Fraser Nelson is a Times columnist and a former editor of The Spectator.
At the end of the editors’ meeting in 10 Downing St today, there was an awkward moment when someone asked if the past hour had been on or off the record. There was something odd about the idea of a bunch of journalists keeping something secret, and anyway there was anyway not much to reveal:
Is Nick Clegg lying about what he’s doing to our national debt? The L-word is seldom used in politics, and in spite of their reputation most politicians try to get it right. To lie is to deliberately mislead — but it’s hard to think of any other word to describe what the Deputy Prime Minister
Our honourable members have been busy denouncing the press in the House of Commons. The debate is still going on, but The Spectator has just had an honourable mention from Jim Dowd who read out our latest leading article (PDF here) to MPs. “The idea that you can trust the press is a strange one,”
Being in government has forced the Liberal Democrats to decide whether they are liberal in the British sense of the word, or in the American, statist sense. Nick Clegg leans towards the latter, which is why he wants the state to regulate of the press. But Jeremy Browne, the Home Office minister, is emerging as
The newspaper industry is apparently working this weekend on a new response to the Leveson inquiry. This should be an interesting exercise. Throughout this imbroglio, the British press has proven itself almost comically incapable of collusion; to collectively agree on anything is not in the nature of our fiercely-competitive newspapers. This makes for healthy competition
For precisely 99 minutes yesterday, it looked like press freedom in Britain was doomed. At 1.30pm Lord Leveson announced his plans for statutory regulation of the press – with his bizarre instruction that we were not to call it statutory regulation. Worse, respectable commentators seemed to buy it. A very clever compromise, it was being
I do believe that David Cameron has just pledged to protect press freedom – and, in effect, reject the most illiberal proposals of today’s Leveson Report. He has asked the media to reform itself, and radically. He accepts the principles of the report and asks the media to ‘implement them, and implement them radically’. But
Lord Justice Leveson reports at 1.30pm tomorrow and David Cameron has blocked out 90 minutes in parliament to respond. The big question is this: will he introduce state licensing of the media? A group of 42 Tory MPs wants him to, and No.10 apparently thinks they will rebel if he doesn’t. But this would mean
Now, what would those in the Equalities industry say to an industry so diverse that it has — in proportion — seven times as many Hindus, five times as many Indians, three times as many atheists and three times as many gays or lesbians as the rest of the country? And that this was achieved
Hiring Mark Carney may just be George Osborne’s best move since becoming Chancellor. Britain badly needed a break from the failed economic consensus which still hangs around the Bank of England like a bad smell. In August, The Spectator implored the Chancellor to mount a global search. When Carney ruled himself out, I gave up
What on earth was Nadine Dorries thinking? Soon after being liberated from the jungle, she kindly agreed to be interviewed by me for Radio Four’s Week in Westminster and explain her rationale. The show broadcast at 11am and you can listen to the whole thing here, but I thought CoffeeHousers may be interested in Nadine Dorries’
David Blunkett, the former Home Secretary, has has his private life in the newspapers often enough to yearn, Hugh Grant-style, for a world where the press is not free but obliged to operate within parameters outlined by the government. But I’ve interviewed him for Radio Four’s Week in Westminster (it airs at 11am this morning)
Over the summer, the balance of probability nudged away from a Cameron win towards a Miliband win in 2015. The collapse of the boundary review deal lifted the bar for Cameron, who might have struggled anyway. The Cameron operation – for all of its strengths elsewhere – has proven weak at campaigns. Failing to win
Could George Osborne be in line for a genuine windfall? The Chancellor is getting quite good at conjuring fake ones (Post Office pensions, raiding £35 billion from the Bank of England) but he has yet to sell the 4G licenses. This could be more significant than next month’s mini-Budget. The stunning success of Ireland’s 4G
The Eurozone is now in recession – this, at least, is what is implied by today’s avalanche of dire economic data. Eurostat has not (yet) made this calculation; but Capital Economics has. Take into account the relative size of the Eurozone economies who have declared figures and it suggests a fall of 0.1 per cent
Angela Merkel is running out of nice things to say about David Cameron and the Tory rebels who are dictating his European policy. Der Spiegel magazine recently compared the British to ‘at best spectators in the gallery like Statler and Waldorf, the two old men on The Muppet Show’. This was apparently after a briefing
Why not tax the bejesus out of the City and tighten regulation? Yes, the bankers will moan — but it’s not as if they will go abroad. The tax rate may be low in Zug, but do our pinstriped friends want to actually live there? The City’s elite have their kids in British schools, the
Tom Watson’s Twitter feed has gone a bit quiet recently. Strange, as he is normally quite vocal about media ethics and their failings. But his silence is well-judged: when he stood up in PMQs and referred to a ‘a powerful pedophile network linked to Parliament and Number 10’ and referred to ‘senior aide of a
After just 54 days in the job, George Entwistle has quit as BBC director general. In a career-ending interview with John Humphrys this morning, Entwistle admitted that he didn’t know in advance about, or even watch, the Newsnight investigation which which led to Lord McAlpine being falsely named as a child abuser. Nor did he
Fresh from his success nationalising the Post Office pension, which artificially knocked £23 billion off the national debt, the Chancellor has come up with another manoeuvre which effectively adds £35bn to the total of QE – and analysts think this just save him from having to tear up his fiscal rule in next month’s mini-Budget.
