World

While the BBC struggles to deal with its recent bout of self-proclaimed ‘shoddy journalism’, there’s another ethical scandal simmering away. The simple question of ‘who decides how the BBC covers climate change’ has a rather complicated answer. In 2006, the BBC Trust held a seminar entitled ‘Climate Change – the Challenge to Broadcasting’. As m’colleague James Delingpole has written at Telegraph Blogs, the seminar appeared to be far from a healthy debate. One of those in attendance, conservative commentator Richard D North, has gone public with his take on the event: ‘I found the seminar frankly shocking, The BBC crew (senior executives from every branch of the Corporation) were matched by a equal number of specialists,

Few people have been more important in America’s recent wars than David Petraeus. Petraeus led the surge of US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan and redefined the US approach to counter-insurgency warfare. He was the most influential military figure of the post-war era and successful enough for some of those close to Obama to hold deep concerns about the prospect of Petraeus running against Obama. 14 months ago, he was put in charge of the CIA by President Obama. There he expanded Predator strikes to Yemen and pushed for a larger drone fleet. But yesterday, Petraeus resigned over an extra-marital affair with his biographer. It is a sad end to

When I worked in Washington, I was shown round the White House by a junior Bush administration staffer. As our group made it round the building we passed various photos of George W. Bush signing bits of legislation into law, at nearly everyone our guide would stop and tell us how many voters in various key states would benefit from it. When there was a picture of Bush with a governor, we’d be regaled with both sets of approval ratings. It was clear that whatever the administration’s flaws – and there were many – it had an acute understanding of the importance of data and the changing nature of the

‘I’ve come back to Iowa one more time to ask for your vote,’ said President Obama at an emotional ‘last ever’ campaign meeting. ‘Because this is where our movement for change began, right here. Right here.’ And his eyes briefly moistened. The nostalgia was doubtless sincere, and the address correct, but it was misleading to describe his 2012 election campaign as a continuation of his earlier ‘movement for change’. In reality, it has been a smoothly ruthless operation to distract attention from a record that has been disappointingly bereft of change. He triumphed over himself as much as over the hapless Mitt Romney. Until it produced a glossy economic leaflet

Today, says American political journalist Michael Brendan Dougherty, ‘120 million Americans will choose who they don’t want to be president.’ Exactly — for all Mitt Romney and Barack Obama’s upbeat noise over the last few days, the 2012 US presidential elections have been motivated, entirely, by fear and loathing. The key questions: Are you so fed up with Barack Obama that you can bring yourself to vote for Romney? Or do you hate the Republicans enough to vote for Obama? With all its attack ads and its mudslinging, this election has been negative populism from the start. It’s not liberalism vs conservatism; it’s anti-liberalism vs anti-conservatism. Let’s not be pious,

Four years ago, on the weekend before the 2008 presidential election, political commentator John McLaughlin asked the four panellists on his show The McLaughlin Group to predict the winner. As Nate Silver says in his excellent book The Signal and the Noise, ‘That one ought not to have required very much thought.’ The polls indicated that Barack Obama was the strong favourite to beat John McCain. For McCain to win, the polls would’ve had to be heavily biased towards Obama — something for which there was no evidence. But of the four panellists, only one — Eleanor Clift — predicted what was clearly the most likely outcome. Monica Crowley predicted