Society

Wednesday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Sorry Prime Minister

There are few things that Brown puts before political advantage but his pride is clearly one of them. How else to explain his refusal to apologise for Damian McBride’s behaviour? As Jonathan Isaby blogged the other day, a sorry from Brown is a pre-requisite for Labour being able to begin to move on from this whole affair. Bagehot puts it well on his blog: “the fixation with apologies is more than just a bit of puerile Brown-baiting. The game only works because Mr Brown never plays. He obviously thinks that an apology is an admission of weakness. But an inability to apologise or admit mistakes is a bigger weakness, especially

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Fixing the County Championship

The cricket season has begun which is, as usual, a cause for celebration and an occasion to lament the guarantee that the first month of the new innings will be ruined by rain. Commercial considerations – that is, the need to stuff the calendar with as many limited overs fixtures as possible during the prime summer months – demand the further marginalisation of the venerable County Championship. Nearly a quarter of the fixtures will be played by the end of May, with others just as liable to be afflicted by poor weather as the season staggers to a close at the end of September. Times change, of course, and even

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Any questions for Kate Barker?

I’m interviewing Kate Barker at 4pm this afternoon as part of The Spectator’s ongoing inquiry into the causes of the recession. She is a member of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee, so she has to regulate what she can say and when she says it. But she’s kindly agreed to be interviewed today, and we aim to publish what she says tomorrow. I hear great things about her – which makes it all the more puzzling that her 2004 review on housing concluded that supply had to be vastly increased to meet the demand. In London, sure, but in depopulating towns like Blackpool? Didn’t she think there was

Peter Hoskin

The tragedy of Smeargate

Sure, he wears his politics on his sleeve, but the Mirror’s Kevin Maguire has not done himself credit during Smeargate.  James picked up on his blog post at the weekend, which made merry with one of the slurs against Cameron.  And now his column today contains this line: Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’d have thought the tragedy of Smeargate is that we have a No.10 operation which regards unrestrained bullying and innuendo as legitimate political methods.  In light of that, it may seem superfluous to pull out one sentence from Maguire’s writing.  But, so long as the disgraceful actions of Brown and his inner circle are watered down

Peter Hoskin

Brutality exposed

On the twentieth anniversary of the Hillsborough Disaster, the footage of a policeman beating a woman attending a vigil in memory of Ian Tomlinson (see above) is especially resonant.  If the police service recaptured any of the public’s faith in the years since 1989 – and that’s a huge if – then you feel that has now been completely undone.  The disgraceful actions of a few Met officers will linger long in the national memory, and skew perceptions of police forces across the country. Don’t get me wrong: I’m a big supporter of the police – they have an extremely difficult job, and there are plenty of professional, dedicated policemen

James Forsyth James Forsyth

How can we take Sir Gus O’Donnell seriously when he wrote a book with Ed Balls?

The civil service must be impartial and seen to be impartial. So, there should surely be a rule that stops permanent secretaries co-authoring books with SpAds. Sir Gus O’Donnell’s decision to write Microeconomic Reform in Britain: Delivering Opportunities for All (note the highly political title) with Balls and another civil servant, the book has an introduction from Brown, makes it hard for the public to look upon him as an impartial arbiter. Like my fellow reformist radical Fraser, I think there is a role for SPADs—indeed, I’d actually like more of them. But career civil servants must be impartial and be seen to be impartial. That doesn’t mean they should

James Forsyth James Forsyth

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The Evening Standard reports this morning that: “Cabinet Secretary Sir Gus O’Donnell appeared unlikely to launch a probe after one of the ministers linked to the affair, Tom Watson, made a statement through solicitors stating categorically he knew nothing about it. Whitehall experts suggested to the Evening Standard that Mr Watson’s denial meant Sir Gus would reject a Conservative call for a formal investigation into who knew what about plans hatched by No10 aide Damian McBride to smear senior Tories via anonymous internet attacks.”

Alex Massie Alex Massie

In praise of Andrew Sullivan

My father is fond of telling a story that, though possibly apocryphal is, in the old newspaper terminology, too good to check. Apparently Georges Simenon was in Edinburgh and, as you would, asked what the gothic rocket on Princes Street was. On being told it was a monument to Sir Walter Scott the great detective writer was left open-mouthed in astonishment. “You mean they erected that for one of us?” he asked. Well, yes, they did. “Well, why not, he invented us all” Simenon is said to have said. The Scott Monument is quite a thing. One day the blogosphere might have to consider an equivalent monument. And when it

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Smeargate shows how corrupted the Brownite moral compass is

Alice Miles, who has been a consistent critic of the Brownite way of doing politics has an excellent column in The Times on smeargate. (Although, it is slightly ironic that a column that is so critical of the culture of anonymous briefings has so many blind quotes in it.) One quote in it is the perfect rejoined to Brown’s letter to the Cabinet Secretary: “This was not just an error of judgment, these e-mails,” another former Cabinet minister put it. “It’s a total error of character. These changes to the rules about special advisers are completely and totally irrelevant. It’s not about rules, it’s about the moral compass of those

Francis King

A delicate talent

When, 15 years ago, Nicola Beauman embarked on this life of ‘the other Elizabeth Taylor’, the novelist and not the film star, she had been deprived of documents that would certainly have been of tremendous use to her. These were the letters that, over a period of some three decades, Taylor wrote regularly and at length to the novelist Robert Liddell, living in self-exile in Greece. Aware that she was terminally ill, she asked him to burn her side of their correspondence, and no less regrettably then destroyed his. Was he right to obey this injunction from a woman whom he himself described as the best letter-writer of the 20th

Tuesday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Watson denies knowledge of the smear emails

Well the “statement” is in – not so much from Tom Watson as from his lawyers, Carter-Ruck, who are complaining about Iain Dale’s article in the Mail on Sunday which claimed that Watson was copied into those emails. Here is the statement: “We have today been instructed by government minister Tom Watson, MP for West Bromwich, in connection with allegations concerning him and the emails exchanged between Damian McBride and Derek Draper relating to a proposed website entitled ‘Red Rag’. We have today written to the editors of the Mail on Sunday and the Daily Mail to complain about the publication of the false allegation that our client had knowledge

Peter Hoskin

McBride: unemployable outside Whitehall?

A striking observation from PR Week’s David Singleton: “[Damian] McBride’s next move is unknown. Previously, lobbyists have been keen to sign up anyone linked to the Brown’s inner circle, but this week it appeared highly unlikely that many agencies will attempt to snare the former special adviser. Hanover Communications MD Charles Lewington said: ‘I am loathed to kick a man when he is down but he demonstrated a clear lack of judgment and professionalism. I fear his reputation is so badly damaged that only a long period building churches in Rwanda will restore it.'” Singleton’s the journo who had the lowdown on the McBride-Carter wars last year, so it will

The Spectator

A reminder | 14 April 2009

Just to remind CoffeeHousers that we’re running a Q&A with Eric Pickles.  We’ll be taking your questions until 10pm this evening, before putting the best to the Tory chairman.  To submit a question click here.

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Exams good enough for the rich are good enough for the poor too

Here’s an interesting – and, for once, encouraging – development. Motherwell College (soon to be moving to a new campus on the site of the old Ravenscraig steel mill) is going to offer students the chance to study for the International Baccalaureate, rather than Scottish Highers. That’s a small, but significant victory for school choice, as teenagers at high schools in Lanarkshire will now have the chance to apply for one of the places on an IB course that has, until now, only been available in the private sector in Scotland. (Indeed, fewer than 150 schools across Britain offer the IB at present, though that number will grow as A-Levels

Peter Hoskin

Field laments the “nothingness” that is Brown’s government

It’s hardly surpiring when Frank Field writes damningly of Brown’s government – but his latest blog post still deserves mention.  Even by Field’s standards, it’s particularly unequivocal and incisive.  Here are some choice passages:   “Harold Wilson asserted that the Labour party was a moral crusade or it was nothing.  The McBride affair has left Labour members looking at nothing.   That is the reality check that McBride has wrought on the party… …Week after week MPs have been turning up but with almost no serious work to do.  There is the odd bill to be sure.  But there is no legislative programme to speak of.  Even the debates that are

Matthew Dancona

Byers offers some sensible advice

The piece by Steve Byers on the McBride affair in today’s Evening Standard is essential reading. First, Byers allows himself to gloat publicly upon the fall of “Mad Dog” – “I made little effort to suppress a smile when I heard about his enforced departure from Downing Street”. This is a huge part of the problem for the PM. So many senior Labour figures have fallen victim to the Brown attack machine over the years that there are few tears around Westminster, and a fair amount of schadenfreude. It is no accident that Charles Clarke, so often on the receiving end of Brownite briefing (and, to be fair, an open

Peter Hoskin

Francis Maude has Tom Watson in his sights

And while we’re talking about letters, here’s the full text of the one Francis Maude sent to Sir Gus O’Donnell last night: “Dear Gus, The e-mails sent by Damian McBride raise serious concerns about the operation of 10 Downing Street, and the degree to which the rules about the role of Special Advisers are being enforced. Mr McBride was hardly a peripheral figure. He was personally appointed by the Prime Minister and directly responsible to him. He worked alongside the Minister for the Civil Service, Tom Watson, at the heart of the Prime Minister’s office. I am sure you will agree that this episode is of fundamental importance to the

Peter Hoskin

Lost in the post | 14 April 2009

The letters that Gordon Brown sent to the victims of McBride’s smears sound as clumsy as you’d expect.  Here’s the Standard’s report: “[Brown’s] handwritten letters expressing “great regret” to senior Tories smeared by aide Damian McBride were dismissed as insincere and inadequate — and unreadable. One recipient, Conservative MP Nadine Dorries, who was falsely accused of a one-night stand with another MP, complained that she could not make out all the Prime Minister’s words because they were scrawled in a thick black marker pen because of his poor eyesight. Sources close to Mr Cameron said the Tory leader was not satisfied with his letter, which fell short of an apology

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Damian McReckless

This story from Steve Richards’ column takes the breath away: ‘On one occasion shortly before a presenter was about to interview a cabinet minister McBride texted him with the message: “Ask him about his drinking problem.” Again even if the attempted assassination of a minister was clever politics – and it was not – for the fingerprints to be all over the source was dangerously inept.’ I’m sure this anecdote will have Coffee Housers screaming, understandably, about collusion between the media and the Brown machine. If the presenter had held the phone up to the camera, McBride would have been finished. But journalists have to protect their sources. If we