Telegraph Blogs

What was the key prejudice in Enoch Powell’s infamous 1968 speech, which everyone is talking about again following Powell’s 100th birthday? It wasn’t actually hatred of immigrants, whom Powell believed to be ambitious, ferociously so. Rather it was fear of native Britons. It was fear of what white Brits, or what Powell referred to as… Read more

At the end of last week President Obama announced an executive order which has the effect of stopping the federal government from deporting illegal immigrants under the age of 30 who came to the US before age the age of 16. They have to have lived in the US for at least five years, have… Read more

How deadly is hype? Since the internet was born, everything’s quicker: your sushi delivery, finding that random essay by David Foster Wallace, contacting Aunt Ramona in Hawaii and also, perilously, the rise and fall of today’s artists. Hype can suffocate a potential star months after cloaking them in glitter and gold. Early blogosphere buzz can… Read more

There’s a report out from the TUC today pointing to the appalling rise in long-term youth unemployment. I guarantee you we’ll not see from them, or any point Leftwards of Ghengis Khan, the correct identification of the cause of this: the national minimum wage. The TUC say the following: The TUC findings – published ahead… Read more

All through the 1930s, the European elites continued to blame the Great Depression on Wall Street excess and the crash of 1929 (a minor, if colourful, event). They continued to do so long after Roosevelt had broken free of fixed-exchange ruin and launched a blistering recovery with monetary stimulus a l’outrance (perhaps helped slightly by… Read more

Rowena Mason has a fantastic tale that will run and run. The Church of England’s Archbishops’ Council, headed by Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury and Dr John Sentamu, the Archbishop of York, has made a submission on Europe to the Foreign Affairs select committee. It urges the Government to be more constructive and positive… Read more

The British government’s dramatic intervention to prevent Russia delivering attack helicopters to Syria represents a serious escalation in the West’s involvement in the Syrian crisis. By freezing the insurance cover of the MV Alaed, a Russian cargo ship, that was carrying a consignment of  Mi25 attack helicopters to Syria, Britain is making its own form of… Read more

One of the problems with Billy Budd – which in my book ranks among the greatest achievements of opera – is that of Billy’s ship, the Indomitable. It’s such a hellish place, it’s hard to understand why the entire ship’s company admire the captain, Vere. Why do they pull together in the war effort to… Read more

The pressure is starting to tell. At the G20 summit in Mexico Jose Manuel Barroso, the President of the European Council, finally lost it. Asked by a Canadian journalist to explain why North Americans should “risk their assets to help Europe” (not an unfair question, in the circumstances), Barroso replied: Frankly, we are not here… Read more

I sometimes feel like Niall Ferguson is out to personally annoy me. He is clearly brilliant, and yet he is so determined to shock and to be “counterintuitive” that I don’t often trust his judgement. His skill is in applying economic modelling to explain events in history, but too often he lurches into ill-thought-through political… Read more

The Government’s proposed internet surveillance Bill – popularly known as the Snoopers’ Charter – has already run into a storm of criticism. Many, including David Davis and Philip Johnston, oppose it on civil liberties grounds. Some, such as Fraser Nelson, argue that it’ll be more use at catching criminals than terrorists, and the Government should… Read more

“I can’t afford to work.” That statement, heard more and more frequently, has finally got through to the Government. It’s usually made by women, and it’s a sad indictment of our childcare system: the cost is so high that few employees can afford a formal childminding arrangement. As a recent Daycare Trust report revealed, the average annual cost of… Read more

You have to hand it to David Cameron. Put him front of a business audience at an international gathering and he deals with their questions stylishly. On Monday he addressed the B20, a corporate and NGO off-shoot of the G20 (B20 at the G20, do you see what they did there?). Generally it was an… Read more

It pains me to say this about a colleague, but Donata Huggins has crossed the line. Free expression is the cornerstone of a democracy, but with that freedom comes responsibility. And Donata has demonstrated all the responsibility of someone rushing into a crowded theatre and screaming “Stop hand jiving to Dancing Queen, you fools, there’s… Read more

The discovery of ‘extremophiles’ strengthens the theory that life was ‘delivered’ from other planets In August, Nasa’s Curiosity rover, the largest and most expensive robot ever to be sent to the surface of another planet, will arrive on Mars. It has several goals, including studying the climate and geography of the Red Planet, and providing… Read more

This week, the 200th anniversary of the opening of the War of 1812 between Britain and America has passed almost unnoticed. It seems extraordinary for such a crucial war to have slipped into oblivion. In many ways, it was the war that made America – by repelling their old colonial masters, they fully established the… Read more

Don’t tell ‘generation rent’ – or rising numbers of people unable to buy their own home – but Barclays Bank reckons it costs nearly £200,000 more to remain a tenant for life than it does to become a homeowner. Worse still, interest rates would have to double from current levels for renting to be cheaper… Read more

Two hundred years ago, on June 18, 1812, the United States declared war on Great Britain. No one had right on their side; the outcome was a draw. America wanted a bit of Canada and to stop the British from kidnapping its sailors. The nasty old Brits were also arming the Native Americans, whose land… Read more

You might think that, what with everything that’s going on in Spain and Greece, Eurocrats had plenty on their plates. You’d be wrong. The EU’s cupidity is unsleeping, for all that its recent initiatives have been driven from our news pages by the travails of the eurozone. You almost certainly haven’t read anything about the… Read more

Calling all Private Eye fans: today, Owen Jones, the Independent columnist, has become Dave Spart – the magazine’s parody ultra-Left winger. He has spent the day, as Mr Spart would, campaigning for longer toilet breaks for call centre workers. He’s been retweeting the horrors: JStott1975 reports that at British Gas in Bolton workers had different coloured… Read more

So the euro, and with it the EU, lives to fight another day. The Ukip tendency in Britain will see yesterday’s re-run of the Greek general election as no more than a postponement of the inevitable. I suspect they underestimate the power of inertia, which, like gravity, often looks weak but in fact holds the… Read more

That’s the subject of an interesting piece of research out today by Donald Hirsch for the JRF. It’s a big issue, because the “couple penalty” is one of the things IDS hopes to deal with using his new “universal credit” – which is due to start being piloted in Manchester from next April. The answer… Read more