his trusty lectern, the Labour leader has bizarrely commissioned an 8ft 6in stone inscription which bears Labour’s key election promises. Miliband plans to install this in the Downing Street Rose Garden if he
Ukip has four key target seats in Essex and Kent it hopes to win on Thursday. In order of likelihood of victory, Clacton, Rochester & Strood, South Thanet and Thurrock are the constituencies to watch on election night. I visited three of these seats yesterday, to find out how each of the candidates are feeling about the
From ‘Rupert Brooke’, The Spectator, 1 May 1915: TO all men there is attractiveness in the combination of the soldier and the poet, and perhaps the combination gives a more satisfying pleasure to the countrymen of Sir Philip Sidney than to any other race. This is the reason why thousands of Englishmen mourn for Rupert
Nicky Morgan’s record as Education Secretary is coming under fierce attack in the Loughborough market place where she’s campaigning. A furious man is telling activists that he will never vote for the Tory candidate because of ‘what she’s done’. The campaigners brace themselves for a diatribe about Tory education policies. Instead, it turns out that
This morning the Duchess of Cambridge gave birth to a baby girl. The girl, who is the Queen’s fifth great-grandchild, is the fourth in line to the throne. As members of the public began to celebrate, the political leaders were quick to put out their own carefully worded messages of congratulations. With the election less than a week
The respected Catholic News Agency has published an interview with Ion Mihai Pacepa, a former general in Romania’s secret police who was one of the Eastern Bloc’s highest-ranking defectors in the 1970s. In it, he says that Soviet Union – and the KGB in particular – created liberation theology, the quasi-Marxist movement that flourished in Latin America from
The Duchess of Cambridge has given birth to a baby girl. It is hardly a very exciting event. Babies are born all the time, and there are already quite enough descendants of the Queen to ensure the survival of the Windsor dynasty on the throne of the United Kingdom for a long time to come. Yet
Ed Milband used his interview with Russell Brand as a chance to bash his arch-enemy Rupert Murdoch. The Labour leader claimed that the media mogul is ‘much less powerful than he used to be’. The disrespect is mutual: Murdoch has taken to Twitter to mock Miliband for queuing up to shake his hand at his annual
The title of a poem by Anthony Brode, ‘Breakfast with Gerard Manley Hopkins’, prompted me to invite verse submissions describing a meal with a well-known poet. Sylvia Fairley tucked, somewhat reluctantly, into albatross with Coleridge, D.A. Prince shared cocoa with Wendy Cope and Rob Stuart enjoyed a curry with Dante. Honourable mentions go to John