Commentators

Steve Richards: Comrade Cable does No 10 a favour

The deficit remains the defining issue in British politics. Those who worry about the pace and depth of cutting do not have an ally in the Business Secretary

Inside Commentators

Adrian Hamilton: Global poverty isn't what it was

Thursday, 23 September 2010

Gordon Brown says he feels "anger" at the failure of some rich countries to stump up the money for the Millennium Development Goals decided at the UN 10 years ago. Nick Clegg, attending the conference in New York of 140 countries to review progress, yesterday called "on others to show equal resolve" to Britain in "honouring their commitments."

Andreas Whittam Smith: Pay up, pay up and play the game

Thursday, 23 September 2010

Reckless banking and tax avoidance have characteristics in common. Both depend upon finding barely legal ways round the rules

The Sketch: Vince banks on a bit of mulish miserableness to really wow them

Thursday, 23 September 2010

"People say I'm miserable," Vince said, to laughter. "But this is my happy face." I had forgotten how useful it is, that thing he has on the front of his head. Such an unpromising arrangement of features: a mouth like a mule's and the guarded, pain-filled eyes. It could play one of the tramps in Waiting for Godot.

Harriet Walker: The curious death of the hipster

Thursday, 23 September 2010

A new-ish video on YouTube (these things are birthed, made viral and killed off within a space of about 13 hours, so keep up) entitled Being a Dickhead's Cool is the latest lambasting of a cipher known in current youth culture iconography as "The Hipster". It features snapshots taken from street style blogs, club nights, American Apparel adverts and unsuspecting hipsters' Facebook pages, set to a jolly tune and song about moving to East London from Cambridgeshire, playing synths, riding a fixed-gear bike and claiming to work in the media when you're actually on the dole. (Full disclosure: I do actually work in the media, but only because I'm not at all hip.)

Andrew Grice: Members fear Clegg could drive away the left that gave him power

Thursday, 23 September 2010

"He must be the first party leader to invite people not to vote for him." That was how one bemused senior Liberal Democrat reacted to Nick Clegg's declaration that his party had no future as "a receptacle for left-wing dissatisfaction with Labour".

Gary Slapper: It doesn't sound much, but this is a constitutional watershed

Thursday, 23 September 2010

In constitutional struggles, little dramas can have momentous consequences. The curious case of the royal financial memorandum is a headline disguised as a footnote. It is, in effect, a formal farewell to one of the vestiges of monarchical power.

Christina Patterson: Saints, sinners and cloud cuckoo land

Wednesday, 22 September 2010

On Sunday, the son of a banker was set on the path to sainthood. This is a very big deal

Hamish McRae: Securing a recovery is the least of our woes

Wednesday, 22 September 2010

Everyone is worrying about the recovery. They shouldn't. After a dip in the coming months, the world economy should experience several years of solid growth. Instead people ought to be worrying about whether the developed world can get itself into shape, so that it can come through the next downturn in better nick than it came through the past one.

Mark Steel: That's right, it was all a Muslim plot

Wednesday, 22 September 2010

You might think that a plot to blow up the Pope would be news for a while. Popes don't get blown up all that often, and this one's enough of a celebrity that if he fell over drunk at the MTV awards with Kanye West it would be in the papers for a few days, so it's strange that a plot to blow him up was only of interest for one day.