Politics Archives

Saturday

6 Jun 2009

Gordon Brown, Caroline Flint, the Scorpion and the Frog

Of all the blunders made by Gordon Brown and his henchmen, few were as easily avoidable as that which led to Caroline Flint’s resignation. Equally, few do more to illuminate a simple, but vital truth: Gordon Brown just isn’t very good at politics. Flint might have been a troublesome minister and far too close to Hazel Blears for her own good, but so what? And, sure, perhaps she was being presumptious when she asked for a better job as the price for her loyalty and willingness to make a fool of herself by defending the beleaguered Prime Minister in public. But, again, so what? There are plenty of jobs avaialable

Friday

5 Jun 2009

Alex Massie

A Message from Gordon Brown

El Gordo addresses the nation: This government will never stop fighting for ordinary people in these extraordinary times. Today I have reshaped the government around three clear priorities. Cleaning up politics, getting through this downturn fairly and giving people greater control over their public services. We need a clean up of our politics in this country. Politicians must serve the public, and not themselves. We will act quickly to bring in an independent regulator to scrutinise the behaviour of our MPs. We will introduce a tough, legally binding code of conduct for MPs. In addition every single expense claim made by MPs of all parties over the last four years

Alex Massie

What about the Ministry of Defence?

Via Facebook, a friend makes a very good point: John Hutton’s successor as Secretary of State for Defence will be the fifth person to hold that job in the last five years. No wonder there’s a total lack of continuity at the MoD. This is, to put it mildly, no way to treat what should be one of the most important jobs in government. And this at a time when, however fitfully, we’ve been fighting two wars. One trusts that the next government will treat the MoD more seriously. But, as I’ve suggested, when it comes to Tory defence policy there seems to be quite a bit of heavy-lifting that

Matthew Dancona

The idea of a Sheerman-Miliband plot is rubbish

The smears begin: Number Ten is briefing that Barry Sheerman’s calls for a secret ballot on the Labour leadership are part of an elaborate Miliband-ite plot – the “how-they-are-connected” reasoning being that the MP for Huddersfield and chairman of the Children, Schools and Families Select Committee, is also the father of one of David Miliband’s advisers, Madlin Sadler. The clear objective is to get Mr Sheerman, who has been an MP for 30 years, deselected. Rumour control: I remember Mr Sheerman from the days when I wrote about education and the idea that he would do something so significant and so alien to his loyalist instincts simply at his daughter’s

Matthew Dancona

Livingstone carries the standard for the Labour left

That it should come to this: one can barely turn on the television without seeing Ken Livingstone vociferously defending Gordon Brown against what he describes, wrongly, as an “uber-Blairite plot.” Ken – of all people – says that this disunity really will not do, and that Labour has a duty to rally behind the Prime Minister and his high-spending, interventionist policies. The two men once nursed one of the great hatreds in British politics. In 1998, for example, Livingstone wrote that “Gordon is not up to his job… The end result… is that Britain is now heading towards a recession entirely of Gordon’s making.” Two years later, Brown wrote a

Matthew Dancona

Is this the measure of Johnson?

Susan Boyle leaves the Priory, Alan Johnson goes to the Home Office. Or is it the other way round? The revolving doors continue to spin. I have long been mystified by Mr Johnson’s position as the Pearly Dauphin, the heir apparent to Gordon Brown. Nobody has been able to explain to me why he should be the next Prime Minister other than the undeniable fact that he has the Cockney charm of an early episode of Minder. Now I like Minder and the works of Guy Ritchie as much as the next man. But I do not see their relevance to the identity of the next occupant of Number Ten

Thursday

4 Jun 2009

Matthew Dancona

The end has come for Gordon Brown

Gordon Brown is finished. I said so on Newsnight last night and I say it again now with even more conviction. In James Purnell, he has lost a truly formidable Cabinet colleague, the best and the brightest of his generation, and one of the few senior Labour figures to grasp the full extent and novelty of the Cameron revival – much more than the neo-Blairite as which he is often caricatured in media profiles. Purnell also has the countenance and personality of a future leader – as the Spectator tipped last year. I hope he reconsiders his statement that he will not run in the leadership election which must surely

Alex Massie

To vote or not to vote?

I’d been thinking that I might as well vote today but Chris Dillow makes a pretty good case for not bothering to endorse any of the parties seeking one’s support. Also, the Scottish european election campaign has, if anything, been even more of a non-event than it seems to have been elsewhere. That is, the minor party that might do well here is the Greens and they’re hardly worth getting worked up about, let alone going out of one’s way to vote against. Not very civic-minded, perhaps. But who truly cares whether the Lib Dems win a european seat or whether Labour holds onto its second? UPDATE: OK, folks, I

Andrew Lilico

Brown’s second spending spree

Public spending is currently accelerating at an unprecedented pace — more swiftly, even, that during the total loss of control during the 1970s. Spending is due to rise £120bn, 20%, in just three years from 2007/8 to 2010/11, taking it from 41% of GDP to above 50% — a much more rapid rise than in other parts of the world, lifting us from well below the EU average to well above. The considerable majority of this rise is not the automatic result of the recession (extra unemployment benefits, etc.) – only 38% takes this form. Neither is it any kind of “public works” programme – only 6% is extra capital

Martin Bright

It’s Truly Shakespearean Now

I’m just back from seeing Jude Law’s Hamlet at the Wyndham’s Theatre. I’ll leave judgement on the quality of the production and performances to those more qualified than myself. But it was certainly a very clear, no-nonsense retelling of that most terrible of stories. Since the point was first made about Gordon Brown being a character from a Shakespearean tragedy, it’s been a fascinating parlour game to identify which tragic hero he most closely resembles. Like Lear, he must have imagined himself betrayed by at least one ungrateful daughter this week and he has always had the vaulting ambition of a Macbeth. He also shares Hamlet’s gift for indecision. But as I

Wednesday

3 Jun 2009

Matthew Dancona

Darling and Miliband won’t be moved

In every crisis of leadership, there are a few protagonists who matter much more than most: self-evidently, the Prime Minister’s spouse and core advisers, but also the holders of the great offices of state. The Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, has already announced her departure, triggering today’s spectacularly ill-timed mayhem. As James pointed out earlier, Peter Mandelson handed the black spot to Alistair Darling in a BBC interview today and Gordon Brown conspicuously declined to use the future tense in his encomium of his Chancellor at PMQs. All seems to be in order for a new boss at the Treasury to be appointed in the forthcoming reshuffle and there is ever

Lloyd Evans

Brown gets through PMQs

Would you Adam and Eve it? The Prime Minister actually seemed to enjoy PMQs today. With the whole of Westminster abuzz with whispered plots and covert knife-sharpenings perhaps the Commons seemed a haven of openness and civility by contrast. Brown got off to a lousy start though. He stuttered and fumbled through the names of the war dead, scuffing consonants, garbling regiments. And he finished the tribute on a weird note of grandiloquent defiance as if he were writing the epitaph of Gordon Brown, RIP, and his clique of apostles. ‘These men are exceptionally great men. And their service shall not be forgotten!’ Cameron got up. What an easy

Fraser Nelson

An air of resignation in PMQs

An electric atmosphere in the Commons today. Labour MPs with faces like murder, Tony McNulty skulking in the back where the cameras won’t get him, and Sean Woodward to Brown’s left. To his right, Harman then Straw. A chastened Michael Martin started proceedings with a question from the SNP’s Mike Weir – isn’t the Cabinet reshuffling itself, and Brown’s authority in shreds? Brown murmured that he’d saved the banks, was getting on with the job, and was roundly jeered. It set the tone for the rest of PMQs. Cameron didn’t go in for the kill – he just asked a similar version of the same question. Brown replied by praising

Douglas Eden

We came close to losing our democracy in 1979

Douglas Eden reveals the extraordinary penetration of the 1970s Labour movement by pro-Soviet trade unionists and the extent of Callaghan’s toleration of the hard Left Thirtieth anniversaries have been in vogue this year. So far, there have been seminars and conferences to commemorate the notorious 1979 Winter of Discontent and the subsequent election of Margaret Thatcher’s government. Still missing is observance of the defeat of the Left’s project, led from the trade unions, to transfigure parliamentary demo-cracy into a form of soviet state. The project’s leading figure was the general secretary of Britain’s largest union, the Transport & General Workers Union (the T&G), and chairman of the TUC’s international committee,

Tuesday

2 Jun 2009

Martin Bright

Why the Reshuffle is a Nightmare for Brown

There are a number of peculiar aspects of the political moment through which we are living: the fact that the Prime Minister has no mandate from the country or his own party, the collapse of the economy, the meltdown at Westminster. But never before have we had a political moment where junior ministers will be praying not to be promoted and Cabinet ministers will be relieved to be leaving the government. When they are reshuffled, Jacqui Smith and Alistair Darling will be delighted to join the backbenches (although in Darling’s case the torture may continue if he gets the Home Secretary job). Who in their right mind would want to work

Alex Massie

Pigs at the Trough?

Now that the Tories have reopened their candidate selection process, there are going to be plenty of candidates wondering how best to take advantage of their opponents’ extravagant expense claims. The intricacies of capital gains tax and “flipping” second homes are all very entertaining, but liable to become bogged down in legalese. Not so, by comparison, the hefty £400 MPs could claim for food each month. A friend sees this as an opportunity not to be wasted and emails me his advice to would-be MPs to: Spend £400 in a branch of Greggs – which will get you approx 100 steak bakes, 200 sausage rolls, 100 scotch pies and 100

Fraser Nelson

The Spectator Christmas edition – full contents

The Christmas issue of the Spectator is in the shops now, but if you don’t yet have a copy, here are the contents in full: Features In defence of Blairism – Tony Blair Michael Gove interviews the Archbishop of Canterbury James Forsyth and Fraser Nelson interview David Cameron Mark Clarke, Bercow, Sewel: 2016 was a vintage year for the cad – Quentin Letts Yes, Eddie Redmayne played a transsexual. Does that make him qualified to speak for them? – Tom Hollander Our uniting kingdom: how opinions in Scotland and England are fast converging – Leading article If it’s Trump vs Clinton then Hillary’s path to the White House is clear. She can’t be

Monday

1 Jun 2009

Alex Massie

How to deal with a problem like North Korea?

As Yglesias notes, it’s uncanny how too many conservative pundits continue to believe that every problem is a nail and the only tool the United States possesses is a hammer. Now, like everyone else, I have no idea how we should deal with North Korea. And even that assumes that there is some kind of a deal that can be made. One thing I would ask, however, is that since NK seems to rather enjoy its pariah status – in as much as any paranoid regime can be said to enjoy anything – one wonders if increasing or tightening sanctions on NK is the most sensible tactic. In some sense,

Alex Massie

Gordon Brown’s Presbyterian Conscience

When a politician tries to make a virtue out of the fact that he was brought up in a household in which lying was frowned upon then, verily, you know he’s on his uppers. Equally, though I daresay that much of the expenses scandal does offend the remnants of Gordon’s “presbyterian conscience” it’s not immediately clear that asserting his own membership of the Elect is necessarily going to endear the Prime Minister to his twin congregations at Westminster and in the country at large, each of which is manifestly fallen… Anyway, if Brown’s “presbyterian conscience” really is all he’d like us to think it is and if his bally “moral

The Spectator

Just in case you missed them… | 1 June 2009

…here are some of the posts made on Spectator.co.uk over the weekend: Fraser Nelson fisks Gordon Brown’s interview with Andrew Marr. James Forsyth wonders whether the Labour press will decide Brown has to go, and gives his take on David Cameron’s mortgage. Peter Hoskin reveals how to kill – rather than save – a premiership, and reports on a terrible opinion poll for Labour. Clive Davis becomes an Evertonian for the day. Alex Massie wanders Saturday Morning Country. And Americano sets out the rules of war for cyberspace.