Fraser Nelson is a Times columnist and a former editor of The Spectator.
From our UK edition
The bottom has again dropped out of the Labour party. A BPix/Mail on Sunday poll shows its popularity has slumped to its lowest level since polling began in 1943. Its 23 percent, just below the 23.5 percent it polled at Michael Foot’s nadir. Meanwhile a YouGov/Sunday Times poll puts Labour down 7 to 27, yielding
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Some secrets are too vulgar to be disclosed by any political party. Gordon Brown’s radical cuts agenda, encoded in the small print of the Budget, is one such secret. The Prime Minister doesn’t want to admit to it, as it contradicts his pious claim that ‘you can’t cut your way out of recession’. David Cameron
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Plato had it right on MPs’ expenses. This from The Republic: “We also have to make sure the guardians do not become like sheep dogs that turn into wolves and abuse their power to harm their fellow citizens. Therefore the guardians will have no private property, they will live transparently, they will be provided for
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So how damaging is the expenses scandal? Harriet Harman has told Sky that it is all within the rules, and I’m sure that’s true. But that’s not the point. To the public, this will look like plunder pure and simple. Straw claiming his council tax back, etc. Ministers had best calibrate their response very carefully,
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Blackberies are buzzing all over London: The Telegraph seems to have got its mitts on the story everyone wants. The disc with MPs expenses is out – and finally we see the Cabinet’s expenses. My favourite is that Gordon Brown has paid his brother Andrew £6,570 for “cleaning services”. Second favourite that Jack Straw claimed
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When JK Rowling’s gives her endorsement of Gordon Brown in this week’s edition of Time magazine, she writes that the Dear Leader’s policies saw 600,000 children “raised out of poverty”. This particular piece of fiction that deserves some exploring, and not just because figures out today show it’s actually 400,000 and falling. This use of
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Joanna Lumley was late for her 4pm press conference – she apologised and explained why. 10 Downing Street had just called her and said they “had just heard” that four of the five Gurkhas have had their test cases rejected. She repeated this, with incredulity. “They had just heard. They had just heard. There seems,
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Guido has run a list of what happens when you type “Gordon Brown is” into Google. It suggests a long line of search strings based on what other people have entered. None are printable here – except the second one. “Gordon Brown is my shepherd.” Now, you might ask, who on earth is searching for
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The law of unintended consequences is one that Westminster unfailingly passes, and there are signs that the massive Quantitative Easing programme is making it harder for companies to raise money, because the government is flooding the market with its own IOU notes. The Bank of England today confirmed that less than 1% of the £44.5bn
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For all its faults, the European Commission is quite good at polling and economic analysis. And its diagnosis for the UK is even worse than some of the papers write up this morning. For CoffeeHousers who are sitting down, here are a few of its most depressing points. I added the OECD, which includes other
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Watching Joanna Lumley give evidence to the Home Affairs Select Committee (I haven’t seen Keith Vaz so excited since he took Shilpa Shetty to Parliament), I suddenly realised what ministers don’t understand. Sure, the Gurkhas understood the terms of their employment when they signed up; no agreement has been broken. Sure, they have seen action
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“Where there is discord, may we bring harmony. Where there is error, may we bring truth. Where there is doubt, may we bring faith. And where there is despair, may we bring hope.” It was 30 years ago today that The Lady said these words at 10 Downing St. It’s not quite the Prayer of
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Anyone who wonders how the NHS can almost treble its phenomenal budget while its service grows worse on many measures should read The Guardian this morning for an example. The 2004 GPs’ contract – Stuff Their Mouths With Gold II – meant their pay soared to an average £120,000, but that for just a £6k
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Enter the iron chipmunk. Hazel Blears has given it straight to Gordon Brown in the Observer, including the immortal line “YouTube if you want to” – this lady is not for tubing. She’s for campaigning, operating on a wavelength broadly approaching that of the British public. This shook up No10 which forced her to put
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Disquiet on the Labour backbenches, calls for Brown to go, Harriet Harman calling for “unity” – ie, politician-speak for “I’m game”: will Labour stage a mutiny this summer, as they failed to do last summer? Absolutely not. Tories do mutiny, and do it properly. It’s House of Cards-style brutality: serious people doing serious violence to
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The FT Magazine has a great wee cover story on what is, in my view, the no.1 scandal in Britain today: the divergence between life expectancy in rich and poor areas. The author, Hugh Williamson, says: I’ll give him my answer. First, the richest have the best education. There is noting equal about our comprehensive
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We baristas at CoffeeHouse aim to serve all our customers, so I’m happy that I have made John Rentoul remind himself that he is “left wing really.” And why? Because in my (admittedly grumpy) write-up of Cameron’s press conference yesterday I said that using words like “Laffer” to describe the pernicious effects of high tax
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There were cold bacon sandwiches on offer at Cameron’s press conference this morning, arranged for 9.15am to get it in before Gordon Brown’s presser with the Iraqi PM (no shoes thrown at Brown), and to time it with the passing of the Coldstream Guards band playing outside. Well, the latter was perhaps a coincidence. But
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As every Hitchhikers fan knows, the answer to life, the universe and everything is 42. The question about the new tax on the super-rich is framed in a similar way. Will it raise £2.4bn as the Treasury claims? Or will it lose about £800m as the IFS model suggests? All of this – the future
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A well-informed friend of mine, in the medical world, has been dealing with this swine flu scare, and I thought I’d pass on what he has to say. The good news: this is not the end of the human race. Swine flu is contagious, far more so than the H5N1 bird flu, when you pretty
