Fraser Nelson is a Times columnist and a former editor of The Spectator.
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We have just witnessed a fascinating glimpse of the use of the internet in elections. This morning, Cameron proposed a unilateral bank tax – moving, I suspect, ahead of what he believes Darling will announce in next week’s budget. Next, at 1.19pm, Will Straw digs up a selectively-edited version of Chris Grayling speaking in his
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Listening to BBC news, it’s striking how they are still using Labour’s politically-charged vocabulary. When the universities are kicking off about their budgets being cut, the BBC newsreaders are told to talk about “investment” in higher education, rather than spending. Why, though? An “investment” would be to put £1 billion of taxpayers’ money into an
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I’ve just come back from the Guardian’s “changing media” conference, speaking about the future of our industry and The Spectator’s intrepid adventures into cyberspace. I had a few gags in my wee speech, but the biggest laugh was when I said that the average reader of Spectator.co.uk is pushing 50 years old. That took me
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The latest issue of the Spectator is out today, and here are my top five features: Might Cameron face a general strike? Pick up today’s papers, and you read more and more unions planning to strike to protest against utterly necessary and inevitable cuts. Dennis Sewell points out that Greek trade unionists have started to
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Gordon Brown has been shameless in using the tools of state to advance his party political objectives – to him, government is electoral war by other means. Anyone who has turned on a commercial radio station recently will have worked out his latest trick: a mass propaganda splurge before an election campaign. Get on a
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Could you vote for Piers Morgan? In an interview with Freddy Gray in The Spectator tomorrow, he says he’s tempted to stand for Parliament – and it’s not such a surprise. He has weirdly inserted himself in the political process in recent weeks, defining Nick “no more than 30” Clegg and giving Gordon Brown probably
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Heaven forbid that the Tories and LibDems end up in coalition – but the Guardian asked me to write a piece war-gaming what would happen if they did. The result is here. I really do believe it would be a short-lived calamity because no one would be playing for the long-term. The Westminster system does
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One of the Brownie’s we’ve been hearing recently from the Dear Leader is that it is in some way ambitious to “halve the deficit by 2014”. It’s a Brownie because it is technically accurate, yet designed to mislead the voter. Two years ago, he forecast no deficit at all by 2014. Now he’s projecting one
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Nick Clegg’s office already has a Downing Street feel to it. Since becoming leader of the Liberal Democrats, he has had it redecorated so that portraits of old party leaders hang on the staircase up to his room, as portraits of former prime minsters do in No. 10. It starts plausibly enough, with portraits of
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The latest issue of the Spectator is out today, and here are my top five features: Nick Clegg takes to the stage. With a hung Parliament looking increasingly likely, I thought we should pay a bit of attention to the Lib Dem leader in this week’s issue. Interviewed by me, he does his best to
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Nick Clegg has a blue rose in his mouth in tomorrow’s Spectator, serenading readers – and showing his hidden Tory side. I have to say, he puts his heart into it. Not only does the Lib Dem leader say he’ll end the structural deficit with 100 percent spending cuts (not the 20 percent tax rises,
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It’s ‘dangerous dogs’ season again – but is there more to the story? The Today programme gave this its main 8.10am slot. The BBC sought to interview some chavs to sneer at – the listener being invited to conclude that the law must be brought to bear on them. But Brendan O’Neill was quite right
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My gut feeling is that Cameron will win with a majority. But I had a gut feeling that Carey Mulligan would get Best Actress at the Oscars. When Scotland play rugby, I have a gut feeling that they will win. My gut, alas, has a pretty poor track record. But if I look at the
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So what if Samantha Cameron has voted Labour in the past? When I saw this story flash up on the wires last night, I wondered what the big deal was. But to splash the Mail on Sunday on it? Everyone knows that she is not the stereotypical Tory wife: she has a tattoo on her
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Might Gordon Brown get away with it at the Chilcot Inquiry today? I suspect so. The media seems obsessed with the run-up to war, whereas the real crime was the betrayal of Basra. Brown made false claims to Parliament about the fall of violence in the city which, as he would have known, was being
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The latest issue of the Spectator is out today, and here are my top four features: 1. Britain on the brink. Allister Heath, the editor of City AM, blogged about his cover story earlier. But the full article really is a must-read: it explains just why hung parliaments don’t work in Britain and why the
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Given that school choice will only benefit those who cannot afford it at present, who could be against it? The answer is the Socialist Educational Alliance, who have decided to stage a protest at The Spectator’s conference on school liberalisation on Thursday. They have produced a leaflet (see left, and click to enlarge). “Bring your
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Should the Tories talk about immigration? This will bring back a lot of bad memories for the modernisers, who believe that this hurt them in 2005. But, as Tim Montgomerie says over at CiF today, the picture has transformed since then. The total number of immigrant workers has risen 25 per cent, to 3.5 million.
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Is the Sunday Times poll a hammer blow to the Tories, or a gift from God? It sounds a weird question, but think of the logic. So far, Cameron’s big mistake was to allow the campaign to become a referendum on him. He was desperate to turn that into a basic question: do you want
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If any CoffeeHousers have been feeling despondent about the Tores, I have the perfect tonic: Cameron’s YouTube video released today. In my News of the World column last week, I listed five messages I thought he should give. And he ticked all of them off – and then some. It was one of those biannual
