Fraser Nelson is a Times columnist and a former editor of The Spectator.
From our UK edition
So far today I have received six text messages about Michael Jackson’s death – five of them wicked jokes that I shant repeat. The first just said “condolences” – sent from a friend who has long teased me for defending Jackson in pub arguments. Here’s why. For all his wackiness he was, he was by
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How will the Tories cuts council work? The Guardian has an interesting piece today, laying out some contours (which will be not entirely unfamiliar to CoffeeHousers). But there is much more to the story – albeit a story which is still being moulded. Much of Tory policy is being formed in response to what they
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David Cameron devoted all six questions to a simple theme: Gordon Brown lied to the House of Commons last week when he said capital expenditure was rising every year to the Olympics. As we pointed out on Coffee House at the time, the figures are falling (see the graph above). Brown’s strategy is to think
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Ed Balls says he hopes there will never be education cuts under Labour – but I have some rather bad news for him. His department has calculated the effects of Gordon Brown’s plans to suck forward spending pre-election, and helpfully published the results in a pdf file (here). It says that spending per pupil peaks
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So now we know the shortlist for Speaker – and it shows Westminster at its most vindictive, corrupt and spiteful. Exactly the same names you’d have expected before any of this expenses furore broke. I simply cannot now see how this race can be taken seriously. As far as I can work out, it has
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So it seems Yvette Cooper and Alistair Darling are uneasy about Gordon Brown’s Big Lie and told him so in the last Cabinet. The Sunday Times has a story about how they confronted him over the “Labour investment v 10% Tory cuts” strategy last Tuesday – and the Dear Leader was so unchuffed that he
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That Gordon Brown is a compulsive, effortless liar is demonstrated yet again by today’s feature-length interview in The Guardian. He is hoping that the majority of journalists who interview him will either a) not find the total spending figures, or b) be unable to adjust them for inflation. I’m not saying Katharine Viner was credulous
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George Osborne was in bed when he heard Andrew Lansley on breakfast radio last week discussing health spending. It was an unremarkable story about Labour’s budgets, with no hint of the political bombshell about to drop. The shadow health secretary was saying that the Tories would increase health spending — which is, of course, official
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I have so far treated Gordon Brown’s green shoots strategy with derision. He has convinced himself that a recovery is going to take root and make the nation realise that they do, in fact, love the Dear Leader. Whereas I first believed his green shoots were a mirage – now, I am not so sure.
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Cameron kicked off on the 10 percent issue. “Some Labour MPs were a bit confused when they were told about 10 percent: they thought it meant his opinion poll ratings.” The gag went down well, and Cameron picked up where he left off with those spending totals that Brown read out in PMQs last week.
From our UK edition
For those who missed Rory Bremner doing an impersonation of Gordon Brown’s dancing on YouTube, the Prime Minister has just done a repeat version during his atrocious speech in Blackpool. You wonder if he has been watching aerobics videos, instead of “how to improve your diction” videos. It was all hands up, then hands down.
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Yet another one of Gordon Brown’s ‘octet’ – the eight advisers named in The Spectator three years ago – is moving on. Michael Ellam is finally on his way back to HM Treasury and I wonder why. Has he just got fed up, like Tom Watson? Or is he being sent to HMT as Brown’s
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When Gordon Brown sends ministers out to lie about his spending plans, he can only really depend on Ed Balls to do it effortlessly. Some, like Andy Burnham, don’t understand his elaborate scam – and tie themselves in knots trying to. But Liam Byrne is a former businessman who does understand a balance sheet (and
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George Osborne’s article today is a breakthrough in the public debate about cuts. I argued in the NotW yesterday that, so far, no party is telling the whole truth because the Tories have been using phrases like “spending restraint,” which is hardly commensurate with the cuts in prospect. That point is now out of date.
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This is the graphic to my News of the World column, representing the choice at the next election: two sorts of cuts. If Gordon Brown were smart, he would argue that his cuts would be better-aimed and more compassionate. Instead, he chooses to lie, saying – as he did in PMQs – that the choice
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Gordon Brown does not change his ways, or his tactics. It will have shocked him to find the newspapers rejecting as a lie his claim that he would not cut spending. But he’ll be thinking, “they’ll get bored of this rebuttal and I won’t get bored of my attack.” So his strategy is to bulldoze
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Now that Gordon Brown’s central attack line of ‘Labour investment v Tory cuts’ has been exposed as a lie, what will he do? His claim that he has planned no cuts under Labour has now been comprehensively exposed as false by Fleet Street today. Plus bloggers are producing figures and proofs – Dizzy and Chris
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Andy Burnham has just let the cat out of the bag on Channel Four News: Labour would cut by 10 percent too. Our new Health Secretary has just been given a robust interview by Jon Snow and was asked if he would say there would not be cuts elsewhere if health is protected. His reply:
From our UK edition
Little did I imagine, when I calculated that the Tory spending parameters would involve a 10 percent cut in non-NHS departments, that it would attract such an audience. Brown repeaed it on Marr, as if it were an official Tory figure. But when Andrew Lansley mentioned it this morning as an official Tory figure then,
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The exchange that follows is not a spoof. It happened on the Today programme this morning and simply defies parody. David Miliband is taking of the need for “radical change”. James Naughtie says that it “failed to occur”. He replies: “No no no. It did occur on the economy. You cannot deny that we have
