Sebastian Payne

Breaking: Leveson cross-party talks collapse

BBC News is reporting the cross-party talks on implementing the Leveson press regulation proposals have broken down. Apparently the divisions between the parties are just ‘too great’ to bridge. Proposals will be published on Monday, followed by a Commons vote. The Prime Minister is holding a press conference in 15 minutes at No.10 — we’ll

Budget 2013: whatever happened to the recovery?

The 2013 budget promises to be a milestone for David Cameron’s government. George Osborne is under pressure to avoid the ‘omnishambles budget’ of last year. As well as satisfying his increasingly-militant ministers, angry backbenchers and coalition partners, the window for making a real difference in time for the next election is closing. Any seismic shifts

Eastleigh by-election: a bad day for Labour too

While the Tories are taking a public beating for their performance in Eastleigh, Labour also have little to be proud of. Despite the party currently floating around 11 points ahead of the Tories in the national polls, they only managed to add 0.2 points to their 2010 general election result and came in fourth place.

Labour are the real losers in Eastleigh

The Lib Dems are still on course to hold Eastleigh. Despite the loss of Britain’s AAA credit rating and the unfurling Rennard scandal, Lord Ashcroft’s latest poll today puts their candidate Mike Thornton on 33 per cent. Tory candidate Maria Hutchings is lagging five points behind on 28 per cent while Ukip are a little further behind

Labour’s southern mission

How can Labour win back voters in the South East? At the 2010 general election, Labour took ten southern seats outside of London, compared to four times that in 1997. Like the Tories in the North, Ed Miliband needs to offer policies that will ease the concerns of these lost southeastern voters; to convince them Labour

The cult horror of The Room

The Room is an awful film. Plot lines are picked up and forgotten in seconds, stock footage is repeated continuously, actors and names change without explanation, doors are never closed and every photo frame contains a picture of a spoon. Even the second (absurd) sex scene is just a repeat with different music. But that

The Tories take tips from Obama in Eastleigh

Eastleigh could be a turning point in by-election history. Not because the Tories are looking like they may well lose, as the Times (£) suggests this morning, but as the moment the party woke up to the possibilities of digital campaigning. Online election adverts in UK politics are nothing new – the 2012 London Mayor race saw both

The View from 22 — Leveson debate special

The Spectator hosted a sell out debate on Thursday night on the motion ‘Leveson is a fundamental threat to the free press’, and you can now hear what happened. As Fraser reported yesterday, it was a lively affair, with the motion carried albeit with a significant swing to those speaking against. Although the quality is

David Willetts looks back to the future for economic growth

Can science and technology become the backbone of the British economy? David Willetts thinks so — he’s set out eight great technologies he believes will ‘play a vital role in delivering economic growth’. The Universities and Science minister explained today why British scientific research needs beefing up, albeit in a very free market manner: ‘The

The View from 22: Get out of jail free and Cameron’s EU speech

How broken is the British criminal justice system? In this week’s View from 22 podcast, Fraser Nelson and Rory Geoghegan, research fellow at Policy Exchange, explain the rehabilitation game and the cover up masterminded by our political class to hide the truth about how we dole out justice. Why is the government so keen on using electronic tagging?

The View from 22: Obama, the Pacific president

On this week’s View from 22 podcast, the Spectator’s assistant editor Freddy Gray discusses his cover feature on Barack Obama, who he argues is becoming the pacific-centric president. Although America has given us the impression they are angry with a potential EU withdrawal, Freddy concludes that Uncle Sam is just not that into us. When