Telegraph Blogs

Will no one rid the Catholic Church of these turbulent American nuns? Earlier this month, the Vatican rebuked the liberal Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) for its unorthodox positions on female priests, contraception and homosexuality. Refusing to back down, one Catholic group has hit the road on a tour called Nuns on the Bus,… Read more

If you live or work in London, pick up a copy of the Evening Standard today. It’s guest edited by, of all, people, Tony Blair, who is clearly determined to make his return into British politics as pronounced as possible. The former PM is apparently also due to turn up in the Weekend FT this… Read more

Which of these makes a more useful contribution to the well-being of the world, would you say? a) an industry which creates thousands of (very well-paid) jobs, brings in billions of dollars in export earnings, massively boosts economic growth, contributes greatly to the government’s tax revenues and furnishes the world with an incredibly useful product… Read more

There’s nothing the English hate more than a standing ovation. They’re cheesy and foreign – and they usually scream the kind of manufactured enthusiasm that should be copyrighted to the US House of Representatives. But just occasionally, there is cause for one, as I discovered last night at the Royal Festival Hall. Gustavo Dudamel and… Read more

Like most observers of the political scene I was intrigued to read the thoughtful words of the Prime Minister on further welfare reform. They are not only a long way from the politics of coalition and the centre ground. They are also a long way from his politics of “sharing the proceeds of growth” in his… Read more

When rock stars reach a certain age and decide to go classical, the result is usually as awkward as when classical performers reach a certain age and go rock. You wish they’d stick to what they know. And I spent last night at Damon Albarn’s opera (if that’s the word for it) Dr Dee admiring… Read more

Funny old game, politics. Yesterday, the Government did something popular. Today, David Cameron had a difficult time in the Commons because of it. OK, some of Ed Miliband’s jokes were badly delivered, but his overall attack on the way the Coalition has handled the fuel duty cut was enough to leave Mr Cameron off balance… Read more

It was the Sun wot won it. Ed Balls nipped in smartly at the dénouement. George Osborne is doing his best to pose as a tribune of the people. But it was the boys and girls from E1 who secured the great fuel duty U-turn with their “Keep it down” campaign. “We will have frozen… Read more

The Conservative MP Nadine Dorries really has no time left for her leaders. She has weighed into the debate about Treasury minister Chloe Smith’s performance on Newsnight yesterday with these tweets: The amazing thing is that this sort of criticism – George Osborne is a “coward” as well as “arrogant” – is barely even surprising… Read more

Of all the malicious, cynical gimmicks perpetrated by Cameron’s Government of presentation and PR – all appearance and no reality – could there be anything worse than making the Queen shake hands with Martin McGuinness? The “former commander in the IRA”? When I hear the word “commander” I think of a dapper officer in his… Read more

Another milestone is reached in Northern Ireland’s history as Queen Elizabeth II shakes hands with former IRA commander turned Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness, an idea that would have once been as unthinkable as “seeing Hitler in a synagogue”, as a Unionist politician once described the prospect of power-sharing. Every new milestone is so once-unthinkable… Read more

Images of toddlers with hair extensions and lipgloss, striking a provocative pose, are by now routine in the States. Child beauty pageants are a $5 billion industry there. Now, thanks to the one day Pre-Teen Pageant Training Academy in Essex, a kind of beauty pageant boot camp, little girls in the UK can aspire to the… Read more

As we move closer to the Republican and Democratic conventions, the number of polls coming out on November’s election is increasing. Yesterday, for instance, we had at least eight different surveys, of which three were national Obama versus Romney match-ups. These are generally suggesting that the race is very tight with the two contenders statistically tied.… Read more

When Chloe Smith, a 30 year old MP elected in a by-election in 2009, was made a Treasury minister last year, not all that many Conservative MPs were happy about it. “What chance does a white male have in this Government?” was the sort of thing you heard from disgrunted backbenchers. It wasn’t helped by… Read more

David Cameron’s game of tease over an EU referendum has left his party badly divided Of all the things that might worry the chief of a major financial concern in the middle of a global economic firestorm, Britain’s exit from the European Union does not spring to mind as the most pressing. Liquidity, capital requirements,… Read more

Mitt Romney’s campaign continues to show no sign of sharing with American voters what he’d actually be like as President, once again spending most of Monday giving evasive answers to questions about whether he did or didn’t support the Arizona’s tough immigration laws. Rupert Murdoch, a straight-talker whatever you think of him, expressed the Romney… Read more

Theresa May is a head banger. Her forceful, highly-politicised decisions over the last year on border control, deporting Abu Qatada and family migration rules are evidence of that. The proposed appointment of Tom Winsor to the head of Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary, the police watchdog, seemed to me just another example. The man is the… Read more

One place you don’t know want to be when the Olympics start is a London bus. Bearing in mind how overcrowded the city’s transport system is anyway, and how much more unbearable it is during the summer, imagine what it will be like with Olympic crowds and the roads blocked up by the world’s freeloading… Read more

Ambitious plans to be put before this week’s EU summit – yes indeed, yet another crisis summit – to turn the eurozone into something much closer to a fiscal union make for easy analysis. On almost any level you care to take, they won’t work. Here’s the plan. In return for debt pooling, Brussels would… Read more

A cancer diagnosis brings with it a whole series of decisions – to take the advice of the doctor and have surgery/chemotherapy/radiotherapy; to agree to swallow the little tablet called Tamoxifen every day for five years; to change your lifestyle; to be tested for genetically inherited breast cancer, and for your family to be tested… Read more

Fuel duty will not go up in August. This means your petrol will be a little cheaper than it would othewise have been. You can thank George Osborne for this. The Chancellor is working tirelessly for you and your household finances, ceaselessly looking for ways to help. In fact, he’s the Tesco of public policy:… Read more

Further to my column this morning putting the case against more QE, I wonder whether the Bank of England really has the scope for more asset purchases even if it wants to engage in another burst of money printing. The run of decent economic news came to an abrupt end this morning with the announcement… Read more