Society

Wednesday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Boost for the Tory campaign in the West Country as the party forces Labour to drop its cider hike

This campaign is going to be a bit like three dimensional chess. There’ll be the Labour Tory contest but there will also be the Tory effort to win Lib Dem seats, 24 of the 120 top Tory target seats are Lib Dem held. A good example of this 3d chess came in the washup, the negotiation about which bits of its programme the government can get passed into law before this session of parliament ends. In the West Country, where the Tories need to win a bunch of Lib Dem seats, Labour’s plan to increase by 10p the duty on cider has gone down very badly. So the Tories forcing

Tuesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Chris Kamara For The Win

Lord knows that in these trying, perhaps even desperate, times we need some light relief. So here’s Chris Kamara cheerfully admitting that he hasn’t a clue what’s going on in the Portsmouth vs Blackburn Rovers game the other day. Now, if only political pundits and broadcasters were this honest… And no, I’m not knocking Mr Kamara. I once wrote a 900 word report on a rugby match that, thanks to my own stupidity and the uselessness of a colleague who was giving me a lift to Hawick and had got the kick-off time wrong, was into injury time by the time we arrived. That is, we saw fewer than two

Peter Hoskin

Brown: the election will be on 6th May

So there we have it.  Brown has been to see the Queen, he’s returned to Downing Street, and now he’s announced what we all knew anyway: the election will be on 6th May.  He was flanked by the entire Cabinet as he did so, like some grim school photograph.  And he repeated the same lines from his Mirror interview this morning: the election is a “big choice”, public service “guarantees”, 13 years of “reform”, and so on and so on. I suspect Blair would have smiled wryly at that last one, as well as at Brown’s claim that he is “not a team of one, but one of a team”.

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Tory Obama? Really?

Is Barack Obama really a closet Tory? That’s the question Andrew Sullivan asks in the light of this passage from David Remnick’s new Obama biography. Speaking about race in America and his election, Obama says: “America evolves, and sometimes those evolutions are painful. People don’t progress in a straight line. Countries don’t progress in a straight line. So there’s enormous excitement and interest around the election of an African-American President. It’s inevitable that there’s going to be some backlash, potentially, to what that means—not in a crudely racist way, necessarily. But it signifies change, in the same way that immigration signifies change, in the same way that a shift from

Monday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The Tories are above forty and have a ten point lead in YouGov’s final pre-campaign poll

The final pre-campaign YouGov poll has just been released and it shows the Tories over forty percent and ahead by ten percent, numbers that I suspect the party would have taken back in January and would be delighted to have repeated on election day. Even on a uniform national swing these results–Tories 41, Labour 31, Lib Dems 18–would produce a Tory majority, albeit a small one. This poll is an Easter one and so should be treated with a certain amount of caution. But it does rather suggest that ICM’s numbers—which showed the Tory lead down to four points—are out of sync with the trend in the polls. There will be

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Declaration day minus one

YouGov’s first poll of the year had the Tories on 40 and nine points ahead of Labour. Its latest one has the Tories on 39 and Labour on 29. So despite the two Tory wobbles, in terms of the battle between the big two, little has changed over the past 90 odd days. The Tories, though, are the party with the momentum after the success of their move on National Insurance. They are also benefitting from some mistakes by their opponents. First, Peter Mandelson doing just what George Osborne wanted him to do and going after the business leaders who had signed the letter in support of the Tory position.

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Podcasting

Regular posting to return later today. Meanwhile I was a guest on the latest House of Comments podcast hosted by Mark Thompson and Stuart Sharpe. Labour List’s Alex Smith and I chatted about the Chancellor’s debate, Tony Blair’s (brief) return to Britain, lessons that might or might not be learnt from the Obama campaign and so on. Anyway, the podcast is available to download via this page here. You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes here if that’s your thing. 

The Spectator

CoffeeHousers’ Wall, 5 April – 11 April

Welcome to the latest CoffeeHousers’ Wall. For those who haven’t come across the Wall before, it’s a post we put up each Monday, on which – providing your writing isn’t libellous, crammed with swearing, or offensive to common decency – you’ll be able to say whatever you like in the comments section. There is no topic, so there’s no need to stay ‘on topic’ – which means you’ll be able to debate with each other more freely and extensively. There’s also no constraint on the length of what you write – so, in effect, you can become Coffee House bloggers. Anything’s fair game – from political stories in your local

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Why I’m complaining to the PCC<br />

A few more points about the PCC adjudication; apologies if you’re getting bored. The first is indisputable: if I had blogged on a website of my own, rather than here, then they would have not got involved. So the upshot is that blogs associated with newspapers will end up not being like blogs at all (for reasons I’ll come to tomorrow), but like MSM articles in all but name. Second, contrary to what has been written about the adjudication in some areas (and repeated on here), the PCC did NOT accuse me of inaccuracy. It was very careful not to do so. It said that we (The Spectator, but presumably

Sunday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Peter Mandelson is over-exposed at the moment

There was a time when Peter Mandelson would let out a few notes and the media would dance to his tune. But this weekend there’s been a Mandelson interview in The Times, a Mandelson interview in The Sunday Times, a Mandelson appearance on Sky News and an Obama campaign-style memo from Mandelson and none have cut-through. Part of this is because it is Easter weekend and not much is moving politically. But it is also because Mandelson is doing too much: his appearances have lost their impact. Mandelson’s ability to shape the news agenda is one of the things that has been keeping Labour in with a chance of preventing a

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Why the Tory lead is growing

With the Tories back up to a ten-point lead in the YouGov/Sunday Times poll, it seems that – as James put it yesterday – the ‘big mo’ is with them. David Cameron is about to survive his third political near-death experience: the first being his leadership campaign and the second the election-that-never-was in 2007. This demonstrates Cameron’s extraordinary recovery capacity – but also an unfortunate habit of blowing opinion poll leads. It’s a habit that I hope he has now kicked: the elastic on his political bungee may snap if he tries another dive before the election. So it’s time to ask: what went wrong? And what went right?  

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Mandelson and Whelan and the battle for Labour’s soul

The Sunday Times has a story today that gives you a sense of the personal animosities bubbling just below the surface of Labour’s election campaign: “The Sunday Times has learnt that Charlie Whelan, the political director of Unite, the super-union, has been barred from entering Labour headquarters during the campaign. Mandelson is understood to have been furious after he discovered that Whelan, whose union is behind the British Airways cabin crew strikes, had been having secret pre-dawn meetings with Ray Collins, Labour’s general secretary.” Mandelson and Whelan, of course, have history. The Blairities blamed Whelan for the events that led to Mandelson’s first resignation. If Labour lose, these two will

Saturday

Melissa Kite

Day of reckoning

Goodness knows how I did it, but I seem to have organised my life so that it runs out annually and needs renewing before the first of April. I do grasp the significance of the end of the financial year and all that. But what I cannot work out is how I managed to co-ordinate the rest of my affairs to this heinous deadline as well. Quite as if by magic, every insurance policy, yearly permit, pass or subscription I possess runs out about now. I’m never sure how this is possible because I cannot have done everything for the first time at the end of March — by which

Taki

Memories rekindled

Turner Classic Movies (TCM), the Ted Turner golden oldies network, saluted Louis Jourdan last week with a night of his movies, an evening that sure brought back memories. The highlight of the evening was the 1948 Letter from an Unknown Woman, based on a story by the tragic Stefan Zweig, a great writer who despaired of the world and ended his life by his own hand in South America during the second world war. The film does his story justice. It is about an egotistical concert pianist and his heedless treatment of a woman who has loved him since childhood. Louis Jourdan is the pianist, the wonderful Joan Fontaine is

Robin Oakley

Loyal partners

Espying Katie Walsh at Newbury with a ride for Nicky Henderson, I couldn’t help recalling one bookie’s reaction to the finish of the gruelling four-mile National Hunt Chase for amateurs at this year’s Cheltenham when she and Nina Carberry finished first and second, both earning bans for overuse of the ‘persuader’. ‘Birds first and second,’ he rasped. ‘And what about the way they used those whips?’ ‘Oh yes, oh yes,’ a gent in a camel-hair coat next to me had echoed, dreamily turning an excited shade of pink. It takes all sorts, even in a racing crowd. Post-Festival life at Newbury, too, was a reminder of racing’s talent for renewal.

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 3 April 2010

Q. My great-granddaughter’s parent’s relationship did not survive. The child’s mother now has another daughter. As I have the means to give my great-granddaughter education in the private sector, I have offered this, but the child’s mother wants both daughters educated at the same school for family harmony. Is there anything that you could suggest other than paying for both and using the inheritance of my great-granddaughter for this other non-related child? Thank you cordially. Name and address withheld A. I have consulted a veteran of the same dilemma. In the 1970s her very bright daughter was accepted at Godolphin, a London girls’ school which, at that time, was first

Dot Wordsworth

Mind your language | 3 April 2010

Hot cross buns we now get all the year round, but it’s funny how unaware we are of the Christian origins of ordinary words. Hot cross buns we now get all the year round, but it’s funny how unaware we are of the Christian origins of ordinary words. Criss-cross is in common use since it handily expresses a specific meaning. I’ve seen it recently in a piece by Frank Gardiner about being shot and a travel article about Venice (where canals do the criss-crossing). Foreigners have to be less specific I think, with sillonner in French using the metaphor of ploughing, as surcar does in Spanish, which also uses cruzar

Toby Young Toby Young

Going on holiday with four kids under seven is a nightmare — what do you do in the car?

When you’ve got as many young children as I have, the prospect of going on holiday anywhere isn’t very appealing. It’s not being somewhere else that’s the problem, though there’s a risk that their sleep patterns will be disrupted. Rather, it’s getting to wherever it is you’re going. How do you keep four children under seven entertained during the journey? This Easter we’re off to Suffolk to stay with my parents-in-law and that means a two-and-a-half-hour drive. One method of passing the time is to get all four children to play I Spy, not easy given their ages. Charlie, our one-year-old, only participates in the guessing part of the game

Tamzin Lightwater

Diary of a Notting Hill nobody | 3 April 2010

Monday V dynamic strategy meeting. The challenge is clear: we must look more statesmanlike, whilst wearing Marlon Brando-style leather jackets. Jed is calling it ‘biker statesman chic’. He says Google executives have been doing it for years, there’s nothing to it. We must also find Dave some more budget accessories to wear following excellent coverage of his £1 belt in all the papers this weekend. I have been personally charged with this. Am being dispatched to the high street this lunchtime to find items that will appeal to Recession Strugglers, our key voter type in marginals. A nice pair of socks from Primark perhaps. Or a little man-bag canvas satchel

The Spectator

Letters | 3 April 2010

More summer time Sir: Why do well-meaning international bodies like the Worldwide Fund for Nature, who instigated the big switch-off for one ‘Earth Hour’ of darkness on Saturday night, not come out instead publicly to support Daylight Saving in this country? Maintaining our clocks on British Summer Time from last October until 28 March would have saved at least one hour of electricity every day of the week — rather than one hyped-up day in the year achieved by the Earth Hour. And would not the application of Daylight Saving in the future eliminate the need for building one extra nuclear power station to meet the fatuous waste of energy