Politics

The BBC’s excellent Nick Robinson speculates that Rupert Murdoch’s decision to hand control of his european interests to his son James is more bad news for Gordon Brown: the man formerly known as Britain’s most powerful tycoon was personally, if not always politically, sympathetic to the prime minister. Rupert Murdoch admires Gordon Brown’s personal morality and his commitment to hard work. What’s more, initially at least, Murdoch Senior was not taken with David Cameron. Not so the man we will now have to get used to calling Britain’s most powerful media tycoon. James Murdoch does not share his father’s admiration for Brown or scepticism about Cameron. What impact will this

If I was Gordon Brown, one of the things that would worry me most is how much more relaxed Labour figure are becoming about expressing unhelpful thoughts. Just today we have Matthew Taylor, Tony Blair’s former chief strategic adviser, telling The Guardian that the Brownite handling of donor-gate has been “inept” and that it’s “too early to say that the position for the government is terminal” and a minister who was dropped when Brown came to office confiding to a Sky journalist that he thinks the government is a ‘disaster.’ There’s also pressure on Brown from the opposite end of Labour’s ideological spectrum. This week’s New Statesman cover is a

Tony Blair recently complained of how in Britain people think of politicians as nuts if they talk about God. But Blair was a lot better off than Mitt Romney, a former governor of Massachusetts who is running for the Republican presidential nomination. Tomorrow, Romney is delivering a speech which could be entitled why a Mormon can be president too. The polls show that Romney’s Mormonism is a serious electoral problem for him with as more than one in four voters saying they wouldn’t vote for a Mormon candidate in some polls. To compound Romney’s problem his main rival in the must-win for him Iowa caucuses is Mick Huckabee a Baptist

One inevitable consequence of donor-gate is that Labour will find it even more difficult to raise money. If things were hard after the whole ‘cash for honours business’, just imagine how much worse it will be now. For a party, that’s £20,178,392 in debt this is a serious problem. Guido, though, has found a silver lining for the Labour bean-counters. As all the deputy leadership candidates were required to give 15 percent of all money raised to the Labour party, Peter Hain will now presumably have to write Labour a cheque for 15 percent of his unregistered donations. Does this mean, though, that Harriet Harman’s indebted campaign can get a rebate for

The monthly Cameron press conference is far more congenial than Brown’s. Coffee is offered at the door, together with biscuits made by the chef in downstairs kitchen. But for all that, it’s quite thinly attended and short (30 mins). Cameron called every journalist in the room by their first name, being utterly at ease. I guess one of the purposes of these briefings will be to strike a contrast with Brown, who only knows a handful of journalists.. Cameron had an entrée for us. He announced, statesman-style, that he’d just spoken to Sayeeda Warsi in Sudan and could confirm the pardon of Gillian Gibbons. No one cared. All questions were