Fraser Nelson is a Times columnist and a former editor of The Spectator.
Journalism usually focuses on what’s going wrong, not what’s going right. As a result, newspapers can give an unduly negative view of the world. I try to remedy this in my Daily Telegraph column today by pointing out that 2014 has been the best year ever – just as 2013 was, and just as 2015
Division and reconciliation were the themes of the Queen’s Christmas Message this year (full text below). She started mentioning the Josefina de Vasconcellos‘s 1977 statue Reconciliation, which is now in Coventry Cathedral. She then went on to other examples of conflict and reunion from the First World War to Northern Ireland. And then the unfinished business of the Scottish independence referendum… “In
Channel 4 has The Snowman, the BBC has the Queen’s Message. And we at Coffee House have another tradition: publishing the above video released in 1941. It was made by British Ministry of Information, narrated by an American for Americans in hope of enlisting American support in the war. There are so many wonderful lines that it
Déjà lu is a symptom that affects all Spectator subscribers after a while: the feeling that, when reading the newspapers, that you have read the story before. Long before. Four months ago, The Spectator ran a cover story about a crisis that hadn’t then hit the news: the meltdown in our ambulance service. Mary Wakefield’s investigation revealed
Joe Cocker died yesterday, just 70 years old, from lung cancer. He was one of a handful of rock singers whose voice was instantly recognisable, adding a new dimension to any song he sang. And perhaps this is why his cover versions worked so well – they did sound completely different, and yet still thrilling and
‘What kind of message are you guys trying to send with that brutal Christmas card?’ asked my friend in the bar last night. He’s referring to the above card, an image created by ‘Castro’ for the Christmas special edition of the Spectator (which you can download here) to run alongside Paul Wood’s stunning diary from Lebanon.
The Daily Mirror has today splashed on the fact that Rupert Harrison, chief economic adviser to the British government, has had a pay increase and is now on £95,000. Outrageous, says Kevin Maguire of the Mirror. I agree: he should be on far more. The British government is in the most almighty financial mess and
Can the Tories really be planning to fight the next election lying about the deficit? I ask because in his speech today, David Cameron has just repeated an untrue claim which made its debut in a George Osborne newspaper article a few days ago: that they have ‘halved’ the deficit*. Here’s what the Prime Minister
Those who complain about the BBC (myself included) usually only refer to a small part of a massive and divergent operation. Nicky Campbell on Radio 5 is just superb – not a hint of bias in any of his breakfast show. Jeremy Vine, too, is pretty fair and balanced. He has just ran a report on
Mark Pritchard, MP for the Wrekin in Shropshire, was arrested on Tuesday following an allegation of rape. The Metropolitan Police said in a statement: ‘We can confirm that a 48-year-old man voluntarily attended a north London police station on Tuesday, 2 December where he was arrested, following an allegation of rape in central London. He has
George Osborne had dismal figures today, and still managed to present them as a triumph. He even presented his failure on the deficit (below) as a success, and got away with it because Labour really doesn’t have an alternative plan. The Chancellor did have some genuine boasts: the job-creation miracle continues and corporation tax revenue is
If you’re buying a house, or thinking about it, there’s only one fact you need to know about today’s Budget: stamp duty is changing. Gone is the old system of thresholds, and instead it will be a percentage chunk of the value. And no, this ist a disguised tax graph – the Chancellor expects to
The Swedish government has just collapsed, not even three months after being formed, and new elections are being called for March. The problem is one that Britain may well soon experience: none of the main parties did well in the election. The only winners were minority protest parties – the feminists and the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats (a
I have just been on Adam Boulton’s Sky News show, talking about the forthcoming Autumn Statement with Ann Pettifor, a left-wing economist. “I bet you didn’t expect me to defend George Osborne,” she told me, after our discussion finished. The UK economy is doing well, she argued, because Osborne has been borrowing like a drunken Keynesian (a good thing, in
So often, throwaway lines from the Spectator end up splashing national newspapers. This time, the splash has come from Penny Mordaunt, who won the ‘Speech of the Year’ gong in the Mastercard/Spectator Parliamentarian of the Year awards on Thursday. Her acceptance speech has ended up splashing the Mail on Sunday. Here’s the story:- A female Tory Minister
Who would buy a number plate for £400,000? The answer is John Collins, a former photographer for Scottish newspapers (and a bit of a journalistic legend in his time) who is now Britain’s pre-eminent Ferrari dealer. He snapped up a ‘250’ number plate for half a million quid, after VAT. I interviewed him for my Ch4 documentary,
Boris Johnson is about the only politician in Britain to stand up for the rich, pointing out that while they may be annoying, they tend to create jobs and prosperity and having plenty of that is no bad thing. The Mayor was interviewed for the latest Freakonomics podcast, boasting that: “London is attracting huge amounts of
The Spectator’s 27th Parliamentarian of the Year awards, sponsored by Mastercard, took place at the Savoy Hotel this afternoon. Here are the winners – and a few extracts from my speech. The awards were presented by Theresa May, and here was my spiel 1. Backbencher of the Year: Sarah Wollaston She plotted a career way that redefines what
Now we know why the Home Secretary did not commit the ‘tens of thousands’ immigration pledge rashly made by David Cameron in opposition. Britain is midway through a job creation miracle, with more jobs created each day in the UK than the on rest of the continent put together. And people with every right to
Theresa May is getting some stick this morning because she has admitted the obvious: that immigration is never going to get below the ‘tens of thousands’ target that David Cameron stupidly agreed to in opposition. She can only control immigration from outside the EU which she has successfully reduced to its lowest levels for about
