Fraser Nelson is a Times columnist and a former editor of The Spectator.
Before the last election, I had dinner with a Labour minister who told me her number one fear about the Tories getting in would be seeing David Cameron lap up the Olympic limelight. The Olympics, she feared, would hugely benefit whoever happened to be in power – and that was, she feared, going to be
With apologies to his Royal Highness, the most popular boy’s name isn’t Harry – in spite of what you will have read in the papers this week. It’s Mohammed, under various spellings. The Guardian hasn’t even worked this out, in spite of its pretty data table. Table 6 on the ONS results shows: some 8,018 baby Mohammeds
What do you say to an Arts graduate? ‘Big Mac and fries, please!’ I used to laugh at that joke until I was served a Junior Whopper by one of my fellow arts graduates in Edinburgh and ever since then I’ve been suspicious of the story I was sold at school: that going to university takes
The Spectator’s sales figures are out today, with digital sales included for the first time. I’m pleased to report that, in a pretty murderous market, our sales are still rising — and, thanks to our new digital readers, rising at the fastest rate in ten years. The red line shows our print sales. It’s not
What a superb closing Olympic ceremony. Normally, government chokes the life out of any arts project it takes on and I’d expected the Olympic Stadium ceremonies to be the Millennium Dome Live. How wrong I was. The gathering of the thousands of athletes reprised the theme of the opening ceremony: that this is about people,
When the contestants were lining up for last night’s sensational 5,000 metre race, both of the American contestants waited until the cameras were on them, then crossed themselves and held their hands in prayer. It’s quite some sight to secular Brits, where religious language (even ‘God bless’) and mannerisms have dropped out of our national
David Cameron has not sought to seek personal or political capital from the Olympics, for which he deserves much credit. It doesn’t take much to imagine how Gordon Brown would have behaved had he been in power. But this is politics, Cameron is under pressure to establish an “Olympic Legacy” so he will today announce
When I won the first Shiva Naipaul Memorial Prize, it was gratifying for me on every level. It helped me find a market for my work in the national press, and gave me the confidence to regard myself as a full-time writer. – Hilary Mantel. The Shiva Naipaul prize is awarded to the writer best
Nick Clegg’s decision to scupper boundary reviews in retaliation for the failure of his Lords reform programme is the very opposite of ‘mature’ government. It is the politics of the sand pit: you have annoyed me, so I’m going to kick your sandcastle down. It’s his way of putting a horse’s head in Cameron’s bed,
I’m off for my annual digital detox: no ConservativeHome, no PoliticsHome, just my wife’s family home in Stockholm and swapping my Blackberry for a primitive mobile with a battery that lasts a week. But before I sign off completely, I’d like to abuse my position to ask CoffeeHousers for book recommendations. I’ve done this for
Is the City of London worth defending? Not many in the government seem to think so. Vince Cable, the Business Secretary, calls it a ‘cesspit’. George Osborne blames the financial sector for causing the crisis – the Barclays Libor scandal, to him, was not an isolated incident but indicative of the whole rotten system, ‘the
Nick Cohen’s Spectator cover story on Olympic censorship has been a smash hit, and is still being tweeted all over the world. It was followed up this morning by BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on its 8.10am slot, and CoffeeHousers who missed it can listen again here. Freddy Gray, assistant editor of The Spectator, is quoted at the beginning on
James Forsyth’s Mail on Sunday column is my first read every Sunday, and it’s choc full of details as ever. Here is his account of the Liberal Democrat reaction to last week’s House of Lords defeat: On Thursday morning, Nick Clegg and David Cameron agreed a new phase of the Coalition after what one
Milton Friedman would have been 100 later this month, and there is likely to be much commemoration – much of it nostalgia for an era where the right had a clear idea about how to get out of the mess the left had left. I always believed that Friedman’s ability to articulate – his gift
Sometimes fiction can be more accurate than published facts. Ten years ago a film, Dirty Pretty Things, told about the plight of illegal immigrants into Britain and the least-explored scandals of all: the black market trade in human organs. It was an aspect of Britain’s secret country, the black market occupied by a million-plus souls
At 7am this morning, The Spectator’s managing director emailed me to say the new magazine is on sale at WH Smiths at Victoria station – a good sign, he said. But why shouldn’t it be? Because this week, we’re running a cover story by Nick Cohen lambasting the thuggish Olympic censors, the people who are
David Cameron said in Prime Minister’s Questions today that there have been 800,000 more private sector jobs under his government. This is almost true, and — I thought — worthy of elaboration. Government cannot, of course, ‘create’ jobs — all it can do is move jobs from the private to the public sector. Every penny
The Guardian has published a piece on school reform which perfectly expresses the attitude which has condemned children of lower-income parents to dismal education for years. The introduction of the story goes as follows: There are around 10,600 empty school places in Suffolk. Or, to put it another way, if 10 average-sized secondary schools
The Lib Dem dove has been shot by a well-aimed Tory arrow tonight, and you can bet that more than a few of Nick Clegg’s allies will feel deeply betrayed. The Lib Dems walked on the coals of the tuition fee rises, and for what? The Tory leadership cannot really claim to be giving its
School and welfare reform are the signature missions of David Cameron’s government – but is welfare going wrong? Labour is crowing that today’s figures from the Work and Pensions department on welfare-to-work show it’s a failure. I’ve just come back from a DWP briefing with Chris Grayling, the minister responsible, and thought Coffee Housers would
