Politics

Last night’s Newsnight interview with Ming summed up the problems the Lib Dems face. First of all, Ming only got 15 minutes at the end of the show compared to the full length, star attraction treatment that Brown and Cameron got. Second, the interview revolved around the Lib Dem’s leadership troubles—a trend Campbell exacerbated by choosing to quibble over every piece of polling data his inquisitors challenged him with. Third, Ming’s performance was poor. (Although, to be fair, he was much better on the Today Programme this morning.) The conventional wisdom is that the Lib Dems can’t afford to get rid of two leaders inside a parliament; especially as an

The government’s unprecedented decision to guarantee every bank deposit in the country should be enough to stop the queues outside Northern Rock branches and any further meltdown in the financial system. However, no one has covered themselves in glory during this episode. Adam Applegarth, the chief executive of Northern Rock, has delivered a master class in how not to handle a crisis, The Bank of England and the Financial Services Authority have between them dropped the ball and the government has looked far from sure of itself. Indeed it is noticeable how despite Alistair Darling’s shaky performances, Gordon Brown has still kept away.   One of the many questions that remains

The credit crunch is global. So why has there only been a run on the banks in Britain? Alistair Darling suggests Northern Rock is a mere domino in a chain which started in America. But John Redwood’s blog points out that the first domino was knocked over by the clumsy fingers of the Labour government. Only in Britain did the central bank refuse to boost liquidity by lending at a non-penalty rate (unlike the ECB, the Fed, the Norwegians, Swiss, Russians etc).   The next bit sounds nerdy, so was the ERM crisis so stay with me. Exacerbated by the BoE’s intransigence, the de facto cost of bank borrowing, three-month

On Thursday I thought that Gordon Brown had pulled off a masterstroke by inviting Margaret Thatcher to tea at Downing Street, but now I’m not so sure. Marina Hyde’s column is a good guide to the shifting reactions to it and is well worth reading. As Hyde writes, “This piece of gesture politics – even that description flatters – reveals nothing more nor less than a total contempt for the voter. What is the slackjawed electorate supposed to divine from this cynical dumb show? Perhaps that Gordon is above anything so unseemly as ideological difference, or that some sort of tea-based transubstantiation has given him new prime ministerial gravitas, or

Sir Menzies Campbell’s call for a referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU is a desperate bid to preserve party unity on the eve of what may be his last conference as Lib Dem leader. No less than Harold Wilson in 1974-5, he seeks to avert a party split by backing a plebiscite. The trouble is that the question Ming wants to pose – In or Out – is a complete irrelevance (except for Ukip voters). The controversy over the re-heated EU Constitution, now stripped of grandiose language but substantially the same as it was in 2004, has nothing whatsoever to do with membership of Europe. It is about trust