All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
How would the rest of the United Kingdom cope without Scotland? On this week’s View from 22 podcast, James Forsyth discusses his Spectator cover feature with Fraser Nelson and Eddie Bone from the Campaign for an English Parliament. Would England be left a lesser country without Scotland? Why has no one looked into how dramatic
I’m not a great believer in the ‘special relationship’, a concept that exists almost entirely in the mind of British journalists, especially during those occasional moments when the English-speaking nations have to bomb some awful former colony. Americans and Brits have a generally positive view of each other—speaking the same language will do that—but American
It was damn close. And it scored top marks for effort. Miliband’s plan today was to prove that Cameron’s NHS policy is a disaster. And to prove it with Cameron’s own admissions. Or omissions. ‘It’s four years since his top-down re-organisation of the NHS,’ began Miliband in that quiet, meticulous manner that always foretells a
David Cameron may have got away with his failure to block Jean-Claude Juncker as president of the European Commission, but that doesn’t mean that his MPs aren’t agitated about the way things are going in Europe. One aspect of last week’s European Council meeting that most people missed was a document setting out what appears
What has Labour got against people who work in McDonald’s? Last week we had Liam Byrne’s burger flip, where he slammed the same fast food employer for which he used to sizzle with praise. Now Andy Burnham has told the Unite conference in Liverpool: ‘What sort of message are we sending out when we say social
PMQs taught us a number of things about Labour and the Conservatives. The first is that while Labour has a bumper economy week underway, it does not feel sufficiently confident to attack the Conservatives on this issue in an aggressive forum like PMQs. This is probably quite sensible, given the attack that Cameron launched towards
Today’s PMQs will not live long in the memory. Ed Miliband led on the NHS and the debate quickly turned into a statistical stalemate. Indeed, at the end Andy Burnham tried via a point of order—with little success—to get Cameron to admit that one of his numbers was wrong. listen to ‘PMQs: ‘Cheer up folks,
What with his victory parade to celebrate a failure in Europe and Labour’s continuing muttering and complaining, David Cameron must be feeling pretty positive about Prime Minister’s Questions today. He’s managed to annoy some of his MPs with a Downing Street hint that it will not oppose Michael Moore’s bill to enshrine the 0.7 per
David Cameron has announced a review into why so few antimicrobials have been introduced over recent years. This seems to be too little too late. The impending car crash in healthcare of death from minor surgeries and incidental infections looms over us all. I have seen patients in critical care die of infections because we
There’s been a bit of a fuss over the claim in Lord Adonis’s growth report—repeated in a draft of Ed Miliband’s localism speech—that four-fifths of the private-sector jobs growth in the UK since 2010 has happened in London. The Prime Minister tweeted: Labour get their facts wrong on jobs – again. How can they ever
How much common ground do the political parties have on localism? As Isabel pointed out this morning, Labour and the Conservatives are engaged in an arms race to see who can out do the other on plans to devolve powers from central government. All politicians love to talk up localism — particularly in opposition, where
Mr Steerpike’s suggestion that things could be getting so bad for Labour that they may have to call on the services of Damian McBride, based on the disgraced former spin doctor’s helpful recent interventions, has ruffled a few feathers in Westminster. A Labour source pours an ice bucket on the idea: ‘I think it’s an
The Tories are very keen to sabotage Ed Miliband’s big speech about rebalancing the British economy, which is probably a compliment to the Labour leader as it suggests that they think he might be onto something. Both parties are certainly engaged in a localism arms race at the moment, arguing that they’re the party that
Who on earth would argue for a regime which hangs homosexuals, stones rape victims and sponsors terrorism across three continents? Who would act as a spokesperson or advocate of such a dictatorship? Well one answer appears to be ‘certain British Parliamentarians.’ In particular Labour MP Jack Straw, Conservative MP Ben Wallace and former Conservative Chancellor
How can politicians encourage this country’s economy to grow more evenly? Do you build a nice big railway line? Or try – and largely fail – to devolve greater power to cities using directly-elected city mayors? Today Labour sets out its answer in Lord Adonis’ growth review. Ed Miliband has already said that he will
Columnists like the Guardian’s Owen Jones have perpetuated a myth that harms rather than eases access to truly affordable homes for the impoverished on whose behalf they campaign. Taken in by the rhetoric of special interest groups, they recycle claims that house building is stymied by Treasury restrictions on council borrowing. Abolishing this ‘cap’ would
Is Damian McBride auditioning for a job as the saviour of the Labour Party spin operation? His re-energised blogging would certainly indicate as much. In the last few weeks the Brownite bad boy has left his job with Catholic aid charity Cafod, and returned to writing full time. He’s also managed to make a compelling
Normally when Speaker Bercow drags out a statement from the Prime Minister to over an hour and a half, the PM starts to look a bit pained. Today David Cameron looked as though he’d quite like a bit more: he’d spent most of the afternoon listening to Conservatives telling him how great he is and
Labour held a debate on Iain Duncan Smith’s stewardship of the welfare state today. Tory MPs backed their man, as did the Conservative journalists, who have told their readers that despite the many disappointments of the Cameron administration, Duncan Smith’s welfare reforms make the excruciating experience worthwhile. If Conservatives were sincere, they would want him
I know that it is unfashionable to feel sorry for Liberal Democrat MPs. Nevertheless there are times when, contemplating their unhappy lot, it seems appropriate to feel the odd pang of pity. The latest polling from Lord Ashcroft furnishes one of these rare moments. He asked punters who they would like to see form the
The row over Jean-Claude Juncker was confected outrage which spectacularly failed to achieve what Cameron wanted. It was confected because the alternatives to the ghastly Luxembourg bureaucrat are scarcely less federalist than he is himself. But the real giveaway, the most significant moment, came in Angela Merkel’s statement, issued as a means of giving a sop to
David Cameron is currently giving his statement to the Commons on the European Council and Britain’s new best friend forever, Jean-Claude Juncker. It’s a failure that his colleagues have given him room to spin into a success, but it’s worth watching how Labour manage it too. The party had an open goal at the weekend
Why is Number 10 pouring cold water on suggestions that National Insurance and Income Tax could be merged? This story bobs to the surface every few months: it was suggested that National Insurance could be renamed the ‘Earnings Tax’ in the 2014 Budget, but then nothing came of it. Now the Times has splashed on
Anyone interested in the EU debate should read Dominic Cummings’ report on the focus groups he recently conducted for Business for Britain. As well as being a reminder of just how strong the anti-politics mood in the country is, they also sketch out what the challenges for the respective campaigns in any referendum will be.
There are many reasons for this but let’s begin with the first and simplest: it is the British Broadcasting Corporation. Who could have imagined that an organisation that, rightly or not, sees itself as both creator and guardian of much of modern Britain’s identity and culture might think itself threatened by a movement hell-bent on destroying, or
In our latest View from 22 video, James Forsyth and Isabel Hardman discuss the two top stories from this weekend — the ascension of Jean-Claude Juncker and Jon Cruddas’s intervention on Labour’s ‘dead’ hand — and how they will play out over the week.
Dominic Cummings is at it again. Michael Gove’s former advisor has become a reliably entertaining guide to the Whitehall labyrinth. It is plain, too, that Cummings likes to think of himself as a Teller Of Hard Truths Many Of Which Our Masters Prefer Not To Contemplate Too Deeply If At All. This is fun. His
David Cameron has survived the post-Juncker post-mortem without a Tory grandee briefing against him. This is comforting for the Prime Minister, although he shouldn’t assume that he has the full loyalty of his party: it is quite clear that many are simply holding their fire until after the General Election. David Davis, who will again
Will investigators ever get to the bottom of what’s going on in Tower Hamlets? London’s most dubious borough has several ongoing inquiries into the alleged misuse of funds, electoral malpractice and voter intimidation. The first of these appears to be encountering some issues. Following a Panorama programme on the borough’s mayor Lutfur Rahman, the Department
It sounds like a cruise liner, doesn’t it? The Cool Britannia II: stopping at Downton Abbey, Game of Thrones and 12 Years a Slave. And if the rumoured guest list is right, the people invited to this reincarnation of Tony Blair’s infamous 1997 luvvie-fest are not far off cruise-liner quality. If Katherine Jenkins isn’t already
The traditional view of Vitamin D is that it is essential for bone health. Vitamin D deficiency is linked to rickets in children; and osteomalacia in adults. These two conditions can lead to bone deformities with an increased risk of fractures. Beyond the focus on bone health the evidence for other health effects of Vitamin
Will the military ever see any wrong in the execution of 306 soldiers for cowardice and desertion in World War One? I ask only because I have tried and failed to stage a new musical drama on the subject in a military museum. The Imperial War Museum said straight away that it had organised its own programme
In an exchange so awkward it might rival Gwendolen and Cecily’s afternoon tea in The Importance of Being Earnest, David Cameron has this afternoon phoned Jean-Claude Juncker to congratulate him on his appointment after weeks of campaigning to thwart him. Here’s the Downing Street read-out of the call: ‘The Prime Minister called the Commission President-designate,
It’s well known that David Cameron voted against Jean-Claude Juncker and tried to persuade his EU colleagues to do the same. Thanks to today’s Mail on Sunday, we know exactly how forceful the Prime Minister was in warning and rebuking his fellow leaders. According to leaked reports, an angry Mr Cameron threw Herman Van Rompuy,