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Oh, Vino. How could you be so stupid? You fought all the way up from the bottom, making it from Petropavlovsk, Kazakhstan to Paris, France on the strength of your legs and an indomitably aggressive spirit. When your team collapsed days before last year’s Tour de France when German Jan Ullrich was barred on doping
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Today’s papers carry a rather exasperated quote from the publicist of Daniel Radcliffe, the young actor who plays Harry Potter. Responding to questions about whether Radcliffe had, shock horror, been drinking at his 18th birthday party: “The question as to whether Daniel was or wasn’t drinking alcohol at his birthday party last night, I am
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Today’s Guardian ICM poll continues the run of bad figures for Dave. Now, all of this can be (and is being) dismissed by Tory optimists as part and parcel of the predictable “Brown bounce”: Gordon has not yet been PM for a month, after all. And I agree that Cameron would be daft to mould
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Anyone who doubts George W Bush’s commitment to Iraq should read this speech delivered by the President at Charleston Air Force Base in South Carolina. Quoting verbatim from intelligence reports, Bush argues that al Qaeda is firmly established in Iraq, but that its operations there predated the invasion of 2003. He takes Bin Laden at
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Gordon Brown’s new book, Britain’s Everyday Heroes (Mainstream, £10.99), is yet another important clue to the Prime Minister’s political trajectory. In inspiration, it is part Cobbett’s Rural Rides, part Eliot’s homage to “unhistoric acts”. In his portraits of 33 individuals engaged in various forms of service and community work, Gordon identifies those he regards as
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The most surreal question from last night’s YouTube debate in South Carolina between the Democratic primary candidates.
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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