Society

Tuesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The Great ID Card Con

Identity Cards would be a Bad Idea even if there were any reason to suppose they would work. So I’m intrigued by the suggestion Pete mentions that this multi-billion pound absurdity might be cancelled. Because of the state of the public finances of course. I doubt it will be abandoned since a) government value control even more than money and b) if it were, the government would presumably have to agree that ID cards won’t save lives. On the other hand – and from the Home Office’s perspective, looking upon the bright side of matters –  they would then be able to blame ID card opponents for the next terrorist

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Republicans at 21% and Full Speed Ahead!

Indefatigable commenter ConservativeCabbie argues: No doubt someone will report on the latest WaPo poll which shows Republican ID at 21% and use it as evidences of the GOP’s terminal decline. The only thing I would say to this… is that in the most recent important poll, the election, the GOP still won 47% of the vote. And that was with decidedly unpropitious circumstances. I agree that the GOP are on the ropes. But isn’t that a fact when it comes to parties falling out of power – that they move towards  their more extreme base before moving back to the middle. That’s what happened to post-Carter Democrats, post-Callaghan Labour and

Peter Hoskin

The ID card scrap

There’s much ado about ID cards ’round Westminster today.  Reports in this morning’s papers suggest that the Government is thinking about scrapping the £5 billion project, to help combat the debt crisis.  The Independent even has a “senior Cabinet minister” telling them that, “My sense is that ID cards will not go ahead.  We have to find savings somewhere, and it would be better to shelve schemes like this that aren’t popular.”  Yet the PM’s spokesman has just briefed the lobby that the government “remains committed” to the scheme. To my mind, this highlights the political difficulty that the government will face in dealing with the debt crisis.  If they

Peter Hoskin

Trouble in the Labour Party over expenses

The more that emerges about Brown’s YouTube calamity on expenses, the more stupid it seems.  The immediate theory was that Brown released it to wrongfoot David Cameron and Nick Clegg.  I’d go along with that.  But it turns out that his own party didn’t know anything about it either.  This in today’s Guardian. Downing Street’s handling of the matter was also strongly criticised by Labour MPs at a lengthy meeting of the parliamentary Labour party last night. During what was described as a ‘fractious’ meeting, MPs criticised Brown for making his announcement on a YouTube broadcast last Tuesday without any reference to them. Some MPs had raised the matter at

Peter Hoskin

A lack of guidance

If you’re wading through all the swine flu coverage this morning, I’d recommend you take time to read the article by Dr John Crippen – the pseudonymous author of NHS Blog Doctor – in the Guardian.  It hints at a disorganised response to the illness in the UK: “Today is one of those days when family doctors want to retire to a darkened room and put an ice pack on their head. Over breakfast, I saw the newspaper headline: ‘Swine flu deaths spark worldwide health alert’. I have not been ‘alerted’. None of my partners has been ‘alerted’ either. There is a general assumption that GPs will already have received

Alex Massie Alex Massie

If Dick Cheney had won the Republican nomination last year…

Ross Douthat’s debut column for the New York Times begins with a good joke, designed (one might think) to have the Upper West Side howling that all the talk of young Mr Douthat being a conservative we can do business with must be so much baloney: Watching Dick Cheney defend the Bush administration’s interrogation policies, it’s been hard to escape the impression that both the Republican Party and the country would be better off today if Cheney, rather than John McCain, had been a candidate for president in 2008. But Ross makes a persuasive case that the country could have benefitted from a discussion of national security and interrogation policies

Monday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The Swine Flu Shot

After the jump, a series of American PSAs warning about Swine Flu, dating from 1976. The second of them features a soundtrack that sounds as though it more properly should accompany a detective show on American TV. Or, for that matter, a movie such as The Three Days of the Condor. Appropriate in times such as these, the government never ceases to remind us, when You Can Never Be Too Careful. Trust Nobody, remember. These days, mind you, any such government-sponsored warning would be much, much more terrifying and, one presumes, be designed to convince us all that the apocalypse was upon us and yet also – conveniently –  avertable.

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The Changing Face of Domestic Murder

Consider this chart: As you can see, since 1976  there’s been a marked decline in the number of men murdered by their wives in the United States and a smaller, but still significant, decrease in the number of women killed by their husbands. The graph comes from Sociological Images where Jay Livingston asks for suggestions that might explain this trend. He suggests that perhaps men are behaving better (not a popular theory, I’m going to guess) and that women have more options, citing the work of women’s shelters and the like in making it easier for women to escape abusive situations without murdering their spouse. Matt Yglesias says, however, that

Peter Hoskin

A return for Reid?

I know, I know – there are only so many Labour reshuffle rumours a readership can take.  But I’m still quite surprised that this report in the Mirror hasn’t received a greater pick-up across the blogosphere today.  It claims that Gordon Brown’s preparing to replace Harriet Harman as Labour Party chairman with none other than John Reid: “It is believed the ex-Home Secretary bruiser will replace Harriet Harman in a June 12 reshuffle – so allowing him to take on the Tories on TV and radio in the election run-up. With No.10’s blessing, he led the Labour attack after the Budget and defended the 50 per cent tax rate on

Peter Hoskin

The Tories take on Brown over the Lisbon Treaty

Let’s get the bad stuff out of the way first.  To my eyes, the poster accompanying the Tories’ new EU Referendum campaign isn’t especially powerful.  It lacks the directness and iconic simplicity of that great “Gordon Brown’s debt” poster, and I doubt it will, by itself, capture the imagination of people who aren’t keyed into the whole Lisbon Treaty backstory.   But the campaign itself is good, effective politics.  By highlighting the injustice that Brown committed over Lisbon, the Tories put him on the backfoot during the campaign for the European elections and, in turn, limit the Government’s capacity to make merry over “Tory splits,” as they’ve been desperate to

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Brooks: Cameron is the right alternative to Obamaism

David Brooks is, to my mind, the most perceptive American commentator. He is a conservative who understands Obama and what he is trying to do. So, I was particularly interested by his remarks on the Charlie Rose show where he said that Cameron’s emphasis on society is what the right should offer as an alternative to the enhanced role for the state that Obama is advocating: “we now have two models. We have the Obama model, which is technocratic, sending teams of experts to solve problems. Very centralized, actually. And then if you want the alternate model — the Republicans in this country unfortunately have no model because they haven’t

The Spectator

CoffeeHousers’ Wall, 27 April – 3 May

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 – provided 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

Peter Hoskin

A sprinkling of Sugar

Plenty to ponder in the latest YouGov poll for the Evening Standard.  Its headline finding puts the Tories 12 points ahead in London; with Cameron & Co. on 45 percent, Labour on 33 percent and the Lib Dems on 16 percent.  Sure, that’s less of an advantage than the Tories enjoy nationally, but it would still see them winning the capital – with 40 of the 74 contested seats – for  the “first time in a generation”.  The Standard reckons that ministers such as Tony McNulty, Ann Keen and Sadiq Khan would be among the Labour casualties. And then there are some eyecatching numbers surrounding the Mayoralty.  The rise and

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Roubini: This is going to be a U, not an L, shaped recession

Nouriel Roubini, the doctor doom of the credit crunch, sounds a mildly optimistic note in an interview with the Washington Post: “I don’t believe we are going to end up in a near-depression. Six months ago I was more worried about an L-shaped near-depression. Today, after the very aggressive policy actions taken by the U.S. and other countries . . . we are, instead, in the middle of a U.” The thing that my economist friends say they worry about now is a W recession. The theory goes that the economy will rebound and start to grow again but because the financial system hasn’t been fixed that recovery will soon

Peter Hoskin

An historic clear-out?

I wrote yesterday that things may be about to get much worse for Brown on the publication of MPs’ expense receipts.  To be fair, signs are that Parliament as a whole will take a kicking; although – by virtue of them having more MPs, and as they form the incumbent government – you still sense that Labour will feel the most pain.  Today’s Mail has a neat sidebox outlining some of the main nasties that will crop up – helicopter rides and holiday homes – and the concern among some MPs that affairs will be revealed by hotel receipts.  A “senior” Lib Dem frontbencher, worried for his future, is even

Sunday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Why won’t the Tories say they favour the creation of a bad bank?

In his speech earlier today, George Osborne said: ‘we must deal with the toxic debts of the banks we now own. They will be zombies until we do. Neither dead nor fully alive.’ The clear implication of this statement, and several others that Conservative spokesmen have made in the last few months, is that a bad bank is needed. But the Tories always stop short of saying that they actually favour the creation of one. I can’t see any reason—political or economic—why the Tories shouldn’t say openly that a bad bank is a necessary step for ending this crisis. It seems to be another instance where the Tories would benefit

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Cameron appeals for patience and signals that taxes will have to rise

David Cameron’s speech to Spring conference was summed up by the line, ‘In time we will set out the hard choices’. With 14 months to go until the election, the clock is ticking on this pledge. The speech did contain two important points. First, Cameron talked about what government should do when it was asking people to ‘put up with tax rises and spending cuts.’ He also, unusually, cited his own experience at the Treasury, saying that he had hated putting up taxes but it had been the right thing to do. The implicit message was that there will be tax rises under a Tory government. Second, Cameron is already

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Pickles story takes the biscuit

Eric Pickles just told a story that bears an uncanny resemblance to one of the most famous cricket sledges ever. Pickles says he was walking along Millbank when a Labour MP, who sounded like Prescott, heckled him saying “Pickles you are too fat to be party chairman”. To which Pickles says he replied, “It is because every time we win a seat I eat a biscuit.” This story sounds like it was inspired by the exchange between Glenn McGrath and Zimbabwe’s Eddo Brandes. McGrath said to Brandes, ‘Why are you so f***ing fat?’ Brandes replied, ‘Because every time I f*** your wife she gives me a biscuit”.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Not being Labour is enough to win, but not enough to solve this crisis

Last night a Tory candidate was telling me what her message to voters was on the doorstep. It was a very cogent critique of Labour. But when I asked her what her positive message was, I just got the same answer back with a slightly different top on it. Her inability to set out a positive message illustrated a problem that is bedevilling the Tories at the moment: they do not have enough of a vision for the country. To be sure, Labour’s manifold failings mean that the Tories will almost certainly win the next election. But the recession and the anti-politics mood in the country, Labour’s internal polling shows that it is the

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Reshuffle rumour of the day

The Mail on Sunday reports this morning that: “One eye-catching change being mooted is the appointment of Peter Mandelson as Foreign Secretary – a job he has always coveted – in place of David Miliband, who is said not to be enjoying the brief. Mr Miliband could then be moved to the Home Office in place of Ms Smith.” My initial reaction to this story is that Brown would be unwilling to move Mandelson from his economic portfolio. He has proven an effective performer on what is bound to be the biggest issue of the campaign. But Brown might be thinking—as 50p suggests—of going down a far more populist route