Daniel Knowles

Christopher Hitchens with Tony Blair earlier this year

I never got to see Christopher Hitchens speak. I only truly discovered the great polemicist last summer, when someone recommended I buy a copy of his autobiography, Hitch 22. Already, he was close to death. By the time I booked myself tickets to the talk he was due to give last month, via video link, to the South Bank Centre, his health was deteriorating fast. Eventually, his appearance had to be cancelled, and instead friends from Salman Rushdie, Martin Amis, Christopher Buckley and others spoke of their friendship with the Hitch. That's the first of the tributes I'll list here:

Then there is this brilliant essay on the New Yorker's website from Christopher Buckley:
We were friends for more than thirty years, which is a long time but, now… Read More

David Cameron rediscovers his pragmatism

Last night, at the 1922 Committee, David Cameron got a hell of a reception. MPs banged their tables, cheered, and, from what I was told, asked soft questions. The bulk of the Prime Minister's speech has been pretty well reported already. David Cameron stressed that it has been a "tough year" – this is worse than 1979-1981 he reckons – and it will carry on being tough. He said that the Government is "working for hard working families doing the right thing" and will carry on. But the point that the Prime Minister apparently made which I found most interesting was this: he told his MPs that he didn't want to run a "technocratic" government, dedicated to nothing except fixing the budget deficit.

This morning, Mr Cameron is giving a speech on… Read More

"I know you are, but what am I?"

The final PMQs of the year, and Parliament was in an end-of-term mood. Nick Clegg arrived grinning like a bullied child before a holiday, to the cheers of his small band of allies. No longer the victim, he sat next to the chief bully, Mr Cameron, both ready to turn on the poor child opposite: Ed Miliband. You could tell it would be a brutal session and it was. Dave squashed Ed to a pulp.

But not straight away. Once a month, on a Wednesday morning, the Office for National Statistics publishes the latest unemployment figures, giving Ed Miliband the perfect ammunition. "The figures show his economic strategy is failing," he said. His point was that a year ago, the Prime Minister said that private job… Read More

Not going anywhere...

Just a quick post, because I said much of it here on Monday. But this morning, the country seems to have woken up to quite how shaky the "deal" reached early on Friday morning actually is. Not only does it do nothing to solve the eurozone's problems – as my colleague Jeremy Warner explains here – it doesn't even work politically. As Mats Persson notes on Coffee House here, several countries are backing away from their agreement.

Just consider this, from the Czech Prime Minister: "I think that it would be politically short-sighted to come out with strong statements that we should sign that piece of paper." Or this, from the Irish Deputy Prime Minister: "I believe there will be a lot of discussion on that between now and March. I… Read More

Newspapers - destroying our democracy apparently

A shocking exposé in the Guardian today. As confidently as 15-year old biology students write "I show the effect of osmosis on potato cells", George Monbiot tweets "I show how the press has systematically misrepresented the sources of oppression". He's puffing his latest column. Apparently the evil Right-wing media is to blame for everything, including global warming, inequality, third-world disease and my morning coffee being a little flavourless.

Obvious right? The free press is no such thing – it's just corporate propaganda. Here's how he concludes: "our political system has been corrupted by the entire corporate media. Defending ourselves from the economic elite means naming and unmasking the power of the press." The elite corrupt everything, you see. If only everyone read the Guardian, which is never, ever elitist, then the world… Read More

The link is undeniable...

While we've been talking about Nick Clegg and David Cameron, and exactly where Britain belongs in the EU, the debt crisis continues. As Gideon Rachman writes in today's FT, there is a good chance that last week's summit will actually prove to be a little more than footnote of history – we're all still doomed.

But at least that means I get to share this incredible graph. It turns out that one of the best predictors of sovereign debt risk is the proportion of young men living at home. A statistician who's checked it out tells me the correlation "couldn't be stronger". But here's the question – is there a causal link, and if so which way does it go? The proportion of young men living at home in Britain is only… Read More

This drama is only beginning...

David Cameron arrived in the Commons today as popular as he has been among his backbenchers since entering office. His Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, didn't enter at all. As a statement of the significance of Mr Cameron's move on Friday morning, little will beat that. Nick Clegg lost the argument: as David Cameron said later, he agreed the negotiating strategy and ended up with a result he neither anticipated nor wanted. Other Lib Dems were on the front bench, but Nick Clegg's absence was damning ("ou est Clegg?" shouted one Labour MP).

Mr Cameron went to Europe prepared to "protect Britain's national interest", he said. He had called for "modest, reasonable and relevant safeguards" and all Britain wanted was "a level playing field". In essence, Dave wa… Read More

David Cameron has played a brilliant game

A weekend on and Europe is still the only topic on the news agenda. This afternoon at 3.30pm, David Cameron faces MPs to report back on his spectacular 'veto' on Friday morning. He faces a three-way split in his Government. The Lib Dems are seething; they reckon that David Cameron has put Britain on the road to withdrawal from the EU (to whose number we can add Ken Clarke, who is rumoured to have thought of resigning). Then there are the Tory moderates, who think Dave probably did the Right Thing, but are worried about what happens next. Finally, there are the serious Eurosceptics, who are delighted, precisely because they see this as the end of Britain's ever-closer union.

Superficially, this threatens the Coalition: if the Lib Dems pulled out,… Read More

NIck Clegg has abandoned all his Europhile principles

William Hague tried to deny it on the Today Programme, but David Cameron's decision this morning to veto an EU-wide treaty deal does change Britain's relationship with Europe. It leaves us in an alliance with Hungary and, if we are lucky, Sweden and the Czech Republic against the 23 other European countries. The interesting thing is that the Lib Dems have backed it. Hague said this morning that Nick Clegg had "absolutely" agreed to the negotiating stance and the Cabinet is united.

I'm not sure how much we should trust that. Patrick Wintour reports in the Guardian this morning that Vince Cable wanted the PM to back exactly the sort of deal that he has rejected. But if Vince doesn't speak up and the Lib Dems swallow this uncontested,… Read More

Children taking exams

We've got a terrific scoop in the newspaper this morning. It turns out that not only are A-levels and GCSEs getting easier, teachers are being trained how to teach them by the very people who set the papers. For £230 a day, chief examiners will explain exactly how pupils' papers are marked, how to word answers, and, most worryingly, which compulsory questions are likely to come up in that year's papers. “We’re cheating,” says one chief examiner. “We’re telling you the cycle [of the compulsory question]. Probably the regulator will tell us off.”

What's most tragic about this story is that it's only the last part – the "cheating" – that is genuinely surprising. It is already relatively well known that examiners look for a certain type of script, especially in humanities. They… Read More