If I told you one Cabinet member had put forward a Bill that’s incompatible with the Human Rights Act, who would you guess I was talking about? Surely not Nick Clegg, the man who has repeatedly defended that Act against calls for it to be scrapped? And yet — as Adam Wagner has just pointed
As Isabel reported earlier, today’s public finance statistics contained a double dose of bad news for George Osborne. Not only did borrowing in May come in higher than expected at £17.9 billion — £2.7 billion higher than May last year — but the borrowing figures for the last two years were revised up as well.
On Tuesday next week, The Spectator will hold its third annual Schools Revolution conference. On the agenda will be the striking failure of new ‘free schools’ to keep pace with the rising pupil demand. Michael Gove, the education secretary, will be our keynote speaker. To book tickets, click here. A couple of month’s ago, Fraser
Will Mitt Romney choose an ‘incredibly boring white guy’ to be his vice presidential nominee? The main alternative has long been Hispanic Florida Senator Marco Rubio, but ABC’s Jonathan Karl reported yesterday that Rubio is not being vetted by Romney’s VP search team, suggesting that he is not on the shortlist. Karl wrote: ‘Knowledgeable Republican
Another snippet of good news after yesterday’s inflation stats. Unemployment has fallen, and now stands at 2.61 million. It’s not a big fall, to be sure — down just 51,000 on the previous quarter (within the survey’s margin of error) — and there are still 185,000 more unemployed people than this time last year. But
‘You attack poverty by knowing what you do changes the lives of those people.’ In that phrase on this morning’s Today programme, Iain Duncan Smith summed up the difference between his approach to combating poverty and Gordon Brown’s. As Fraser has put it, Brown saw poverty as ‘a statistical game… his great spreadsheet puzzler’. The
Want to know how this year’s race for the White House will end? Then head over to the New York Times’s FiveThirtyEight page, where expert psephologist Nate Silver has just released his model’s forecast. What makes Silver’s analysis stand out from the rest is that it doesn’t just take into account the polls, but also
Bill Clinton — the man who was such a thorn in Barack Obama’s side during the 2008 Democratic primaries — has become one of the current President’s most important supporters this time around. All the more significant, then, that Clinton has added his name to the list of Democrats who have voiced concern at one
When Obama brilliantly skewered Donald Trump at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner last year, you might’ve thought the billionaire would slink off the political field. But, to the great glee of Team Obama, ‘The Donald’ is still keen to keep playing. Ever since Trump’s endorsement of Mitt Romney back in February, the Democrats have been
Two U-turns in 12 hours — even for this government that’s some going. Following George Osborne’s watering down of his VAT changes, Ken Clarke has rowed back some of his ‘secret justice’ proposals. Specifically, the Justice and Security Bill — published today — does not extend closed hearings to inquests, as previously planned. It will
What is Baroness Warsi accused of? The main allegation in yesterday’s Sunday Times is that, in early 2008, Warsi was ‘claiming parliamentary expenses for overnight accommodation when she was staying rent-free in a friend’s house’ in Acton. The house in question is owned by Dr Wafik Moustafa but Warsi stayed there as a guest of
A couple of weeks ago, James revealed that the promise of an EU referendum is almost certain to feature in the 2015 Tory manifesto. But might we actually have one before then? If the speculation by ‘senior government sources’ in today’s Times is to be believed, we might indeed. According to No.10 and the Foreign
So Theresa May has voiced her support for same-sex marriage, joining Lynne Featherstone, Yvette Cooper and the PM’s Parliamentary Private Secretary Desmond Swayne in recording an Out4Marriage video. Of course, we shouldn’t be too surprised. It’s May’s own department that’s put forward the proposals for same-sex marriage, with a foreword signed by both the Home
What do Ed Balls and Mitt Romney have in common? They both want you to think that Barack Obama is spending government money like never before. For Mitt Romney, it’s an attack: he wants to make Obama a Big Government bogeyman who’s failing to tackle America’s deficit. ‘I will lead us out of this debt
The 2012 London mayoral election may barely have finished, but already there’s speculation as to who might run — and win — in 2016. The current favourite is Boris — despite suggestions that he’ll be back in Parliament with his sights set on the Tory leadership by then. And the second favourite? It was David
The Prime Minister will be jetting off to Camp David today for the G8 summit — and his first meeting with new French President Francois Hollande. But before going, he’s been popping up on the morning show sofas to promote the government’s new initiatives to help parents. A new digital service will allow parents to
As if Lords reform, communications surveillance powers and same-sex marriage weren’t enough, it looks like there’s another issue that’ll cause a good deal of friction between Liberal Democrat and Conservative MPs: plans for regional public sector pay bargaining. It’s something George Osborne is understandably keen on — James laid out the political and economic reasons behind
Today’s jobs figures show a 105,000 rise in employment and a 45,000 fall in unemployment, from the final quarter of 2011 to the first quarter of 2012. Welcome news, although both figures are within the margin of error, meaning we can’t say with confidence that employment is indeed higher or that unemployment is lower. But
With just over three months to go to the Republican convention, what sort of vice presidential nominee is Mitt Romney looking for? Well, a Republican official ‘familiar with the campaign’s thinking’ tells Politico that what they want is an ‘incredibly boring white guy’. You see, the Romney campaign is determined not to repeat the mistakes
