Politics

Publicly at least, Labour MPs are jubilant that Gordon Brown has agreed to appear, in principle, in a televised election debate. They give the responses to the creed first spun by Blair: that Brown is an arch-realist and heavyweight who will undo the vacuous Tories in debate. Certainly, Mr Brown is blessed with talents. As proud wives like to do, Brown’s listed his the other day – intelligence, hard work, dutifulness, diligence and patriotism. All laudable attributes, but even from environs of the cosy Labour conference, Mrs Brown did not dare suggest that her husband was in any way a realist. Brown’s, and Labour’s, messy divorce from political reality was

I just don’t understand David Cameron’s stubbornness over his alliance with his new friends in fringe European parties. Why make a stand for these people? William Hague’s insistence of an apology from David Miliband following his comments at Labour Party conference is plain daft. Miliband may have gone over the top in what he said about Cameron’s new allies. But there’s no way he will withdraw his comments. Why draw attention to the Conservative Party’s connections with these people?  I don’t know if Poland’s Michal Kaminski really is an anti-Semite or a homophobe or whether he was a member of a neo-fascist group in his youth. Everything David Miliband said about

Iain Martin writes a typically insightful post on Labour’s conference capitulation.  His central point is that Brown & Co. are following a misguided “no compromise” strategy: “These difficulties with the media are part of a wider problem with the so-called ‘fight-back’ strategy being used by Gordon Brown. It is based on an analysis which is highly unlikely to convince any voter to change his or her mind. In short, it runs like this: ‘We have looked at the many opinion polls which tell us the vast majority of you think we’re untrustworthy and have messed up monumentally. But we think you’re wrong. We’re actually brilliant, and we’re going to keep

A quick post to point out that Fraser’s interview with David Cameron – to which CoffeeHousers contributed questions – will be appearing in tomorrow’s issue of the magazine.  We’ll also be making the article free to all website users tomorrow morning, so you can read the full thing then.  In the meantime, here’s a selection of the quotes within it, so you can get a sense of what the Tory leader had to say for himself: Thoughtful radicalism: “What you need is thoughtful radicalism. Prepared radicalism. It needs to come from a solid and strong base. Compare Margaret Thatcher’s trade union reforms with Ted Heath’s. It wasn’t that Ted Heath’s