Fraser Nelson is a Times columnist and a former editor of The Spectator.
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Only in politics could you get someone appointed to a top job with zero experience. Quite often, you hear laments about how the UK has a defence secretary who has never fought, a Chancellor who has never run anything bigger than a raffle, a health secretary who has only ever been a user of the
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The Cameron/Clegg press conference did not teach us very much — save that the chemistry between the two is as good as ever, that they can still finish each other’s sentences and exchange bad jokes. The Prime Minister’s bad joke related to one of the comments under his interview with Matthew d’Ancona yesterday where he
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Not that anyone has noticed, but the Kyoto Protocol expired on 31 December, with carbon emissions up by 58pc over 1990 levels – instead the 5pc cut the signatories envisaged. All that fuss for worse-than-nothing. Kyoto has not been replaced, because a new era of climate change rationalism is slowly taking root. As Nigel Lawson
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At my first-ever Tory party conference, I saw William Rees-Mogg leave a reception and chased him down the corridor like a groupie. I asked him if he had any tips: since college days, I’d marvelled at how he managed to write so clearly, compellingly and accessibly on such a variety of subjects. He had no
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For all the good intention of Michael Gove’s school reforms, there have been only a few dozen new schools so far. When I interviewed him for The Spectator earlier this month, I asked if there was much point to all this if the successful schools could not expand (and, ergo, add capacity to the system).
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Why aren’t there more free schools? Halfway through this coalition government and we have just 72; we’d need 400 opening a year simply to keep pace with population growth. When I interviewed Michael Gove for our Christmas double issue, I asked him about all this. I didn’t put it in the magazine as this is
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White Christmas, a wartime Christmas no1, sold an distinctly American vision of yuletide bliss. The below video shows what Britain was going through a the same time: short Christmas trees being sold, because tall ones could not fit into the air raid shelters. Toy shops still open, selling Spitfires while dust gathers on the models
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An friend of mine in the City just sent me what is perhaps the shortest email I’ve ever received. The text just read “WTF?” with an attachment: the below graph, from today’s borrowing data, showing that underlying state spending was up 5.5pc in the three months November, compared to the same period last year. The
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Right now, there are about 60 assorted cases of people trying to sue Britain’s intelligence services. Is that because our spies are unusually wicked, cavalier or brutal? Or because they may be caught in a legal trap with the laser beam of the human rights lobby moving ever-closer to their vitals? I argue the latter
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Did the police stitch up Andrew Mitchell like a kipper? I was at a No.10 reception earlier this evening and a section of a room drained when Michael Crick’s extraordinary report about Plebgate came on Channel 4 News.The police claimed that Mitchell’s swearing shocked ‘several members of public’: CCTV footage, released by the Cabinet Office,
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Yes, Britain’s employment figures are strong but most of the rise in employment so far under this government is accounted for by foreign-born workers (as was 99pc of the rise in employment under Labour). The recession has not diminished employers’ appetite for immigrant workers and today’s Sunday Times magazine has a long piece asking whether
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Remember the Lawson boom? Gordon Brown did not let you forget it. His phrase to describe the Lawson-Major-Lamont era, ‘boom and bust’, was hammered relentlessly into voters’ minds. But only now, five years after the crash, is the full extent of the Brown bubble becoming clear. A note from Citi today throws this into focus
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Ever since the issue of gay marriage returned to British politics, we have seen the debate become crazier and crazier. When Tony Blair handled this with his Civil Partnerships Act 2004, he did so with care and discretion, mindful of deeply-held opinions on either side of the debate. David Cameron seems to pursue gay marriage
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Standard & Poor’s has delivered its verdict on George Osborne’s mini-Budget. It has reduced its outlook to negative, as per Citi’s predictions (which I blogged about last week). Citi said the S&P thumbs-down would happen in the new year: it took days. S&P now thinks there’s at least a 33pc chance that the UK will lose its AAA rating.
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There was something odd about George Osborne offering tax breaks for fracking when it was still banned by another part of his government. The ban has been lifted and exploration can begin again in Lancashire, in what could be the most important piece of economic good news since the discovery of North Sea oil. But
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On Monday, I interviewed Michael Gove for the new Christmas double issue of The Spectator. It’s out tomorrow but here’s a longer version, arranged in subheadings so CoffeeHousers can skip over bits they’re not interested in. This is the picture that stands behind Michael Gove’s desk: an imposing McCarthy-era poster which saying: ‘Sure, I want
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An email from an Asian friend last night pointed me to a piece in the Telegraph saying: ‘This is the kind of thing they do in Singapore! I’m amazed it’s happening in Britain.’ She was referring to Maria Miller, the Culture Secretary, whose adviser told the Daily Telegraph to be careful about exposing her expenses
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Behind Michael Gove’s desk stands an imposing McCarthy-era poster which says: ‘Sure I want to fight Communism — but how?’ In their less charitable moments, Tories may argue that his Department of Education is as good a place as any to start. The strength of its grip over state schools has long been the subject
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Britain will lose its AAA rating within 18 months because George Osborne ‘no longer has credible plans to put the debt/GDP ratio on a stable or declining path’ according to Citi. Its verdict is worth reading in full (pdf) and is important because it adds weight to the idea that — as a result of
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There was plenty to welcome in George Osborne’s budget, from the proposed corporation tax cut to scrapping the 3p fuel duty rise. But to read Jonathan’s seven-graph summary is to realise that Osborne’s 2010 plan is not now enough. I look at this in my Telegraph column today. Here’s a festive summary of my pain points:- Osbrownism