Fraser Nelson is a Times columnist and a former editor of The Spectator.
I have always considered the West Lothian Answer to be fairly simple. The Speaker decides if legislation is England-only, and if so then only English MPs get to vote on it. This has been in the last two Tory manifestos – but Ken Clarke today offers something different. He suggests all MPs vote on second
Sometimes you really do wonder if Labour’s wide-eyed Euro supporters realise just how tightly they have tied their own hands. Take Jack Straw, proposing new “emergency legislation” to allow anonymous witnesses in trials. No one seems to have mentioned the European Convention on Human Rights, which is senior to English law since our gullible MPs
John Major’s mistake was to believe time would be a healer. It was not for him, nor will it be for Gordon Brown. Instead of nursing his wounds from the English locals, Crewe and Henley, he is facing a meltdown in his own back yard, as the Scottish Labour Party faces a by-election in Glasgow
With a 13,500 Labour majority, Glasgow East is as unwinnable for the SNP as Crewe was for the Tories. Expectation here in Edinburgh is that the election will take place next month, and will be a test as to whether Salmond can take a big a chunk out of Brown in the north as Cameron
I’ve been catching up with some old friends here in Edinburgh and in between speculation about what will happen next – the Glasgow East by election would be miles worse than Crewe to lose – I have assembled the rather hilarious story of Wee Wendy and her call for a referendum on independence. You may
I’m in Edinburgh right now, and read the morning press with suspicion. It’s full of quotes from Wendy Alexander’s friends saying she would not stand down at all. Hmm. What summed it up for me was a brilliant piece by Angus Macleod (my successor) in The Times. After the complaint against Wee Wendy declaring her
Tom Harris says I was “predictably cruel” to Khalid Mahmood who (perhaps deliberately) died on his feet at PMQs. How hard is it to ask a question, I said. “Well, you’ll never know the answer to that, Fraser, but believe me, it’s a lot harder than it looks, and certainly a lot harder than sitting
This is the third in our series of posts looking at where it all went wrong for Gordon Brown. The first and second are here and here, respectively. Assessing Gordon Brown’s biggest mistake is like trying to name Elton John’s worst record. There are so many to choose from. But set aside the strategic blunders
James Purnell has again repaid my faith in him. What he is proposing is a much needed expansion in the part-privatisation of the benefits industry. As I say in tomorrow’s magazine, the task is not so much welfare reform as regime change. The DWP boasts that it spends more money than the economic output of
I had thought it impossible to pay tribute to our servicemen in a more garbled way than Brown did last week. But Khalid Mahmood proved me wrong. He stuttered, gasped, looked at his papers. How difficult can it be to ask one question? When he sat down, I thought he’d be mortified. But he smiled broadly,
At 9 p.m. on the night before Tony Blair became Prime Minister, he was lying alone on his bed staring at the ceiling. He didn’t want to join his family, watching television, but was eventually dragged down for the News at Ten. ‘No,’ he said, when he heard its exit poll. ‘I accept that we’re
The problem with charting Gordon Brown’s economic slowdown is that the phrase “record low” is not enough. Take today’s data from the British Bankers Association. Its mortgages approval was 27,968 in May – a record low. But the month before, 34,752 was also a record low. And March, at 36,788 was the lowest since 1997.
Unlike Iain Dale, I do believe Boris was right to accept the resignation of his political adviser James McGrath earlier this evening. Like Patrick Mercer, McGrath made a remark which could easily have been misrepresented as racist, even though it was not. Here are the specific words he used in an interview. “McGrath was
At a dinner party in central London a few months ago, David Davis made an extraordinary confession. He had become disenchanted with David Cameron, he said, and was considering quitting politics. ‘I believe in certain things,’ he claimed, ‘and I do not believe the next Conservative government will implement them.’ He wondered if he should
My, British politics is becoming litigious. First Shami Chakrabarti threatens to sue over “smears” about her and David Davis, and now David Cameron is talking about suing the Liberal Democrats over the contents of their Henley literature. There is an instinct to say ‘grow up, it’s only politics’ but its about time the Tories started
A few months ago, I was told that David Davis had confessed at a dinner party that he didn’t believe the next Cameron government would be very Tory, and didn’t see the point in staying. I put this to both Mr Davis and a few of his friends. All laughed it off. Mr Davis said
With four more troops dead in Afghanistan, the campaign in Helmand led PMQs. Gordon Brown wished to pay tribute, and I’m afraid it did not go well. “The freedoms that we have in Britain are in no small part due to the fact that we have taken on the Taleban in Afghanistan and refused them
At a dinner party in central London a few months ago, David Davis made an extraordinary confession. He had become disenchanted with David Cameron, he said, and was considering quitting politics. ‘I believe in certain things,’ he said, ‘and I do not believe the next Conservative government will implement them.’ He wondered if he should
Andy Burnham is quite right to dismiss Scotland’s planned ban on alcohol advertising as “a bit silly”. Simply because the lager adverts have for years been the most amusing and intelligent thing on Scottish television. For the uninitiated, I’ve embedded my favourite Tennent’s Lager advert above – it’s a spoof of the immortal Ealing film Whisky Galore. And if you have
If looked as if Alistair Darling were stuck on a groove on his Sky News interview. Michael Howard was famously asked the same question 13 times – Darling seemed to give the same answer as many times. I suspect his message was programmed by No10 because it has Brown’s fingerprints all over it. Here’s that message –