Politics

The Prime Minister’s epic catalogue of early summer mishaps, mistakes and misjudgments lengthens by the day: if he is not making a fool of himself on YouTube, he is misreading the mood of the Commons on MPs’ expenses, or posing in front of swastikas. But, as wretched as they are, these incidents pale into insignificance compared to one truly monstrous strategic error: Number 10’s failure to acknowledge Joanna Lumley’s requests for a private meeting with the PM. Part of New Labour’s political genius in its early years was to hoist a Big Tent, a welcoming canvas which stretched over everyone with influence. Sometimes, this ‘inclusiveness’ was absurd and desperate: in

Christopher Caldwell’s* diary in the latest edition of the print magazine is good fun and I look forward to reading his new book. This part was especially entertaining: For many years, the ingenuity of the British press in exploiting the Brown-Blair rivalry story amazed me. What a gift the papers had for conveying that, this time, it was really about to blow. It was good to see last week that this old journalistic warhorse can still be saddled up, with the help of Hazel Blears’s remarks about the Prime Minister’s ‘lamentable’ failure to communicate. To an American audience, Blears’s insistence that she was 100 per cent behind the prime minister

So how damaging is the expenses scandal? Harriet Harman has told Sky that it is all within the rules, and I’m sure that’s true. But that’s not the point. To the public, this will look like plunder pure and simple. Straw claiming his council tax back, etc. Ministers had best calibrate their response very carefully, and here is an example in how not to respond from Sir Stuart Bell, who sits on the House of Commons Commission: “If this was received by unauthorised means, it is disgraceful that a national newspaper should stoop so low as to buy information which will be in the public domain in July. It undermines

Alex Salmond may argue that Scotland is “two thirds” of the way towards independence (though even if Salmond is correct that doesn’t mean independence is necessarily imminent) but the Royal Navy doesn’t seem to agree. In fact, the MoD must consider independence unlikely, otherwise why* would it be basing all of Britain’s submarines at the Faslane naval base on the Clyde? According to the latest plans, the Trafalgar class of subs will move from Devonport to Faslane by 2017 and the new Astute class submarines will also be based in Scotland. The SNP’s defence policy, of course, is a mess. The party is vehemently opposed to nuclear weapons and considers

Mental illness has always taken up a lot of space in the lexicon of New Labour,  I have always thought Alistair Campbell’s own brush with the black dog had something to do with this. From Ron Davies’s “moment of madness” to Gordon Brown’s “psychological flaws”, the terror of incipient madeness has always been a New Labour nightmare. I wrote about this tendency a few years ago but recent events have brought me back the subject. It was telling that Damian McBride’s emails contained references to Frances Osborne’s state of mind – as if it would be a bad thing that she was upset by her husband’s political misfortunes. It seemed inconceivable in the