Society

The post-mortems are already beginning on John McCain’s campaign. There is plenty for folk to get stuck into—the lack of a domestic policy message, the Palin pick, the failure to distance from Bush until so late in the campaign—but McCain is trailing principally because he is a national security candidate in what has turned into an almost exclusively economic election. As Steve Hayes notes, back in 2007 the most important issue in picking a president for both Republicans and Democrats were national security related—terrorism for Republicans, Iraq for Democrats. Now only nine percent cite terrorism and seven percent Iraq as their top issue while 57 percent name the economy. This

When you look at these figures from Time magazine you realise how hard hit this country, and London especially, is going to be by this recession: “In 2007 financial services accounted for 10.1% of the U.K.’s gross domestic product, up from 5.5% in 2001. Add in professional services linked to finance, such as accounting, law and management consulting, and the total rises to 14%. And that’s for Britain as a whole. For London, finance has been even more important: it accounts for almost one-fifth of the city’s total output, perhaps as much as one-third if professional services are included. That’s far more than for even New York City, where financial

Ian Jack has a dispatch from Glenrothes in today’s Guardian. Here is his main point: “The conventional wisdom about Glenrothes goes like this. After its victory in Glasgow East, the Scottish National party thought it could wipe out Labour’s 10,000-majority. Then the global crisis erupted. Small-country nationalism no longer looked so clever – Salmond will never praise Iceland again. The UK Treasury bailed out Scotland’s two greatest banks and Brown emerged as the saviour of the world economy. An SNP victory is no longer secure. There’s a new spring in Labour’s step. All may be broadly true; people will mention it when asked, though usually only as a kind of