Spectator

Quentin Letts certainly wants a lot from good ol’ Father Christmas. In the festive double issue of The Spectator he pens a wish-list that contains no less than 56 items. Here are some of the highlights: A referendum on Britain’s future in Europe… Or, a Linguaphone course to brush up my German. A protest march through Islington by striking taxpayers. An announcement from David Cameron that he is scrapping the Ministerial and Other Pensions and Salaries Act 1991, which granted pay-offs to Cabinet ministers. (The Act was also responsible for setting the Commons Speaker’s indecently generous pension. Double bingo!) Less windbaggery from Speaker Bercow. And if we taxpayers must shell

Our Christmas issue is so packed that, sadly, there wasn’t enough space to include everything that was originally commissioned. Among the ejectees was a series of Christmas recipes and tips from politicians, writers and friends of The Spectator. In which case, we thought we’d put them up online, where the real estate, just like the goodwill, is endless. You can read Nick Clegg’s recipe for Patridge ‘Estofada’ below. And there is — and will be — more on our Facebook page today, including Ed Miliband’s recipe for roast lamb… Partridge ‘Estofada’
 This isn’t what we’ll be eating on Christmas Day but we’ll certainly have it in the run-up, when we

As promised by Fraser earlier, here is an extended version of James’s interview with Owen Paterson that we posted yesterday: It is becoming increasingly clear what the Conservative party expects of its Prime Minister. If he is going to agree to 17 eurozone countries pushing ahead with the Franco-German plan for fiscal union, he needs to secure a new deal for Britain in exchange. Just what this new deal should look like is a matter of intense debate in Conservative circles. If France and Germany turn the eurozone into a ‘fiscal union’, what does that mean for Britain’s standing in the European Union? At the weekend, Iain Duncan Smith suggested that the nature of

The Commons will debate the UK’s controversial extradition treaty with the US and the European Arrest Warrant later today. The debate has been brought by Dominic Raab MP. He was on the Today programme this morning, explaining that he wanted to introduce a ‘forum clause’ to the UK-US treaty. Forum is a principle that could apply in cross-border cases like Gary McKinnon’s, which Raab has been championing. Raab wants to end the ‘sort of haggling between prosecutors behind closed doors’ that governs extraditions at present, and reform the process by placing it before open court in Britain. He argues that numerous other countries enjoy such an arrangement with the US,

In the latest issue of the magazine, a flock of politicians, commentators and economists offers George Osborne some advice for growing the economy. There are ten contributions in total, but here are three for CoffeeHousers’ consideration: Arthur Laffer Chairman, Laffer Associates Cut the 50p tax Reducing the burden which government places on the economy, through tax cuts, is the surest way to promote growth. I have never heard of a country that taxed itself into prosperity. Yet Britain last year raised the top rate of income tax from 40 per cent to 50 per cent. For more economic growth, and more tax revenue, this rate should be lowered immediately. This

The pledge to almost double Britain’s international aid budget was made in the boom years, when the government actually had money. In the bust, there is something deeply strange — almost perverse — about borrowing money from China and giving it to India. It’s time to reassess Britain’s aid commitment, and The Spectator is having a debate about it tomorrow night. I hope CoffeeHousers will be able to come because it is, I think, a crucial issue. Alan Duncan is the man to thanks — or blame, depending on your point of view — for the Tories committing to spend 0.7 per cent of economic output on foreign aid. He

Let’s end the working week how it began: with talk of a European referendum. The talk, in this case, is provided by Daniel Hannan, who wrote an article for us in 2008 about his efforts to promote a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty from within the European Parliament. Here it is, our latest excavation from the Spectator archives: For MEPs, public opinion is merely an inconvenience, Daniel Hannan, The Spectator, 22 November 2008 I’ve just done the most pointless thing an MEP can do: I’ve delivered a speech to the European Parliament. Actually, ‘speech’ is rather a grand word for my little soliloquy which, under the rules, had to be