Politics

Nick Clegg’s reshuffle illustrates the problems that he is going to have as Lib Dem leader. Three of the most talented and well know Lib Dems won’t be on the front bench. It is hard to imagine that a party as small as the Lib Dems can afford to have big beasts like Charlie Kennedy, Paddy Ashdown and Ming Campbell missing from the front line. The top team is, though, as Iain Martin argues, strong in certain aspects. Vince Cable is an impressive figure and if the economy goes south, he’ll make sure that the Lib Dems benefit politically. Ed Davey will be a more formidable foreign affairs spokesman than Michael

David Cameron and George Osborne are both singing from the same hymn sheet about the fact that there was no Granita style deal between the two of them in their joint interviews with the Mail and the Telegraph. The big difference between Cameron and Osborne and Blair and Brown is that Osborne was never the senior partner and as the younger man need not fear that he’s missed his turn. Probably the most likely source of future tension between the two of them is foreign policy. Where as Cameron is a classic Conservative when it comes to foreign policy, see his Berlin speech which was depressingly Hurdian, Osborne’s world view is far

The main news coming out of Gordon Brown’s monthly news conference is that nationalising Northern Rock is now clearly under serious consideration, with Brown and Alistair Darling both stressing that all options are on the table. The other notable thing was how Brown kept banging on about ‘the spirit of Christmas’ in, what came across on television, as a rather over the top fashion. One of the New Year’s resolutions for Brown’s media team must be to find a way of humanising him and allowing him to demonstrate some warmth and humour in a way that comes across as natural. PS Bob Marshall-Andrews, who’d be disloyal to himself if he

Peter Hyman, Tony Blair’s former chief speechwriter, described Nick Clegg as a ‘mini-Cameron’ on Newsnight yesterday and there’s little doubt that Cameron and Clegg exude a similar aroma. Some think that this will dilute Cameron’s appeal, see Simon Heffer in the Telegraph this morning, but this ignores the fact that Clegg is not yet as able a politician as Cameron. For evidence of this, just compare how both fared against Jeremy Paxman. Last night, Clegg attempted to counter Paxman by questioning his entire method as Cameron famously did during the Tory leadership race in 2005. Clegg repeatedly told Paxman you can sneer if you like and tried to dismiss him

Washington After almost a year of the candidates manoeuvring for position in the national and state polls, one aspect of the 2008 presidential election campaign remains as constant as the North Star: Hillary Clinton is the favourite. She is backed by most party regulars, supported by a national machine, advised by the most brilliant politician of her generation and perched on a consistent lead in the national opinion polls. Almost the only thing that could lose her the election is her personality. Behind their hands, observers compare her to Richard Nixon in 1968. Like Nixon, Clinton has a withdrawn, cool and calculating personality. The comparison does not end there. Both

A Republican debate in Florida in late November marked this electoral season’s debut of Adolf Hitler, that reliable presence in American presidential campaigns. The Arizona senator John McCain, struggling to draw even with the garrulous ex-New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani and the Mormon technocrat (and former Massachusetts governor) Mitt Romney, decided to burnish his pro-war credentials. The problem was, there was almost nobody to burnish them against. Seven of the eight candidates on stage had vied for months to outdo one another in their lock-stock-and-barrel support for George W. Bush’s Iraq policy. That left Ron Paul, the 72-year-old, ten-term congressman from Texas, to bear the brunt of McCain’s wrath. Paul