If Tony Blair were still Prime Minister Labour would be five—not sixteen—points behind the Conservatives, according to the latest YouGov poll. With Blair back at the helm, the Conservative vote falls to below 40 percent, while the Labour vote rises by six points. More voters think that it is unlikely than likely that Brown will
The full absurdity of the health and safety culture is brought home by this story in The Sunday Times. A chap was taking his date to the champagne bar at St Pancras for her birthday and so asked if he could bring a candle for them to put on a cake for her. This is
Gordon Brown doesn’t boast anymore about his friendship with Alan Greenspan – and little wonder. The former Fed Chairman’s name is fast becoming mud in America, as they turn on the man they lionised for more than a decade. America is about nine months ahead of the UK in the credit crunch, and what fascinates
The Sunday papers pick up where the Saturday ones left off. The Independent on Sunday reports that Charles Clarke is preparing a stalking horse challenger if Labour does badly on May 1st. The Mail on Sunday revives the story that Brown has promised to only fight one general election. A poll for The Sunday Times
With the headlines dominated by Chinese action in Tibet, Issac Beech’s new Web Exclusive article – Reporting from Tibet’s cocoon – is essential reading. You can access it here.
There is a must-read piece in the Mail on Sunday by the impeccably connected Sue Cameron, who provides a compelling inventory of the Brown administration’s dysfunctions. My favourite detail – so rich in irony – is that Number Ten is frustrated by the poor flow of information from the Treasury, and that the PM’s aides
The most interesting thing about relationship break-ups is not so much what is said but what is not said. For example, last week I parted from my boyfriend of eight months and the thing I really wanted to say was not ‘why has it come to this?’ or ‘how dare you call me co-dependent’. No,
I turned the key in the ignition. Nothing. I switched on the radio. Nothing. Flat battery. Even the clock had stopped. I checked the switches to see if I’d left a light on. Nothing. I rang the AA. ‘Someone will be with you in up to 80 minutes,’ said the controller after he’d taken down
New York I read in the New York Times that one of the four persons who apparently operated the escort service that undid Eliot Spitzer, the ex-governor of the state of New York, was one Cecil Suwal, 23, ‘a graduate of an élite New Jersey prep school’. Bad news travels fast and I was informed
In Competition No. 2539 you were invited to submit a problem in verse form to The Spectator’s agony aunt in the style of a poet of your choice. The assignment was inspired by James Michie’s poem ‘Dear Mary’, which appears in his superb posthumously published collection Last Poems and which brims with wit and humanity,
I have finally done it. After two decades of pitching ideas to television executives, one of them has been commissioned. The first episode was broadcast last week and attracted several million viewers. OK, now for the bad news. The person named as the ‘creator’ of the show is someone who I have never met and
The last two words of my column last week were ‘in future’. The new annoying equivalent to this phrase is going forward. The last two words of my column last week were ‘in future’. The new annoying equivalent to this phrase is going forward. It is much used by management-brains and media-types. I told my
Crowded isle Sir: You spell out the complexities of the immigration issue clearly in your leading article of 5 April, but the overriding problem, the nettle that simply has to be grasped, is its effect on the overall size of our island’s population. At more than 60 million it is already uncomfortably large, but a
Monday Major pasta panic! Dispatched to Oxfordshire to help Sam find lasagne sheets for Dave’s Thinkers and Opinionators Supper this weekend which is in real danger of being cancelled for the first time in its history — due to food shortages! Isn’t this just the most damning indictment of Brown’s Britain? Emailed Jed a memo:
Got some free time this weekend? Why not enter Fark’s Design a Flag for the Nanny State competition. A couple of entries I liked… [Hat-tip: KMW]
May 1st is becoming ever more important for Gordon Brown. Holding London and exceeding expectations in the rest of the country is the only thing that can put a stop to the increasingly frequent stories about how his government is doomed and he is the problem, see the Martin Kettle and Matthew Parris articles that
One of the most important things to have emerged from recent events in Basra and the testimony of General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker is that Iran has stepped up its efforts to destabilise Iraq. The crucial question is whether the Maliki government is now more prepared to confront this Iranian influence. The signs are promising.
The succession talk is chasing Gordon Brown into the weekend. Here’s Martin Kettle in today’s Guardian: “A spectre is haunting the Labour party – the spectre of Gordon Brown’s failure. Questions about Brown abound in Labour ranks. The concern is not, as far as I can tell from many conversations this week, primarily about Brown’s
At 11am today, Radio Four looks at the Tory school reform plan – inspired, apparently, by our recent cover story on Cameron’s schools revolution. I’m on the panel of Talking Politics, Dennis Sewell is hosting and my fellow panellists are Michael White from the Guardian and Anne McElvoy from the Evening Standard. We pre-recorded on
On March 14th, a Tibetan friend emailed me with this inscrutable message: “Here I meet many problem. Maybe you hear that. I can’t say for you in the mail.” March 14th seems to have been the most furious day of protests in Lhasa. That I had heard, but couldn’t be sure it was the ‘that’