Fraser Nelson is a Times columnist and a former editor of The Spectator.
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There are German operas that lasted longer than today’s Hoon-Hewitt plot. Launched at 12.45pm, given legs by the fact that ministers hate Brown too much to interrupt their lunches for him. But dead by 6pm due to Mandelson texting Nick Robinson. (Again, you can’t fault Mandy for drama). You feel the Tories should take Labour
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It’s only been two hours, so how much can we read in to the silence from most of the Cabinet over the Hoon-Hewitt rallying cry? I didn’t think Brown was in that much trouble, until I heard Margaret Beckett come on Five Live to defend him. Is that the best his defence operation can do?
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Say what you like about the Cameron project, but at least they are strongly committed to marriage. Aren’t they? Well, it seems, not now. I always suspected that the wonderful strength of Cameron’s rhetoric on marriage was not really matched by his policy – a rather paltry tax break. Now, it seems not even that
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David Cameron can give rousing, mature, insightful speeches. Yesterday’s was not one of them. It used the word ‘hope’ 7 times and ‘change’ 27 times and that, I suspect, was its entire purpose – because there was precious little content in it otherwise. In the News of the World today, I describe the speech as
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Happy New Year – and have a drink! That’s the message from the new year issue of The Spectator, where Leah McLaren has written a superb piece answering the Liam Donaldsons of this world. Here she is, in full flow: “Almost all of this country’s most famous names been unapologetic boozers. From Kate Moss to
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“Did he know who you were? I mean, not to be disrespectful, but he has been away for two and a half years…” So Five Live’s Phil Wiliams asked David Miliband who was talking about his conversation with Peter Moore who has just been released from Iraqi captivity. Brilliant image. The guy gets out of
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Hogmanay is still a couple of days away, but it’s proving to be a very happy old year for us at 22 Old Queen St. The Spectator just been named political magazine of 2009 by readers of Iain Dale’s blog. Normally, we’d maintain a bashful silence: but I’d like to say a quick thanks to
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The Ed Balls leadership cart is revving up a gear. He wants to position himself as the main mover behind the election campaign, now that Gordon Brown is dead in the water. It was his plan to stop Darling jacking up VAT to 20 percent, so he can accuse the Tories of wanting to do
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I have some advice for CoffeeHousers hungry for the latest evidence about the guy who tried to blow up the Amsterdam-to-Detroit flight: go to the American press and their websites. They are 100% free to pursue these stories: the press in Britain isn’t. Not any more. The suspect suffering second degree burns in hospital, named
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The Tories have missed a trick in responding to the predictable news that Gordon Brown won’t be giving evidence to the Iraq Inquiry until after the election. William Hague has just said that it stinks. He should have followed up by listing the questions Brown should be asked – highlighting the extent of his personal
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Is Greece too big to fail? When the Eurozone project was up and running, its taxpayers were promised: this was not a system where they’d have to bail out a badly-run country like Greece or Italy (or Brown’s Britain, were we members). But this rule (a clause in the Lisbon Treaty) is being torn up
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When Mandelson said in his Spectator interview that he plans another 15 to 20 years in politics, what could he have meant? Now that his European career is over, there is only one decent post coming up for a Labour figure in the first half of the next decade – and I float the latest
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Like David, I’m a fan of Polly Toynbee. Every compass needle needs a butt end, after all. She is 180 degrees wrong on most things: but splendidly, eloquently, passionately wrong. I’d like to pick up on one aspect of her column. “Social democrats are the world’s optimists, knowing human destiny is in our own hands
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Would cutting spending “risk the recovery?” This claim is, literally, Gordon Brown’s re-election manifesto. He is hoping that the Tories haven’t learned to use numbers as weapons – so any economic message he has will not be effectively countered. In fact, his claim is very easily exposed as being bogus by a simple look at
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Our Christmas double edition is out today, and is choc full of writers to keep y’all entertained over the festive season. Someone who certainly entertained me is Lord Mandelson. I interviewed him just after Charles Moore’s disclosures about the shooting party: he didn’t shoot, he says, but was at a large dinner chez Rothschild where
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It’s said that every newborn either looks like Winston Churchill or a pound of mince. But this gorgeous, wee creature, I’m sure you’ll agree, looks like neither. Born at 5.52am this morning, after a wait of what felt like an eternity, he weighed in at 9lbs 1 ounce. The staff at the hospital (Kingston-upon-Thames) were
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Lord Mandelson of Foy sticks his nose into the room in which I am waiting for him and sniffs the air theatrically. ‘This place smells,’ he declares. And this, it seems, is my invitation to follow him through to his office — for an interview and some light admonishment. He is cross with Charles Moore
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It has started. The Labour attack unit is out today talking about a “Tory VAT rise” – as per Paddy Hennessy’s scoop. Osborne stated his (to me, relatively paltry) position on the deficit: that he’d reduce it faster than Labour but can’t say how much. The Labour attack unit keeps partying like its 1999 with
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Two polls out tomorrow: one (ComRes/Sindy) showing 17 point Tory lead and other (YouGov/Sunday Times) showing a 9 point lead. This is the difference between a comfortable majority and a hung parliament. ComRes shows that the Eton class war attack backfires (I hope Balls/Ian Austin etc are reading) with 70% disagreeing that it makes any
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It has taken eight years, but Tony Blair has finally leveled with the British public and admitted that the WMD thing didn’t really matter: he wanted to depose Saddam Hussein anyway. That’s what he has said in a BBC interview, presumably to pre-empt his appearance before the Chilcot inquiry. His chosen confessor: Fern Britton. His
