Politics

A quick update to my earlier post: according to the Evening Standard, ten ministers are now prepared to quit in protest at Brown’s leadership.  Of course, they may not go ahead with it.  But the story still fuels the idea that dissatisfaction with Gordon Brown is hardening, rather than fizzling away over the summer as Downing Street would have hoped.  Apparently, most in Labour now consider a revolt at the beginning of September “highly likely”.  It’s becoming increasingly difficult to disagree.

What happens when politicians shut themselves away, and stare into an abyss both political and personal? After Bruce Anderson’s revelations about Gordon Brown yesterday, I think we need to know. So I re-watched Robert Altman’s 1984 film Secret Honor last night, looking for a bit of elucidation. Secret Honor gives us a fictionalised, post-Watergate Richard Nixon. He locks himself in a room – not with a computer and the garbled recollection of a Dominic Grieve quote, but with a bottle of scotch and a loaded gun – and delivers his political testimony to a tape recorder.  That’s what we get for the next 90 minutes. Stephen yesterday referred to Brown’s actions as “more that political paranoia”. 

Rachel Sylvester’s article in today’s Times is a perfect summary of the plots threatening the Labour leadership. Two passages jumped out at me: “Civil servants – who can sink or save a politician – have not warmed to Mr Brown. ‘People say he’s charming in private but it’s completely untrue,’ an official who has worked closely with him said. ‘He’s incredibly rude. He doesn’t remember names. His e-mails are brusque demands. And his defining characteristic is anger. I’ve seen him kicking furniture.’” And “I spoke to a junior minister yesterday who claims to be prepared to resign in September in protest at Mr Brown’s leadership and believes that nine other government

Here are George Osborne’s answers to the last five questions put forward by CoffeeHousers.  For Part I click here GS London “What are the realistic possibilities of a flat-rate taxation system? If not, please explain why not, and, failing that, would a conservative government make effort to drastically reduce the complexity in current taxation?”  There are important lessons we can learn from the flat tax. Under Labour, Britain’s tax code has more than doubled in length, adding to the administrative burden for businesses and individuals across Britain. That’s why I have set out a long-term commitment to make our tax system simpler and fairer, and asked Lord Howe to develop

 Dunfermline, Crewe, Glasgow East – the phenomenon of safe Labour seats being upended is one that deserves a little more attention. Let’s consider that incredible turnout in Glasgow East – 42% in a seat where 48% turned up for the general. For the first time in decades, a political party (the SNP) campaigned hard there. People knocked on doors. The nationalists raised, and deployed, an army of people and asked Glasgow East voters what they thought, they engaged with them. And it worked.   Remember the BNP’s electoral successes – such as they are – come from exploiting the forgotten people in Labour’s modern-day rotten boroughs. They were the first

Aside from schadenfreude, there is not much in the Glasgow East result to make David Cameron smile. It reminds us that what is happening nationally is a fury directed at Labour, not Obama style enthusiasm for the Tories. I had initially thought coming third was quite a result for Cameron but went to bed before calculating voting shares. As CoffeeHousers pointed out, Cameron has made no progress in Glasgow East with his 6% voting share unchanged. And that in spite of an excellent candidate. Of course in these by-elections, voters wishing to stir things up pick the nearest stick to beat Labour with. In Dunfermline and West Fife, Brown’s home