Politics

You have to give David Cameron marks for trying. He’s still trying to breathe life into the word “responsibility” in hope that it can become some kind of a political battle cry. Steve Hilton literally built a business making “corporate social responsibility” into something that companies buy into – but it’s harder to do the same with politics. Every politician claims what they do is responsible, it’s not a distinguishing feature. The more Cameron uses the r-word, the more it reminds me if Brown starting every sentence “it is right that we…” Yet no new Tory idea is complete without the r-word, whether it’s the Debt Responsibility Mechanism or the

I say in my political column this week that Cameron must “offer tax cuts before Brown does” – and seems I may not have to wait long before David Cameron repays my faith in him. Patrick Hennessy says in the Sunday Telegraph today that the Tories are planning an employment-orientated tax cut financed by spending cuts. As the FT said on Saturday that Darling could be mulling some £15bn of tax cuts, there was a danger that the Tories could be the only party in Britain not proposing to let people keep more of their money. Cameron was in danger of falling into the trap which ensnared John McCain. McCain

It has become fashionable to blame Sarah Palin for John McCain’s election defeat. Sure, say Washington insiders, Palin invigorated the conservative base — add contemptuous sneer — but she alienated the independents and undecideds. The God-fearing mother-governor of Alaska was not fit for high office. Her television performances were an international embarrassment. In choosing Palin as his vice-presidential candidate, McCain proved that he was over-impulsive, cynical, foolhardy. All true to an extent. It should be recognised, however, that Senator Joseph Biden, the man who will now be sworn in as vice-president in January, is just as disastrous a public figure as Sarah Palin. In fact, he might be worse. At

Honey, they shrunk the candidate. It has been a sadness to watch John McCain, a towering figure in US politics, diminished by the campaign trail and by the errors he has made along the way. The nominee who stands before America today is a very different creature to the prospective candidate I interviewed for The Spectator in 2006. McCain’s whole mission then – and one which made him identify with David Cameron – was to stretch a hand out to non-Republican voters, to ditch the Bush-Rove strategy of wooing the “base” above all else. Lest we forget:  McCain was one of the first politicians of the Right to engage sensibly