Fraser Nelson

Fraser Nelson

Fraser Nelson is a Times columnist and a former editor of The Spectator.

Monday

Fraser Nelson

Five reasons why things are now looking up for the Republicans

From our UK edition

1) Gustav has been downgraded to a Category One hurricane. No levees were breached. So no disaster - and McCain may deliver convention speech in person after all. 2) To an extent, Gustav may atone for Katrina in showing lessons were learned â“ and that McCain is a decisive leader who didn’t dither about the convention. 3) Bush and Cheney cancelled their speeches due today. No one in Team McCain will shed a tear for that. 4) Sarah Palin’s daughter’s pregnancy is an issue, but looks likely to be treated sympathetically and may yet augment her appeal. Time Magazine is on the scene in Alaska, and says it was “no secret”. 5) General interest in Palin has negated any Obama post-convention bounce. It’s still a tie between him and McCain.

Fraser Nelson

Should we care about Sarah Palin’s teenage daughter being pregnant?

From our UK edition

The Republican Convention, Minneapolis, Minnesota Word that Sarah Palin is to become a grandmother, aged 44, is spreading rapidly through Minneapolis. Should it matter? James says no, but personally I can't see how it can avoid being an issue. Just three days ago, Palin was on a stage introducing her entire family to America. The system here involves the candidates invading their own privacy to an extent unheard of in Britain. The tradition of spousal speeches strikes Brits as bizarre and it is tough to work out where the line is drawn between political and private life. Character is king in American politics, and voters like every metric they can get to gauge character. Is this damaging? It raises Palin even higher in my estimation. It is easy to be against abortion in theory.

Sunday

Fraser Nelson

Will Hurricane Gustav dent McCain’s hopes?

From our UK edition

I’m in Denver airport waiting for what a Republican friend in St Paul has just informed me is likely to be a one- or two-day convention. Even if Hurricane Gustav does not cause the destruction expected, it may yet blow away McCain’s chance of victory. The Republicans are acutely aware that this brings back memory of the Bush administration’s disastrous handling of Hurricane Katrina. Bush and Cheney are the last people the Republicans want on stage, and they have both pulled out. McCain knows he will be judged more by his response to Gustav than what he says in the speech, so even he may not turn up – there’s talk of him speaking by videoconference. FEMA has released its estimate of what’s in the way of the Gustav, now 400 miles away from New Orelans: 5.

Saturday

Fraser Nelson

Politics | 30 August 2008

From our UK edition

Denver, Colorado Just as high street stores send spies to the Paris fashion shows in order to copy all the latest designs, so British political parties send agents to American conventions in search of ideas and inspiration. Several Brits were skulking around the Democratic National Convention in Denver this week, carefully noting the new soundbites and attack lines that were being unveiled on the world’s greatest political catwalk. Yet if these Labour and Tory emissaries were doing their job properly they’ll come back with bleak news — because the four-day convention showed both British parties how vulnerable they truly are. All the excitement in the thin mountain air was underpinned by mild panic. Everything has, in theory, gone right for Barack Obama.

Fraser Nelson

Sweden’s magic, its women – and its fish

From our UK edition

Fishing in Utopia: Sweden and the Future that Disappeared by Andrew Brown Sweden holds a powerful allure for British men, which I used to see for myself every Friday in a departure lounge of Heathrow airport. I was part of a group of weekend commuters who met for a beer, en route to see our girlfriends in Stockholm, in Terminal 3. Every so often one of our number would disappear, being swallowed up by this beautiful country for good. There would be no goodbye or explanations. It was taken for granted each one of us, sooner or later, would succumb. But not Andrew Brown. After eight years as a Swede, where he not only dreamed in Swedish but learned to distinguish trees by the smell, his marriage collapsed and he returned to Britain.

Thursday

Fraser Nelson

Kerry, this time with feeling

From our UK edition

When John Kerry got up there to speak with his insomnia-curing drawl, I thought I’d watch the old loser just from a sense of schadenfreude. But then his attack came out. It was interesting, potent and it had Michelle Obama rising to her feet. In fact, it struck me as the punchiest, hardest-hitting speech of the convention. Who would have thought that dull old Kerry had it in him? He found a nice way of dealing with the Democrats key problem. McCain is – in Clinton’s own words – “a good man who loves his country.” But Kerry separated “Senator McCain” from “Candidate McCain” saying he’d mutated into a tool of the Republican party.

Wednesday

Fraser Nelson

Lessons to be learned

From our UK edition

Just as high street chains send spies to Paris fashion shows to nick ideas, so British political parties send envoys to American conventions to see what new ideas are coming off the production line. Francis Maude is here for the Tories and Ed Miliband (plus his fellow Harvard alumni David Lammy) for Labour. In my political column for tomorrow’s magazine, I list some lessons they should be taking home – because the convention so far has highlighted vulnerability in both parties. The first two are worrying for Cameron, the last three for Labour.  When charisma goes wrong. The ghost at the feast here in Denver is the lack of any sustained poll lead for Barack Obama.

Fraser Nelson

Keep going, keep going–2012 is only four years away

From our UK edition

My take: Hillary did what was required of her but I saw plenty traces of a 2012 campaign in her speech. The CNN coverage (it’s all they show here in the press tent) focuses on how incredibly gracious she was – but I didn’t see it. Unsurprisingly, she told people to vote for Barack Obama but I felt she was going through the motions. It was more “hold your nose and vote Obama” plus a few mild attacks at her “friend” John McCain. As for her future, what really jumped out at me was the bit in her speech where she quoted Harriet Tubman’s advice to fleeing slaves: “If you hear the dogs, keep going. If you see the torches in the woods, keep going. If they're shouting after you, keep going. Don't ever stop. Keep going.

Monday

Fraser Nelson

Michelle’s moment

From our UK edition

James and I have now installed ourselves in a bit of space at the Pepsi Centre in Denver. The stage is all set up, Obamabilia is being sold in the halls and musicians are warming up for the opening night of the Democratic National Convention. Tonight is, essentially, Michelle Obama’s coming-out party, a speech from the woman everyone has heard of but hardly anyone has heard from. The narrative about her is already being spun furiously: a working class Chicago girl unlike the super-rich Cindy McCain, A headstrong woman and devoted wife, as she puts it “I’m married to this guy Barack and that’s about it.” The spouse matters in American politics – think of the votes Laura Bush hauled in. Mrs Obama has to deliver.

Sunday

Fraser Nelson

A big state means a spying state

From our UK edition

One of Churchill’s mistakes in the 1945 election campaign was to argue that no socialist system could be established in Britain without a form of political police, a British Gestapo. He should never have used the g-word: it struck the electorate as excessive. But reading the Sunday Times this morning, I could see what the old man was getting at. The enemy Britain was fighting was not just Germany, but the way of life that National Socialism in Germany represented. Britain had stood apart from the big government sweeping first Russia, then Italy then Germany. The British way of life was different: respect for liberty and freedom. The nightmares about this intrusive state were taken to one extreme by Orwell later, in 1984.

Saturday

Fraser Nelson

It is getting harder–not easier–for first time buyers

From our UK edition

I’d like to quickly scotch this myth that softening in average fixed-rate mortgage rates means it’s now easier for first-time buyers to buy houses, which I hear the Treasury is now punting in the hope that journalists start to repeat it. Moneyfacts has joined the number of dotcom setups getting great publicity by saying the average fixed rate is 6.59%, only just above 6.56% it was in August 2007. This has allowed headlines such as “Mortgage rates back at 2007 levels”. But one must treat these figures with care. First, consider the deposit now required. The Council of Mortgage Lenders says the average laid down by first-time buyers soared to £17,300 in June – half the average first time buyer (FTB) salary. In August 2007 it was just £13,160.

Friday

Fraser Nelson

Bursting Brown’s Bubble

From our UK edition

Brown's Bubble: these two words should come to sum up the last seven years of British economy. Today, George Osborne used the phrase. But it should become more than a soundbite, it should be a forceful and coherent analysis explaining how and why the economy has got to this point. That the "prosperity" of the Brown years was not real, but an avalanche of funny money, borrowed against made-up house prices. The pain Britain feels now is that of a bubble bursting. My brief analysis: Brown kept to Tory spending plans at first, giving Labour cover to win a second term. Magicians refer to this stage as "the pledge" when they show you something like a solid hat, or a rabbit. Then comes the trick.

Wednesday

Fraser Nelson

It’s still war between Brown and Miliband

From our UK edition

David Miliband should remember: it is still war between him and Gordon Brown. Thinks he’s Foreign Secretary? Thinks he can go around talking up Nato protection to former Soviet states in speeches like these? Well, Team Brown has something to say about it. Here is Nick Brown, deputy chief whip and Brownite muscleman in a Guardian article: “Cameron urges Nato to admit Georgia. Nato is a mutual defence pact… .Do we really mean to commit ourselves to all-out war against the Russian Federation if something like this happens again?

Fraser Nelson

Labour’s unfunded spending commitments

From our UK edition

Yvette Cooper on Monday revealed two parts of George Osborne’s policy of which I was unaware. The first was his secret plan for swingeing tax cuts. Next, she informs us, “by my tally, the Tories have commitments of an extra £11bn of unfunded promises”. Well by the ONS tally, revealed this morning, Labour’s unfunded spending commitments total £19.1 billion, and that’s just since the start of the financial year in April. This time last year it was £8.1 billion. This is one for ConservativeHome’s Scorched Earth Alert – vandalisation of the public finances, driving down the pound which is in turn pumping up inflation.  Of course, the money will have to be repaid by taxes raised by whoever wins the next election.

Fraser Nelson

Politics | 20 August 2008

From our UK edition

It is dangerous, almost reckless, for a British Prime Minister to leave the country while in a jam at home. Had Margaret Thatcher not gone to Paris during the Tory leadership contest of 1990, she would probably have found the two extra MPs she needed to survive. Had Callaghan not jetted off for a Caribbean summit in 1979, he wouldn’t have looked so preposterously out of touch when returning to the winter of discontent. So it must have been with the greatest reluctance that Gordon Brown set off on Wednesday for a five-day trip to China. The Prime Minister dislikes travel at the best of times, so the prospect of the 30-odd hours of flying which his multi-staged trip entails must have been his very idea of hell.

Tuesday

Fraser Nelson

Boris’s gift to Labour

From our UK edition

Might Labour’s attack machine have come back from the dead? They have today seized – and quite rightly – on this comment in Boris Johnson’s Daily Telegraph column: “If you believe the politicians, we have a broken society, in which the courage and morals of young people have been sapped by welfarism and political correctness.  And if you look at what is happening at the Beijing Olympics, you can see what piffle that is” Quite apart from Boris talking about “the politicians” as if he’s forgotten he is now one of them, there is only one party talking about a “broken society” and that’s the Conservatives. It was a theme of Liam Fox’s leadership campaign, adapted by David Cameron and now used liberally.

Fraser Nelson

The middle-class rip-off

From our UK edition

Great moment on the Today programme this morning when John Major – without irony – told James Naughtie how great the National Lottery was because an opera lover like him could benefit from the money poured into the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden. That deal was perhaps the most egregious example of cash transferred from poor people to rich people, but sadly typical of the regressive nature of arts funding. I can understand the logic behind supporting indigenous arts lest they die out, but why have British taxpayers subsidise the singing of songs written a hundred years ago in Italian or German?

Monday

Fraser Nelson

Swedish thoughts

From our UK edition

I’m now back from my fortnight in Sweden where I kept my word to give up Coffee House for a fortnight. There’s something about the country that makes it a lodestar for left and right, and the reasons why hit you as you travel around. Here are a few of my notes:- 1. At a café in Birkastan (an area of Stockholm, not a breakaway Islamic republic) I bumped into Johan Norberg one of my favourite writers. I urge anyone who hasn’t heard of him to read his small but powerful book In Defence of Global Capitalism. He’s been having some fun at Naomi Klein’s expense recently and his article “The Klein Doctrine” is published by the Cato Institute, where he’s now a senior fellow.

Monday

Fraser Nelson

A holiday farewell, and some thoughts about Coffee House

From our UK edition

Many smokers I know say they aren’t addicted, they just choose not to stop. By the same token, I’m seeing if I can give up Coffee House for a fortnight as I take my summer holidays in Sweden. I was asked by a media reporter for the Sunday Herald newspaper last week if I mind when anonymous people attack my pieces online. On the contrary, I replied, it’s why I blog. When James Forsyth got Coffee House going for last year’s May elections, I had no idea I’d end up writing far more as a Coffee House barista than for the magazine. The comments are the pull. There’s something gratifying (and, I admit, addictive) about writing an idea at 2pm and having CoffeeHousers – a strikingly smart, diverse, eloquent and well-informed group of people - comment by 2.

Sunday

Fraser Nelson

Taxing alcopops: the Australian experience 

From our UK edition

Taxing alcopops is one of Tory ideas designed to stop youth drinking. “They've done this kind of thing in Germany and Australia and it has had dramatic effects,” George Osborne told Andrew Marr last March. Just how dramatic is now clear, with the evidence now in from Australia. Jacking up pre-mixed drink prices by 70% cut their consumption by 30%, but pushed bottled spirit sales up by 46% as kids mixed their own. And - surprise, surprise - the people pour far more generous measures than they were getting with the Bacardi Breezers. Result: a sharp 10% hike in the amount of alcohol consumed in Australia, the precise opposite of what was planned. But there is some consolation for its government. The extra boozing means some A$600,000 a month extra in duties.