Welfare Reform Bill: why won’t anybody say it’s just plain wrong?
So many of London’s £1m-plus houses are occupied by workshy immigrant families of ten that swathes of Maida Vale have been transformed into one vast welfare ghetto, with Afsoomali emerging as the dominant tongue on street after street.
And huge numbers of City Boys aren’t that fussed about losing their jobs in investment banking because, let’s face it, most of them are better off on the sick.
Scottish independence: which partner gets the record collection?
Not many books make such an impression that you can still remember the broad outline of their arguments three decades after reading them. But the second edition of Tom Nairn’s ‘The Break Up of Britain’, published in 1982, was the work that has shaped my thinking on nationalism within the British Isles ever since.
If Scotland goes its own way, a permanent Tory fiefdom would result in England and Wales. But Europe would gain another country with a social democratic centre of political gravity. Let the Scots decide their own future.
The class politics of standardised mortality rates
Bryncethin? It’s some village near Bridgend, apparently. Never heard of it until this morning, to be honest. Wouldn’t like to guess as to how you pronounce the name.
However, the place finds itself in the news this morning, after data released to parliament revealed that the age-adjusted death rate per nominal 100,000 people is 1,499. That compares with 1,452 in Botswana and 1,427 in Rwanda.
What exactly is London’s problem with Liverpool?
London has a Conservative mayor who famously accused Liverpool of displaying a ‘deeply unattractive psyche’, and even of ‘wallowing in its victim status’. But as a cockney myself, I reckon scousers can be forgiven for feeling that little bit chippy.
Nor is Boris Johnson’s attitude any novelty within his party, as is demonstrated by today’s revelation that back in 1981, top Tories Geoffrey Howe and Sir Keith Joseph advised Margaret Thatcher to abandon that beastly city altogether.
Thatcher’s funeral: you mourn if you want to
Perhaps the most inane remark ever uttered by any leading New Labour figure - invidious though it is to select just one, of course – is Peter Mandelson’s vapid contention that ‘we are all Thatcherites now’. Some of us never were, and never will be.
Such abject ideological capitulation to the ideas Labour was created to stand against demonstates a certain arrogant incomprehension on the political right, a category into which Mandelson clearly falls. Admiration for Margaret Thatcher is far from universal.
Iraq and the Arab Spring: a thought experiment
Very few things about the political state of Iraq can accurately be described as clear. But now that the flag has been cased and the last 4,000 US troops are on the way home, some sort of preliminary balance sheet is finally possible.
As president Obama told the troops at the military base in Fort Bragg this week, the country the US military leaves behind almost nine years after the invasion is ‘not a perfect place’. If reports of continuing sectarian violence are anything to go by, that is a considerable understatement.
Europe: the last touchstone issue in British politics
Opposition to the European Union resonates with the Conservative right to a degree that no issue seems to excite any section of the Labour Party anymore, in ways that are essentially unfathomable to those that stand outside the tribe.
For that reason alone, David Cameron’s decision to veto treaty changes designed to prop up the eurozone could prove a pivotal moment in Britain’s domestic politics. Nothing he could have done or said could be better calculated to restore his faltering standing among his activist base. This is Thatcher’s Bruges speech, all over again.
The political motivations of Standard & Poor’s
First they downgraded America. Now it is the turn of the eurozone. Standard & Poor’s is well aware of the weight financial markets attach to its pronouncements, and of late has developed the alarming habit of timing them to maximise their impact.
Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel have issued a statement, noting curtly that they ‘take note’ of the ratings agency’s decision to put France, Germany and 13 other countries on credit watch, implying a 50% chance of a downgrade in the next six month.
But the two leaders are almost certainly furious at this intervention, which just two days ahead of a summit meeting in Brussels later this week that is widely seen as the single currency’s last best hope.
Jeremy Clarkson: the right, the left and deathwish jokes
Three quarters of Telegraph readers back Jeremy Clarkson in the row over his ‘execute strikers’ outburst. The Top Gear presenter’s remarks should not have been taken seriously, because he was only joking, they insist.
As Freud explained over a hundred years ago, tendentious jokes are a mask for socially unacceptable feelings, not least violent hostility. There is probably a level at which Britain’s most famous petrolhead meant exactly what he said.
N30: trade unions only look dead
Hardliners. Militants itching for a fight. Michael Gove is in no doubt about who is responsible for N30.
Yet there are a couple of fundamental flaws with the education secretary’s assertion that those taking part in Wednesday’s public sector stoppage are being manipulated by an unrepresentative clique of hard left union bosses.
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» Criticism of Obama for its own sake: a reply to Mehdi Hasan
» Do older people really need more NHS healthcare?
» There are alternatives to the reckless ‘Plan A’
» On Beecroft: it is already quite easy to sack people
» Why Cameron’s claim of 600,000 jobs created is plainly wrong
» By using age to allocate NHS funding, Lansley rewards Tory voters
» The rise in domestic violence deaths is not an “isolated” problem
» Adrian Beecroft highlights mindset of Tory right
» The US is now a model for the Eurozone to save itself
» The IMF plan to revive the economy doesn’t go far enough
» The Boris brand is weaker than his friends think
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