Society

Monday

Peter Hoskin

The vultures circle ever closer

Is the bad news stacked against Gordon Brown reaching some kind of critical mass?  The newspapers today are absolutely stuffed with stories about banks, bankers and bonuses that are either embarrassing or downright ruinous for the PM.  And, to top it all off, Trevor Kavanagh begins his Sun column asking why Brown hasn’t resigned after the events of last week.  Sure, it’s highly unlikely that we’ll see that particular resignation before the next election; but there’s still a growing sense that it’s not so much chickens as vultures that are coming home to roost on the roof of 10 Downing Street. Unfortunately for the PM, his party’s now losing most

Sunday

Susan Hill Susan Hill

A story the press should not encourage

When I saw bewildered little Alfie Patten holding his baby I wanted to weep. Though, the 15 –going on- 35 year old mother was winding her daughter with all the casual expertise of a girl in the driving seat of the entire situation. You wonder who to blame first. Not the two kids involved. Sex is in their faces all day –cheap magazines, tabloids, television, the internet – oh, and compulsory sex education from Year 1. They can hardly avoid knowing exactly how to do it -and why in God’s name does a 12 year old boy who looks 8 know where to get, let alone how to use, a

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The next American geography

Richard Florida’s Atlantic cover-story on how the current recession will re-shape America is a thought-provoking read. He argues that the coming economy requires a different kind of geography: “the economy is different now. It no longer revolves around simply making and moving things. Instead, it depends on generating and transporting ideas. The places that thrive today are those with the highest velocity of ideas, the highest density of talented and creative people, the highest rate of metabolism. Velocity and density are not words that many people use when describing the suburbs. The economy is driven by key urban areas; a different geography is required … In short, it will be

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Moore pain for Brown

There are few things the press likes more than a whistleblower, they make for great copy. So, Gordon Brown will be alarmed to see Paul Moore, the HBOS whistleblower, appearing in The Independent on Sunday. ‘Paul Moore, the former head of risk at HBOS, told the IoS that he has more than 30 potentially incendiary documents which he will send to MPs on the Treasury Select Committee. He says they disprove Mr Brown’s claim about the reasons for HBOS’s catastrophic losses – now estimated to be nearly £11bn – and show that it was the reckless lending culture, easy credit and failed regulation of the Brown years that led directly

Peter Hoskin

An air of resignation about Downing Street

When you step back and think about it, it’s really quite astonishing how fast and how emphatically Brown has fallen since his minor ‘bounce’ in the autumn.  Sure, he was always going to struggle as the recession bit deeper and deeper.  But to so swiftly get to this point – where all news is bad news; where there is little salve or comfort; and where hope is dying from suffocation – really takes some doing.  Little wonder, then, that Labour now seems saturated by despair and self-loathing; something that’s captured wonderfully by two comment pieces in today’s papers. The first is Andrew Rawnsley’s article in the Observer, an essential portrait

Saturday

Melissa Kite

Real Life | 14 February 2009

With good reason, I get suspicious and frightened when things go right. I have learned certain truths during my time on this planet, not least that all events in the end conspire against me and that every rule and regulation I encounter has been tailor-made specifically to frustrate my progress. And yet. And yet. A lot of things have been going right lately. The system seems suddenly to have completely turned around in order to work with me, not against me. I don’t want to be churlish about this. I want to give credit where it is due — to the gods and/or the ruling authorities on earth — but

Jeremy Clarke

Low Life | 14 February 2009

It’s good to talk Last week, when the snow lay thickly on the ground, in a rare burst of altruism I picked up the telephone and dialled the number of a frail, elderly and vulnerable member of our community, to ask her if there was anything I could get for her from the village stores. The phone rang and rang and rang. Just as I was about to give up I heard the receiver being fumbled into position and a quavering, phlegm-coated voice say hello. ‘How are you?’ I said. ‘Do you need anything from the shop?’ I ought to have known that getting answers to these simple questions was

Taki

High Life | 14 February 2009

All’s fair Gstaad At Easter 1215, a young Tuscan married woman innocently flirted in public with a man not her husband. He flirted back just as innocently, and then things got out of hand. A vendetta was declared between Guelf and Gibel, two rival brothers of Pistoia, that resulted in extreme violence, the splitting of Guelf factions into Whites and Blacks with ensuing massacres, 1,400 houses in the middle of Florence burnt, and a feud that brought out every long-simmering antagonism from politics, to money, to envy which lasted far longer than if the flirtation had not been as innocent as it was. Guelfs and Ghibellines came to mind as

Robin Oakley

The turf | 14 February 2009

There is no certainty today. For years we humble wage-earners were told that City bankers were sage repositories of special expertise who could be entrusted with that little that is left when the taxman and the bookies have finished with us. In reality, it turns out, they were greedy spivs who knew no more about the financial packages they dealt in to feed their bonuses than the betting shop loud mouth who claims infallible information about the winner of the forthcoming 2.30. Now in racing, too, we are riven with doubt. After his defeat at Kempton Park last Saturday on a seasonal debut delayed by a heart scare, many are

The Spectator

Letters | 14 February 2009

Solidarity with the strikers Sir: As a member of the English working class I write to express my approval of and agreement with Rod Liddle’s article (‘Would the working class vote Labour now?, 7 February). I would compare the action of the strikers with those of the shipyard workers of Gdansk in 1980 whose actions exposed to the world the falseness of the Polish Communist Party’s claim to protect the class it purported to represent. These strikers have shown up New Labour’s pretence that it cares about British workers. Peter Mandelson’s performance was eerily reminiscent of the party hacks who were wheeled out to attack Solidarity. What must have sent

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 14 February 2009

The case of Caroline Petrie, the nurse suspended for offering to say a prayer for a patient, discloses something of which most people may not have been aware. To work in the National Health Service, it is officially stated, you ‘must demonstrate a personal and professional commitment to equality and diversity’. It is remarkable that there should be a state rule about what you can think (the ‘personal’ commitment) before you can be employed. I also wonder if it is possible to have a commitment to equality and diversity at the same time. For instance, if, as Brighton and Hove Council tried to insist against a Christian care home, you

Tamzin Lightwater

Diary of a Notting Hill Nobody | 14 February 2009

Monday Major recession panic. Clearly we are being out-apocalypsed by Labour. Dave furious and wants to know why we’re still only predicting the worst downturn in 80 years while Ed Balls is calling it the Most Terrifying Depression in the History of Mankind. Obviously, we need to do the doom vision thing better, or we could find ourselves in government a year from now amid allegations that we didn’t see the end of the world coming. It’s not as if we didn’t make a good start with Gids predicting the death of sterling, but since then we have basically been playing catch-up. Thankfully our new economic recovery committee is now

Toby Young Toby Young

Status Anxiety | 14 February 2009

I had quite a sobering lunch this week. It was with Bill Griffin, the former CEO of Kiss FM and now the strategy director of a big London ad agency. The main topic of conversation was the cultural impact of the recession and Barack Obama’s election. Would brands that are closely associated with the boom era, such as Gucci and Prada, need to reinvent themselves in order to survive? This, in turn, led to a discussion of journalists and which ones are likely to go to the wall over the next 12 months. He took the view that the cynical, hard-bitten, wise-cracking style of many veteran hacks is out of

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 14 February 2009

Q. My 12-year-old son and I braved the snow last week to keep an appointment for him to look at a school. On the much delayed journey back to Paddington I was walking through to the buffet car when I saw two friends of a friend who kindly suggested I fetch my son and come and join them. Having said I would, I immediately regretted it because it meant my son (who boards) and I would not be able to chat together alone. I could not think of a way to backtrack and dragged him through to both of our regrets. How could I have explained that I had changed

Peter Hoskin

YouGov deflates the Lib Dem rise

Given the wave-making nature of the ComRes poll earlier, it’s worth pointing out the YouGov poll for tomorrow’s Sunday Times.  Rather than a eye-catching increase in Lib Dem support, it records a 2 point fall for Clegg, Cable et al.  Here are the headline numbers: Conservatives — 44 percent (up 1 percentage point) Labour — 32 percent (no change) Lib Dem — 14 percent (down 2) Over at Political Betting, Mike Smithson indicates that the difference may be down to polling methods, online vs telephone.  I guess we’ll have to wait for more polls to know either way.

Martin Bright

Smoking Gun: Katharine Goes to Hollywood

It was great to hear Katharine Gun the GCHQ whistleblower on Saturday Live this morning talking about the morality of the leaker. I suppose the pretext was the banking crisis, but Katharine used the opportunity to explain why she had revealed details of a US/UK spying operation on the United Nations just prior to the outbreak of the Iraq war in 2003. I have a close connection to the story as the journalist who received a copy of the original email request from the States. I published the revelations in the Observer in March 2003. The war went ahead despite Katharine’s efforts. Katharine was later arrested and charged for breaching the Official Secrets Act, although the case

Peter Hoskin

Labour down in the dumps, as Lib Dems climb

John Rentoul promised us a wave-making ComRes / IoS poll, and he wasn’t lying.  The figures he revealed earlier show a 6 point climb in Lib Dem support, putting them within three points of Labour, who record their worst showing since last September.  The Tories have fallen back slightly, too, but their lead over Labour is a hefty 16 points, the biggest since October last year.  Here are the headline figures in full: Conservatives — 41 percent (down 2 percentage points) Labour — 25 percent (down 3) Lib Dems — 22 percent (up 6) Before writing off the surge in Lib Dem support as outlier, remember that last week’s ICM

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Petty Brown tried to bar Cameron from Thatcher dinner at No 10

Matt’s column tomorrow in The Sunday Telegraph contains this scoop: “Later this month, Gordon Brown is hosting a dinner to mark the unveiling of a new portrait of Margaret Thatcher. Naturally, No 10 asked the Iron Lady for the names of guests she wanted to attend. No less naturally, it was suggested by her office that the present Conservative leader should be invited. But when Downing Street heard that David Cameron was on the list, there was, I gather, a preposterous attempt to strike him off.” This really is pathetic. Indeed, judging by the qualifications coming out of Downing Street tonight they realise just how small this makes the Prime

James Forsyth James Forsyth

A costly victory

The stimulus package is now ready to be signed into law by the President. On the one hand, this is a pretty major legislative achievement for Obama within the first month of his administration. On the other, Obama has taken a few knocks in the process and has lost a decent chunk of his reputation for being able to bring the two parties together and for transparency. In the House, in both votes not a single Republican voted for it. In the Senate, only three Republicans crossed party lines; the post-conference version of the bill only passed the Senate with the minimum 60 votes. In the meantime, Obama saw his

Peter Hoskin

Mandelson’s June election advice for Brown

Those early election rumours just won’t go away.  Here’s Peter Oborne writing in the Mail today about the decision to publish this year’s Budget on 22 April: “But there is another, more intriguing reason for the delay. Gordon Brown, acting on the advice of Peter Mandelson, wants to keep open the option of a General Election this year. The Prime Minister hopes that U.S. President Obama’s visit to Britain at the start of April for the G20 economic summit will boost his own credibility. He wants the budget to be held in the wake of the visit and to unveil a massive boost to public spending, like the one Obama