James Forsyth 5:56am
On a night which will live long in the memory, Barack Obama accepted the Democratic nomination for president. His acceptance speech was in parts stridently populist but in others presented Obama as the great conciliator. The speech as a text was not one of Obama’s best but it was delivered with the passion that he is often said to lack. When he thundered ‘Enough!’ about the last eight years the crowd was momentarily taken aback.
This convention has been criticised for not being harsh enough on John McCain, Obama set about correcting...
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James Forsyth 7:56pm
The McCain campaign used to rail against the media’s obsession with Obama but now it feeds it. It has jumped into the conversation through a series of ads mocking Obama and tough charges all of which has helped turn the election into a referendum on Obama. (This shift from a referendum on the Bush years to a referendum on Obama is the best explanation for why race is so close.)
As part of this approach, the McCain campaign will bracket Obama’s acceptance speech tonight with an ad from McCain asking Obama a...
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James Forsyth 5:25pm
The expectations for Obama’s speech tonight are a mile high. I’d be tempted to say they’ll be impossible to match but, as First Read points out , Obama has never yet failed to deliver on one of these set piece occasions.
Obama speaks as the first African-American nominee of a major American party on the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s ‘I have a dream’ speech’, emphasising the historic nature of this moment. Add to this the fact that Obama is regarded as the best political orator in a generation and that...
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Peter Hoskin 4:23pm
Ok, so Tesco's announcement that they're dropping plans to construct an eco-town at Hanley Grange, Cambridgeshire, was couched in diplomatic terms ("We think the proposal had very good prospects of succeeding under the government's Eco Town initiative", they said). But it's hard not to regard their actions as a sign that confidence in eco-towns is dwindling.
After all, as this Government's stock falls, and as further questions about the towns' "green" credentials emerge, it's no longer good PR - or good business - to back the scheme. The Tories recognised that back in June,...
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Sean Martin 3:09pm
Laura Richards, a former head of the Met Police homicide prevention unit has claimed stop and search makes gangs stronger not weaker. The method has been used by the Met in stabbing “hotspots” to catch knife carriers. Richards feels the indiscriminate searches are marginalising young men, and suggests that – as 90 percent of knife murderers are previously known to police - searching targeted youths would get better results.
On the surface this seems a great idea, with excessive police interference only worsening what are already poor relations with young people. The...
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