Politics Archives

Saturday

8 Dec 2007

The Spectator’s notes | 8 December 2007

Charles Moore’s thoughts on the week We all know about spin in theory, but we are slow to notice it in practice. The approved version of the release of Gillian Gibbons, the ‘teddy bear’ teacher in the Sudan, is that the Sudanese government has seen reason thanks to the mission of two Muslim peers, Lord Ahmed and Lady Warsi. But is that so? Is it likely that the Sudanese government had no hand in the original, preposterous charge against her, and did not plan the game which followed? Is it credible that the demonstration calling for fiercer punishment for Ms Gibbons was not approved by the government? Was there any real

James Forsyth

How Gordon plans to reconcile with the Blairites

The big political story of the New Year will be how Gordon Brown tries to get his groove back. Peter Oborne reports in the Mail this morning that Brown’s plans include a regional tour, a possible cabinet reshuffle and a rapprochement with the Blairites. To that end, Oborne reveals: “There is now lively talk inside Downing Street that Alastair Campbell might be brought back in a senior strategic role in the New Year and, apparently, there are indications that Blair’s controversial former Press Secretary would welcome such a role. More striking still, I am assured that Cherie Blair is now certain to receive a peerage.” One wonders if a peerage

The Skimmer

Connections … between the BBC and Blair

The distinguishing characteristic of the three-part documentary on the Blair years which ended on BBC1 last Sunday was not just that it failed to tell us things we didn’t already know. No, what was most intriguing about it was the web of interconnecting BBC-Blairite links that lay behind it. Consider the following. The series was made for the BBC by Juniper, an independent production company run by Samir Shah, who used to run BBC Westminster. An intelligent man of strong Blairite sympathies, he does more than just run Juniper — he is also a non-executive director on the board of the BBC. Juniper’s managing director is Richard Clemmow.

Fraser Nelson

Labour would get rid of Gordon — if the plotters had a real candidate

There is conspiring in the corridors once again in Westminster. Who could replace Gordon, they ask. Labour’s problem is that the young pretenders are too young and the idea of caretaker leader seems slightly ridiculous, it would look absurd for the government to change Prime Minister twice in the same Parliament. So, Brown will solider on while the battle of succession rages just beneath the surface. After ten tedious years of firm party discipline, life is finally returning to the corridors of the House of Commons. A lobby journalist on patrol can once again gather intelligence, whether it be from ministers colluding behind the Speaker’s chair or clusters of Labour

Irwin Stelzer

Guess what? Gordon has done something right

Spare a moment for a story in which Gordon Brown is the good guy. Not as exciting as tales of the money trail from David Abrahams to the Labour party’s coffers; nor as bloodcurdling as tales of crimes committed by untold numbers of illegal immigrants; nor as nervous-making as the possibility of identity theft from tens of millions of lost HM Revenue and Customs files; nor as economically immediate as tales of a busted bank. But of more enduring consequence for Britain’s economy and its social structure. Soon, very soon if City rumours are correct, some top executives will face criminal charges — not from overzealous American cops, but from

Anne Mcelvoy

The Labour party has ended up as the unloved child of the Blair–Brown divorce

Deep party feuds never really die: they just lie buried under the flimsy covering of the good times. For Gordon Brown as Prime Minister, such times have been brief indeed. My yoga teacher tells her wobbly pupils that the point of balance in a perfect headstand is the point just before we fall over. Mr Brown has discovered this goes for politics too. Not least among his many horrors in a parliamentary session overwhelmed by a building society crisis, carelessly lost confidential files, inaccurate data on foreign workers and the funding scandal from hell, is the return of negative comparisons with his predecessor. As soon as I heard people close

Friday

7 Dec 2007

Alex Massie

Changes in Murdochland

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

Alex Massie

D.I.V.O.R.C.E British style.

Scotland is already a semi-detached member of the Union and the question, it now seems, is whether the delegation/repatriation of further powers to Holyrood results in a Scotland that is 75% detached from the rest of the UK, or one that decides for whatever constitutes independence these days. Regardless of what the country decides, the momentum towards having to make that sort of decision seems all but irresistible (I’d add that logic adds its weight to the process too, but that’s a different matter). A couple of fresh data points this week: first, this Guardian article “Scotland Awakes” is an unusually reasonable London take on matters north of the border;

James Forsyth

Celebrity politics

I’m normally fairly sceptical about the value of celebrity endorsements. I can’t imagine that if, say, Frank Lampard urged people to vote Tory at the next election it would make much of a difference. But the exception to this rule is Oprah Winfrey, the American chat show host who is going out to stump for Barack Obama this weekend. She’s already filled an 80,000 seat football stadium in South Carolina for the campaign and she’s enabling Obama to reach voters he otherwise wouldn’t. To get a handle on just how much Oprah matters to her fans and how much influence she could have on the race consider these two statistics: “A

James Forsyth

Did Abrahams say this?

Just when you thought that the David Abrahams’s story could not become any more bizzare, along comes this. The Jewish Chronicle has an explosive interview with Abrahams this morning in which he warns that if “the government starts hammering” him, then the whole affair “might take one or two dirty turns.” He also claims that the “real reason I wanted to remain anonymous was that I didn’t want Jewish money and the Labour Party being put together because this is what I feared would happen. People would say there’s a Jewish conspiracy.” But Abrahams is denying that he ever gave the Jewish Chronicle an interview. David Rowan, the editor of

Thursday

6 Dec 2007

James Forsyth

Brown under factional fire

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

James Forsyth

All faiths are welcome but none

Mitt Romney’s campaign has released extracts from his speech today on the role on faith in public life, or more cynically his explanation of why his Mormonism shouldn’t bother voters. Throughout the speech, Romney is keen to stress that there is more that unites religious folk than divides them. But a large part of the speech is a crude sectarian rallying cry, albeit aimed at atheists rather than followers of any conventional faith. So, Romney tells us that: “Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom.” Now, I certainly agree with the second half of the sentence but the first part of it seems dubious. Then he goes on to

Fraser Nelson

Why 42 days?

It seems only yesterday that Jacqui Smith was saying “I don’t know” when asked how long terror suspects should be detained without trial. Now it seems she has decided on 42 days. The government needed to reclaim the news agenda, and this was a button waiting to be pushed. Why not 56 days? Why not 35 days? The figure will have come not from the police or MI5 (who don’t arrest anyone) but from the Labour whips. And even this may be a big ask.

James Forsyth

What the Brownite bunglers are up to today

Fraser explains the absence of Douglas Alexander and Ed Balls from the airwaves in the past week in this week’s cover story and today brings further news on what this dynamic duo are up to. Alexander has pulled out of Question Time tonight, begging the question of what should replace him. (Iain Dale has a list of the questions that Douglas might not have been too keen to answer). While Ed Balls will not be facing the media today but playing Santa Claus at a No. 11 Christmas party, Ben Brogan reports. Ben also reveals that Balls owns his own full Santa outfit. Considering the way this government is going

Fraser Nelson

A debatable triumph

Last night I was at a Policy Exchange debate where I was proposing the motion that Cameron has changed the Tory party for good. They expected 40 guests, but had 300 applications so we moved to a larger venue. Why the crowd? Part of it is this strange, voracious appetite for debate in London right now reflected in the phenomenal success of the Spectator/Intelligence Squared debates. And part of it is the simple pulling power of the Gover. At the end of it, a queue formed to speak to Michael Gove, who was like me proposing the motion. He was on classic form, dividing leaders into fag-enders (Eden after Churchill,

Wednesday

5 Dec 2007

James Forsyth

The religion question

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

Fraser Nelson

Brown finally wins a round

I normally review PMQs from the chamber, and conclude Brown has bombed. So I tried a TV view for a bit of balance. Labour does looks better from this vantage point. In the gallery, you can compare the volume of roars (Tories far better) and see every face (Labour glum, Tories exuberant). But on TV you can just see a broad panorama of the chamber, and only the faces in the camera “donut” – who look lively, under instruction from the whips. For the first time, Brown came armed with figures, attack lines and put downs and knew when to use them. I’d actually say that Brown won. It

James Forsyth

Clegg ahead in the press

Iain Dale is out with his monthly ranking of the shadow cabinet’s media appearances but it is actually his Lib Dem numbers that are most interesting. If anyone had asked me whether Nick Clegg or Chris Huhne had got more press last month, I would have said that it was pretty even but with Huhne probably edging it. But according to Iain’s numbers, Clegg got vastly more mentions than Huhne—450 to 301. Whether this is any predictor of the final result of the leadership election is unclear, but it does emphasise how much of a front-runner advantage Clegg has had.

James Forsyth

More details emerge about the Wendy Alexander fundraising scandal

The Jersey based businessmen whose donation to Wendy Alexander’s leadership bid should not have been accepted, has revealed more about his contacts with the Alexander campaign. He alleges that Charlie Gordon, MSP assured him that he was allowed to donate the money despite not being on the electoral roll. Speculation is now rife that Gordon will resign his seat. Meanwhile, The Scotsman reports that Alexander is claiming that emails from her to Gordon questioning the legality of the donation to her campaign will clear her name. Labour are acutely aware that if Alexander goes then others could follow. A spin doctor has been despatched to Edinburgh to help her and the

Tuesday

4 Dec 2007

James Forsyth

At least Labour have money coming from somewhere

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