Back soon

Apologies for the paucity of posts of late. I'm getting married today, and will then be on honeymoon. I'll post, but it will be sporadic!

Email to a friend  |   Permalink  |   Comments (5)

Nick Clegg or Chris Huhne: no one can change the Lib Dems’ failure to find a niche (The Spectator)

I've written the political column in this week's Spectator, on the LibDems. You can read it here.

Email to a friend  |   Permalink  |   Comments (2)

Clegg or Huhne?

Daniel Hannan has his own take on Clegg versus Huhne:

If I were a Lib Dem, it would have to be Nick Clegg, who possesses every requisite refinement. He’s articulate, personable, simpatico and modest. He speaks five languages fluently. He’s a proper parliamentarian, equally at ease in committees and on the floor of the house. He’s temperate in his opinions, and courteous to those - like me - who find those opinions risible.

As a Tory, it’s equally straightforward. There is no one we’d rather have than the almost unbelievably pompous, ambitious and litigious Chris Huhne.

Easy then, no? Except that, happily for the other parties, LibDems are a notoriously chippy bunch, and Clegg’s looks and brains will count against him. So my money is on Huhne, the man who, in 1991, delivered himself of the following observation: “Britain’s belated membership of the ERM has proved to be a greater success than almost anyone expected. We have discovered, 11 years after most of our European partners, that fixed exchange rates make sense”. There you have the authentic voice of the LibDem loser through the ages: self-important, unapologetic and wrong.

Email to a friend  |   Permalink  |   Comments (8)

Bye bye whatever your name was

Small earthquake in Chile. Not many dead.

The modern equaivalent is yesterday's resignation by Ming Campbell, a second rate politician from a second rate party. I thought the Times had it bang on today, according the story a small little box on the right of the front page. 

Fraser wrote yesterday on Coffee House that 

I regard Nick Clegg as much of a certainty to replace Ming as Blair was to succeed John Smith in 1994.

I can't speak with knowledge about the LibDem electorate's propensity to do the sensible thing, but if they have any sense that indeed is what they'll do. 

But this needs to be kept in proportion. The LibDems are essentially an irrelevance, and althought they may bob up and down in the polls a bit, they will always be that. Where they can make a difference is as Daniel Finkelstein observes:

although Tories have very big disagreements with Clegg, he talks openly about the problems of big government, state interference and monopolies in health and education. His election would help to shift the centre of gravity in the political debate towards the freedom loving right. This would be a very big gain indeed.

And if the LibDems act as a protest vehicle for Labour voters who can't quite stomach Cameron, that is all to the Tories' good.

I'll have more to say about this later in the week, when I'll link to a column on it.

Email to a friend  |   Permalink  |   Comments (1)

Back tomorrow

Sorry for the long absences. I'm getting married this weekend, and preparations have taken precedence over everything else. 

I will be posting again from tomorrow.

Email to a friend  |   Permalink  |   Comments (6)

Fred nearly got his breakfast ate

This fabulous account of the Republican nomination process is on my friend Robert George's site: 

Email to a friend  |   Permalink  |   Comments (0)

Moonbat - let them starve

I've only just noticed the inimitable Peter Briffa's take on a bizarre column by George Moonbat.

"If you are of a sensitive disposition, I advise you to turn the page now. I am about to break the last of the universal taboos".
OHMYGOD. Don't tell me you're a nonce, George. Not on Comment is Free. This is a step too far even for those halfwits.

"I hope that the recession now being forecast by some economists materialises".
Ah, that's a bit better. Somewhat surprisingly, I find myself share Georgie's hopes. For too long the workers have been doing well for themselves, getting jobs, some even keeping them, breeding, and generally using up all the trees and emitting all that horrid carbon dioxide. Well, bollocks to that, I say. Let them starve. It's for their children's future.

Email to a friend  |   Permalink  |   Comments (0)

You don’t understand us, do you, Gordon?

Alice Miles' piece today on Brown is simply brilliant - one of the most penetrating political columns I have ever read. I won't extract it - you really should read every word.

Email to a friend  |   Permalink  |   Comments (1)

Spiderman in No 10

We have, it seems, a PM whose famous moral compass is pointed to...Spiderman.

Here's what Mr Brown said today:

With power comes responsibility.

And you know whose phrase that is? 

Spiderman's.  

(Well, to be strictly accurate it's "with power comes great responsibility", but what's a "great" between friends?)

So he steals lines from Al Gore and Spiderman. It kind of figures.

UPDATE: Fraser Nelson spotted it, too.

Email to a friend  |   Permalink  |   Comments (2)

The really worrying Dawkins message

Far more worrying than Richard Dawkins'  words are the comments left on Daniel Finkelstein's post which are overwhelmingly in defence of Dawkins, along the lines of 'he's right - the Jewish lobby is overwheening', 'don't call critics of Israel antisemites' and 'you're being oversensitive, like so many Jews'.

[BTW, I've yet to see an example of anyone remotely serious calling a critic of Israeli policy an antisemite for arguing against Israeli policy. I know of no one well disposed to Israel who would dream of confusing the two. Just look at the Israeli media if you want to see full-on criticism of the Israeli government. But what's striking is that, all too often, those who are indeed genuinely anti-semitic - who oppose the existence of Jews, not just of Israel - hide behind that distinction.]

Why are such comments as those on the Times' site more worrying than Dawkins ignorant bigotry? Because I'd venture to suggest that readers of the Times' blog are pretty normal people and if that's the consensus view of such people, Jews in Britain really do have cause to worry.

Here's Melanie Phillips' take:

In vain does one point out that the power of the Jewish lobby in America pales beside that of Saudi Arabia; that the most powerful lobby on behalf of Israel is composed of the Christian evangelicals; that the main reason the US supports Israel now is because it views it as a vital strategic ally in the region; that the vast majority of American Jews are Democrats who loathe President Bush and have always been opposed to the war in Iraq; that Israel told the US from the start that Iraq was the wrong target and it should be attacking Iran instead; and so on and on.

It’s no use whatever, of course. Waste of breath. Because what you are arguing against is sheer irrational bigotry. You argue with them because you just can’t believe that apparently rational human beings can be impervious to reason. But they are. That’s why they’ve swallowed this poisonous crud in the first place. And history tells us that ostensibly intelligent, cultured, educated and civilised people can and do believe demonstrable lies about the Jews. You know that. You’ve read about the Nazis venerating Goethe and listening to Mozart, of course. But when you meet the modern equivalents, you just can’t believe it.

We’d all better start believing it. This evil has returned. And it has to be fought by being exposed, named and shamed. 

Email to a friend  |   Permalink  |   Comments (22)