Fraser Nelson is a Times columnist and a former editor of The Spectator.
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A BBC source tells me that James Harding is the BBC’s new Director of News. There is no official confirmation yet, but it makes sense. Just a few months ago, he quit as editor of The Times – with the praise of Fleet St ringing in his ears and a £1.3 million payout in his
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The old joke — ‘my only exercise is acting as a pallbearer for friends who exercise’ — is no laughing matter for Andrew Marr. He has been interviewed on his own show this morning and revealed what induced his stroke: a session on a rowing machine. “I’d had two minor strokes, it turned out, in that year –
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How seriously should we take Nigel Farage? He’s an exceptional politician but when UKIP did so well at Eastleigh I suspected they may have peaked. I went along to test my theory at a UKIP rally in Worcester last week, expecting to find a few hardline Eurosceptics huddled together in a room and I wondered
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I hope CoffeeHousers will forgive me for using the blog to advertise jobs, but we have some vacancies: Production Manager, Special Assistant to the Chairman and Researcher. Applications to editor@spectator.co.uk, saying in the heading which job you are interested in (update: applications for the researcher job are now closed. Everyone should have been sent details;
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The New Statesman today publishes a splendid centenary edition, to celebrate its 100 years — a collectors’ item. It also carries some vintage blame-dodging by Tony Blair who pretends 13 years of Labour rule was not responsible for the mess we’re still in. Overspending is not to blame for the debt crisis, he says. It’s
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In his Mail on Sunday column today, James Forsyth gives a fascinating insight into what both main parties are thinking as we move from welfare wars into local election campaign mode. His piece is, as usual, full of gems – but one in particular caught my eye. Several of those closest to [Ed Miliband] tried
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George Osborne has been behaving rather oddly of late. Normally, he’s known as the ‘submarine’ for surfacing only twice a year. Now, it’s twice a week. On Tuesday he delivered a speech to supermarket staff, talking tough on welfare and sometimes lapsing into a Dick Van Dyke mockney accent. On Thursday he used the Philpott
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The banking witch trials resume today, and we are offered three new men to burn at the stake: Lord Stevenson, Sir James Crosby and Andy Hornby. The Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards released its report at midnight (pdf), and it is as personally damning as any I’ve seen. It basically calls for them to be
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It’s tough being a supporter of this coalition government. Mishap and omnishambles have come to characterise its first three years in office – but you can almost forgive all of this given the progress being made on education and welfare. Reforming the latter is the toughest mission in politics, and another phase of that reform
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Trenton Oldfield has written in this week’s Spectator that he won’t be attending today’s Boat Race but just in case, we learn today that Royal Marine Commandoes will be patrolling the Thames with thermal imaging equipment to look out for copycat stunt artists. Whatever it cost to imprison Oldfield will be as nothing compared to
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A few months ago, a Norwegian students’ group made a spoof video sending up Live Aid, and the clichéd Western view of Africa and the stereotypes perpetuated by the aid industry. It has now been viewed two million times, making it one of Europe’s most successful political videos. It starts with an African equivalent of Bob
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Today’s newspapers disclose that Cabinet members have received letters telling them to expect 10 per cent cuts to their budget in the next spending round. This will have been a letter designed to be leaked, and to establish a negotiating position. The Times says that the real figure is closer to 8 per cent, as
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David Miliband rather grandly told Sky News last night that the public’s “legitimate fascination” with the tension between him and his brother Ed had “obscured the real choice for the country” – that between Labour and the Tories. As if. The truth is that people had just stopped thinking about David Miliband. For all the hopes once
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Trenton Oldfield, the Australian who was fished out of the Thames last year when disrupting the Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race, is now out of prison and has written a piece for tomorrow’s Spectator about his experiences. In it he reveals that the Metropolitan Police have offered to help him protest at the 159th Boat Race taking
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Ed Balls is a good street fighter, but not a very loveable one. The polls suggest he is perhaps the least popular figure in frontline politics. His manner too abrasive and his political bloodlust too obvious. As James Forsyth says in this week’s View from 22 Spectator podcast (below), Balls is — at best —
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Three years ago, Dennis Sewell wrote a Spectator piece about the real enemy awaiting Michael Gove: ‘The Blob’. Carla Millar illustrated the point (below). Today in the Mail on Sunday, the Education Secretary extends the metaphor further: ‘School reformers in the past often complained about what was called TheBlob – the network of educational gurus
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Whatever else is said about David Cameron’s hand-ling of press regulation, there can be no doubt that the deal he struck on Monday demonstrated masterful sleight of hand. Just days earlier, his differences with Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg had seemed irreconcilable and the Prime Minister was heading for defeat in the Commons. But then,
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Those of a nervous disposition should not click beyond the link. What follows are a few graphs that sum up what’s very hard to spin out of: the extent to which our economic situation has worsened, and how bleak the future looks. The Chancellor started by saying he’d cut the deficit by a third, not
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This was, as I suspected, an empty budget. There was the usual whale spray of policies: a penny off beer duty here, petrol tax reduced there. Nowadays, we don’t have to wonder if the Budget will make a blind bit of difference: the Office for Budget Responsibility sees the figures in advance and does the
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As we wait for the Budget, I’d like to draw CoffeeHousers’ attention to a talk being given to the RSA tomorrow by one of my heroes, Hernando de Soto. Much rot is spoken about how to help the poor and his books, the Mystery of Capital and The Other Path – make some hugely important and fairly basic