For the last 15 years, a four-letter word has terrified and paralysed the Conservative leadership: cuts. When it has been deployed by Gordon Brown on the electoral battlefield, the Tories have had no defence. Even after they surrendered and signed up to Labour’s spending plans, Mr Brown still accused them of planning ‘deep and painful
It’s the little slights that really hurt. The ones where they just don’t seem to have thought about it. Certainly, we’re all thrilled that the great President Obama has deigned to make a visit to this little island vassal state. But why did he have to bring his own car? We have cars. Loads of
Charles Moore’s reflections on the week Only connect. Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, said that her family house in her Redditch constituency was her second home. This allowed her to claim £116,000 from the taxpayer for it. Then her husband, Richard Timney, who is paid by the taxpayer as her constituency assistant, claimed pornographic films
I live in fear of that peculiar sharp intake of breath I seem to hear whenever I ask service men actually to service anything I own that doesn’t work. I live in fear of that peculiar sharp intake of breath I seem to hear whenever I ask service men actually to service anything I own
At last, a government response to the financial crisis that is actually working. Am I referring to last November’s VAT cut? Of course not; it has been as ineffectual as we all said it would be. Those loan guarantee schemes for struggling small businesses? Nope, still very little sign of them, I’m afraid, months after
‘From this filthy sewer, pure gold flows’: that was in 1835, but it could be today Alexis de Tocqueville, the great French political commentator, visited Manchester in 1835 when the city was the capital of the world’s textile industry. He wrote: ‘From this foul drain, the greatest stream of human industry flows to fertilise the
