Fraser Nelson

Fraser Nelson

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

Friday

Fraser Nelson

The British jobs miracle – explained in five graphs

From our UK edition

The British jobs miracle continues – and in ways that continue to surprise. Your CoffeeHouse baristas have been crunching the numbers. They’re startling in a number of ways. For example:- 1. David Cameron’s record at job creation is better than any of his last four predecessors – including Tony Blair in a boom. See chart above. 2. Jobs are being created so quickly that even the March Budget prediction is out of date. The above graph shows a dotted line, indicating the OBR projections. The thick red one, above, shows that we're already ahead. 3.

Sunday

Fraser Nelson

Eurovision 2014: the booing of Russia was a disgrace

From our UK edition

Yet again, the best Eurovision entries rose to the top on the night. Sweden, the Netherlands and Austria were the bookies' favourites before the betting started, and no amount of 'buddy voting' upended that. What did disappoint me was the booing of the teenaged girls representing Russia. I felt desperately sorry for the Tolmachevy twins, who had a decent song and pulled off an impressive stage performance. I can't remember the last time I heard a Eurovision audience boo anyone; during the Iraq war in 2003, no one booed Britain - we just came last with no votes from anyone. The acrimony should be in the voting: Poland didn't have to say 'nul points' to Russia, it just happened and everyone enjoyed it. So what explains the viciousness?

Saturday

Fraser Nelson

Ukip and the vicious politics of Eurovision

From our UK edition

The Eurovision song contest has just started – seven million of us will tune in, at least 30 million Eurovision-related drinks will be consumed and the voting will be deliciously political as always.  (Poland has entered again, perhaps just for the joy of being able to vote on Russia). But there's plenty domestic politics too. Ukip's Nigel Farage claims that Britain is doomed tonight because of discrimination against us. He obviously doesn’t follow the contest very closely – if he did, he’s struggle to name a single entry submitted by the BBC in the last few years that deserved to qualify for the final, far less win it.

Fraser Nelson

Miliband, Cameron and the importance of intellectual self-confidence

From our UK edition

Is intellectual self-confidence a good thing? Ed Miliband was teased in parliament by David Cameron for claiming to possess it, and teased again by Lord Finkelstein in his notebook for The Times. 'I know he thinks he is extremely clever,' Cameron sneered at PMQs. Lord Finkelstein refers to a book that claims that intellectual self-confidence is a curse because it leads to wrong decisions.  I disagree. We argue in the leader of this week’s Spectator that Miliband is very confident about bad ideas, and Cameron lacks confidence in good ones. More's the pity. Cameron was being unfair: intellectual self-confidence does not mean thinking you're 'extremely clever'. It's about believing you have the right ideas, and being prepared to articulate and act on them.

Friday

Fraser Nelson

Exclusive poll: Brits think we’re doomed in Eurovision (and blame the BBC)

From our UK edition

Seven million of us will be tuning in at 8pm tomorrow night for the Eurovision final, rising to nine million when the UK number is played. But what do we expect to see, and do we think it’s rigged? The Spectator's Culture House Daily blog, in conjunction with YouGov, is able to give you an exclusive poll of 1,860 Brits, seeing what the nation thinks about world’s most-watched cultural event. Seventeen years of hurt has led Britain to think that we just can’t win this thing anymore. A pitiful 1 per cent of those polled think Molly’s Children of the Universe will take the crown tomorrow night, a low figure given that the bookies have her at 8-1. Just over half of us think she’ll finish bottom of the table.

Sunday

Fraser Nelson

The Eurovision Song Contest is starting – and for once, Britain is in with a chance

From our UK edition

There are those to whom the word ‘volare’ means nothing. But for  us Eurovision enthusiasts, it’s all starting with the opening ceremony tonight. Two semi-finals this week, then the big one on Saturday. It’s transmitting live in China, New Zealand and Canada this year – making Eurovision the most-watched non-sporting television event on the planet. The annual, spectacular clash of nations, cultures and politics is also becoming a major betting event. A friend of mine in Sweden (where Eurovision is not seen as a massive gay pride festival) usually makes a killing getting it right. To do so requires pretty good knowledge of music, European politics, trends in trading relationships, and popular (as opposed to governmental) opinion.

Fraser Nelson

Health diktats, rail renationalisation – Labour’s leftwards lurch continues

From our UK edition

The evolution of Ed Miliband's Labour Party continues today with a letter in the Observer from candidates demanding that the party renationalizes the railways to lower the fares. It would be popular in commuter towns, they say – no wonder, as this would pass the costs from commuters to the general taxpayer. When challenged about it on this morning's Andrew Marr show, Miliband didn't rule it out. 'We're looking at all the options,' he said. His only concession was that he is 'not going back to old-style British Rail,' - he plans a new form of state intervention.

Friday

Fraser Nelson

Rents are falling, in real terms. So why does Ed Miliband want state intervention?

From our UK edition

In recent weeks, I have found myself defending Ed Miliband as much as attacking him. I do believe that his election would be a calamity for Britain, but that doesn't mean I think he is an idiot pursuing a stupid strategy. On the contrary, I think what he is doing is bold, coherent, radical and chimes with the emerging populist mood. I also think that it is working – as things stand, he is on course to become the next Prime Minister. I look at this in my Telegraph column today. The rent control policy announced yesterday embodies this bold populism. Britain has a problem with buying houses – one created, in my view, by government policy to keep interest rates nailed to the floor during an economic boom.

Thursday

Fraser Nelson

Why Beyoncé is a conservative icon

From our UK edition

[audioplayer src="http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_1_May_2014_v4.mp3" title="Fraser Nelson and Freddy Gray whether Beyoncé is a conservative icon" startat=1050] Listen [/audioplayer]When Time pictured an underwear-clad pop star on its cover, hailing her as one of the world’s most influential people, it looked like a crass sales ploy. But in Beyoncé Knowles-Carter, they had more of a point than they seemed to realise. Time had asked Sheryl Sandberg, the head of Facebook, to praise the singer for joining various do-gooding campaigns — but this is the least of her achievements. Beyoncé’s real potency lies in her status as a poster girl for a new conservative counter-revolution taking place among the young.

Saturday

Fraser Nelson

Sajid Javid’s first move as Culture Secretary has been to defend press freedom.

From our UK edition

When Maria Miller was Culture Secretary, her aides kindly invited me to a consultation to give my thoughts about government's involvement in press regulation. I declined, saying that there should be no involvement at all so there was not much to discuss. It seems that her successor agrees. In an interview with The Times, his first since being appointed to the Cabinet, Sajid Javid has drawn a line under this sorry and deeply illiberal chapter in our country's history.  This is his first serious move since taking the job as Culture, Media & Sport Secretary, and it's very welcome. He tells The Times: 'The press is hugely important and freedom of speech is a cornerstone of our democracy. I’m proud of the press . . .

Friday

Fraser Nelson

Syria is the first real war of cyber-jihad

From our UK edition

Some 400 Brits have been to Syria to fight, an estimated 20 have been killed – yet the draw is growing stronger. Last year, the number of arrests relating to Brits joining the jihadi-dominated Syrian was one a fortnight. So far this year, it’s been one every two days. The police’s appeal yesterday for Muslim women to inform on their men who are considering signing up was a sign of desperation – but they're not sure what else to do. This is the era of cyber-jihad where social media is a massive recruiting sergeant for jihadis, and I look at this in my Telegraph column today. The idea of indoctrinating young people so they go to fight in a foreign war is not new. It happened during the Spanish civil war – as depicted in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.

Thursday

Fraser Nelson

Old Labour, New Danger

From our UK edition

[audioplayer src="http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_24_April_2014_v4.mp3" title="Dan Hodges and Marcus Roberts debate the state of Milibandism" startat=47] Listen [/audioplayer]A cruel new joke is doing the rounds about Ed Miliband: that the Labour leader is like a plastic bag stuck in a tree. No one is sure how he got up there, but no one can be bothered to take him down. It’s one of many unfair gags, made on the premise that he is a laughing stock and, ergo, doomed in next year’s general election. Many a Tory comforts himself with the idea that Miliband is just too implausible, too weak, too trivial a figure to make it to 10 Downing Street. Yet anyone wishing to dismiss him has to face some uncomfortable questions.

Wednesday

Fraser Nelson

New Labour’s greatest failure

From our UK edition

My friend and critic Jonathan Portes obviously took exception to my remarks about Keynesianism having been disproven. His entertaining rebuttal claims to have exposed my misreading of data. That's not quite how I see it. I agree with him that the appalling build-up of out-of-work benefits happened before 1997. The Tories badly miscalculated incapacity benefit; thinking it would be a one-off way to help those affected by deindustrialization. But, in fact, it created a welfare dependency trap, and the 1992 recession caught too many people in it. John Major had an excuse: a recession. Tony Blair had no such excuse. I wasn't joking about a quarter of Liverpool and Glasgow being on the dole at the height of the Labour boom.

Fraser Nelson

It’s official: smaller state and welfare reform leads to jobs record

From our UK edition

The British jobs miracle continues, with unemployment now down below 7 per cent and employment at an all-time high of 30.4 million. This is the level that Bank of England Governor Mark Carney said he'd consider raising interest rates - a milestone chosen because, only recently, it seemed as if we'd take years to reach this point. Now we're past it. It's a reminder: economics is a very blunt art, and economists are often no better than the Met Office. They can be surprised when the economy goes right, as well as it goes wrong. It was the failed, Keynesian, stimlus-worshiping economic model that led Ed Balls to declare accuse George Osborne of entertaining a 'fantasy' when the Chancellor said total jobs would rise even after he'd cut 300,000 public sector jobs.

Monday

Sunday

Fraser Nelson

The joy of the Spectator’s ‘Portrait of the Week’

From our UK edition

It’s a gorgeous spring day, and I’ve been spending it reading an out-of-print history of The Spectator from 1828-1928. With out new online archive - which has scans of every single edition - it's easy to go back and find out why we were the only publication to support the north against the slave-owning south in the US civil war, for example. Our first-ever edition, in July 1828, explained what would be, for this new magazine, our signature theme - it's preserved on our new online archive, here. You can actually call up the page itself. The first wee piece, on the top left of the above picture, explains perfectly, what our 'Portrait of the Week' does right now in 2014:- 'The principal object of a Newspaper is to convey intelligence.

Wednesday

Fraser Nelson

Maria Miller’s resignation has exposed another Tory shambles

From our UK edition

[audioboo url="https://audioboo.fm/boos/2059892-maria-miller-on-her-resignation"]Maria Miller: Resigning is ‘the right thing to do’[/audioboo] Yet again, the Conservative Party has reminded us that it is quite capable of losing the next election. The Maria Miller episode is entirely consistent with a party that is so gauche, so addicted to self-harm that it can make Ed Miliband seem positively presidential by comparison. It’s right that she resigned, but had she and her superiors thought more about all this beforehand the calamity of the last week could have been avoided and the party could have emerged from this with credit. David Cameron should have dropped her, or mounted a proper operation to defend her. He did neither -  hence the mess that stands before us now.

Saturday

Fraser Nelson

Maria Miller reminds us why no politician should oversee the press

From our UK edition

The Daily Telegraph last night released the audio of Maria Miller's special adviser implying very clearly that its reporter should lay off investigating the Culture Secretary's expenses because she was deciding about the future of a free press. Here's the key quote: 'I should just flag up as well, while you're on it that when she doorstepped him, she got Maria's father, who's just had a [removed] and come out of [removed]. And Maria has obviously been having quite a lot of editors' meetings around Leveson at the moment. So I am just going to flag up that connection for you to think about.' We knew about the comments at the time — the Telegraph is not a newspaper easily bullied — but to hear it now is still shocking.

Thursday

Fraser Nelson

Why Tristram Hunt is wrong about free schools

From our UK edition

‘I’ve come to exorcise you lot,’ said Tristram Hunt cheerfully, as he turned up to deliver the keynote speech in The Spectator’s schools conference today. He had come to explain why free schools, a project this magazine proudly supports, are going wrong. His speech was as elegant and clever as it was wrong, which is why it’s worth studying. We’ll post the audio of his speech soon, but here’s my take. Hunt started by claiming the free school system is in meltdown, because a few of them have failed. He mentioned IES Breckland in Suffolk. Then Al-Madinah free school in Derby - so bad, he said, that Ofsted had to invent a new category of dysfunction. The Discovery New School in Crawley has closed.

Tuesday

Fraser Nelson

Michael Gove is right — the Conservatives are the party of social justice

From our UK edition

Yesterday, George Osborne dedicated himself the mission of 'full employment'. Today, Michael Gove has given a speech declaring that the Conservatives are the 'party of social justice'. This is not positioning - it's simply stating the obvious. Thanks to Gove, the best hope a council estate kid has of dodging the local sink school is for a new school to open nearby. The Gove reforms don't help the rich - the education system works fine for them. The best state schools are filled with the state pupils from the richest backgrounds. Ed Balls was sent private, as his dad (who used to teach at Eton) had wisely saved money and rightly sought to invest this in his child. The same is true for Tristram Hunt's parents.