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Politics

Fraser Nelson

Wednesday, 27th August 2008

Fraser Nelson reviews the week in politics

Denver, Colorado

Just as high street stores send spies to the Paris fashion shows in order to copy all the latest designs, so British political parties send agents to American conventions in search of ideas and inspiration. Several Brits were skulking around the Democratic National Convention in Denver this week, carefully noting the new soundbites and attack lines that were being unveiled on the world’s greatest political catwalk. Yet if these Labour and Tory emissaries were doing their job properly they’ll come back with bleak news — because the four-day convention showed both British parties how vulnerable they truly are.

All the excitement in the thin mountain air was underpinned by mild panic. Everything has, in theory, gone right for Barack Obama. Against initial expectations, he has defeated Hillary Clinton’s formidable election machine and drawn more adulation from the American media than any candidate since Bobby Kennedy in 1968. Yet what is glaringly, painfully and (for the Democrats) bafflingly lacking is a sustained opinion poll lead. If Obama is the Chosen One, how come the deeply unfashionable John McCain — 72 on Friday — is neck-and-neck with him in national polls?

Unwittingly, the Democrat candidate is showing David Cameron how a young, charismatic challenger can overdo it and start to annoy the electorate. Obama has a weakness for grandiose gestures, like the speech to the mile-long audience in Berlin and his address to the outdoor football stadium in Denver. What he describes as ‘the audacity of hope’ has started to look like the audacity of complacency: taking the electorate for granted and treating it like a grateful audience. He has allowed himself to ease into the dangerous role of heir-apparent, giving McCain the gift of underdog status.

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A child of our time

From the economic and psychological bedlam of the global downturn has emerged a particularly dangerous false dichotomy: namely, that there is somehow a choice for ministers over the next few years between economic reconstruction and the repair of Britain’s broken society, and that the government (whether Labour or Conservative) must prioritise the former at the expense of the latter.

Diary

Anne Robinson

The daughter and I spent the last few days before the American election in Arizona.

Politics

Fraser Nelson

Fraser Nelson reviews the week in politics

The Spectator's Notes

Charles Moore

‘A money-financed tax cut is essentially equivalent to Milton Friedman’s famous “helicopter drop” of money.’ So said Ben Bernanke, now the chairman of the Fed, in a speech about how to ward off the ‘extremely small’ chance of deflation, which he delivered in 2002.