The Labour protest over the Government’s plan to allow foreign investors to take up a stake in Royal Mail has just been ramped up a notch by the resignation of Jim McGovern as PPS to Pat McFadden, Minister of State for Employment Relations and Postal Affairs. All signs now are that this could turn into one of the biggest rebellions
The mutterings about this have been around for a while, but now it’s been confirmed: UK troops will be leaving Iraq by July 2009. In a joint statement just now – at the start of a surprise visit to Iraq by our PM – Brown and Nouri Maliki claimed that UK forces will have “completed
The Telegraph’s Iain Martin makes the key observation over the two outrageous government waste stories (here and here) in the papers today: “This is not simply a bureaucratic failure, it is a moral failure too: taking high taxes from a public feeling the pinch and then throwing it away when it could have been put
Plenty of noteworthy snippets in this Telegraph article by James Kirkup today, among them a claim by a Labour strategist that “Voters would be disgusted if we called an election at a time when they are worried about their homes and their jobs”. Of course, that could be a deflection rather than a true indication
Just as an addendum to Fraser’s post on the international resistance to Brown’s world-saving act, there’s an intriguing little story in today’s Independent about “Labour backbench unrest” over the fiscal stimulus announced in the PBR. I quote it here in its entirety: “Frustration is growing among Labour backbenchers over the Government’s rescue plan for the economy. Several MPs believe a VAT
One of the quaintest – and most enduring – of all Westminster traditions is how ambitious politicians skirt around the question of whether they want to be party leader/PM. They don’t say “yes” – that would be far too brash. But they don’t say “no” either – feeling, for some reason, that that’s the one lie they can’t tell. Instead,
Welcome to the latest CoffeeHousers’ Wall. For those who haven’t come across the Wall before, it’s a post we put up each Monday, on which – provided your writing isn’t libellous, crammed with swearing, or offensive to common decency – you’ll be able to say whatever you like in the comments section. There is no
Yet another poll to report on today; one which more or less falls in line with the two released yesterday. The Ipsos MORI poll in the Mirror has the Tories on 42 percent (down 2 percentage points); Labour on 36 percent (up 4); and the Lib Dems on 11 percent (down 4). There’s also a
Ok, I’m as sceptical as Peer Steinbrück when it comes to Gordon Brown’s big-spending, debt-heavy approach to managing our economy. And I regard the main fiscal debate between the splurgers and the thriftniks as perhaps the most important in British politics today. But the fact remains that the splurgers are in power. As Andrew Rawnsley
Remember the statistics released by the Home Office yesterday – and reported in the newspapers today – which highlighted positive devlepments in the war on knife crime? Well, you can officially disregard those statistics. The Chair of the UK Statistics Authority, Sir Michael Scholar, has issued an angry letter saying that the numbers weren’t ready
As it’s Friday, I’ll let you in on a little past-time we have here at Spectator Towers. My colleague Mary Wakefield and I often instigate ‘Dear Deidre’ reading sessions – whereby one of us reads out the letters sent into the Sun’s resident agony aunt, Deidre Sanders, while others say how they’d respond or guess
Does the failure of the bailout package for the US car industry mean we’re going see another of those apocalyptic days in the markets? Things certainly aren’t looking great so far. The Hang Seng index closed down 5.48 percent; the Nikkei was down 5.56 percent; and – at time of writing – our very own
So yet another German politician has launched a broadside against Gordon Brown’s debt-heavy approach to the downturn. Here’s what Steffen Kampeter said earlier: “The tremendous amount of debt being offered by Britain shows a complete failure of Labour policy… …After years of lecturing us on how we need to share in the gains of uncontrolled financial markets,
It’s been a few days now since we asked CoffeeHousers to put forward their questions for Theresa May. We’ve since picked out the best, which have now been put to the shadow leader of the Commmons. She’ll get back to us at the start of next week. Anyway, here are the questions: john miller “Why
Just how significant was Brown’s “Saved the world gaffe” in PMQs yesterday? Was it – as one respondent to Politics Home’s latest PHI100 Index puts it – “a tiny motif … that tells a bigger story” about Brown’s hubris? Or is the whole thing childish and overblown, as the Spectator’s own Clive Davis argues? These
The Telegraph’s Iain Martin quotes a “Labour man,” who offers the following take on the next general election: “Brown holds the election, fights on the economy and emerges at the head of the largest party. Vince Cable becomes leader of the Lib Dems, is made Chancellor in a coalition and demands a deal on Proportional Representation which
Guido’s already highlighted Ed Balls’ repsonse to the German attack on our government’s “crass Keynesianism”, and now Brown’s weighed in on the matter. Here’s what our PM said earlier: “I do not really want to get involved in what is clearly internal German politics they have a coalition in Germany of different political parties. The
So what emerges from Alan Sugar’s interview with Gordon Brown, a transcript of which is published by the Sun today? Not a great deal, really. The headline-grabbers are Brown’s sort-of-admission that the downturn has strengthened his position, and his “No, no, no,” when asked about joining the Euro. The first of these is almost certainly
Over at Comment Central, Alice Fishburn’s highlighted a couple of 2008’s worst predictions. Of course, we’ll have to wait to see how things pan out, but I reckon Alistair Darling’s claim that the economy will start recovering by the third quarter of 2009 could well be a contender for the list. He first deployed it
Here’s footage of Brown’s classic “Saved the World” gaffe in PMQs. For my verdict on PMQs, click here. Hat-tip: ConservativeHome