Politics

Read about the latest UK political news, views and analysis.

Wednesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Glenn Beck and the Useful Idiots at Fox News

David Frum is, once again, spot on. Writing about the ludicrous – and loopy – Glenn Beck and his fantasies of armed resistance against the Obama administration’s “fascism”, Frum points out how useful Beck is to Obama (and vice versa) and how poisonous he and his ravings are to the future of the Republican party: Beck is a comedian at bottom, and he does not want to incite anyone to do anything except stay tuned through the following commercial announcements. But if the Obama press team had consciously designed an Exhibit A for their coming campaign of defamation against conservative America, they could not have asked for anything better than

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Special advisers do good work too

The McBride affair may have a dangerous side-effect – and that is blackening the name of special advisers. I am in the minority position of wanting to see more of them in Whitehall, and here’s why. McBride’s problem was his behaviour, not his status. The current suggestion that the real problem is his SpAd status – and not the instructions from dhis master – is a clever piece of self-exculpatory spin from Brown. We should not fall for it. And it’s also an insult to the many other SpAds who do good, honest work. I imagine many CoffeeHousers baulked at that last bit – but “good, honest spad” is not

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The McBride affair is a portent of the coming struggle for Labour’s soul

One can only imagine what went through Alistair Darling’s mind last weekend, as the scale of the McBride affair became evident. In his Budget next Wednesday, the Chancellor faces a political mission which was already next to impossible before the email story broke. Now his task has become downright laughable in its scale. To produce a budget with the economy in freefall is hard enough. But to do so with the government disintegrating all around you is scarcely worth attempting. In theory, Damian McBride’s resignation was simply the departure of a spin doctor, already relegated to a ‘back-room’ role. But nobody with the slightest knowledge of the Brown court believes

Tuesday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

BREAKING: Tom Watson to make a “personal statement”

I hear Tom Watson is about to make a “personal statement” which should clear up how much he knew about Red Rag and Damiangate. Last time I looked, Guido didn’t have any crosshairs trained on him – but we’ll see.  UPDATE: He isn’t going to resign, I’m told. But expect a statement tonight.

Matthew Dancona

Gove’s prophecy

Hat tip for political prophecy to Michael Gove who, in October 2007, provided the best analysis of what makes Gordon tick yet delivered by a senior Tory, and one which is even more impressive in the light of the McBride Affair  In a speech to the Bow Group, Gove dissected the (then newish) PM’s flaws to devastating effect, comparing Brown’s shortcomings to those of leaders past such as Lloyd George, LBJ and Mitterrand. Idealism, sincere initially, falls victim to the methods used to win and retain power: “…in order to win power, in order to hold it, in order to manage affairs, in order to woo public opinion, that idealism

Andrew Neil

Brown let the dogs out

When you keep a kennel of attack dogs then I guess you can’t entirely claim ignorance or absence of responsibility when one of them bites several passers by. That explains why Gordon Brown’s apologetic non-apology for the attempted muckraking of Damian McBride has failed to satisfy not just the Tories but many Labour supporters too.   After all, though McBride was fired for plotting to slime leading Tories, it is Labour politicians who have more often suffered at the hands of his dark arts — even supposed Brownite loyalists such as Douglas Alexander were victims. So many Labour MPs were as pleased to see McBride get his comeuppance as were

Sunday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Has the damage limitation worked?

So, has the spin operation worked? McBride’s quick depature had three objectives. 1. Close down the story. This seems to have worked: today’s news doesn’t have many more developments. If tomorrow’s papers have nothing new, then Damiangate may not last until Wednesday. This would be, in the circumstances, the best possible outcome for Brown as there is a far more dangerous aspect to this story as yet unwritten: how the tactics exposed by McBride’s emails (ie, character assassination) were the weapon used by Team Brown to take out his potential rivals for No.10. This time, the Tories were the target – but similar tactics were used to destabilise a long

Alex Massie Alex Massie

If politics were more like the internet… that would be a good thing

If it weren’t such fun despising Derek Draper one might have to pity the poor man. James has already highlighted one part of his latest post, but here’s another noteworthy, if sadly delusional, passage: Maybe this affair will encourage the whole blogosphere, right and left, to commit to a new start, where offensiveness and personal attacks are avoided and debate is elevated not dragged down into the gutter? Maybe this can be a turning point at which we all redouble our efforts to tap into the internet´s positive potential rather than allowing its more peurile aspects to come to the fore? But that won´t happen without many many more people

Matthew Dancona

The line-up remains the same

Yesterday, as the McBride resignation story raged, a distinguished former Labour minister asked me a rhetorical question: why is it always the same faces coming back? Derek Draper, Damian McBride, Peter Mandelson, Alastair Campbell, Charlie Whelan: all have supposedly resigned, disappeared from the front line, retired to explore new careers – and yet, here we are, in 2009, a decade and a half after Tony Blair became leader of the Labour Party and the faces remain the same. In this line-up, McBride, who only became a political adviser officially after the 2005 election, is very much the new boy. The answer is to be found, like so much wisdom, in

Alex Massie Alex Massie

How much does Damian McBride’s disgrace actually matter?

The first thing to say about the downfall of Damian McBride is, of course, how entertaining it is. Gordon Brown’s machine has deserved this kind of comeuppance for years. These are, and always have been, thoroughly disreputable people and, while there are plenty of people in the Labour party who might be wondering today why they’ve tolerated the McBrides of this world for so long, the questions don’t end there. After all, McBride and his ilk depend upon the connivance of the press to operate effectively. There’s something amusing too about seeing the press do its finest Captain Renault impression, declaring itself Shocked! that this is the way that Downing

Martin Bright

And So it Came To Pass…

It’s Easter Sunday and I have better things to do than think about sleazy emails. I’m unlikely to be able to post again about this again today, but I have much to say on the subject and Iain Dale in the Mail on Sunday has already quoted my previous comments about the thuggish company the Prime Minister sometimes chooses to keep. This is very serious for the Prime Minister, especially now Charlie Whelan’s name has been associated with the emails. The Tories have asked Gordon Brown to apologise and he probably should. I have always marvelled at the latitude Brown gave to his lieutenants. This has allowed him to distance himself, if

Saturday

Martin Bright

Could It Get Any Worse?

The tawdry tale of Damian McBride’s “juvenile and inappropriate” emails about Conservative politicians is pretty grim as it is. But it is just possible to imagine how the situation might be worse. What if someone even closer to McBride were on the circulation list, for example? Someone like Charlie Whelan, for example. That would be truly dreadful. And what if the emails were circulated even further, dragging in others, like Whelan, with close links  to the unions who will fund Labour’s next election campaign. Now that is so awful it is almost beyond imagination. Gordon Brown’s loyalty has always been his best and worst quality. There are many within the

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The smears that backfired

So what was Damian McBride planning in those emails? I can give you a glimpse of what the News of the World* has tomorrow – it’s an outline of the various dirty tricks discussed by McBride and Derek Draper, and it was far more developed than what has so far been claimed. The smears – and they are just that or, as the NOTW calls them, “false malicious stories” – include: 1) That David Cameron has some embarrassing illness. 2) A smear about Frances Osborne, wife of the shadow Chancellor 3) That a certain Tory MP used his position to get publicity for a lover’s business 4) That Cameron has

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

McBride quits

So, it’s happened. The News of the World has confirmed that Damian McBride has quit – and I understand that it will tomorrow publish the emails at the centre of the storm. The logic for the resignation is clear. McBride broke two cardinal rules for spin doctors: 1) Never become the story, and 2) Never, ever screw up during a bank holiday because the story just mushrooms – there’s nothing else to fill the news pages*. Damiangate had, through the course of today, taken on its own, awesome momentum. The options for No10 were clear: if McBride stayed, then tomorrow’s newspapers (and Monday’s, and Tuesday’s) would be choc full of

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The Tory plan for victory

Today’s Telegraph piece on how the Tories plan to fight the next election is worth reading in full. But there are some points in it that deserve special attention. First, the Ashcroft marginal seats campaign is still delivering with the Tories enjoying a 14 point lead in the main marginals. Second, love-bombing the Lib Dems seems to have worked. There has been a swing of 15 percent from them to the Tories since the 2005 election. Third, the Tories are confident that a desire to kick Labour out will be enough to motivate the base. As one Tory strategist tells the paper, “There is no point in focussing on immigration,

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

What McBride tells us about Brown

I woke up to a text message this morning from a friend in Whitehall. “I see Mc**** is in the doodoo”. An expletive preceded by “Mc” can only refer to one person – and indeed, as James and Pete have blogged, Damian McBride is back in the news with his redoubtable emails. I said a couple of years ago that McBride should be banned from electronic communication. Email is as proving as good for McBride’s career as it was for Oliver North’s. Here are two other things that strike me about the affair. 1. Brown’s Black Arts Strategy. His skill lies is attack, not persuasion. He bullied and plotted his

Martin Bright

Tribalism: The Curse of Labour

The official line from Number 10 is that Damian McBride’s emails were “juvenile and inappropriate” and that all staff will be reminded of the “appropriate” use of resources. Presumably they will also be reminded of how to be grown up. It has been an open secret for some time that there has been mission creep from McBride’s supposed backroom role. The formerly neutral Treasury civil servant was moved last October from his job as Gordon Brown’s frontline spinner because some, including cabinet ministers, believed he had become a liability. But McBride is an obsessive texter and emailer and it seems he couldn’t resist letting his fingers do the walking. Regular readers of this blog

Thursday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Barclays’ latest big deal leaves a bad taste in the mouth

What’s the difference between a banker and a pizza? A pizza can feed a family of four. So ran one of Vince Cable’s jokes when he presented the British Press Awards last week – but there is a crucial flaw. He reckoned without the financiers running an exchange-traded business fund named iShares. It is a subsidiary of Barclays and is 4.5% owned by senior Barclays staff. It has today been sold to CVC Capital, a private equity firm for $4.4bn – most of this money borrowed from, erm, Barclays (no difficulty finding credit there!). Result: payday for the lucky few with equity in iShares – about £1.6 million each –

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Is a 2009 election still a possibility?

Steve Richards reports in the New Statesman that Cabinet ministers are again talking about the prospect of an election this year not next. The thinking goes that if Labour clings on until the last minute they’ll lose so better to take the initiative and call an election as soon as they are within striking distance. One rumour doing the rounds in Westminster is that the Pre Budget Report in October will contain a second stimulus and Brown will then go to the country after that. But as Steve writes, “the dilemma for Brown is that, if he goes on to the bitter end, unlike Major, he is doomed to lose;

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The truth about conservatives and laissez-faire

Was it remarkable that George Osborne rejected laissez-faire economics in his speech yesterday? A CoffeeHouser, Marcus Cotswell, asks why I didn’t pick up on it in my summary yesterday. It is a very good point, and perhaps one worth addressing in a post rather than a comment. The Tories have never, ever believed in laissez-faire – this was a Liberal policy, a product of late Victorian politics. But the phrase is now said to caricature and attack the right (like “trickle-down economics” and “Washington consensus” etc). As Adam Smith observed, businessmen tend to collude with each other – you need laws and regulations to stop them. It’s a basic tenet