Society

I wonder what Downing Street made of Alastair Campbell’s plea to Spurs manager Harry Redknapp in the Thunderer column this morning: “Redknapp at least had the good grace to look embarrassed as he shook [Burnley manager, Owen] Coyle’s hand, and the post-match phone-ins were flooded with Spurs fans saying that they didn’t deserve to win. In which case all that remains to be done – a long shot, I know – is to appeal to their sense of fairness. If Harry truly wants to concentrate on avoiding relegation, if he really is a man of the people, surely he has to do the decent thing. Stand aside.” Quite.  

Well done the Treasury Select Committee, who are today calling on Brown ‘n’ Darling to release quarterly accounts showing just how much the banking bailout is costing the taxpayer.  It’s an absolutely crucial demand – not just for the sake of accountability and transparency, but also to reassure creditors and investors that the Government has anything like a clue of what’s going on.  Failure to meet it could make credit rating agencies even warier of the UK economy – and, in turn, that could cause the situation to nosedive even further. Thing is, I doubt that will worry Brown; for whom short-term political gain generally trumps what’s right for the

Over at ConservativeHome, Tim Montgomerie has an intriguing post on what Eric Pickles hopes to bring to the role of Tory party chairman.  Here’s a snippet: “An aide to the new Party Chairman tells me that this visit communicates two of the big themes that Eric Pickles wants to characterise his tenure at CCHQ: graft (he promises to match the sacrifice of volunteers) and a focus on the LibDems.  With opinion polls pointing towards a perhaps decisive increase in the Tory lead some party strategists are recommending a significant shift of battleground resources into unseating Liberal Democrat MPs.  Eric Pickles is a big advocate of the lovebombing tactic.” Tim goes onto describe

An article in today’s New York Times captures the mounting fear and loathing with which the UK economy is regarded.  Here’s how it begins: “LONDON — An island nation that bulked up on debt and lived beyond its means. A plunging currency. And a financial system edging toward nationalization. With the pound at a multidecade low and British banks requiring ever-larger injections of taxpayer cash, it is no wonder that observers have started to refer to London as ‘Reykjavik-on-Thames.’ While that judgment seems exaggerated, there are uncomfortable parallels between Iceland’s recent financial downfall and Britain’s trajectory. Equally important, news that widening bank losses in Britain have necessitated another round of

Walter Russell Mead, whose book Special Providence is one of the best works on American foreign policy, has a fascinating essay in The New Republic arguing that the current financial crisis will actually strengthen and sustain American power. Mead writes: “Cataloguing the early losses from the financial crisis, it’s hard not to conclude that the central capitalist nations will weather the storm far better than those not so central. Emerging markets have been hit harder by the financial crisis than developed ones as investors around the world seek the safe haven provided by U.S. Treasury bills, and commodity-producing economies have suffered extraordinary shocks as commodity prices crashed from their record,