Alex Massie is Scotland Editor of The Spectator.
Andrew Sullivan issues it: Obama reminds me of a one-nation Tory, refitted for the austerity era. David Cameron would fit very easily into his cabinet, and vice-versa. I fancy some of this magazine’s readers, to say nothing of less literate parts, headbangers True Believers elsewhere on the Tory right, worry Andrew may be right about
Tim Montgomerie is in full-on never waste a crisis mode today. Given the doom plastered across all the front pages (The Sun excepted) this is a good time for wheeling out old favourites: With the world economy facing such a bleak decade this is no time for half measures. We need to be cutting taxes
I like the Economist’s Democracy in America blog very much and I like my friend Erica Grieder too. But her recent post on the debt-ceiling deal, the Pentagon’s budget and the resurrected “threat” of American isolationism won’t wash. Contemplating some conservatives’ willingness to imagine cuts to the security budget she writes: There has always been
Mary Robinson was (and is!) a woman and, just as importantly, the first President of the Republic of Ireland whose candidacy was not backed by Fianna Fail. Her successor, Mary McAleese is originally from Northern Ireland and thus, like Robinson, some kind of outsider. Both women expanded the idea of the Irish presidency and, in
First things first: defence policy is difficult. Even more than is generally the case in other departments every decision made at the MoD is a question of trade-offs. This is true of all aspects of the brief: policy, personnel, procurement and so on. If you do this you can’t do that and so on. Add
As a torch-and-pitchfork populist it’s not a great surprise that Guido Fawkes is in favour of the death penalty. Nor will it be a great shock when he gathers the 100,000 signatures needed to petition parliament* to consider reintroducing capital punishment. And I agree with my old friend Neill Harvey-Smith who, while opposing the death
Surprise! Polly Toynbee’s column on the Tea Party today is a mess. You wouldn’t expect La Doyenne to agree with the Tea Party’s thirst for deficit reduction, nor with its willingness to take the United States to the edge of a technical default. That’s fine. Equally, there’s certainly a strain of conservative thinking immune to
Blimey David, the startling aspect of Eric Pickles’ announcement that central government will loosen the guidelines it issues to local councils concerning the proper provision of car parking spaces is not that this modest proposal has somehow made it through the Whitehall machine but that it was ever thought sensible for Whitehall to tell the
Mind you, if Obama lost on the Debt Deal then what to make of Mitt Romney’s position? As president, my plan would have produced a budget that was cut, capped and balanced – not one that opens the door to higher taxes and puts defense cuts on the table. President Obama’s leadership failure has pushed
Hurrah! We have a deal! Financial meltdown has been avoided! Well done Congress! As has to be the case in these circumstances it’s a case of making the best of a rotten and also ridiculous situation. Whether it lasts is a different matter, not least since this Congress cannot bind its successors. In the larger
On balance, I agree with Sir Geoffrey: Ian Bell was out and the Indians had nothing for which to feel ashamed. On the contrary, it is England whose reputations are, to my mind, (slightly) diminished by this incident. To recap: batting for England in the second test against India yesterday Ian Bell believed his partner
In honour of the debt-ceiling fiasco currently crippling Washington George Jones’s Things Have Gone To Pieces seems rather appropriate. Happily, it’s also a great song.
Tim Montgomerie is a bonnie fighter but his essay in this week’s magazine (Subscribe from as little as £1 a week!) is a splendid example of the pundit’s fallacy: if matters were arranged as I think they should be everything would be for the best and David Cameron would have a thumping majority. Well, maybe
Journalist seeks to embarrass politician for crime of enjoying themselves before they became a politician and, apparently, must expect to have their every move vetted by prudes and scolds. Said hack wants to know if it is true that: Whilst working at EMI, in the 1990s, you took drugs with Nigel Kennedy at Ronnie Scott’s
But first, another grubby little piece of u-turning from this government. You might think that a commitment to remove from the DNA database the details of more than a million innocent people was both simple and easily honoured. Such a suspicion fails to appreciate the so-called complexity of the matter and, one must presume, the
As you may have noticed it’s been pretty quiet around here. That’s what weddings, cricket matches, some unseasonal sunshine and, most of all, being swamped by family will do for you. Those waters are receding now and there’s time and freedom to blog again. Hurrah. Plenty to write about too, including the test match, Norwegian
Everyone needs to return to the Carter Family from time to time. It’s a country pilgrimage. Here the ladies perform My Clinch Mountain Home and Foggy Mountain Top. Class all the way and forever.
Perhaps it is time for Glasgow to become a Charter City: More than a third of people in Glasgow North East have no school qualifications. A table published by the University and College Union (UCU) showed 35.3% of those of working age left school without passing a single examination. The result gives the area the
I was going to write something about the 2000th test match but was distracted by Murdochpalooza. Happily this is not actually the 200th test. Or it should not be. The ICC, reliably mistaken as ever, have given test status to the (disappointing) 2005 match between Australia and the Rest of the World. The Bearded Wonder
Enda Kenny, Taoiseach, delivered an astonishing speech to the Dail yesterday during which he lambasted the Vatican in ways unprecedented in the history of the Irish Republic. It was, indeed, a republican speech of the best sort during which the Taoiseach asserted – reasserted would, alas, be too innacurate a way of putting it –