Society

Thursday

Daniel Korski

Karzai is no longer part of the solution in Afghanistan

Kabul Hamid Karzai has been steadily losing international support. It started last year when the Afghan leader scuppered the appointment of Paddy Ashdown to head the UN operation in Afghanistan. Then came a few choice leaks from Richard Holbrooke, criticizing Karzai, while Vice-President Joe Biden is said to have stormed out of a meting with the Afghan president. Visibly shaken, Karzai became more erratic and paranoid. But the mood in Kabul today is now completely different. In a few weeks the wily Karzai has managed to turn the tables. He has outmanoeuvred the opposition, who had demanded his resignation when his mandate runs out (there is a gap between the

James Forsyth James Forsyth

A very public courtship dance

A few weeks ago, Allegra Stratton put the cat among the Labour pigeons when she blogged that Jon Cruddas and James Purnell might team up to run for the leadership. At the time, some dismissed the idea out of hand. The nay-sayers argued that the ideological differences between Cruddas and Purnell are simply too large; Cruddas takes his inspiration from the first phase of Blairism and Purnell from its final period. But I’ve always thought an alliance was a distinct possibility. Both men know that their factions aren’t big enough to deliver the leadership on their own. Another factor pushing Cruddas and Purnell together is that the other leadership options

Peter Hoskin

Another of Brown’s attacks undermined?

We’ve already mentioned how Mervyn King’s recent comments undermine Brown’s central “doing everything it takes” vs “do nothing” distinction.  But a document that the Tories have just put out highlights how another of the PM’s central attacks is now in tatters.  Its theme is how Brown has “taken” the Tories’ “advice”, now that he seems to have backed down on another fiscal stimulus.  This line cuts right through the “no time for a novice” jibe, and subverts the teacher and pupil relationship that Brown has tried to cultivate in PMQs recently (cf, from a couple of weeks ago, his “Unprecedented means without precedent; global means across the world…” monologue).  Brown’s

James Forsyth James Forsyth

An extreme error

Last night Charles Farr, a civil servant who coordinates the government’s counter-terrorism strategy, delivered the Colin Cramphorn memorial lecture. Farr was expounding on and defending the recently released edition of the government’s counter-terrorism strategy. Listening to Farr, one was struck by how the government still can’t properly grasp that terrorism is merely a symptom of a wider problem, the hold of extremist Islamism on a small but significant section of the British population. Frustratingly, there have times when the government seemed ready to grasp this nettle. After 7/7, Blair declared: “We will start to beat this when we stand up and confront the ideology of this evil. Not just the

Peter Hoskin

Brown shouldn’t stake his chips on a Budget fightback

With Brown’s G20 agenda looking less globe-shattering, and more shattered, by the minute, Andrew Grice – writing in the New Statesman – reveals that the PM now regards the Budget as a more likely stage for any “political fightback”:   “Close allies insist that Brown will focus on the domestic agenda once the G20 show is over, and that he knows the Budget on 22 April will be much more important to his chances of staging another political fightback. ‘He has not staked all his chips on a one-day summit,’ one said. ‘He will move on quickly. He has still got a lot of chips left.'” Still got a lot of chips left,

Daniel Korski

The three Talibans

Stereotyping the Taliban is easy. The toppled Taliban Emirate was misogynist and repressive. Then, like now, its leadership partnered with Al Qaeda and acquiesced to Osama Bin Laden’s murderous programme. Then, like now, it committed horrific crimes on and off the battlefield, including ethnic massacres and teenage-cide. Faced with this kind of medieval barbarism, stereotyping comes easy, even naturally. But it also misses things. In the words of the RAND Corporation’s Christine Fair, another one of my travel companions, the ‘militant architecture’ is complex and made up of at least three main groups (and that is not even counting criminals, drug-smugglers and government-affiliated warlords). First there is the ‘real’ Taliban,

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Why Germany Won’t Play Ball

It’s not just Gordon Brown who wants the rest of europe to splash some cash to get us out of the mess we’re in. There are plenty of commentators on the American left – Paul Krugman for one – who also fret that unless european countries join the massive stimulus bandwagon they threaten to delay, or even cancel, everyone’s recovery. Enemy number one, obviously, is the Germans. But as Tyler Cowen points out, the Germans might have some good reasons for their reluctance to go on a spending spree. They remember the costs of German unification and can recall how spending massive quantities of money wasn’t a magic cure-all then

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Stat of the day

The FT’s Westminster blog flags up this quite astonishing statistic: ‘The FT’s resident economics guru Chris Giles has a flabbergasting explanation of the scale of the debt the government is raising in the next two years: £350bn. “That is more debt bequeathed to its successor than the total borrowed by successive rulers and governments of Britain between 1691 and 1997, the year Labour was elected.”’ Normally, Prime Ministers who do not lead their party to an election victory and serve only part of a Parliament are mere footnotes in history. Brown will avoid that fate. But he will go down in history as one of the worst Prime Ministers this

Peter Hoskin

Balls sets out his ambitions

Now, this is novel – a politician effectively admitting that they’d like to be party leader.  It may be Ed Balls – interviewed in the latest New Statesman – so the news is hardly a surprise.  But it still makes a change from the usual non-denials we hear from those with an eye on the leadership.  Here’s how he puts it: “I’m not going to say that I don’t want to be leader of the Labour Party, that would be a silly thing to say. But if I ended my political career not being [leader], would that be a failure? Absolutely not. And will I always back the leader of

Peter Hoskin

Brown backs down

Apart from the sentiment expressed, perhaps the most damaging aspect of Mervyn King’s intervention on Tuesday was its timing.  Brown’s round-the-world trip was meant to act as a rallying call – but now it’s more an exercise in firefighting, as he deals with tricky questions surrounding our capacity for a “fiscal stimulus”.   Take his comments in New York yesterday , where he suggested that there wouldn’t be any further stimulus in the Budget, and claimed there were more “effective and quicker ways” of boosting the economy.  This is a trifle unconvincing, coming from a man who has paraded his “everything it takes” credentials for the past few months, and

Martin Bright

The Guardian and Libel

There is a very important piece in today’s Guardian about the UK libel laws by my old friend Jo Glanville, editor of Index on Censoship. I urge you to read the article in full. She argues that the UK’s “libel laws remain the most significant daily chill on free speech in the UK”. She is right. There are a number of stories that the British press won’t touch because the threat of being sued by welathy individuals would be so great. I can think of one such story that I would love to tell you about, but if I gave even the merest hint of the identity of the individual involved

Wednesday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Cameron should learn to love the bankers

Seeing Fred the Shred’s house being trashed in Edinburgh gives a glimpse of the nastier elements of the hang-a-banker mood out there – not just in Britain but internationally. Here is a remarkable opportunity for the Conservatives. World over, there are votes to be gained in threatening to tax or regulate the bejesus out of all financiers. Left-leaning governments (such as the Obama administration) find it difficult to avoid this temptation. There has been something of a rift in the White House over this, as Obama’s economic advisers know it makes makes very bad economic sense: in this globalised world, bankers can go anywhere they like (Barclays, for example, recently

Martin Bright

The Left and Radical Islam

There is a part of me that hopes I never have to write another word about the troubled relationship between the British left and radical Islam. But I certainly wouldn’t appreciate being told I could never write about it. This is what I find so mystifying about the campaign by Sunder Katwala, the Fabian Society’s head honcho, to stop Nick Cohen criticising the left for its mealy-mouthed approach to the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood and its south Asian offshoot Jamaat-i-Islami. He says he finds Nick’s critcism of the Fabians “politically regressive and personally offensive”. So, as a result Sunder has gone on the warpath. I find this very odd. I

Peter Hoskin

Restoring faith in Parliament

A thought-provoking article by Iain Martin in today’s Telegraph, on the subject of MPs and their expenses.  Here are some of his proposals for strengthening Parliament and making the system more transparent: “So, how to improve the quality of members and their work? Some political analysts argue, with some justification, that MPs should be paid more, with a simpler allowance system and publication of all expenses claims. But, realistically, this is a non-starter: the public would hate the idea, and it would be a foolish government that risked it in a recession. Better would be to increase the size of constituencies, to cut the number of seats to around 400

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The Problem with Working Hard

So El Gordo is in New York today, ostensibly to drum up support for his G20 gabfest. According to the Telegraph’s report: At a breakfast for business leaders, Mr Brown said that values such as “honesty, integrity and working hard” may have been absent from the financial system in recent years. One might agree about honesty and integrity but the problem with the financial sector is not that people there abandoned the “value” of “working hard”. Quite the contrary. They worked too hard. We might not be in quite this mess if there’d been less hard work and more leisurely lunches and 4pm finishes. Greed and incompetence were problems but

Peter Hoskin

PMQs live blog | 25 March 2009

Brown’s off saving the world, so it’s a Harman-Hague-Cable match-up at PMQs today.  Stay tuned for live coverage from 1200. 1201: You can watch proceedings here. 1207: Here’s Harman.  First question from Joan Ryan, wanting an assurance that the Government “will do all it can” to combat rising burglary.  Harman, predictably, gives an answer in the affirmative, and reels off some policies… 1208: Cheers for Hague as he stands to the lectern.  As he did a few weeks ago, he leads on the government’s failure to get its business loans scheme up-and-running.  Keys into the “headless chickens” attack. 1210: Harman looks flustered from the off.  She slips up, claiming that the

James Forsyth James Forsyth

A shameful lead

The Guardian’s editorial on the government’s decision to break off relations with the Muslim Council of Britain over the views of Daud Abdullah, its deputy secretary-general, contains this quite remarkable passage: “the government’s chief quarrel is with the hypothetical suggestion that resistance would be appropriate if UK forces were ever used to intercept arms destined for Gaza. Very many Muslims, and indeed many non-Muslims, would agree with that” So, The Guardian believes that there is nothing inherently wrong or unreasonable with believing that it is justified to use violence against British forces attempting to prevent the shipment of arms to a genocidal terrorist organisation. This is as incredible as it

Peter Hoskin

How significant was King’s intervention?

Looking at this morning’s papers, it’s hard not to see Mervyn King’s intervention yesterday (footage from Sky, above) as a major turning point. It makes the covers of the FT, the Telegraph, the Guardian, the Mail and the Times, and the headlines cut right into Gordon Brown’s “everything it takes” bravado (The Times: “Bank to Brown: stop spending”). The Tories will be delighted, particularly as King’s warning more or less reflects what they’ve been saying over the past few months. Suddenly, if indirectly, the case against Brown the Headless Chicken looks a whole lot stronger, while the PM’s “do-nothing” retort looks a whole lot weaker. Indeed, you wonder whether the

Tuesday

Peter Hoskin

Home and away | 24 March 2009

A tale of two speeches today, as Brown and Cameron delivered addresses largely on the markets and financial regulation.  The big difference: Brown’s was directed at a European audience in Strasbourg, whilst Cameron’s was delivered here in Blighty.  It made for a striking comparison. On the one hand, you had the PM putting a Continental spin on his usual platitudes – he even said that “we in Europe are uniquely placed…”.  Will this really achieve all that much, apart from raising a few chuckles from those European politicians who can remember when Chancellor Brown frequently snubbed meetings of EU finance ministers?  Of course, the idea is that Brown has to rally support

Daniel Korski

The problems with a larger Afghan security force

Kabul They look very impressive, marching around a rain-soaked square while their US-trained Master Sergeant sends a punishing salvo of parade instructions their way. These new recruits in the Afghan army represent Afghanistan’s proudest post-2001 achievement. I spoke to dozens of them from all of Afghanistan’s ethnic groups, saw their commander and watched several live-fire drills. Now, as the New York Times reports, President Obama is planning to double the security forces. From a projected troop strength of some 130,000 plan the plan is to create a force of about 400,000 Afghan troops and police officers. But, after today’s visit to the Afghan army, I am clear that such a