Politics

There is talk once again of Tony Blair becoming ‘President of Europe’. This grand title is unofficial. The job in question is formally called President of the European Council, and it will be created if the Lisbon Treaty ever comes into force. More Europhiles now see Mr Blair as having the fame and political clout to make the collective EU presence on the world stage a greater reality. The fact that they are thinking this way indicates something which we Eurosceptics are too slow to understand, which is that crisis in the EU tends to be used to strengthen integration. To us, it is obvious that a country like, say,

One of the problems with nationalism is that it craves attention. The Scottish variety is no exception. Thus, for instance, the normally sensisible SNP Tactical Voting asks: One day we may read in foreign newspapers “why can’t we be more like Scotland?” once in a while. Wouldn’t that be a refreshing change? Jeff goes on to say how jolly splendid it is that the SNP’s proposals for price controls on alcohol might be emulated elsewhere in the UK and, who knows, in truly foreign countries too. Whoopee! But this is scarcely surprising. After all the Scottish parliament has led the way before. Brave Wee Scotland was the first to ban

It can be dangerous to be more catholic than the Pope. That was my immediate reaction to John O’Sullivan’s piece on David Cameron in the latest issue of National Review. O’Sullivan dismisses the notion that there’s anything the Republican party can, let alone should, learn from the Cameronian Makeover. O’Sullivan is hardly alone in thinking this. That is, British conservatives exiled in Washington tend to disdain Toryism. From their comfortable berths at Heritage, AEI or National Review they tend to think British conservatism is fatally muddied by compromise and lacking the appealing clarity of the dominant strands in American conservatism. They dislike the uncomfortable truth that Britain is not an

No one outside Downing Street can imagine how tense it must be getting in the bunker as the economic situation worsens and the period Gordon Brown has to turn things around shortens. My suspicion is that it is getting very tense indeed. I was informed on Friday that  No 10 was not happy with some of the things I have been writing on The Bright Stuff. We already know that people around the Prime Minster were concerned at the suggestion that they were studying footage of Obama’s apologies. Officials have been unable to identify the person who was asking for this footage I am told. All very mysterious. But then again, would you put your hand

Once every fortnight or so, David Cameron’s chief strategist lands at San Francisco airport and returns to his own version of Paradise. Steve Hilton has spent just six months living in this self-imposed exile — but his friends joke that, inside his head, he has always been in California. Look at it this way: this is the place on Earth which fuses everything the Cameroons most like in life, where hard-headed businessmen drink fruit smoothies and walk around in recycled trainers. It is where a dynamic economy meets the family-friendly workplace. And it is here, to an extent that is greatly underestimated, that the Conservative government-in-waiting is looking to find