Fraser Nelson is a Times columnist and a former editor of The Spectator.
Ever noticed how the debate on African development is colonised by white men? I’ve just finished a book on the subject by Dambisa Moyo, an African woman, and it’s a brilliant indictment of the aid industry which, she agues, does more harm than good in her native continent. Moyo is Zambian born, bred and educated
A long, long time ago, when it was still quite unlikely that the Conservatives would form the next government, George Osborne made a promise that, at the time, I thought he’d come to regret. He said a Tory administration would publish online every item of government expenditure over £25,000 – an idea from the Taxpayers’
The Wall St Journal is a joy to read because it’s a business newspaper which is also proudly free market (and explicit about its philosophy). In contrast, the FT leader column seems to think it is being all clever and counter-intuitive by bashing capitalism now and again, and applauding the more naive schemes of the
It takes more than an inch of snow to stop the wheels of Scottish democracy. The devolved parliament was hard at work on Monday morning, eight of its members engaged on a most sombre business: a motion formally denouncing a rogue political columnist. It reads as follows: “That the Parliament notes that the journalist, Fraser
Today’s Andy Davey cartoon in The Sun (click at the bottom of this link to see it) deserves to go on Darling’s fridge. Because two more pieces of data have just come out which can be confused for good news. One is that personal insolvencies are at a lower level than 2006 and, next, that manufacturing prices
So, Tom Harris and I had our duel on Radio Scotland this morning. His line of attack was straightforward: that when I said “scummy estates” – a charge for which I’m being denounced in the Scottish Parliament – I could only be referring to the people who lived in those estates. I thought back to
I am in the process of being formally denounced by the Scottish Parliament for remarks I made on CoffeeHouse last week – that Castlehouse and Easterhouse were “beautiful names, but scummy estates”. An MSP named Charlie Gordon has found time in his busy schedule to table a motion against what he read on the blog.
I’m at a seminar with David Cameron and Michael Gove on education reform, a favourite subject of ours here in Coffee House. Cameron’s pledge was unequivocal: “A great education reform bill will be a very big part of the first months of a Conservative government”. There are about two dozen people here to discuss what
So how significant was Gordon Brown’s claim in PMQs that the world is in a “depression?” Those accustomed to his word-mangling wrote it off as another verbal slip. But as Dizzy points out, the world’s press were less sanguine. As a result No10 has spent much of the day trying to explain that we have
So why was Wen Jiabao, the Chinese Prime Minister, carrying Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments in his bag when he came to see Gordon Brown? My hunch is that his aides found it contained a perfect description of the man he was about to meet. I reprint Smith’s almost Nostradamus-style description here. This is
If anyone wants a taste of what Westminster would be like with a minority government, have a look at the fiasco in Holyrood. Alex Salmond’s nationalists failed to pass their budget last week, so he threatened to resign and have an election (which is automatic, if no other party can form a majority). The Greens
Oh the weather outside may be frightful, but David Cameron went ahead with his education speech today – a subject on which he doesn’t say enough, in my view, because there is so much to say. The policy he had to launch was a Carol Vorderman-led maths review, but there were plenty of other aspects
The prospect of a “British Jobs for British Workers” controversy will have haunted Gordon Brown long before he came up with the soundbite. He will have known, way before Fleet St did, that immigrants had taken (or created) 81 percent of British jobs. He’ll have known – as he paid for the bills – that
When Reform Scotland was set up, I feared for their prospects. Although Scotland was birthplace of the Enlightenment, its new parliament has failing strikingly to produce any new ideas. It has instead proved a reactionary force, priding itself in banning things before England does and using powers to reject reform introduced by Blair in England. So what chance
So what will the Brown stimulus actually do? Suspiciously, we’ve never been told. In America, Obama has shown the public what they’ll get for their money – how his stimulus would boost employment and the economy. Seeing as no one in Britain has done this exercise, we at The Spectator commissioned Oxford Economics, perhaps the best
When someone says they “hope” to come to your party, it’s normally a polite way of saying “forget it”. And when Brown spoke to Obama on Friday, the president said he “hopes” to come to the G20 summit in London. (White House readout here). It wasn’t a slipup. I called the Foreign Office who confirmed:
Fraser Nelson says that the ‘cash for amendments’ scandal dramatises the accelerating decay of the Brown regime — economic, political, constitutional. A saga that began in 1997 with grand promises of reform is entering its last bleak phase Even at the ripe old age of 79, Lord Taylor of Blackburn knows how to strike a
“Why did nobody notice it?” asked the Queen a few months ago, at the LSE. The simplest answer is that inflation targeting was a disaster. People wrongly thought that if you controlled the prices, all else would follow. This was wrong, hopelessly wrong, calamitously wrong. Everyone gushed about what a great idea Bank of England
Anyone with vaguest interest in the war we’re fighting in Helmand should tune in next Sunday to Ross Kemp’s Return to Afghanistan. I went to a preview on Friday, and was most impressed. We’re told more about the war in Gaza than the one in Afghanistan, and what we do hear from Helmand is normally
Channel Four has just released a striking exchange between Sir Ian Blair and Boris over the de Menezes case, released from Freedom of Information. Boris had gone on the radio to say that one could argue that the police had been “trigger happy” in Stockwell tube that Saturday morning. Sir Ian wrote to him saying
