Fraser Nelson is a Times columnist and a former editor of The Spectator.
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In his five years as Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer has shown a striking appetite for (self-) publicity and given the job a higher profile than ever. He’s just informed the world, from Andrew Marr’s sofa, that he’s opposed to plans by the Justice Secretary, Chris Grayling, to tear up the egregious Human Rights Act
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What part of ‘no’ don’t they understand? Our politicians have proudly unveiled their new plan to license the press, as if this was is in their power to do so. In fact, the press in Britain has been free from political interference for generations. The British government simply does not have the power to regulate
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The Royal Mail privatisation has been a resounding success: shares were priced at the top range of 330p and are now trading at 440p. The 99.7 per cent of Royal Mail staff who took shares have today seen the value of their stake jump by a third. Ditto the 15,000 Royal Mail middle managers who
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A few weeks ago the Prime Minister of the liberated Libya, Ali Zeidan was sitting in 10 Downing St talking to David Cameron. A few hours ago he was kidnapped, in what appears to be retaliation for the seizure of an al-Qaeda leader by the Americans in Tripoli a few days ago. The Libyan government
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The very fact that a Cabinet member has stood up in the House of Commons to make a statement on the future of newspapers suggests there’s something going rather wrong in our democracy. For three centuries, newspapers have not been toys in the political train set. Britain has operated on an unspoken principle of liberty, so
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The Queen need not bother attending Wednesday’s meeting of the Privy Council: the decision over press regulation has already been taken according to BBC Newsnight. And it has leaked. An octet of MPs has decided to reject the newspapers’ attempt to preserve press freedom (or self-regulation) and defer until 30 October judgment on the politicians’ rival
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My first job in journalism was with the Glasgow Herald, which then had a bar built in to the complex. I was taken under the wing of the legendary James Freeman, who taught me the ways of the jungle. ‘You see that journalists always drink in groups of three?’ he told me in the bar
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David Cameron has just been interviewed by Sarah Montague on Radio Four, who rather put him through his paces. She teased out an interesting position he is adopting to the growing concern about his Help to Buy mortgage subsidies. He defends himself by saying he will liberate those ‘trapped’ in rented accommodation and casts his
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The chief executive of The Guardian has delivered a rather grim verdict about the newspaper’s future (or lack thereof). ‘At the moment, I believe we could not survive in the U.K,’ says Andrew Miller, blaming the ‘oversupply’ of newspapers and the omnipresence of the BBC. He has been speaking to the New Yorker magazine which
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You have to hand it to George Osborne: he’s great at turning massive setbacks to his advantage. He pledged to get rid of the deficit over one parliament, now he’s boldly saying he’ll do it over two. Be had said he’d sort out the economy over five years (after all, Britain won a world war
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Here’s what jumped out at me from David Cameron’s interview with Andrew Marr in Manchester this morning: Tax cuts: the Tory weapon ‘As this economy has started to recover, it’s very difficult for people to make ends meet. Their wages are relatively fixed, and the prices are going up. That’s why cutting people’s taxes is
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Come and have a look – cheap, cheap debt! Very, very good – cheap, cheap debt! The £1 fish singer may have been deported, but his spirit lives on in George Osborne’s launch announcement today. The Tory response to Ed Miliband’s cost-of-living pledge seems to be more adventures into sub-prime. The Chancellor will press ahead
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For political junkies, autumn is bringing a fix of three big books. Damian McBride’s expose of Gordon Brown has come out, Matthew d’Ancona’s inside story of the Cameron government will be serialised tomorrow. But I’ve just finished the other biggie: Iain Martin lifting the lid on RBS. Finally, Britain has an answer to Andrew Ross
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A banker of my acquaintance went to Switzerland skiing this winter. A luxury he normally could not afford, but he’d just remortgaged thanks to George Osborne’s Funding For Lending scheme and saved a packet. To his amazement, he was being bailed out by the Chancellor – he didn’t need the money but thought he’d take
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When the Damian McBride scandal blew up, Ed Balls was quick to distance himself from his former colleague saying he spoke to ‘Mr McBride’ once or twice and had dealings with him when they worked in Treasury but had not had much contact since. I remember Ben Brogan (then at the Mail) blogging: ‘Liar, liar,
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In his Guardian column tomorrow, Jonathan Freedland writes that Ed Miliband reckons he’ll “get a kicking from the Daily Telegraph” for his lurch to the left, but his ‘gamble’ is that he’ll survive it. The Times and the Daily Mail have not given his remarkable speech much of a better reception (above). All three newspapers can
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‘Red Ed is back,’ said the Daily Mirror’s Kevin Mcguire, and it’s a fair summary of today’s speech. He has pledged to use state power to force the hand of property companies: “use it or lose it” he said, reviving the idea of compulsory purchases. His new flagship policy is imposing a 20-month price freeze
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Why does the right like Labour’s Jon Cruddas so much? Because he’s actually a conservative. He’s just admitted as much in a fringe meeting, hosted by my colleagues at the Centre for Social Justice. He was talking about his own politics: conservative, he said. But in a Labour way. ‘I don’t go in for the
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I will admit to a grudging admiration for Ed Balls. He’s wrong about most things, dangerously so. But his speeches are always well-considered, full of substance and usually part of a strategy that he keeps up for months if not years. For that reason, his speeches are always worth reading. This was a good speech,
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As Ed Balls knows, people tend only to remember one thing about a speech. A word if you’re lucky, a sentence if you’re really lucky. Or an image. Perhaps he was relyijg on HS2 to grab the headlines because the image he conjured up for us today was David Cameron getting changed in the beach