So why didn't the police go for David Davis? This is one of the questions hanging in the air after the arrests of the Tory immigration spokesman, Damian Green, and Christopher Galley, his Home Office source. After all, Davis was Green's boss when Galley first made contact in 2006. The former shadow home secretary and Tory leadership candidate has written: "Damian is among the most straightforward and honourable of people. [...]

The second-biggest rally addressed by Barack Obama this year, aside from his victory speech in Chicago on 4 November, was on 24 July in Berlin, when the then Democratic candidate for president set out his vision before 200,000 people for a closer alliance between the US and Europe.

Two days later, at the conclusion of his Continental tour, after seeing first Tony Blair for breakfast and then Gordon Brown in [...]

So the government has ripped up the new Labour rule-book with a return to redistributive taxation, nationalisation and work-creation schemes. The same spinners who once laid burnt offerings at the feet of the gods of the free market now sing the praises of state intervention.

In this world turned upside down, one government figure has been consistent in his reading of the situation. From the early summer, Alistair Darling has [...]

It is impossible to know how many regular readers of the Sun - with the obvious exceptions of its owner, Rupert Murdoch, and a handful of Premier League footballers - earn more than £150,000 a year. But it is tempting to wonder whether the average Sun reader, often described as "white van man", is ever bemused by the tabloid's ideological commitment to the very rich. In the week just past, [...]

When Robert Kilroy-Silk was elected as MP for Ormskirk in 1974, he marked himself out as being someone in a hurry. Confident and handsome, with a strong regional accent, the former Liverpool University lecturer announced, in a documentary made about his arrival at Westminster: "I want to be prime minister in 15 years."

In the event, he ended up standing down as an MP in 1986, ostensibly because he was [...]

During the Labour party conference in September, one big beast was doing the rounds of the parties with a plan for Gordon Brown. First, the Prime Minister should fall on his sword for the greater good of the party. It was then necessary, according to this former cabinet minister, for the party to find a role for Brown travelling the world, talking to international economic experts. "There is no one [...]

Last December, when it looked as if Boris Johnson's mayoral campaign was in trouble, senior Tories were in despair. The media were accusing their candidate of laziness and lacking an appetite for the fight. Unable to take advantage of the obvious weaknesses in the Labour camp, the Tories were sleepwalking towards defeat. Enter George Osborne. Aides to the shadow chancellor and Conservative election supremo are said to have been astonished [...]

Anyone who has ever experienced the misery of unemployment will have felt a chill on hearing this week's labour market statistics. It is a truth universally acknowledged that rates of alcoholism, drug abuse and depression rocket in times of recession. Joblessness has a devastating effect on people's health, physically and mentally, and the full social consequences of an economic crisis are felt in the criminal justice and education systems for [...]

For a man who this summer was denounced as “mad” by supporters and enemies alike, having resigned his position as shadow home secretary to fight a one-man crusade on civil liberties in a by-election at his constituency of Haltemprice and Howden, David Davis is in remarkably good spirits.

I’ve known him for more than a decade – we’ve often discussed the sovereignty of parliament, his lifelong passion – and [...]

In the final weekend, as the polls held unusually steady, John McCain seized on a comment made by Barack Obama the day before. On a brief pass through Iowa, Obama had reminisced about his win in the state's caucus which had launched his candidacy ten months before. "My faith in the American people was vindicated," Obama said.

McCain took this as further proof that Obama was a self-aggrandising cosmopolitan who [...]