Some very clever people are rallying around the idea of a specific NHS tax partly because of what has been called a ‘winter crisis’ in hospitals. It’s an idea that has been around for yonks, but Nick Boles’s book, Square Deal, has kick-started the debate again. He argues for National Insurance to be repackaged as
Next month, as they have done for more than a century, the pupils of Colston’s Girls’ School will troop into Bristol cathedral for a special service in honour of the man who gave their school its name. There’s just a little snag: Edward Colston (1636-1721) will not be named, not even once, because of a
Did the 2007-08 financial crisis cause Brexit, the election of Donald Trump, the rise of Jeremy Corbyn? George Osborne’s answer, 10 years on from it all, echoed Zhou Enlai on the French revolution: it’s too early to say. But at a Spectator event at Cadogan Hall, in conversation with Andrew Neil, Osborne defended not only
Theresa May must have woken up this morning wondering, for a split second, if yesterday was all just a very bad dream. The front pages will hammer home the reality of her situation – she was ‘luckless’, says one of the kinder headlines. But I wonder: how much did yesterday’s shambolic performance have to do with
There’s a good reason ministerial conference speeches are often so achingly dull. Because such occasions are inevitably party political – featuring punchy attacks on Labour and so on – civil service policy experts and departmental speechwriters aren’t allowed anywhere near them, for fear of breaking various Whitehall codes. So the speeches are stitched together by
Sir James Dyson would make a good therapist for anxious Brexiteers. Everything about him is comfortingly precise — his manner and way of speaking, his owlish round glasses and blow-dried white hair. He exudes a Zen-like calm. What he has to say is reassuring, too. He is as sunnily optimistic about leaving the EU as
Edward Colston, mega-rich philanthropist around the year 1700, is the nearest thing Bristol has to a patron saint. The largest stained glass window in the cathedral there is dedicated to him. Go and do thou likewise, it commands. There’s no doubt Bristol owes Colston. He funded almshouses and schools here; made countless donations to churches
As the Brexit negotiations kicked off in Brussels yesterday, an equally delicate act of diplomacy took place in London at the Royal Courts of Justice, where David Lidington was sworn in as the new Lord Chancellor. Ceremony aside, this was a big political moment, involving one of the most important speeches of Mr Lidington’s career so far. He
We can’t yet be sure what caused the devastating fire at Grenfell Tower. Early speculation, some of it expert, some of it not but based on eyewitness testimony, points to the cladding on the outside of the building, which was added during a recent £8.6m makeover. This, it seems, may have turned an ugly but
It is hard to overstate the scale and intensity of the fire that engulfed Grenfell Tower, a 24-storey west London block of flats, shortly before 1 a.m. this morning. Pictures and video from the scene look like something out of a disaster movie. ‘Inferno’ is the Evening Standard‘s headline. At this early stage, six people
Liz Truss, I think it’s fair to say, was miscast as justice secretary. She was appointed only last July by Theresa May and demoted rather cruelly on Sunday night to be Chief Secretary to the Treasury. Truss is far more capable than her critics allow; but I would still argue that the job wasn’t right for her. Before her move to
Pundits and pollsters have spent the last year trying to explain what the Brexit vote meant. Was it right-wing or left-wing? Was it about immigration or sovereignty? Was it a bit racist? They’ll do the same for this election – trying to pinpoint where it all went so humiliatingly wrong for Theresa May. But to me
My taxi was about 90 seconds behind the murderers who struck on London Bridge last week. My wife and I saw their victims on the road. It made no sense until we stopped and got out. Then with horror we realised what we were witnessing. As everyone has already said, the emergency services’ response was
Until last night, I always felt uncomfortable seeing police with guns on the UK’s streets. It’s just not very British, I used to think. But after I had the misfortune to be on London Bridge in the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attack, I’ve changed my mind. I was in an Uber with my wife heading
Just after 10pm on Saturday night, I was in an Uber minicab with my wife, heading south over London Bridge. We’d been out for a tapas dinner and were on our way home. It had been a lovely evening. Suddenly I noticed something odd on the pavement on our side of the road. It looked
In the wake of terrorist outrages such as Monday’s bombing, the British public tends to keep calm and carry on. We saw it in London after the Westminster attack in March; we saw it yesterday on the streets of Manchester – a stirring sight. That calmness in the face of evil is an attitude that
‘The Tory “dementia tax” could backfire for Theresa May’ was the Coffee House take last Thursday, perhaps the first mention of that phrase in the media last week. It took a few days for the announcement to sink in, and for the ‘dementia tax’ tag to stick. But it most certainly has backfired now. Jeremy Hunt tells the Evening Standard that the
The Prime Minister says there is no such thing as ‘Mayism’, only ‘good, solid Conservatism’. Fine. But let’s examine just how ‘good’ and ‘Conservative’ her party’s new policy on social care is, unveiled earlier today. The Tory manifesto says, in effect, that people who need care in old age will have to pay for every penny
Theresa May’s snap election, scheduled for 8 June, was unlikely for three big reasons. Holding off until 2020 would allow the Tories to take advantage of boundary changes that come into force in 2018. There’s a fixed-term parliament act, which is a major complicating factor (Labour will probably have to back a vote in the Commons
Yesterday’s appalling Islamist attack in Westminster was not just an attack on Parliament. It began on Westminster bridge, where foreign tourists and members of the public were indiscriminately targeted as they made their way over the Thames. But the attack ended at the Palace of Westminster itself, when the assailant was shot dead by police in New
