Answer the snowman
The most surreal question from last night’s YouTube debate in South Carolina between the Democratic primary candidates.
The Spectator
Tuesday
Here's some beef
Amidst all the hullabaloo about David Cameron heading to Rwanda while parts of his constituency remain flooded, it is worth noting that the report he is unveiling over there has some pretty sound ideas in it. Writing in the Telegraph this morning, Peter Lilley, the group’s chair, argues that trade is essential and that rich
Monday
Cameron's gamble
Behold an extraordinary role reversal: the Tories used to define themselves by crunchy competence, and Labour by compassion and an emotional appeal to collective and international solidarity. Tonight, Gordon Brown is styling himself as the right man to steer the nation through its watery crisis: après la deluge, moi. David Cameron, meanwhile, has taken a
The real Iraq question
Both sides in the Iraq debate tend to ignore, or downplay, the downside to their preferred course of action. On Meet the Press, New York Times columnist David Brooks put the dilemma that both sides need to address: So are we willing to prevent 10,000 Iraqi deaths a month at the cost of 125 Americans? That’s
Kavanagh: Labour set to win big and then win again
In The Sun this morning Trevor Kavanagh dismisses the Tories chances of winning the next election, writing: “Gordon Brown is going to win—and win big. In the process he will likely set Labour up for a fifth term and 20 unbroken years of socialism.Why? Not because he has necessarily delivered a better Britain over the
No time to leave the country
As Middle England sinks further underwater today, David Cameron is off to Rwanda to inspect the gap year-style project overseen by Andrew Mitchell. The timing couldn’t be worse: today, for the first time in decades, there are towns in Britain without clean water. Temporary residents’ centres are opening for the displaced in Oxford. If I
Country music
In Competition No. 2503 you were invited to supply new words for the British national anthem, to be sung to the original tune. Spain’s opposition leader Mariano Rajoy recently called for its anthem to be given words following complaints from athletes who were fed up with humming self-consciously or staring solemnly into the middle-distance while
Sunday
Can the Tories win from this far behind?
Matt is right that the Tories would be daft to dump Dave. First, Labour would have an absolute field day accusing the Tories of panicking and ‘lurching to the right’. Second, it would turn the Tory party into a laughing stock and, last but not least, it is hard to see who could do a
Powell's wife hits out at police over 'cash for honours'
One of the most striking things about the end of the ‘cash for honours’ inquiry on Friday was the absence of a victory lap from those who had spent so long under pressure from the police probe. Both Lord Levy and Tony Blair were magnanimous in victory and careful not to criticise the police directly
Why the Tories would be fools to dump Dave
Melissa Kite has a terrific scoop in the The Sunday Telegraph, revealing that Tory MPs have started to send letters to Sir Michael Spicer, the chairman of the 1922 Committee, demanding a vote of no confidence in David Cameron. Here’s my column on why they are mad and what Dave should do.
Saturday
Letters to the Editor | 21 July 2007
Why Russia’s defensive Sir: The only pertinent fact from Fraser Nelson’s anti-Russia diatribe last week is that the country’s defence budget is 5 per cent that of America’s. (The New Cold War, 14 July). The rest of the article is scaremongering. An evening spent in Moscow should convince anyone that Russia has not left ‘the
Brown doesn't want it to rain on his parade
Gordon’s response to the floods shows that his political antennae are twitching ferociously in spite of the overall strength of his political position this weekend. If the car-bomb plot was his mini-9/11, this crisis threatens to be the new Prime Minister’s mini-Katrina. And he’s not going to repeat the errors made by Bush – who
Waiting for Harry
The queue party in Hampstead was more queue than party – a few Waterstones employees in witches’ hats and T-shirts saying ‘Muggle’ wandered up and down taking notes of children who had come in fancy dress, but the atmosphere was one of cheerful patience rather than festivity, with everyone waiting patiently until a New Year’s
You've seen the queues, now read the review
Coffee House has a review of the latest, and final, Harry Potter book here. The review doesn’t give too much away, but if you’re a dedicated Potter fan I’d recommend finishing the book first.
One of us
As Spectator readers would have expected, this magazine was an early and enthusiastic backer of Boris Johnson as the next Mayor of London. On 4 July we gave him our official endorsement and urged him to run on our Coffee House blog (new.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse). Now that he has thrown his bandana in the ring, we shall
Friday
Why Cheney is a law unto himself
What makes Dick Cheney so unusual a Vice President is that he knows this is his last gig. He really couldn’t give two hoots who he ticks off because after this it is time for the carpet slippers. When Bush picked Cheney in 2000, the general view was that this was a good thing as
Talking about Harry's generation
I am of the “Harry Potter Generation”, but truthfully, the massive hype really puts me off the whole thing. I wish I could escape it. Inevitably there are some of my friends who are proud of their Harry Potter obsessions, but not many. It’s for kids and ‘big kids’, right? It’s not very cool. I
Harry Potter and The Deathly Hype
Writing on the eve of the most over-hyped book release in history (dare I mention the title), I find myself lost. Never in history has such overexcitement surrounded a book franchise. So what happens when I, a 16 year-old boy, am surrounded by Harry Potter gossip? How do I respond? With a blank expression and a
The fallout from 'cash for honours'
My thoughts on today’s drama 1. Yates will be hopping mad if (as is believed) he recommended charges against Jonathan Powell and others. He may see this as the second time he’s been shafted by the establishment. 2. No criminality doesn’t mean no wrongdoing said Martin Bright, my counterpart at the New Statesman in a Week in
The ties that bind | 20 July 2007
In a piece keying off the Beckhams arrival in the States, Time magazine tries to explain what unites the English-speaking peoples and comes up with an interesting, distinctly non-Churchillian answer: Britain is now just about as open and classless a society as the U.S. (The Beckhams’ habits are far more typical of modern Britain than