Fraser Nelson

Fraser Nelson

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

Tuesday

Fraser Nelson

Must see TV

From our UK edition

Some of the best journalism never appears in print and we had two stunning examples last night.  Ross Kemp's journey with 1 Royal Anglian as they prepared for and entered Helmand was vivid and compelling - it had me hooked like an episode of 24. It is the first series I have seen that takes the viewer to the frontline of Britain's most ferocious war since Korea. It was just episode one, but set your Sky Plus for the rest. And if you don't have Sky, this series is the excuse you need to get it. Next was Channel Four's Dispatches presented by my counterpart at the Statesman, Martin Bright, on the cost of Red Ken. It was one jaw-dropping exposure after another.

Monday

Fraser Nelson

Are Brown and Darling the Del Boy and Rodney of British Politics?

From our UK edition

Have a look at the stock market today, then the housing market, and then ask what kind of idiot would try to flog a mortgage bank like Northern Rock right now? Brown and Darling are fast becoming the Del Boy and Rodney of British politics – churning out dodgy figures, mesmerised by their own little scams and then getting fleeced when they engage in the real market and try to do deals with real business people (remember that gold sale?). The truly terrifying thing is it’s our money – about £60bn of it - bundled in the back of their Robin Reliant as they head off to see a man about a dog and a bank. At 11.30am the FTSE100 is down a bloody 3.6% but there’s one exception. Northern Rock is up a gravity-defying 35%.

Sunday

Fraser Nelson

Brown won’t get his Tory split on Europe

From our UK edition

William Hague was on Steve Richards' GMTV show at 6am this morning (amazing what baby care does to your viewing habits) and asked The Question ahead of tomorrow's debate: what would a Tory government do about a ratified EU Reform Treaty/constitution? He answered in almost the exact same words Cameron used on Marr last week. "In our view too much power would have been transferred from Westminster to Brussels, that it would lack democratic legitimacy for the reasons we have discussed, and that we would not let matters rest there and that is a position that Conservative MPs, as far as I can see, are very, very supportive of." The Tory problem is that there is little agreement on what, precisely, should be done. The EU offers no reverse mechanism.

Fraser Nelson

Delhi University up in arms over Brown’s “doctorate”

From our UK edition

In last week's Spectator, I disclosed, that Indian's government was stuck for ideas as to what to give Gordon Brown as a present for his visit and ordered Delhi University to deliver an honorary PhD - for "Public services and academia." When I spoke to No10 before that piece, they were unable to confirm that the award would go ahead. I speculated that this was because it may invite awkward questions such as "what as Brown ever achieved in the public services?" But the true controversy, according to The Hindu newspaper, is that the University academics are strongly against the plan - and of the 280 people present, just 15 supported giving Dr Brown another doctorate.

Saturday

Fraser Nelson

The right kind of bulb?

From our UK edition

Both The Sun and The Daily Mail are today offering low-energy light bulbs for free. Neither newspaper mentions that they contain mercury, and neither reprints the advice which Defra gives to anyone who breaks these lights: "Vacate the room and ventilate it for at least 15 minutes. Do not use a vacuum cleaner, but clean up using rubber gloves and aim to avoid creating and inhaling airborne dust. Sweep up all particles and glass fragments and place in a plastic bag. Wipe the area with a damp cloth, then add that to the bag and seal it. Mercury is hazardous waste and the bag should not be disposed of in the bin. All local councils have an obligation to make arrangements for the disposal of hazardous household waste." Curiously, this advice is not even on the light bulbs themselves.

Fraser Nelson

Europe returns to the Commons — and, this time, nobody is safe

From our UK edition

Both Brown and Cameron face separate backbench mutinies as the revived EU Constitution — now called the Lisbon Treaty — comes before the Commons, says Fraser Nelson. Which of them will end up looking like John Major in the ghastly Maastricht era? Only one thought has consoled Gordon Brown throughout the horrors of the European Union Reform Treaty. He had always expected a mauling for agreeing it, and had no choice but to sign the wretched document in Lisbon. He could not hold a referendum he was certain to lose. So the Prime Minister knew he would have to put his head in a pillory and wait for Fleet Street’s rotten vegetables to fly.

Friday

Fraser Nelson

Just get out of the way, Prime Minister

From our UK edition

Brown’s been in China only a few hours and already I can’t take any more. Unable to match Blair’s slick statesman act, he gabbles on like an over-promoted finance minister – regurgitating the same type of statistic-riddled declarations he gave as Chancellor.  His “response” to China is to lay out his own central targets, committing to treble trade to £30bn, we’re told. Come again? Brown has 20 business leaders with him on the trip. One should take him aside and quietly explain that Britain is a free economy – so its trading preferences are outside his control. He is a mere spectator in what is a mutually-beneficial relationship between the British people and Chinese people – trading through the businesses they form and use.

Wednesday

Fraser Nelson

Cameron gets the better of Brown in clash over Northern Rock

From our UK edition

Great fireworks today over Northern Rock. Cameron started with sombre questions about taxpayers’ money involved - Can Brown guarantee the safe return of the taxpayers’ money given Northern Rock? Was he advised the liability could rise so high? Could it rise higher than £55bn? No answer. Brown tried his trick of last week of asking Cameron a question so often that Michael Martin intervened. “He doesn’t have to answer the Prime Minister’s question,” says Michael Martin. Not until the next general election, at any rate.   Then for Cameron’s coup de theatre. “I’ll tell you what you did. When it came to the need for a total guarantee of deposits, you dithered and delayed.

Fraser Nelson

Brown tries to shift the blame for Britain’s economic troubles

From our UK edition

PMQs opened with perhaps the most worst planted question I have ever heard in the Commons and it’s worth a blog on its own. Robert Flello claimed his constituents “concerned about how economic…” (stumbles, looks at sheet) “em, how global economic issues… affect them. How does my Rt Hon Friend feel these events compare with those of the early 1990s when Britain was plunged into recession after recession?” This Brownite jargon sticks in the jaw so much that not even Labour backbenchers can read it without a script. And spot the key Brownite narrative: that there is “global economic turbulence” which is to be blamed if any bad things happen. The truth is that no other major economy is facing a slowdown as sharp as ours.

Tuesday

Fraser Nelson

Correcting the narrative

From our UK edition

Ed Balls was on the World at One, taking a bow for the teachers' pay deal. He again referred to low inflation and falling interest rates - which will not sound at all right to those reading the Telegraph's splash about food prices rising at the highest rates in history or the 1.6m poor souls renegotiating their mortgage this year. One of Brown's key tactics is the fake narrative: cherry picking statistics to cast his years in No 11 in the best possible light. But his official version is now becoming so detached from what people experience and read about that it just sounds fake. One of the reasons the Swedish Moderates (ie, conservatives) broke years of Social Democrat rule was that they used different metrics.

Monday

Fraser Nelson

Cameron meets the press

From our UK edition

About the only thing we learned at his press conference today is that David Cameron  has mastered the art of not answering awkward questions. He dodged several this morning, but in a way that sounded as if he had given answers.   Nick Robinson asked it first. Why didn't George Osborne personally declare to parliament the cash raised for the party in his name? Cameron said the registrar had given him "unclear" advice - but we knew that as he told Marr this yesterday. Nick asked why Cameron had not decided “if in doubt, publish and be damned”. No direct answer. He was later asked why Osborne sought advice about these donations just a few weeks ago – no clear answer.

Sunday

Fraser Nelson

Why Hain must go

From our UK edition

Of all the reasons why Peter Hain should go, here’s my top one. Right now a quarter of British families are caught up in Labour’s hideously complicated means-tested benefits – tax credits, etc. If they “forget” to declare income, it’s called benefit fraud – an offence for which Hain’s department successfully prosecuted 28,800 people in 2006-07. Yet now that Hain himself has forgotten to declare income he has a get-out clause: declare late, and you are automatically off the hook. Not so for those being hounded for over-payment of tax credits.

Fraser Nelson

Brown’s golden error

From our UK edition

The price of gold broke $900 an ounce on Friday. So this gives us another chance to reflect on Brown’s calamitous decision to sell British gold reserves at $275 an ounce five years ago. By my calculations his disastrous foray into asset management has cost the British taxpayer £3.1bn so far. Tackled about this on Marr last week, he said he was simply responding to those “asking us to diversify our portfolio of holdings from simply gold to other currencies.” The real, extraordinary story is in this definitive Sunday Times piece from last April.

Saturday

Fraser Nelson

Cameron is making the intellectual running now — with a little help from the Blairites

From our UK edition

What do you give a Prime Minister who wants nothing? The Indian government has been asking itself this for some time, ahead of Gordon Brown’s official visit later this month. The famously frugal Prime Minister would have little interest in any trinket. Presenting him with some casual clothing could be misinterpreted as an impolite sartorial hint. So after much deliberation, Delhi University has been ordered to award Mr Brown an honorary doctorate. The chosen subject: ‘academia and public services’. It is not yet clear whether Mr Brown will accept. The degree might invite unhelpful questions about what, precisely, he has contributed to the theory of public services.

Friday

Fraser Nelson

Cameron’s real enemy will be the machine

From our UK edition

A sound objection to David Cameron’s welfare reform policy is raised today by Richard Littlejohn. Norman Fowler took him out to Washington and Baltimore in the 1980s when he was a Labour Correspondent to show him workfare, and pledged to introduce workfare to Britain. Nothing happened. “If Thatch couldn’t force it through, it’s not going to happen now,” he says today. It’s unclear just how hard Thatch tried – but it’s true that the Cameroon team may underestimate how hard it is to get the civil service to do anything. The drawback of a long period of Opposition is one forgets the frustrations of government – and you enter the delusion that you can go into a department, say “do X” and X happens.

Thursday

Fraser Nelson

Brown goes nuclear, repeatedly

From our UK edition

Is Gordon Brown running for the world record on the number of times a story is announced? His “revelation” that Britain will continue with nuclear power is something this government announces almost on a quarterly basis, to show how it is taking tough decisions. No serious policy analyst ever thought Britain would go nuclear-free – and ministers would say so in private, promoting various stories over the years. Blair started to detail the agreement in private briefings around the 2005 Labour conference – which I wrote up in October 2005. A cursory cuts check shows this story in The Times in both November of that year and May 2006 and both Brown and Darling announced it back in July. And today’s news is?

Wednesday

Fraser Nelson

Brown does a Hillary (again) – and fights back

From our UK edition

An angrier Brown was in front of us today, holding handwritten notes for his exchanges with Cameron rather than anything given to him by No10. He would scribble furiously, and went on the offensive - asking Cameron whether he supports ID cards for foreign nationals. It seemed a bit daft at PMQs to hear the PM ask questions of the Opposition leader so often, but it won't be repeated on TV and he needs to show the House he is on the attack. Cameron appeared to say yes, but it wasn't clear. Those normally ashen Labour faces lit up.   Brown again brought up Cameron's role "as the principal adviser to the Chancellor" (as if) on Black Wednesday. Cameron responded by listing things Brown believed in his 20s: wholesale renationalistion, etc. I don't think it worked.

Fraser Nelson

Hillary now odds-on favourite again

From our UK edition

Ladbrokes is calling it "one of the largest shocks in political betting history" - along with journalists and pollsters the money had also predicted an Obama win. Yesterday, Ladbrokes had him even to be the next US president. Now he's on 2/1 with Hillary again favourite at 5/4. The Republicans come some distance behind: McCain 7/2 amd Giuliani 7/1. William Hill offering 10/1 on Clinton/Obama joint ticket. At one point Hillary was 8/1 for taking New Hampshire. Damn.

Tuesday

Fraser Nelson

Welfare reform is now seen as well fair

From our UK edition

I’ve just finished a 45-minute BBC Five Live phone-in with Richard Bacon about Cameron’s welfare reform – me in favour and Lisa Harker from the IPPR (ex DWP) against. I had expected it to be a flak-taking exercise, and perhaps it would have been had it been a Westminster discussion. But most of the callers were very supportive of the Tory proposals. There was a guy who had been on Jobseekers Allowance for months who applauded Cameron’s workfare idea – ie, demand people work for their dole. It makes you feel you’ve earned something, he said. Another text said “I work six nights a week for my family, no one else’s”. Another called to denounce the idea that the state owes anyone a living.

Fraser Nelson

The truth behind inflation

From our UK edition

Is Brown right on inflation? TGF UKIP appeals for help: is it correct to say as he did in the Observer and on Marr that inflation is 4% in America, 3% in Eurozone and 2% in Britain?  I was thinking of Fisking the interview – but soon worked out it would be longer than the transcript. And perhaps Brown’s statistics are not supposed to be taken literally, like John Prebble’s books or the EU’s accounts. But for those who care, here’s the story on inflation.   It jerks around a lot, and Brown is lucky to have Britain in a dip and America in an upswing last month. The figures he referred to were reported by various countries. But crucially, definitions vary.