James Forsyth is former political editor of The Spectator.
From our UK edition
The New York Times has a fun round-up of commencement addresses, speeches by the great and the good to the graduating classes of US universities. Gavin Newsom, the mayor of San Francisco, used a line from Churchill in his which I hadn’t heard before and is well worth committing to memory: What is the secret of all
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Ben Brogan reports that David Davis has put off resigning as an MP. The word in Westminster is that he is waiting until Wednesday as he intends to go out with a question to Gordon Brown at PMQs. (Considering that the Speaker refused to let Davis announce that he was standing down as an MP
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Kevin Pietersen’s switch hit six in yesterday’s one day international up at the Riverside was remarkable to watch. Yet, I have a certain sympathy with those who think it is not really fair. As Mike Selvey points out in The Guardian today if the bowler has to declare whether he is blowing right or left
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The news that AQ Khan was selling the electronic blueprints for a modern nuclear device brings home just how close some rogue nations might be to a nuclear bomb. Here are the two key passages from The New York Times report: American and international investigators say that they have found the electronic blueprints for an
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Alasdair Palmer’s column in The Sunday Telegraph chronicles how the government makes the same mistakes again and again wasting more and more of our money yet no one carries the can for this. Palmer cites a Public Accounts Committee report into how the Home Office managed to spend £29 million on considering whether to build
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Two new polls this morning show the Tories with massive leads over Labour. The Independent reports that the Tories were ahead 48-26 in the fieldwork for their poll which was carried out before Davis resignation but that dropped back to 41-26 after the shock announcement. However, as Anthony Wells notes the sample sizes involved are
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Bob Marshall-Andrews, the maverick Labour MP, has offered to campaign for David Davis, The Observer reports. Marshall-Andrews has encouraged other Labour MPs to join him and it is not hard to imagine a few of the other 42 day rebels doing so. This raises an interesting question, if there is no Labour candidate is it
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The Irish no vote provides the Tories with a golden opportunity to make Gordon Brown’s trustworthiness the defining political issue of the summer. Brown stood in 2005 on a manifesto that promised a vote on the European Constitution he then reneged on that promise; the Lisbon Treaty is nowhere near different enough from the constitution
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The split between the Westminster Village and the public at large over whether David Davis’s resignation was a moment of madness or an act of profound principle is rapidly becoming the story. Matthew Parris turns his attention to it with his typical eloquence in his column in The Times today. Most people in Westminster think
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Tim Russert was the finest American political interviewer of his generation. People in Washington used to talk about the Russert primary, the idea that a candidate had only proved they could stand up to the scrutiny of a presidential campaign if they could get through the full-hour long interview on the show Russert hosted Meet
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Denis MacShane, the former Europe minister, was not a happy man as he did interviews yesterday about the Irish no vote and his piece in today’s Times is a mixture of anger and denial. He starts by dismissing the no votes against the constitution in France and Holland and the rejection of the Lisbon Treaty
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Watching the BBC broadcast of Barroso’s press conference you realised how the EU just can not compute any result that does not go its way. Barroso said that he respected the Irish decision but then kept on insisting that the 27 EU members would have to find a way to ratify the treaty anyway. It
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Mark Mardell has just reported that Gordon Brown has phoned Nicolas Sarkozy and told him that he would continue with ratification even if the Irish vote no. One wonders what part of ‘no’ these people don’t understand. Brown is in a total pickle here. The Irish no is going to revive anger in this country
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A new ICM poll of 1,012 voters for Open Europe, finds that if a referendum was held in Britain on the Lisbon Treaty, 51 percent of people would vote against it, 28 per cent would vote for it and 20 per cent are don’t knows. PS Open Europe have excellent live coverage of the Irish
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David Cameron wasted no time in appointing Dominic Grieve yesterday but it might be a case of act in haste, repent at leisure. I’m picking up considerable concern in Conservative circles about Grieve’s appointment for the following reasons. 1). It unbalances the front bench: If one thinks of the Tory front bench as a see-saw,
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David Davis’s Daily Telegraph piece makes clear that he will be running as a Conservative party candidate in the by-election, something about which there has been some confusion. He also presents Brown and his cabinet with this challenge: I will debate with any one of them – any time, anywhere – what Gordon Brown euphemistically
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It seems that Dominic Grieve has, as he did with grammar schools, forced a re-write of Tory policy. Last night, the Tory position was that they would almost certainly repeal the 42 days legislation but not that they would repeal it. That was still the position when David Cameron spoke to the press to announce
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As so often, Charles Moore put it best when he used this phrase about Cameron. Charles was reflecting on Cameron telling Stanley Johnson straight out at a social occasion that he wouldn’t be allowed to have a run at Boris’s old seat but it applies perfectly to today’s events as well. Some thought on Dominic
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David Cameron’s ruthlessness was on full display just now in his statement on Davis’ resignation. He has appointed Dominic Grieve as the new shadow Home Secretary. There was no indication that Davis would get his old job back once he wins his by-election—his bluff has been well and truly called. Also, worth noting that Cameron
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The Lib Dems have announced that they will not stand against David Davis. Now, this is because they agree with him on 42 days. But if Labour were also not to field a candidate, David Davis would be denied any great publicity triumph and could end up looking rather silly.