Politics

Andrew Rawnsley’s column in today’s Observer on quite how much Brown and Cameron dislike each other is essential reading. As one Brown ally tells Rawnsley, ‘Gordon could only be more contemptuous of him if Cameron were a lawyer.’ How the two sides handle this enmity is going to be key to the next election result. To go back to Gore v. Bush in 2000, which to my mind is the previous campaign which most resembles the Brown-Cameron showdown, there’s little doubt that Gore’s disdain for Bush ending up hurting his election effort. His desire not only to beat Bush but to humiliate him, to expose him led to Gore’s over

If Douglas Alexander’s speech yesterday–or, more accurately the spin applied to it–prompted concerned phone calls from Washington and a memo from Gordon to the cabinet to go easy with the Bush bashing, then one wonders what Mark Malloch Brown’s quite extraordinary interview with the Telegraph will prompt. Malloch Brown, Kofi Annan’s former chief of staff, tells Rachel Sylvester and Alice Thomson that while at the UN he felt that: “everything I had worked for and fought for was suddenly under attack from one corner of the American political system and if they wanted to go toe to toe on it, I was going to do it.” Throughout the interview, Malloch

Groan. Ana Marie Cox* links to an interview with Bill Clinton at the Aspen Ideas Festival in which he says that if Hillary wins the Presidency: “My Scottish friends suggest I should be called ‘First Laddie.'” There are plenty of more significant reasons for being less than wholly comfortable with the prospect of a Clinton Restoration. But Bill just added another one to the pile. * You do read Swampland don’t you? If not, you should. It’s good.

Sometimes Joe Biden is actually pretty good: “This progress report is like the guy who’s falling from a 100-story building and says half-way down that ‘everything’s fine.’”

Brown has a PMQs headline for us: let Cameron do the PR, he’ll be the PM. Well, his performance was better than last week. But what struck me was the Tory’s “behold the Jock” strategy. One Tory backbencher demanded English votes for English laws. Another asked “The Prime Minister claims to treat people equally, so why do nurses in his constituency earn more?” The new Shadow Scotland minister Ben Wallace (good man, keep your eye on him) raised the West Lothian Question. Even the LibDems joined in, comparing Kirkcaldy’s maternity wards favourably to those of Chelmsford. All great fun. Brown has no answer. Trouble like this is precisely why the