Thursday, 5th November 2009

Is it Possible to Have a Twit-Scoop?

10:07am

I was interested to see the Observer story at the weekend about Lord Ashcroft accompanying William Hague to Washington.

I tweeted this on October 23rd. I even teased Iain Dale and Tim Montgomerie about Ashcroft now dominating Tory foreign policy as well as domestic policy.

Does this count as a micro-scoop?

...

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Tuesday, 3rd November 2009

The Tories' Euro Curse

10:28pm

I happened to be on the phone to the Foreign Office press office late this afternoon when I heard a huge cheer go up. The press officer I was speaking to laughed nervously. "The Lisbon Treaty has been signed", she said. So who was cheering? It surely can't have been independent civil servants. I guess it must have been a large group of ministers and special advisers who just happened to be walking past the press officer at just that moment.

Whoever it was, they were cheering at the expense of David Cameron. The Tory leader's twin strategy for appeasing the...

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Half Term Nostalgia

9:30pm

I've been away for the half-term break. Sorry not to have blogged, but I needed a break from all the constructive criticism of my regular commenters.

i always get soppy about this first half term of the school year. It takes me right back to my west country primary school in the 1970s, kicking through the autumn leaves as the nights drew in. The excitement of the new term has gone and the long winter lies ahead. (You can already feel this small-scale sense of dread on Westminster).

This first half-term always reminds of one of my classmates. He was not...

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Sunday, 25th October 2009

My BBC Radio 4 Analysis programme on Secrecy

9:32pm Can secrets ever be good for you? I used to describe myself as a “free speech fundamentalist” and believed that there were almost no circumstances in which official secrets should be withheld from the public (one exception was when disclosure would put the lives of individual members of the armed forces or intelligence services at risk).

But over recent years I have become worried that the cost whistleblowers pay for their disclosures is too high. I worked closely with two high-profile leakers, Katharine Gun from the government’s secret surveillance centre, GCHQ, and Derek Pasquill, a former Foreign Office civil servant. Both...

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Friday, 23rd October 2009

How Question Time Became Important

10:57pm

I can't expect anyone to bother reading another piece about Question Time, but bear with me here. In the build-up to Nick Griffin's appearance on Question Time, I was convinced it was a fuss about nothing. I still can't quite understand Peter Hain's objection to allowing an unpleasant fascist hang himself live on TV. Good box office, sure, but surely a spectacle worth paying good money to see.

My only concern was the quality of the panel. But when it came to it, I was pleasantly surprised. I thought Huhne, Warsi, Straw and Greer were really rather good. I have...

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Wednesday, 21st October 2009

Now the Tories Need to Get Serious About Their Euro-Allies

8:23am

The Guardian splash today puts some serious meat on my story in last week's Jewish Chronicle about growing US unhappiness about the Tories' new friends in Europe. Jonathan Freedland adds some important analysis.

When I first put it to the Conservative Party press office that there might be an issue here I was told that it was unlikely the Obama government was troubling itself with such a parochial British issue. To me this demonstrates a fundamental failure of understanding that stretches right up to David Cameron himself. There has always been the suspicion that, for Cameron and his...

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