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This Thursday watch the Spectator Parliamentarian of the Year awards on Spectator.co.uk. The awards ceremony from Claridge’s Hotel in London will be broadcast live with the welcome speeches running from 1 to 1:10pm and the awards from 1:50 to 2:30 pm. The awards will be presented by last year’s winner John Reid and hosted by
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Telling Right from Right Sir: I was very disappointed to see James Forsyth pinning the xenophobe label to Gordon Brown for his comment ‘British jobs for British workers’ (Politics, 3 November). The trouble with Forsyth and his kind of Conservatives is their claim that the logical position of the Right is to welcome a free
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Gordon Brown managed to keep a straight face last month when he claimed that he was abandoning plans for a snap election because he needed time to spell out his ‘vision for change’. The rest of the country, it must be said, was laughing at this nonsense, knowing full well that it was polling evidence
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On December 11th, the Spectator is hosting with Intelligence Squared a debate on the future of Iraq at Central Hall in Westminster. The speakers include Liz Cheney, Tony Benn, Sir Christopher Meyer, William Shawcross, Rory Stewart, and Ali Allawi. If you want to be in the audience and have your say on the most pressing
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Gregory and the inquest Sir: We read once again an attack on Mohamed Al Fayed by Martyn Gregory over the inquest into the deaths of Diana, Princess of Wales and Dodi Al Fayed (‘No “flash before the crash”’, 27 October). As it happens, Mr Gregory has rarely appeared at the inquest, which goes a little
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When Nigel Lawson was Chancellor of the Exchequer, he liked to say that the problem with tax simplification was that you always end up complicating tax, too. The same is true of much constitutional reform: any attempt to remove an anomaly will often create another. New Labour’s devolution experiment responded to the desire of the
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Tonight, Spectator.co.uk broadcasts the latest debate in the Spectator / Intelligence Squared series. From 6:45pm, listen to John Redwood, Nigel Lawson, Tim Harford, David Rieff, Eric Bettellheim and Frances Cairncross discuss whether carbon trading can combat climate change without hurting economic growth. You can listen to the debate here and have your say by voting in our
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We’ve just posted a great piece by Martin Vander Weyer on the dangers to capitalism of the kind of huge pay-offs that the departing boss of Merrill Lynch is set to receive. You can read it here.
From our UK edition
This Tuesday, Spectator.co.uk broadcasts the latest debate in the Spectator / Intelligence Squared series. From 6:45pm, listen to John Redwood, Nigel Lawson, Tim Harford, David Rieff, Eric Bettellheim and Frances Cairncross discuss whether carbon trading can combat climate change without hurting economic growth. You can listen to previous debates on whether Britain has failed Zimbabwe
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Stolen seats Sir: On what evidence does Stephen Pollard (Politics, 20 October) base his contention that the ‘only possible reading of the past three decades’ is that the voters ‘turn to the Conservatives only when the Labour party presents itself as unelectable’? Since 1977, the Tories have been in power for 18 years (60 per
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It is almost 40 years since Enoch Powell delivered his notorious speech on immigration to the Annual General Meeting of the West Midlands Area Conservative Political Centre on 20 April 1968. ‘As I look ahead,’ said Powell, ‘I am filled with foreboding. Like the Roman, I seem to see “the River Tiber foaming with much
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Matthew d’Ancona, editor of The Spectator, writes: I am proud to welcome Melanie Phillips to Spectator.co.uk as one of our regular bloggers. The essence of The Spectator, in print and online, is distinctive voices and great writing. Melanie is one of the best and most fearless columnists in Britain today, constantly forcing us to reconsider
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Promises, promises Sir: Fraser Nelson (Politics, 6 October) suggests that the approach that won David Cameron the leadership in 2005 was conveyed in messages like ‘social responsibility’ and ‘general wellbeing’. I, and I believe many others, decided to vote for Mr Cameron after he promised to withdraw the Conservatives from the EPP/ED Group in the
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Let us step aside for a moment from the political posturing and horse-trading at the Lisbon EU summit and go back to the beginning. On 20 April 2004, Tony Blair announced to the House of Commons that there would, after all, be a referendum on the EU Constitutional Treaty. It is important to restate the
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Trafalgar Square, today.
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Rattled, hoarse and angry, Gordon Brown did not look a happy man at Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday. Small wonder: it is only weeks since his clunking fist was pounding the Tories into submission. Now, he has allowed himself to be caricatured as a clucking chicken, as fearful of an election as he is of
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A-bomb or B-movie? Sir: I have no idea whether or not we really came close to WW3 last month, as your correspondents Douglas Davis and James Forsyth insist (‘We came so close’, 6 October), but one line in their exciting piece brings doubts to mind. After ‘secretly’ crossing into Syria (as opposed to coming in
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By Fraser Nelson Pennies are dropping in the city about the inheritance tax con. Here is Nigel May at MacIntyre Hudson: “The Chancellor has done some wonderful arithmetic here by adding together two allowances that already exist, and passing it off as doubling the allowance. Any married couple receiving advice about reducing their inheritance tax
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By Fraser Nelson Here’s the weasel. The Inheritance Tax “reduction” is a canard. Anyone with financial acumen (or a lawyer) will not benefit at all. KPMG have just been on the phone explaining it all to me and explain it here. “This change, although likely to grab headlines, is in practice only giving to most
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By Fraser Nelson • Buy-to-let bonanza: Previously, if you sold a buy-to-let house you’d pay between 24% and 40% on the capital gains. Now it’s 18%. Great news, which may help housing market liquidity. • Welfare: Might Brown be aping Cameron on welfare reform as well? The CSR balances by assuming a fairly heroic 5% annual reduction