Politics

The next election will present voters with two distinct futures, says Irwin Stelzer: Labour’s rising taxes and love of the EU, or the Tories’ spending cuts and plans for the ‘broken society’ Where is the clear blue water? MPs in both the Labour and the Tory parties have engaged in behaviour that is illegal, or tawdry, or both. Both parties are responsible for the dire financial condition in which the country finds itself, Labour by spending and spending during the fat years, the Tories by promising to spend just as much if given the chance, instead of calling for restraint. Both parties will have to cut spending in the future,

Iain Dale, however, thinks Cameron passed with flying colours. I suppose it was merely a matter of time before the “Why Won’t Obama Come to the Aid of the Protestors?” meme spread to this side of the Atlantic and now, courtesy of the good* Mr Dale, it has. And apparently Gordon Brown and David Milliband havel also failed to help the Iranian regime by offering sufficiently forceful denunciations of their behaviour. That’s not what Iain wants, but it’s what would have happened if the President, Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary had followed his advice. Iain’s post is headlined “What Would Thatcher & Reagan Have Done About Iran?” which is itself

It seems some readers of this blog are such fundamentalist economic liberals that they even disapprove of Thatcher-style state encouragement of entrepreneurs. Check out some of the reaction to my last post for some examples of this tendency. I was really trying to alert readers to the words of Sir David Trippier, but never mind. But if my last post wound you up, I wonder what you’ll make of my latest news. I have been outed by David Lister of the Independent in a very generous column as “thinker in residence” at the Southbank Centre. Helpfully, David, has outlined some serious problems I have to consider: “How do you disport yourself?

It’s hardly breaking news that the British [sic] National Party are a bunch of racist goons. But it’s a little unsettling to see a Tory MP such as Eric Pickles* suggest that “They are going to be a very serious force in British politics and the mainstream political parties have got to get their act together and start confronting them.” On that latter point, we can agree. But, again, the suggestion that the BNP are going to become a force, let alone a serious one, in British politics gives these clowns much more credit than they merit and does a grave disservice to the collective wisdom and decency of the

So now Kitty Ussher has gone too. This really is becoming a significant clearout as hopes for the next generation of Labour politicians fall away. I always rather liked Kitty, who seemed decent enough and even spoke out against Tony Blair’s failure to speak out about the Lebanon war. But it’s difficult to see how she could stay in the government. An old colleague has just tweeted me that I shouldn’t be too soppy about her as she was “a Blairite SPAD who was parachuted into safe seat of which she knew nothing”, which is a little unfair, but not completely off the money.  His comments remind me that she was

For those who missed Rory Bremner doing an impersonation of Gordon Brown’s dancing on YouTube, the Prime Minister has just done a repeat version during his atrocious speech in Blackpool. You wonder if he has been watching aerobics videos, instead of “how to improve your diction” videos. It was all hands up, then hands down. He did a jump to the left, then a step to the right. It was a Prime Ministerial version of the timewarp, and it made you dizzy watching it. Except, who will have watched it? I did: I’m paid to. But Brown’s problem is that when he shows his coupon on television people reach for

TEHRAN, IRAN – JUNE 14: Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad holds a press conference on June 14, 2009 in Tehran, Iran. Photo: Majid/Getty Images. Well, you’d be chuckling if you’d stolen an election too, wouldn’t you? Suggestions for what Ahmadinejad is saying here are, of course, encouraged…

Labour got 15 per cent of the vote in the European elections, in which only 34 per cent of the electorate voted. That is roughly five per cent of those entitled to vote. When you add those too young to vote, this means that, on average, only one in every 25 people you pass in the street voted Labour last week. So when Mr Brown emerged triumphant from the meeting of his parliamentary party on Monday, his slogan was really ‘The Audacity of Hopelessness’. When people bemoan (or applaud) the decline of the British Establishment, they reckon without Lord Mandelson of Foy and Hartlepool. He presents himself as the only