Cocktails & apprehension
Matthew d'Ancona 11:10pm
At the CNN party in Marylebone, Andrew Marr, James Purnell, Dame Sue Tinson, sundry BBC chieftains, Whitehall officials and Labour apparatchiks galore down cocktails, watch the huge screen, and dig in for a long night. The sense among centre-Left guests is one of superstitious apprehension. 'It all looked safe in 2000,' says one Blairite. 'And then it all went wrong the next morning and we ended up with eight years of Bush.'
For the McCainites - a small band of brothers huddling in a corner - Palin looks like being the Fall Gal. But...
The below is the memo sent to Barclays staff yesterday from John Varley, chief executive, explaining why he didn’t go for a taxpayer bailout. Remember, Barclays badly need British shareholders to approve this deal – so it will have been written with that in mind. This email is itself a comment on the times we are living – should a CEO of Barclays really need to explain why he preferred a private refinancing to part-nationalisation? It is evidently a response to the kicking he took mainly in the weekend press. We at Coffee House...
In his announcement today Alan Johnson sought to put right the awful spectre of patients being denied NHS care because they have accessed private treatment. It is a situation that was morally repugnant and needed to change months ago.
I’ve just been to a polling place here in DC to watch people cast their ballots. The lines are more manageable now than they were early in the morning when people were queuing for an hour-and-a-half to vote, despite the fact that Obama will win the District with 90 percent plus of the vote. 
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