Fraser Nelson is a Times columnist and a former editor of The Spectator.
There is a curious sound Labour MPs make when Tony Blair is on form, a kind of yodel which resonates around the chamber. We heard plenty of it this afternoon, as he wiped the floor with David Cameron. Do the Tories really want to abolish all NHS targets? Isn’t that pandering to health unions? The
Just back from David Cameron’s press conference. It was a Blair-style “beat the goalie” session, with journalists invited to ask him nasty questions until they were exhausted. And, like Blair, he walked away unscathed. As ever, I have gripes: he’s still using the meaningless phrase “Social Responsibility” to sum up what his Conservatism is about.
Should Scotland have its own Olympic team? Alex Salmond thinks so, and his point is far from trivial. For the SNP, politics is sport carried on by other means. I was working in a bar during the 1992 Olympics in the naval town of Rosyth, and I’ll never forget the celebration there when Linford Christie’s
A sense of stagnation has descended upon the House of Commons. The king is dead, and yet the new king will not be enthroned for weeks. Nothing much can happen in the meantime. After delivering his latest farewell speech, Tony Blair is still making spectral appearances around the country for purposes no one is quite
Alan Milburn was nine years old when he arrived home to find the front door of his council house had been painted bright yellow. His mother, who looked after him on her own, was perplexed. In the morning it had been red, but men with brushes had come and gone. This was to have a
My political column has only just been published, and already I’m getting stick for being soft on Gordon Brown. Here’s my case: few can deny Brown has great political skills, unrivalled grasp of detail and is a masterful strategist. And he has character traits which may lead him to deliver many things Conservatives would applaud.
Some of the best journalism never appears in print, which is why it’s a tragedy that documentaries are so tough to get hold of once broadcast. I was being treated to a birthday curry last night and didn’t see Peter Oborne’s superb documentary on Gordon Brown where he had interviewed a hundred people (myself included)
Gordon Brown is to “set out his plans to build 100,000 houses in five eco-towns”. That’ll keep him busy. But it’s the Sunday Times splash and has wrong-footed the Tories who say this initiative was first announced last May. And that’s what I like about Brown. He has so far proved himself a bulwark against
When John Reid was asked if he’d stand for Labour party leader, he would always give the same sort of reply. ‘I have a life outside politics,’ he told me at the last Labour conference. ‘I play the guitar, I play piano. I have a house in France. I could walk away from all this
So what will the new Brown era be like? No more of that nasty spin? Those who attended Anthony Browne’s leaving party on Tuesday evening found out different. As Chief Political Correspondent of The Times, he has been asked to get the Treasury’s response to the newspaper’s extraordinary scoop that Gordon Brown had been warned
As a keen subscriber to Channel Four’s Snowmail service, I immediately opened its email promising “breaking news”. And the news? Tony Blair has “just touched down on Teeside prior to a speech in his constituency” where he’ll announce he’s leaving. As he did in Oct04 and in Sep06. Spare me. We have six weeks until he
Fans of Thatcher’s famous no confidence debate performance shortly before her downfall, will be pleased to note that the same fey eloquence is enlivening Tony Blair’s final few performances. Oliver Letwin’s obscure musings on the way forward for Cameronism were ripe for being lampooned by Blair who was on superb form today; the walls in the
The latest Westminster gossip: he was told by Gordon Brown he wouldn’t be Home Secretary or Foreign Secretary—the only acceptable alternative for him. Perhaps Brown thought his cabinet would be too Scottish, perhaps he wanted to make way for these new young faces and have ”maximum flexibility” (Reid’s words not Brown’s) for his reshuffle. Or
The unravelling of New Labour starts here. John Reid’s decision to quit the cabinet today is loaded with unanswered questions. He has said he’ll back Gordon Brown as leader, but did he decide he couldn’t work with Brown? Did they have a fundamental disagreement about the level of autonomy he’d receive as Home Secretary? Did
For almost two years, Westminster has been abuzz with what many MPs believed to be an explosive secret. The ringleader of the 7 July London bombings, Mohammed Sidique Khan, was not a so-called ‘clean skin’ who came out of the blue. Instead, he had been bugged, photographed and followed during an MI5 investigation into a
When I was a reporter in the Scottish Parliament seven years ago, I wrote a piece on the life of the poor Hansard reporters up there. The MSPs were not the most educated types and the Official Report staff had to un-garble their words every night. They claimed some was Scots. But one phrase made
I went to bed at 5.30am thinking “Well, I’ll wake up and know the result”. It’s now Friday lunchtime, and we’re none the wiser. Who won Scotland? Labour and SNP are on a knife-edge with 100,000 supposedly spoiled ballots. An incredible drama is unfolding, a Scottish version of the “hanging chad” nonsense that bedevilled George
I’m not quite on the BBC election panel – I’ve had better luck. I’m down the boozer: the St Stephens Tavern with Emily Maitlis and a wide array of pundits. They’ll come to us every now and again as we give our considered opinion on how there are no meaningful results expected until about 3am.
Might Labour keep Scotland after all? I’m told Labour HQ in Glasgow is fairly chirpy this evening. The YouGov poll predicting their defeat doesn’t chime with what they’ve picked up from postal voting, nor the gossip from the exit polls. I can well believe this. There is something in the DNA of Scots, which makes
A tiresome trait of local elections is seeing every party declare victory of sorts on election night. At present, it seems only the Scottish National Party will be able to do so tomorrow. I have just had a text message from a nationalist bearing triumphant news: a YouGov poll in the Daily Telegraph tomorrow puts