Fraser Nelson is a Times columnist and a former editor of The Spectator.
‘That sounded so much better in my head,’ said Rachel from Friends in Series 2. I suspect Jeremy Hunt is now thinking the same. He meant to say that British workers need to improve their productivity, and be weaned off work subsidies. But instead, it came out like: ‘We have to proceed with these tax
Andrew Adonis has not defected to the Conservatives but, as he’ll know, it will look an awful lot like he has. As tomorrow’s newspapers reveal, Lord Adonis is to give up the Labour whip to become a crossbench peer in order to chair a new National Infrastructure Commission. To allow this announcement to be made
The waiting is over – the next volume of Charles Moore’s biography of Margaret Thatcher has, at last, been published. It follows the central, triumphal years of her premiership, from the Falklands to the 1987 election. Some of it has been serialised in the Sunday Telegraph today, with more in the Telegraph tomorrow. But if
Should right-wing politicians be more moral? The question is being raised by Ricky Ross on his superb Sunday morning show on Radio Scotland*; I will be one of the guests. We recorded the discussion this morning. Why, he asked, are Tories seen as being a bit cold-hearted, obsessed with the rich and unconcerned with welfare?
You may notice some changes being introduced to the Spectator website today; we’re having a small refresh to make it cleaner, more elegant – and better able to cope with the two million people (or ‘unique users’) who now read us each month. Everything should be in the same place as before: Nick Cohen, Rod Liddle, Alex
Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party conference speech started pretty well, with him poking fun at the newspapers’ more apocalyptic predictions of what would happen should he become Prime Minister. He teased the Daily Mail for a story saying that he once welcomed the prospect of an asteroid hitting the earth.* And then, a wee joke. ‘It’s not the kind of policy
The new shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, told us to expect him to sound like a mild bank manager when he gave his speech today. He ended up sounding like he was auditioning for the remake of Citizen Smith. How many bank managers end their speech by actually scripting a Wolfie-style yawp of ‘Solidarity!’? Perhaps this
A new leader with little credibility asks famous economists to ‘advise’ him on economic policy. It’s an old trick. News that Jeremy Corbyn is seeking the counsel of Thomas Piketty and Joe Stiglitz is not surprising – both are in the business of selling books suggesting the world is becoming more unequal than ever, and
Not often that I’d be inclined to agree with Syriza, but Yanis Varoufakis had a point last night when he questioned the degree of austerity that has happened in Britain. The Conservatives talk a good game, he said, but George Osborne’s cuts pretty much stopped after year one. I’m going to give a compliment to
Any British Prime Minister who meets the Dalai Lama knows it will upset the Chinese government — but for decades, no British Prime Minister has much cared. John Major met him in 10 Downing Street, as did Tony Blair. These were small but important nods to Britain’s longstanding status as a friend of Tibet. Of
The Dalai Lama was in London on Monday and met his old friend (and Spectator contributor) Jonathan Mirsky. Time was when he could expect to see the British Prime Minister too – but Beijing was furious that David Cameron met him three years ago and outrageously demanded that the Prime Minister apologise for it. Cameron
A year ago today, Britain woke up to find the union saved – but only just. In 10 Downing St, the 45 per cent voting ‘yes’ looked like a victory, and the whole issue closed. I was in my hometown of Nairn that day, in the Highlands, where things looked rather different: after visiting pupils in
Given that Jeremy Corbyn is a Hamas sympathiser with an IRA sympathiser as his Shadow Chancellor, I imagine he didn’t think too much about promoting a little-known Scot named Mike Watson. He is a Labour peer, who now takes a place in Corbyn’s frontbench as education spokesman. He is also a convicted arsonist, who quit the Scottish Parliament in
When George Osborne watched Ed Miliband winning Labour leadership in 2010, he shouted “Yes!! Yes!! Yes!!” I imagine he had probably passed out by the end of Jeremy Corbyn’s acceptance speech: it was the stuff of Tory fantasy. In Miliband’s acceptance speech, he had the wit to play down the role that the trades unions had played
Funny to see Iain McNicol, the party’s general secretary, warm Labour activists up for the bad news. “Isn’t it remarkable that so many people have joined Labour?” he says. “I look forward to seeing them on the doorstep, alongside the members who have campaigned for years and decades.” This was a bit of a dig – it’s
The migration crisis is about more than Syria. A few weeks ago, Theresa May repeated one of the biggest mistakes in politics: thinking that third-world development will somehow mean fewer migrants. In a Daily Telegraph article, she argued that:- ‘We must help African countries to develop economic and social opportunities so that people want to stay.’
At a time when so much of television is read from autocue, it’s a joy to come across complete professionals whose love for their subject is second only to their knowledge of it. Those who don’t have young children may not have come across Steve Backshall; those who do will know that he’s one of the best-informed and
Another disclosure from Anthony Seldon’s upcoming biography of David Cameron: he reveals that George Osborne tried to stop the referendum European Union membership. The below is from the Mail on Sunday’s serialisation of Seldon’s book: Both men are profoundly irritated by their Eurosceptic MPs, but Osborne is even more pragmatic than Cameron. The Chancellor’s view is that it is
Just a few months ago, almost everyone thought that David Cameron was a goner. That he was about to go down in history as a one-term Prime Minister who failed to win against a bad Labour leader in 2010 then lost to a worse one in 2015. During this period, Anthony Seldon spoke to a
The success of school reform in Britain seem to be worrying the private schools’ spokesmen. They’ve taken the unusual step of releasing a statement in response to my Daily Telegraph column yesterday, where I show that the top state schools outperform top private schools in A-Level league tables. I’m not sure why they’re so upset; I didn’t
