Telegraph Blogs

On one level, the epic tussle taking place on Capitol Hill over the raising of the national debt ceiling was business as usual in Washington. The American constitution laid down that government should be divided between the executive, legislative and judicial branches. When the legislature itself – Congress – is split between the two parties, gridlock… Read more

See how the Internet has levelled the ground between public figures and tabloid reporters. Here is an email exchange between an investigative journalist and Louise Mensch, the Conservative MP who has been pursuing claims of phone-hacking at the Mirror: “Dear Mrs Mensch, We are informing you that we have come into possession of the following information, about… Read more

From Saturday’s Daily Telegraph Was Anders Breivik an internet troll? I’m sorry if that seems a flippant question to ask about a man who killed dozens of Norwegian teenagers, but you can’t read his 1,500-page “manifesto” without being struck by how thoroughly he trawled the web. Whatever the explanation for his murderous actions, this was definitely… Read more

I’ve just written a depressing essay for Notting Hill Editions on why it is I’d like to leave Britain for America. It’s not that I have a particular desire to abandon my country, I explain. Rather, I feel the country I love has abandoned me. Its values are not my values; it seems to have… Read more

After virtually every event, including the deaths of leaders and terrorist atrocities, it takes mere minutes for political operatives to start calculating who among them might benefit and who might suffer. In Washington today there is certainly no shortage of analysis about how the tactical landscape might have shifted after Speaker John Boehner’s initial failure to… Read more

When we hear debates about the “credibility” of the Bank of England, or of the government’s deficit reduction programme, what does that word actually mean?  “Credibility” is an economists’ term of art, closely connected with another piece of jargon – a “commitment technology”.  A commitment technology is some means of committing ourselves.  A promise would… Read more

It’s a pretty good rule of thumb that, however touristy a city gets, step 20 yards away from the popular bits and you’ll find some hidden, barely-visited gems. That’s the case at the gardens of Clarence House – Prince Charles’s London house – which are open today for free, and again on Sunday. While the Mall is… Read more

I caught a story in one of the geeky computer magazines that I subscribe to that I completely missed in the mainstream press and it made me giggle with delight and horror. The story concerned the auctioning off of some of the now-defunct Nortel’s patents, specifically their 4G mobile network tech. This superfast data network… Read more

The Public Administration Committee has this week released its damning report on the relationship between the Government and IT, forebodingly titled “A Recipe for Rip-Offs”. According to the committee, the current state of affairs is a disgrace – overpriced goods, a misunderstanding of the services required, too few suppliers who stitch up contracts and a… Read more

If you wanted to pick an issue that really excites MPs, you could do a lot worse than High Speed Rail 2. Sure, Europe, the deficit, foreign aid – those are all issues. But unlike David Cameron in No 10, most MPs board a train every weekend back to their constituencies. Some, it seems, spend… Read more

Republican Speaker John Boehner failed last night to muster enough votes to pass his plan to lift the debt ceiling. The press expected passage, especially after a handful of Tea Party favourites came out in support. Poor Mr Boehner – who looks permanently on the verge of tears – is politically wounded. Momentum could pass… Read more

It has taken several weeks for Piers Morgan to become entangled in the phone hacking net, but it now looks probable that he’ll receive an invitation from John Whittingdale MP to appear before the Culture, Media and Sport select committee. That is an extremely perilous position for the ex-editor of the News of the World… Read more

After another humiliating defeat for John Boehner’s bill, where are we now in the hunt for a compromise to head off US default and government shutdown? No nearer a deal, that’s where. It’s a quarter to midnight and House Republicans cannot even agree among themselves on the way forward, let alone reach an accord with… Read more

The eurozone contagion has leapt across the bright Aegean. First Cyprus’s credit rating was sharply downgraded; then the private banks followed; now the government is in collapse. It was only last week that EU leaders were assuring each other that the euro crisis was over, their complacency lazily parroted by most of the MSM. Readers of… Read more

What a mess. After delaying a vote on his bill because he couldn’t prevent at least 24 conservative Republicans opposing it, Speaker John Boehner tried to twist a few arms and failed to change the situation. So a vote that had been planned for 6pm slipped and slipped throughout the evening and was then postponed… Read more

House prices edged upwards by 0.2pc last month, according to Nationwide Building Society, as lending increased three years after the global credit crisis caused a mortgage famine in Britain. Other lenders are easing terms to tempt first time buyers back into the market with low rates and higher loan to value (LTV) deals.

Skipton Building Society was… Read more

I have just seen an extraordinary scene outside Amy Winehouse’s house – just round the corner from my flat in Camden, north London. As I bicycled past, a woman in her late 30s, dressed in dark clothes and a trilby, started taking photographs on her phone of a dummy on a crucifix (pictured) that she had placed… Read more

Post-war politicians can be broadly divided into two categories: those who have been dedicated to real, substantial achievement, and those who have concentrated on style and presentation. Within the first category fall Clem Attlee, Aneurin Bevan and Margaret Thatcher. Whether or not we admire what they did, there is no question that all three left… Read more

More bad news for the White House as Rasmussen announced today that just 17 percent of likely US voters believe the country is heading in the right direction, the lowest level of public confidence since Barack Obama took office. According to Rasmussen, a staggering 75 percent of voters now believe the country is heading down… Read more

This is too good a story not to repeat, not least for the headline it invites: (H/T Ed West; Julian Morris) JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — A federal wildlife biologist whose observation in 2004 of presumably drowned polar bears in the Arctic helped to galvanize the global warming movement has been placed on administrative leave and is… Read more

Today is crunch day. If Speaker John Boehner’s bill passes the House this evening (latest is that a vote is due at 6.15pm EDT) then the odds that a debt ceiling deal will be reached significantly increase. No outcome is certain and the markets now seem genuinely fearful that a default could happen. But there are a… Read more

Unlike Guido Paul and his intriguing suggestion, I have no theory to advance to explain how Steve Hilton found himself on the front of the FT today. That Dave’s head of implementation has robust views and radical ideas is not new, nor is the fact that he is prone to launching them on civil servants.… Read more