All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
The news that the national debt is even larger than it appears ties a knot in the stomach, limiting, as it does, the state’s ability to cut taxes. Andrew Tyrie has called time on the PFI bonanza, but in many ways this intervention comes too late. Back during the financial tempests in the autumn of
Here are some of the posts made at Spectator.co.uk over the last week. Fraser Nelson has a web exclusive of his magazine interview with IDS, and notes that inflation has risen yet again. James Forsyth laments the missed opportunity to transform, and compares Cameron and Miliband’s responses to the riots. David Blackburn examines Merkel and Sarkozy’s
A woman has been banned from every bookshop in the country after stealing £56 worth of magazines and Plasticine from a branch of WH Smith in Hartlepool. (Hartlepool Mail) The developers of a mosque on the site of a former pub in Sneinton, Nottingham, are seeking fresh planning permission after it was found to be
The row over sentencing rioters has morphed into a row about prison numbers and safety. Cathy Newman has been issuing a steady stream of tweets all afternoon, revealing that the Ministry of Justice is concerned about overcrowding and safety in prisons and young offenders’ institutions: an internal memo discloses that 2 convicted rioters have been
There has been a dramatic turnaround in the military situation in Libya. The rebels are now within 30 miles of Tripoli and the consensus is that Colonel Gaddafi’s days are numbered. The rebels have taken the strategically vital town of Zawiyah, which lies on the road between Tunisia and Tripoli, upon which Gaddafi relies for
Jon Huntsman was never likely to win the Republican nomination anyway but this Tweet suggests he’s decided to say “Sod it, let’s just have some fun.” These views are fine inside the Beltway and in Foggy Bottom but they butter few parsnips out in the country. Here again, the suspicion lurks that Huntsman 2012 is
The most ostensibly boring things often turn out to be of critical importance. PFI falls into this category. The Treasury Select Committee has demanded substantial and immediate reform of the scheme. The committee’s report lambasts the government for overusing PFI to keep costs off departmental balance sheets and calls for much greater transparency to ensure value for money. An estimated £67
Even after 10 years, Afghanistan still has the capacity to shock. Details of the attack on Kabul are vague, but it seems that a posse of Taliban fighters dressed in “military garb” walked into the offices of the British Council and the United Nations; three people were killed in the ensuing explosions and fire-fights between
Iain Duncan Smith has given a detailed interview with the Spectator and the full-length version is online. Right now, beyond David Cameron and George Osborne, he has the most important job in government. There is some really interesting and innovative stuff here despite the unnecessary British jobs for British workers dog-whistle politics. IDS is right
The recent rally on the markets is now the most distant memory. Stocks continued to fall today amid concerns about the European sovereign debt crisis, negligible growth figures in the developed world and cooling Asian economies. Robert Peston has an excellent account of the causes and effects of the latest rout. Banking stocks were brutalised,
This England cricket team is rather like the great German football sides of the past: a collective rather greater than the sum of its parts. Hard, determined, efficient, ruthless, organised and together. There’s quality too, for sure, but that’s not what stands-out. They thoroughly deserve their success. Nevertheless, their success comes at a price. Or,
Who are the forgotten victims of the economic malaise that has beset the West? Martin Vander Weyer’s business column in a recent issue of the Spectator is a lament for the middle classes. The modest fruits of their honest labour are being quietly obliterated by forces they cannot hope to resist. The piece is infused both with
Will Straw takes issues with Fraser’s post on the matter of just how many “new” jobs have been filled by foreign-born workers. As Straw says, foreign-born is one metric, British-national another. If you measure these things by the latter yardstick then, apparently, 69% of new jobs in the last year have been filled by non-UK
The press’s tendency to feature female students receiving their A-Level results rather than their male counterparts is coming in for a fair bit of ribbing today. The Guardian diary yesterday revealed quite how far some schools are prepared to go to get their pupils on the front page: “And yet eyebrows were raised at Diary
There’s a lot of bad news around, but some things are going right in Britain. Sales of The Spectator are on the rise again, for the first time in four years. Pretty soon, if the trend (and our luck) holds, more people will be buying the magazine than at any point in our 183-year history. I
The Eurozone Tobin tax announced on Tuesday by Merkel and Sarkozy is intended to reduce market volatility. It could have the opposite effect, and, if introduced in Britain, could cripple Britain’s financial sector, a new report by the Adam Smith Institute says. Based on the example of the “pure” Tobin tax that was implemented in
The Gap Year has been declared dead. It’s A-levels day today, and the annual scramble for university places has been intensified ahead of next year’s tuition fees rise. According to this morning’s Times (£), the last count had 669,956 pupils sprinting after 470,000 vacancies. An estimated 50,000 students with adequate grades will not enter higher
I dare say some of the sentences handed down in the aftermath of the riots are on the stiff side of things. Some people are likely to be harshly punished for moments of stupidity as they were carried away by the thrill of running with the mob. But, though readers know I tend to take
The news that the Crown Prosecution Service has asked Essex Police to make further inquiries into the whole allegation that Chris Huhne asked his then wife to take speeding points for him in 2003 is a political embarrassment for the Energy and Climate Change Secretary. Huhne has always denied these allegations and nothing has been
Earlier this month Joe Biden was in “trouble” for referring to the Tea Party as “terrorists”, now Rick Perry’s getting it in the neck for suggesting loose monetary policy “between now and the election” is “treasonous” and that if Ben Bernanke turned-up in Texas he’s be treated “pretty ugly”. This might have been phrased better
I have interviewed Iain Duncan Smith for tomorrow’s Spectator. In print, space is always tight and we kept it to 1,500 words. One of the beauties of online is that you can go into detail in political debate that you never could with print: facts, graphs (my guilty pleasure) and quotes. Here is a 2,300-word
Could it be that Ireland has passed through the worst of the storm? Writig in the Financial Times yesterday David Vines and Max Watson argue that maybe, just maybe, it has. [T]he first and most important thing about Ireland is that it is swiftly restoring its competitive edge. Indeed it is moving rapidly towards a
All politicians require a thick skin, but Gordon Brown must have an elephant’s hide. If an ordinary man had presided over the greatest crash since 1929, shame would compel silence. Not so with Brown, who is unable to see himself as other see him, and has written an account of the European crisis for the
Applications to be the next commissioner of the Metropolitan Police closed at noon today. But thanks to the Home Office and the police, the best candidate for the job — Bill Bratton — hasn’t been allowed to even apply. The energy which was put into barring him shows just how determined the police and the
Last week, George Osborne boasted that Britain has the second-fastest job creation in the G7. In tomorrow’s Spectator, we disclose official figures showing that 154 per cent of the employment increase can be accounted for by foreign-born workers. We on Coffee House have often questioned Labour’s record: 99.9 per cent of the rise in employment was accounted
David Cameron promised that looters would feel the full force of the law. Courts have been sitting round the clock holding defendants on remand and issuing stern sentences. This is causing disquiet in some circles. Lib Dem MPs complain that the government has overacted, incapable of resisting the temptation to take draconian decisions without adequate scrutiny.
30,000 new jobs by 2015: that is the glittering prediction made by the government as it announces the creation of more enterprise zones this morning. 11 zones* have been identified in total, tailored to foster the expansion of hi-tech manufacturing industries away from London and the M4 corridor. Enterprise zones certainly have their critics –
The problem with the Prime Minister’s “Broken Society” meme is that it’s not obvious society is more broken now than it always has been. Sure, there are serious problems and some of them are deep-rooted and, perhaps, the overall level of hopeless venality is higher than once it was but, tempting though it is to
My mother doesn’t read blogs but if she did this is the kind of thing she’d like to see: Appropriate, not just for the anniversary today, but for Riot Week too.
The word flying around Westminster this evening is that the government is going to announce a fresh package to stimulate growth tomorrow. In line with recent reports, the expectation is that new enterprise zones will be unveiled. Enterprise zones are, of course, the linchpin of the chancellor’s current strategy, offering generous tax breaks for start-up industries,
Dan Drezner tweeted this afternoon that Barack Obama vs Rick Perry would be the starkest choice between rival philosophies and policies since Johnson-Goldwater in 1964. That might well be true, particulalry if you limit the question to domestic policy. Perry is barely out of the traps, of course, and already people are rushing to argue
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
Oh look: a poll produced by R3 “the insolvency trade body” finds – surprise! – 47% of people think “financial pressures” contributed to the riots and 92% of folk think “easy access to credit” created “a sense of entitlement”. Well played lads. Sir Humphrey would be proud of you: [Hat-tip: Hopi Sen who – huzzah!
Boom! Phone-hacking is back and it’s yet more bad news for Andy Coulson and, by extension, David Cameron. The Prime Minister’s problem is that we are tasked with believing that he believed the former News of the World editor when Coulson claimed to have had no knowledge of phone-hacking (and other criminal acts) during his