Society

Thursday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The one and only Gordon Brown

Bagehot in The Economist makes the sensible—but overlooked—point that Brown’s strengths are his weaknesses and vice-versa: “In his response to the crisis, Mr Brown has demonstrated many of the traits that contributed to his ruination before. One is a fondness for plagiarism. He is a natural copycat, as he demonstrated to his cost last year when he imitated a sketchy Tory idea to ease inheritance tax by squeezing “non-doms”. But well-judged plagiarism can be a desirable, even an admirable, skill in a leader, as it is proving now. Mr Brown borrowed elements of Sweden’s bank-rescue package of 1992, plus ideas advanced by the Tories and others, and worked them into

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Dollar diplomacy

There is a fascinating story in the Washington Post today about how Pakistan is looking to China for $3 billion worth of emergency assistance. Pakistan, which is on the verge of bankruptcy, desperately needs funds but knows that in the current circumstances the United States is unlikely to come through. China with $1.9 trillion in foreign reserves, and with a long-standing relationship with Pakistan—it played a crucial role in assisting the Pakistani nuclear programme, is well placed to help. It will be well worth watching to see what other countries China assists over the coming months. However, in the long term the financial crisis could do far more harm to

The Spectator

Frozen out

As Iain Martin says you couldn’t make up the fact that the Audit Commission has £10 million in Icelandic banks. Oxford University also has £30 million in Icelandic banks, the BBC reports.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Brown ignored the warning signals

Some are saying that you can’t hold Brown in anyway responsible for the current situation because no one saw it coming. But as Martin Bright points out in the New Statesman this week, this simply isn’t true: “Brown’s assiduous biographer, Simon Lee of Hull University, noticed the warning signals contained in the report. He wrote last year, in his book Best for Britain?: the Politics and Legacy of Gordon Brown, “as the IMF has noted, by encouraging the UK economy to become even more linked to global financial markets, the British model has increased the vulnerability of the UK economy to global risks and contagion”. The report warned of the

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Too little, too late?

Last night, John McCain turned in his best performance of the debate season. He clearly distanced himself from President Bush, he drew contrasts with Obama on taxes and he appeared confident in his answers. In short, he did tonight what he needed to do in the first debate. (However, it should be noted that the instant opinion polling once more showed Obama winning the debate). The two questions are will McCain’s performance change things and does he have enough time to get back in the game. My sense is that last night will get the McCain campaign up off the floor, it should see McCain stabilise his position. But that

Wednesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The Ground Game: The View From Ohio

In 2004, George W Bush “won” the Ground Game. This time? Well, every indication is that Barack Obama has built a vastly more formidable organisation than John McCain. To help give readers a sense of what’s happening out there in the field, I’m delighted to say that super-smart Democratic operative “Josh Lyman” is going to be filing occasional reports from the great state of Ohio. Here’s his first dispatch: “I got placed in Bowling Green, right by Bowling Green State University.  To say that this area is a hotbed of activism, ground tactics, tension, and the trenches of the cultural war would be a stretch.  The county is a swing

James Forsyth James Forsyth

If Brown can’t learn to feel the electorate’s pain, it will be him who suffers

Fraser in his politics column, available online tomorrow, argues that in the current climate Brown’s lack of emotional intelligence will be less of a problem for him. This is one of those rare instances where I disagree with Fraser. It is one of Brown’s great faults that he doesn’t do empathy or apologies. I think this is going to be a huge problem for him during a recession when politicians have to be able to do the ‘I feel your pain’ stuff if they don’t want to appear hideously out of touch. Take Brown’s comments earlier today. Andrew Porter, a journalist who gives Brown a fair shake, reports that Brown

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Someone didn’t get the memo about avoiding premature triumphalism

Gerri Peev’s story in The Scotsman today has a quote in it from Nigel Griffiths which takes the biscuit: Nigel Griffiths, the Edinburgh Labour MP who is close to Mr Brown, said: “I can describe his response to the financial crisis in one word – Guinness. Pure genius.” Mr Griffiths, who has been campaigning in Glenrothes, said the reaction to Mr Brown had changed remarkably. “If you had asked me ten days ago how it [the by-election] would go, I would have said we had narrowed the gap but the SNP were still ahead. Now, I’m thinking we could win Glenrothes.” The Glenrothes by-election is gaining in importance by the

James Forsyth James Forsyth

What should McCain do tonight?

Tonight is the last McCain-Obama debate and McCain goes into it needing a game-changer; three polls out today have him down by 14, nine and 10 respectively. To compound McCain’s problem, the economic news is so bad that it is virtually impossible for a message on any subject other than the economy to cut through. The Obama campaign is keen to spin that McCain is panicking and that is how they’ll likely respond to any bold new initiatives McCain proposes or any attacks he unleashes on Obama. McCain’s best strategy might be, as was suggested on Meet the Press on Sunday, a bit of straight talk: telling the American people

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The Canadian experience 

Tim Montgomerie, who spent a lot of time with the Canadian Conservatives during the campaign, has a good piece up on yesterday’s election in Canada which saw the Conservatives maintain their status as the largest party but fail to win an overall majority. The one issue I would take with Tim on is green taxes, which Tim is very down on. I’d argue that conservatives should support moving the tax burden from work to waste. Also, green taxes if properly applied can be used to lower—or scrap—the taxes which press down hardest on low and middle-income families. PS I can’t get through an article about Canada without telling my favourite

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Will there be a manifesto commitment to privatise the banks?

Events have moved so fast this week that there are a whole string of questions that we have not really thought about. For instance, when will the government sell off its stakes in Royal Bank of Scotland and the bank to be created by the TSB-Lloyds HBOS merger? Obviously, the government would be foolish to announce the schedule that it is working towards as the answer will depend on market conditions. But it doesn’t seem unreasonable to ask whether the parties’ manifestos at the next election will contain a commitment to place these shares on the market before the end of the next parliament, which will in all likelihood be

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Will Brown be busted?

Daniel Finkelstein lays out the most eloquent case I have seen yet for why the current financial crisis will ultimately do for Brown: “Our view of the Brown decade is like the turkey’s view of mankind, utterly destroyed by what has now happened. The stability was a trick of the light, the lengthy period of growth was fuelled by house prices and debt, the low interest rates (of which Brown is still, amazingly, boasting) were an error. The length of the good years is being paid for by the severity of the crisis we now face. … What matters is not whether the bust was avoidable. It is that the

Charles Leadbeater

As Brown poses as FDR, look ahead to a very new capitalism

Charles Leadbeater, the acclaimed innovator and new media analyst, predicts a transformed landscape: a new ‘networked’ capitalism in which the state plays a part but cannot pick winners — a system that is chastened, subdued and fraught with social danger We should be searching for a new kind of capitalism, and not just according to the far Left. That is the message from Washington dinner parties and in the pages of the Financial Times. For most people the next year will not feel like a search for a brave new economic model: it will be more like hand-to-hand combat to keep hold of what you have. Yet the world is

Bronwen Maddox

Faith in the Founding Fathers

The American Future, by Simon Schama This is the most exhilarating book that has been written about America for at least eight years, although it depends on the premise that the influence of George W. Bush is over and that Barack Obama will be the next president. Simon Schama is fortunate that this outcome looks more likely by the day. He has not been helped, on the other hand, by the suddenness of the financial drama which has overtaken the world’s most powerful economy, and which calls into question some of the American future he describes. All the same, this intricate and ambitious account of American inspiration and of the

Ross Clark Ross Clark

The unravelling of the great buy-to-let scam

Ross Clark says speculators and fraudsters saw easy money in buying city-centre flats with borrowed money — but investors and lenders now face huge losses as prices crash I have developed a rather ghoulish pastime. It involves thumbing through auction results for repossessed apartments in city centres, then checking what those same properties sold for when new, a year or two ago. My record so far is a two-bedroom flat in a development called Beauchamp Place, Coventry, which was auctioned in September for £85,000 — less than 40 per cent of the £214,000 for which it was sold new in June 2006. That flat has, however, performed better as an

Sir Les-Patterson

Diplomatic Notebook

I am an elder statesman, but I’m a versatile old bugger. In about a month’s time I’m hitting the boards in Austin, Texas as a support act for Dame Edna. She’s not a happy lady about it because we’ve never hit it off, or got it off for that matter, and she’s got this bee in her bonnet that the Seppos (Septic Tanks — Yanks) might find me a bit too forthright in the language department and I could end up as popular as a bastard on Father’s Day. I beg to differ. She can stick her opinions as far as I’m concerned, and I’ve got a gut feeling I’m

James Delingpole James Delingpole

My real focus group scorned climate change

If you ever want to get in touch with the real world, try pretending to be a second world war GI. This is what I did the other weekend and it was quite an eye-opener. I don’t mean the stuff I learned about the correct procedure for debussing and advancing to contact from an armoured half-track — fascinating, obviously, though that was. I mean what I discovered about my fellow Living History re-enactors in the pub, afterwards, when we got on to the subject of impending ecological disaster. ‘Oh that? No, it’s a load of old bollocks that is,’ said my neighbour, and I did a double take. It has

Tuesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

42 Days: Jacqui Smith

Here’s video of Jacqui Smith’s contemptible performance in the Commons last night. Basically, she says that if you don’t support giving the police carte blanche then you’re on the terrorists’ side. At the very least, if you dare to question the government you don’t care about security. And of course all you yoghurt-munching civil liberties pansies also don’t care about the liberty of “not being blown up”. Seriously. As I say, contemptible. Note too the bald-faced lies she tells. Apparently every security expert supports the government’s proposals. Not so. Former policemen and, as I say, two former heads of MI5 opposed the government last night. So too, one should note,

James Forsyth James Forsyth

How Labour should behave

Sunder Katwala at Next Left, the Fabian Society’s excellent blog, has laid down some rules for how Labour supporters should act  during the current crisis: “1. Behave sensibly. At all costs, avoid triumphalism about an economic crisis, however well the Prime Minister handles it. 2. In particular, could anybody banging on about the Falklands please stop it. It is in very poor taste all round. 3. And, particularly particularly, if any MP wants to say ‘when the crisis is over, perhaps there might be an early election’, perhaps arrangements could be made for them to be quickly taken out and shot.” This is wise advice. Considering the damage that the election