All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Sometimes when a significant public figure dies, even, perhaps especially, when that death comes as no surprise and may, indeed, be considered some form of release there is a natural tendency to wonder if the blanket media coverage that invariably follows is altogether appropriate or even seemly. Is it not all too much? A man
Look; I’m sorry Nelson Mandela is dead. It happens quite often to people in their 90s who have been very ill, even famous people, but I’m sure that doesn’t lessen the sadness for many of us. I never met the man but, on balance, I came to the conclusion that he was a force for
Downing Street has released the following statement from David Cameron: ‘A great light has gone out in the world. Nelson Mandela was a towering figure in our time; a legend in life and now in death – a true global hero. Across the country he loved they will be mourning a man who was the
The Trussell Trust, which runs the biggest network of food banks in the UK, has used today’s Autumn Statement to remind politicians that over 500,000 people have sought emergency food parcels since April. There is a particular poignance to this,as today was the day the Lib Dems were having a song and dance about their
Ed Balls has not had a good day. He has just given his post-autumn statement briefing, at which he argued that Labour had set the agenda for this statement with Ed Miliband’s energy price freeze pledge. He’s right, but as James explained in his blog, while Labour set the terms of debate for the autumn,
After an autumn in which Ed Miliband has made the political weather, the government desperately needed a competent autumn statement that would change the terms of political trade. Today, it looks like they got that. George Osborne avoided trying to be too clever by half on the cost of living and instead stuck to the
Following George Osborne’s 2013 Autumn Statement this morning, The Spectator’s Fraser Nelson, Isabel Hardman and James Forsyth discuss the Chancellor’s announcements, the reaction he received in the House of Commons, how Ed Balls responded to the statement, the winners and losers and what we can expect to see on tomorrow’s front pages. You can subscribe to
Hallelujah, vaguely. The Prime Minister’s extremism task force set up in the wake of the murder of Drummer Lee Rigby has just reported and its findings, ‘Tackling Extremism in the UK’ include the following admission: ‘We have been too reticent about challenging extreme Islamist ideologies in the past, in part because of a misplaced concern
Ed Balls knew that his response to George Osborne’s Autumn Statement today was going to be difficult. As I blogged this morning, the Shadow Chancellor didn’t really have anywhere to go other than complain about the cost of living. This was aggravated by the fact that any Shadow Chancellor’s response to any autumn statement is
I know this is not exactly breaking news but Gerry Adams is a vile man. Since no-one devotes much attention to Northern Ireland these days it is easy to forget this. Easy to file Adams and his Sinn Fein comrades into a musty drawer marked Ancient History. But the past is not another country. In Dublin
listen to ‘George Osborne’s Autumn Statement’ on Audioboo Mr Speaker, Britain’s economic plan is working. But the job is not done. We need to secure the economy for the long term. And the biggest risk to that comes from those who would abandon the plan. We seek a responsible recovery. One where we don’t squander
Just because George Osborne had some very good figures indeed to read out at today’s Autumn Statement doesn’t mean that he had an easy job. There’s Labour’s campaign on the cost of living, which the Chancellor and his colleagues have given enough ground to that it has credence. Then there are the worries of his
1. Growth has been re-forecast, again (above). This year and next, it’s a lot better than Osborne forecast last time (in the red). A little worse thereafter. 2. The projected deficit is, as a result, smaller than he forecast in March. But still way ahead of his original Plan A. 3. Debt as a share of GDP, Osborne
Throughout the day, we’ll be posting audio highlights from the 2013 Autumn statement — including speeches from George Osborne and Ed Balls. George Osborne’s statement to the House of Commons: listen to ‘George Osborne’s Autumn Statement’ on Audioboo
I’m interviewing the Prime Minister tomorrow – he is a keen reader of Coffee House (or so he says!) and is always happy to take some questions from CoffeeHousers. So please do leave some suggestions below. I’ll choose some, put them to him and report back.
George Osborne wants to use today’s Autumn Statement to focus on the good figures and his government’s responsible approach to the economy. This, Tory strategists hope, will leave Labour with nowhere to go: Ed Balls has been a prophet of doom whose predictions now look as useful as those offered by a chap with a
A good wine, as I say in my book Life’s Too Short To Drink Bad Wine (now in a new, revised, nifty-looking edition) is a wine you like drinking. Which sounds obvious, but isn’t; a lot of people seem to suspect that there are objectively ‘good’ wines, and if they haven’t been inducted into that
Earlier on this evening, I bumped into John Woodcock who I’ve known since my days at The Scotsman. He’s swapped journalism for politics and is now Labour MP for Barrow and Furness. We met in an ITV studio, and I asked what he was going on to talk about. “Popping pills,” he replied. He has
Hats-off to James Kirkup for noticing that Goldman Sachs have suggested they would “drastically” cut their UK workforce (and operations) should Britain decide to leave the European Union. That is the view of Michael Sherwood, the fellow responsible for running Goldman’s european operations. I am sure eurosceptics will dismiss this as the usual scaremongering just as Scottish nationalists dismiss
When George Osborne releases the bumpf accompanying his Autumn Statement tomorrow, I understand that there will be one paper that will be quite unlike anything presented by a previous chancellor. There will be a study on dynamic tax scoring: ie, recognizing that tax cuts stimulate the economy, and that the Treasury can expect to claw back
The chart at the top of this post comes from the government’s National (sic) Infrastructure Plan 2013. (Sic because it is largely a plan for England.) You can find it on page 30. You may notice that one rather large part of England is not listed on this chart: London. Perhaps that is because the
Crash-bang-wallop. The chances of a Lib-Lab pact in 2015 have just gone hurtling through the floor. David Cameron is away in Beijing looking for Chinese venture capitalists who can turn Britain into the new Africa. Nick Clegg took his place at PMQs. He lost no time socking it to Labour. They were intellectually bankrupt, he
Well Alan Rusbridger has certainly received a glowing review from his own newspaper for his appearance in Parliament yesterday. In a moving paen, Roy Greenslade today describes how his boss ‘was able to bat away MPs’ concerns without raising a sweat, despite bluster from a couple of them who sought to suggest he might be guilty
Much of the meat of the Autumn Statement has already been briefed, which raises the question of what’s left to get excited about tomorrow. There will likely still be a number of crowd-pleasing announcements, but ministers are clearly keen to clear some space on the decks to focus on the figures that George Osborne will
Westminster Christmas party season is in full swing. Half the Cabinet dropped by the Sky News bash at the Intercontinental last night. Mick Hucknall was also there, which was odd. The big news of the evening came when the head of Sky News, Jon Riley, confirmed that all three party leaders have now officially agreed to
Today’s PMQs showed that Labour still have no plan for Nick Clegg other than to attack him. With Clegg standing in for Cameron, Harriet Harman didn’t try and tease out any differences between the coalition partners but instead attacked him as the best deputy any Tory Prime Minister could have and as an accelerator on
I don’t really understand why politicians spend so much time talking to journalists. Most of the time little good can come from doing so. Of course, from a personal or professional perspective, this is fine and adds greatly to the gaiety of trade and nation. Nevertheless… Take, for instance, the reports in today’s Financial Times
What do the Liberal Democrats and Ukip have in common? According to the second round of Survation’s constituency polling, they are both locally outperforming their national trends. Thanks to the Ukip donor Alan Bown, we can see how the seats of Great Grimsby and Dudley North would vote, were there a general election tomorrow: These
Today’s Times has a headline designed, I suspect, to make the blood boil. “Idle Britons are allowing Romanians to take jobs,” it says – paraphrasing the conclusion of Mariana Câmpeanu, Romania’s labour minister. This echoes a widespread idea repeated even by some British politicians. Especially those who argue that we need mass immigration to grow the
Guardian editor, Alan Rusbridger, was quizzed about the Snowden leaks in select committee today. The chair was amply filled by Keith Vaz who always comes across as well-fed, well-meaning and well-nigh useless. He began by thanking the Harry Potter clone for showing up at all. ‘I didn’t know it was optional,’ said Rusbridger frostily. Vaz
If only Boris Johnson had enjoyed as fun a day as his mannequin in Madame Tussauds. While the Mayor struggled with an IQ test set by LBC’s Nick Ferrari, his waxwork was donning a cheery Christmas jumper for Save the Children’s Christmas jumper campaign.
A minor observation on the BBC’s coverage from Cameron’s visit to Beijing (which has been, for the most part, of very high quality.) Nick Robinson closed his piece yesterday with a reference to the authoritarian and censorious nature of Chinese society and government heavy-handedness. To illustrate this, he revealed that he and his crew had
Boris Johnson insisted today that critics of his comments about IQ had chosen to ‘wilfully misconstrue what I said’. He told LBC radio this morning that ‘what I was saying actually is that there is too much inequality, and my speech was actually a warning, as correctly reported by many newspapers, actually a warning against
Every so often, when another strange case crops up of someone being declared fit as a fiddle for work who then dies a few days later, or who cannot walk, talk or feed themselves, questions are asked about how on earth the government could have got its fitness-to-work tests quite so wrong. These Work Capability