Society

Friday

Peter Hoskin

What are the odds? | 7 November 2008

For Gordon Brown, one of the greatest boons of the Labour triumph in Glenrothes is that it gives him an opportunity to tighten his stranglehold on the economic narrative.  All he need do is spin the byelection as a referendum on the Government’s approach to the downturn, and the Labour victory as a public endorsement of that approach.  Unsurprisingly, it’s an opportunity he’s duly taking. Now, with the main political battleground of the next few years likely to be the economy, these moments are pivotal.  Brown can capitalise here, and – thanks to the reinvigorated Labour spin operation, and the Tories’ confused economic message – most probably will.  This doesn’t

Peter Hoskin

Are the knives out for Osborne?

How much have the Deripaska affair and the Tories’ flimsy response to the economic and financial crises affected George Osborne’s standing within his party?  A fair bit, if this survey of party members by ConservativeHome is anything to go by.  I quote from their findings: “…support for the Shadow Chancellor has also plunged among the Tory grassroots.  Our latest survey of over 1,600 rank-and-file members found that 49% were satisfied with Mr Osborne but 47% were dissatisfied; a net positive rating of just 2%. That is a huge shift since last month when George Osborne enjoyed a net positive rating of +70%.” Osborne currently enjoys the support of David Cameron. 

Peter Hoskin

Glenrothes: the aftermath

To some extent, Gordon Brown deserves the plaudits he’s getting this morning.  Yes, the Labour victory in Glenrothes will be have been catalysed by a number of factors – the quality of their candidate, Lindsay Roy; the financial and economic crises; the deployment, cynical though it may have been, of Sarah Brown; and the failings of the opposition campaigns.  But in the background to all that was an uncharacteristic risk by our PM – his decision to closely involve himself in the campaign, made when party support for him was at a low ebb.  And it paid off. The post mortem now begins for the other parties.  All will be

Peter Hoskin

Glenrothes by-election: the numbers

Lindsay Roy (Labour) — 19,946 votes (55.11 % of total vote, up 3.20 percentage points on 2006) Peter Grant (SNP) — 13,206 votes (36.49%, up 13.13 points) Maurice Golden (Conservatives) — 1,381 votes (3.82%, down 3.82 points) Harry Wills (Lib Dems) — 947 votes (2.62%, down 10.04 points) Of course, the main talking point from this will be the surprise Labour victory, but expect the hefty 10 percentage-point drop in Lib Dem support to cause much consternation on Cowley Street.  The Tories won’t be too pleased with their showing either.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Labour expected to win the Glenrothes by-election

Labour officials are confidently claiming that the party will hold Glenrothes in the by-election there. This is a safe Labour seat, but the SNP do hold the equivalent seat in the Scottish Parliament. Expect the press to treat this as proof that Brown is back in the game.

Thursday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

You mean Africa is, like, a continent?

You betcha! According to Fox News’ Carl Cameron Sarah Palin wasn’t aware of this. Nor, he says, could she name the countries that signed NAFTA. Clue: there are only three. This latter problem alone must, one supposes, have horrified the campaign (though of course they only had themselves to blame), the former something that though hard to believe (surely!) you can’t do very much about. Of course, self-interest abounds here: McCain’s advisors have every incentive to pin the blame upon Palin. But still… UPDATE: Ramesh Ponnuru says it’s rather more likely that Palin didn’t appreciate that South Africa was, you know, a country not just the bottom bit of Africa.

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Obama’s Test

Hope has a short half-life. Right now most of the world is simply happy to see an end to the Bush years. Even so, there’s no denying that Obama generates much more excitement internationally than, say, Hillary Clinton would have had she been elected President. Much, though not all, of this excitement is generated by Obama’s personal story, not his policies. Nothing either wrong or surprising about that, though foreigners do like all the stuff about how Obama intends to restore America’s standing in the world. But there will come a time, not immediately but sometime, when flesh needs to be put on those rhetorical bones. A time when promises

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The meaning of Rahm

It now appears that Rahm Emanuel has accepted the job of White House Chief of Staff in an Obama administration. The Chief of Staff is, in many ways, the second most powerful person in the White House after the president. Some will say that the appointment of the hyper-partisan Emanuel demonstrates that for all the talk of unity, this is going to be an aggressively political White House. But that misses the point: Emanuel is there to scare Democrats who try to over-reach rather than Republicans. What is true is that Emanuel reflects another side of Obama’s political character that is rarely seen in public, the aggressive fighter who knows

Peter Hoskin

Who will win in Glenrothes?

I’m always slightly wary about calling elections, so I’ll refrain from doing so now.  But here’s a thread for CoffeeHousers to leave their predictions.  At the moment, the betting markets suggest that the SNP will triumph.  But a PHI100 poll earlier today recorded a distinct split between politicians and the media on this – a majority of media respondents predicted an SNP victory, whereas a majority of politicians predicted a Labour victory.  Check out Political Betting’s take on that split here. Polls close at 2200, and we should have a result by 0030, Friday morning.  Tune into Coffee House then to found out which party’s triumphed. 

Peter Hoskin

Spot the hypocrisy

Exhibit A: Yvette Cooper urges the banks to pass the interest rate cut on to borrowers. Exhibit B: The state-owned Northern Rock withdraws tracker mortgages – which follow the movements of the base rate – to avoid passing rate cuts on to new borrowers.

Peter Hoskin

The birth of a one-liner

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been critical of Team Osborne’s inability to distil their economic message – and their attacks on Gordon Brown – into simple language that can sink into the public consciousness.  But, to be fair, Osborne’s just coined a fairly effective one-liner on the interest rate cut, that deserves highlighting: “It may be a shot in the arm but it shows how sick the patient is.” I’m sure there’ll be occasion for the shadow chancellor to wheel this one out again, in future – and not just in the case of further rate cuts.  Now all he need do is figure out some zingers which articulate the Tory reponse to the

Peter Hoskin

Now that’s a cut

So, those pushing for a 1 percent cut in interest rates have got their wish – and then some.  The Bank has just announced a 1.5 percent cut in base rates, bringing them down to 3 percent.  That’s the biggest cut since 1981. Now what does this – frankly, quite astonishing – move tell us? Two things, in particular: 1) That the Bank feels that the doomsayers – the people like David Blanchflower, with their “cut rates or die” prognoses – are most probably right.  Things are worse than the Bank initially thought, and they’re trying to play catch-up. And, 2) that the officials really, really want significant cuts to be passed on by banks to their customers. HBOS et al

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Bank cuts rates by 1.5 percent

The dramatic and urgently-needed cut in base rates – by 1.5 points to 3 percent – is a comment on the extent of the deep recession that Britain is sliding into. It has been made possible by the collapse in inflation expectations. Because fewer Brits will have salaries – and most of those who have are coping with real-terms pay cuts – shoppers’ wallets are empty of earned and borrowed cash. Shops will have to slash prices to move goods – it will be murder on the high street. Ergo the collapsing inflation expectations allow the MPC to drop rates. In fact the recession will be so bad that we can probably expect

Peter Hoskin

Does the ‘Brown bounce’ end here?

And so the polls have opened in an election closer to home: the Glenrothes byelection.  We should see a result by the early hours of tomorrow morning, but the current expectation is that the SNP will come out narrowly on top.  Both the betting markets and party insiders are playing down Labour’s chances.  Whilst Alex Salmond is sounding typically bullish. Will a Labour loss mark the end of this latest ‘Brown bounce’?  Almost certainly – and not least of all because Brown has invested himself, and his wife, so heavily in this campaign.  But the question remains of what the rebound will look like.  Will Labour’s opinion poll rating start

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Let us take a moment to praise John McCain

Washington is a city with a short memory. Today as I did the rounds before heading to New York and then Boston for a few days holiday, John McCain’s name was barely mentioned as anything other than a footnote. But if Tuesday night marked the beginning of the end of McCain’s career in public service, he deserves a proper and full-throated vote of thanks. First of all, John McCain has served his country in ways that few of us can imagine. No matter how many times it is said or the partisan uses it is put to, there is no doubt that John McCain’s refusal of special treatment in Vietnam

Wednesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Bloggery

Are you interested in technology and technology policy and politics? If so then you should zip on over to Julian Sanchez’s new blog, Law & Disorder at Ars Technica. Goodness assured.

Alex Massie Alex Massie

When lunatics write…

I’d wondered how Melanie Philips – Britain’s pop-eyed, vein-bulging answer to Andy McCarthy and Stanley Kurtz – might react to the election of Barack Obama. Happily, she doesn’t disappoint: Those of us who have looked on appalled during this most frightening of presidential elections – at the suspension of reason and its replacement by thuggery — can only hope that the way this man governs will be very different from the profile provided by his influences, associations and record to date. It’s a faint hope – the enemies of America, freedom and the west will certainly be rejoicing today… What this election tells us is that America voted for change

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Double-standards?

There’s a rather odd notion in some circles that black people voting for Barack Obama on the grounds that he is black is itself somewhat racist. Here’s Iain Dale for instance: I could hardly believe my ears this morning, listening to my old mucker Yasmin Alibhai-Brown on 5 Live, talking about the US election. Shelagh Fogarty quoted a poll saying that 97% of black voters in America are supporting Obama. She asked Yasmin if she thought it was OK for black people to vote for him purely because he is black. Yasmin said yes, she thought it was absolutely fine. I wonder what she would have said to white voters

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The aftermath

A little sign of the way in which this election has touched people is the fact that you cannot buy a copy of the Washington Post today for love nor money. There is currently a huge queue outside the Post building downtown as people wait for the arrival of a special commemorative edition of the paper. Meanwhile, the chatter continues about who Obama will appoint to key jobs. At the moment there is the most buzz around Rahm Emanuel as White House Chief of Staff, Larry Summers as Treasury Secretary, Jim Steinberg as National Security Advisor and possibly Colin Powell as education secretary.   The Republicans, by contrast, are licking their