Society

Obama’s speech to the ‘Muslim world’ in Egypt was full of necessary fictions. But more substantively it set out what Obama sees as seven areas where progress must be made if tensions are to be eased: the fight against violent extremism, Israel / Palestine, Iran’s nuclear ambition, democracy, religious freedom, womens’ rights and economic development. Missing from the speech was a clear appreciation that violent extremism comes out of an extremist ideology. Violent extremism cannot be defeated until the ideology that lies behind it is tackled. It was also, to my mind, a mistake to relegate democracy to fourth place in Obama’s list. In anything other than the short term,

In his analysis of Blears’ resignation letter and Brown’s response, the Times’s Philip Collins picks up on one of the strangest minor details of the entire saga: neither letter, in 12 whole paragraphs, contains one full-stop.  As Collins quips wonderfully: “No full stop appears in either letter.  New Labour began with no verbs and it ends in no punctuation.” But what could it mean?  A quick internet search for “graphology” and “no full-stops” has proved fruitless, so maybe CoffeeHousers have some ideas.  Are Gordon and Hazel revealing an inner desire for things not to end?  Or are they just following the government style guide?  Your theories below, please.

And so we come to Election Day 2009.  But the voting itself is being overshadowed by the melodrama on Downing Street; or at least being anticipated through the prism of What It All Means for Gordon.  For any CoffeeHousers who have been out of the country for the past few days – and even those who haven’t – there’s a great summary of events by Francis Elliot in today’s Times.  But the question remains of what will happen next.  Personally, I can’t see the election results being much better than a disaster for Labour, so the pressure on Brown will certainly be ratcheted up a notch.  But will the plotters

Peter Mandelson, who is spinning at full speed today, has just given an interview to Jon Sopel in which he has said that he spoke to Blears this morning and that she just found the pressure placed on her because of her expenses too much. Mandelson is playing a dangerous game. Blears doesn’t want to have resigned because of expenses: she was trying to send a political message. If Blears feels she is being smeared as a weak woman who couldn’t cope with the media spotlight, she might feel obliged to hit back. The Telegraph also has a leak from the Cabinet Office that Blears did not pay capital gains

Peter Mandelson has just been on TV stressing what pressure Smith and Blears have been under because of the expenses story and trying to spin that as the sole reason they have resigned. He was then asked about Darling and his response was that Darling was another person who had found himself in the eye of the storm “fairly or unfairly”. It is hard not to read this as a sign that Mandelson is signed onto the plan to move Darling out of the front line. It really does look as if Brown is going to try and place Balls at the Treasury in the reshuffle. But if he does,