Society

Friday

Daniel Korski

Can you ever beat insurgents?

Counter-insurgency is a complicated thing. It used to be easy to tell whether you were winning a war. Either the enemy was retreating or you were. In counter-insurgency, things are more blurred. Some say you are winning if the insurgents take on asymmetric techniques – road-side bombings, assassinations, suicide bombings. Others argue that counter-insurgency has no “victory”, only containment. Perhaps you win so long as domestic opposition to a war (a normal, perhaps even constant, phenomenon nowadays) does not translate into effective political action i.e. street violence, civil disobedience or just the rout of war-making governments. If people care enough about an issue they will act, as in Iceland and

The Spectator

The week that was | 20 March 2009

Here are some of the posts made during the past week on Spectator.co.uk: Fraser Nelson responds to the latest issue of the New Statesman, and thinks David Cameron got the better of Gordon Brown in PMQS. James Forsyth reports on the government’s debt worries, and says that the Tories are in the same position as Labour were nine months before the 1997 landslide. Peter Hoskin picks up on Brown’s non-apology, and thinks the Tories are ramping up their spending cut rhetoric. Martin Bright watches Whistleblowers United in action. Clive Davis wonders whether bloggers can actually write. Alex Massie tracks the debate between the traditionalists and reformers over the future of

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Obama’s troubled start continues

Last week it was David Brooks and William Galston, this week it is Peggy Noonan. In her column today Noonan, becomes the latest figure sympathetic to Obama to worry that he is getting it seriously wrong. Here’s how she ends her piece: “These are the two great issues, the economic crisis and our safety. In the face of them, what strikes one is the weightlessness of the Obama administration, the jumping from issue to issue and venue to venue from day to day. Isaiah Berlin famously suggested a leader is a fox or a hedgehog. The fox knows many things but the hedgehog knows one big thing. In political leadership

Peter Hoskin

Now, this is getting silly

Labour’s Obama-centricity has certainly been grating recently – the hoo-haa surrounding Brown’s trip to the States, for instance, and the name-dropping he’s engaged in since. But now it’s been cranked up to 11, and is all the more disspiriting for it.  Exhibit A: the party’s G20 micro-site, which Dizzy highlighted yesterday.  It features a picture of Brown and Obama, and calls for users to submit statments to “Prime Minster Brown, President Obama and the G20”.  Somehow, I doubt other G20 leaders will be amused at Obama’s elevation from the pack.  And, now, Exhibit B: a Labour party leaflet emblazoned with the words “Yes. I want to make a difference” and,

Peter Hoskin

The Tories are in line for a 45p tax headache

Have the Tories fallen into Gordon Brown’s 40p tax trap?  Since the measure was announcned in the Pre-Budget Report, they’ve skilfully avoided raising it – after all, an attack on the tax hike could be spun by Labour as a case of the Tories and their “rich friends”; whilst support for it could provoke some ire from the Tory benches.  But no longer.  The Telegraph extrapolates from David Cameron’s comment yesterday that “the richest in our society must bear a fair share of the burden” to reveal that: “Senior Tory sources believe that the 45p tax rate is now necessary if the party is to fulfil its other pledges to

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The Flower of Scotland Lies Cold in Flanders Clay

Back in the days when the Edinbugh Evening News printed a “Saturday Pink” edition, it used to be said that there were two headlines on hand for whenever Scotland played England for the Calcutta Cup. Occasionally the sub-editors could scream “It’s Bannockburn!”; more often they were left to lament “It’s Flodden”. The latter, as always when the game is played at Twickenham, seems the more probable result tomorrow. Still, talk of ancient battles is merely tabloid hyperbole. Other conflicts loom larger. Frank Keating had a characteristically lovely piece in the Guardian this week, recalling the terror of the First World War and the calamitous toll it took on rugby: The

Peter Hoskin

Why welfare reform will be a vote winner

There’s a school of thought that welfare reform will become less popular as the recession bites deeper, and as more people enter the welfare system.  Not so, to my mind – and Alice Thomson adroitly sets out the reasons why in today’s Times.  Her central claim is that the main divide in UK labour isn’t between immigrants and non-immigrants – despite Brown’s dangerous BJ4BW sloganeering – but simply between the “active and the idle”.  Many of those currently losing their jobs belong to the former group – they are getting made redundant and almost immediately hopping into the queues at Job Centres.  The competition for jobs is fierce, but they’re willing

Peter Hoskin

Work-shy Labour?

An eyecatching snippet from the Telegraph: “[Labour chief whip, Nick] Brown said that he was concerned that a hardcore rump of five per cent of Labour MPs were responsible for a quarter of all ‘unauthorised absences’ from the Commons.” Now, I wonder who they might be…

Peter Hoskin

Brown’s wayward sense of priorities

What is it with Gordon Brown and alarm calls?  He spent years ignoring the IMF’s warnings about the state of the UK public finances.  And now, thanks to a National Audit Office report, we learn that he ignored warnings about the preparedness of the Treasury to deal with a banking collapse.  Here’s the relevant passage from that report, with the key part underlined:   31. The Treasury had been aware of potential shortcomings in the arrangements for dealing with a financial institution in difficulty prior to the crisis at Northern Rock. From 2004 the Tripartite Authorities had undertaken exercises to test their response to a range of scenarios. These exercises

Martin Bright

Whistleblowers United

Good to see three of my favourite whistleblowers – Katharine Gun, Brian Jones and Derek Pasquill – giving evidence to the Public Accounts Committee today. But it seems from the reporting that Carne Ross, former first secretary at the United Nations, rather stole the show by live video link from New York. Ross, it seems he suggested that there is still more to be found out about the Iraq War and said that the full papaer trail should be published. Funnily enough, Alistair Campbell didn’t use the opportunity of the guest editorship of my old publication, the New Statesman, to enlighten us further. It was a bold, if rather curious

Thursday

Peter Hoskin

Have the Tories drawn back some of their spending plans?

If you want a taste of what Cameron’s speech on the public services was like earlier, do tune into his interview with Nick Robinson – video on the BBC website here.  He’s considerably more unabashed about talking cuts than he has been in the past, and stresses the “tough choices” that a Tory government would have to make.  It makes for a fascinating contrast with his press conference in January, when Cameron asserted that the NHS, schools, international development and defence would all see real terms spending increases under a Tory government.  Pushed by Robinson today, he seems only to commit to increases for the NHS and international development and,

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Getting ahead of the pitchforks

As this recession drags on, I suspect that three groups—apart from the finance figures who behaved so recklessly—will bear the brunt of public anger: corporations and individuals who avoid tax, those who abuse the welfare state and those public servants who take advantage of their position to unfairly enrich themselves and their families. The politician who can learn how to harness this anger would show the electorate that they are on the voters’ side.   The way to make this message cut through would be to go against type. So, for example, Cameron should emphasise that he’ll clamp down on tax avoidance rather than majoring on welfare abuse. (Naturally, Labour should

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Jeeves and Foreign Policy

Timothy Garton Ash tries to explain the Anglo-American relationship in terms of another great partnership: Jeeves and Wooster. Here, in miniature, is a classic example of that whole British approach to our relationship with the US, which I call the Jeeves school of diplomacy. Impeccable manners; a discreet smile; always perfect loyalty in public; but privately murmuring insistently, “Is that wise, Sir?” And back home in Jeeves’s own club, frequented – as devotees of PG Wodehouse will recall – only by gentlemen’s gentlemen (ie butlers), you tut-tut about the foolish conduct of the masters. This has, in some measure, been a British approach for more than 60 years, ever since

Peter Hoskin

The Tories are ramping up their spending cut rhetoric

David Cameron has just delivered what struck me as his most forceful speech yet on public spending, an indication that the Tories may finally be prepared to talk about cuts.  The basic theme was “more for less” – cutting down on Government waste and trimming the “quangocracy” – to deal with the crisis of our public finances.  Sure, it’s all still a little nebulous.  But at least it makes fiscal sense – unlike the “sharing the proceeds of growth” formula, which I suspect this speech was designed to bury once and for all. The more Cameron talks like this, the better for the Tories.  As Robert Chote points out in

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Debt worries

Robert Chote, the director of the IFS, has a piece in today’s Times detailing just how bad the state of the public finances is. As Chote puts is, ‘public spending will have to be squeezed and taxes will have to rise’ whoever wins the next election. The real worry, though, is that Gordon Brown trashes the public finances so comprehensively in the next PBR before going to the polls that it becomes more expensive for this country to borrow: “The Pre-Budget Report assumed that the Government would continue to pay an average interest rate of only a little over 4 per cent on its debt. There are good reasons to

Peter Hoskin

Cameron calls for a positive approach

Here’s how David Cameron kicks off his article in the latest issue of the magazine, before going on to outline the Tories’ “empowerment” agenda: “‘Sit back, keep quiet, let the government unravel and you will be in Number 10.’ If I had a pound for every time these words of advice have been uttered to me over the last year or so, I’d be able to make a sizeable contribution towards easing the pain of Labour’s debt crisis. But the advice — however well meaning — is plain wrong. The election is far from won and I still hold to the belief that governments don’t just lose elections; oppositions must

Wednesday

Peter Hoskin

Will this have the same impact as it did in 1979?

You felt it had to come at some time, and here it is – the Tories have reworked the original ‘Labour isn’t working’ poster (30 years old this year) for the current recession.  As Fraser suggested earlier, you can expect this message to form their central attack from now until polling day.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

How to deal with the shameless bosses who are pocketing their rewards for failure

The argument raging in America over the AIG bonuses is basically the same as the one in Britain over Fred Goodwin’s pension. Those responsible for dragging their companies down and forcing the taxpayer to bail them out are receiving huge sums of money. To add insult to injury, the government could—and should—have done something to stop it. There are two schools of thought on where we go from here. One is that these case are a distraction from bigger, more important issues. The other holds that if public support is to be maintained for the unpalatable steps that are necessary to restore the economy to health, then the wrongdoers must

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Introducing the Spectator Inquiry wiki-site

Is there such a thing as the collective wisdom of Coffee House? By the end of The Spectator Inquiry into the recession, we’ll find out. It’s now live and with its own wiki site – http://spectatorinquiry.pbwiki.com. We’re very much playing this by ear, so I’d be grateful if a few CoffeeHousers could head over there, have a fiddle about with it and let us know if it works. Within the next few days we will have the transcripts from interview with William White and Nigel Lawson. Meanwhile have a look, have a tinker, play with it, add pages, get writing, get stuck in…