Society

Friday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

An Alaska-Stockholm Summit?

It’s too late now, of course, but there’s at least one head of state Sarah Palin has something in common with. King Carl Gustaf XVI of Sweden who has just come out in favour of shooting wolves. Bonus: Sweden’s moose-hunting season opened last week, and moose – or elk – hunting is increasingly popular amongst women: Some 300,000 moose, or elk as they’re known in Europe, roam Sweden’s woods during the summer months, and about a third of those are killed off each autumn during the hunt. “Society has changed over the years. Now people can pursue their interests, regardless of gender and there’s nothing stopping them…” Anja Kjellsson, a

James Forsyth James Forsyth

High noon on Wednesday is Cameron’s next chance to change the narrative

PMQs is frequently derided as something that is only of interest to the Westminster Village. That may be true but it helps frame the way that political reporters and commentators see the battle between the parties and plays a crucial role in determining the mood of the parliamentary parties.  This week’s clash will be one of the most important in a while. The consensus in Westminster is that Cameron’s speech today was too small for the moment—though, it is worth noting that the Standard’s write up is positive and the odd conversation about it that I’ve overheard on the train to the north that I’m on has been fairly warm

The Spectator

The week that was | 17 October 2008

Fraser Nelson reveals Gordon Brown’s new plan to bring down national debt, and begins the illustrated guide to the Brown bust. James Forsyth asks whether there’ll be a manifesto commitment to privatise the banks, and reports on the demise of 42-day detention. Daniel Korski says the appointment of Sir General David Richards as head of the British Army is a good thing.  Stephen Pollard laments the awful West End. Melanie Phillips analyzes the culture war for the White House. Clive Davis imagines Gordon Brown as Sonny Liston. Trading Floor writes on environmental crime. And Americano asks whether John McCain’s performance in the latest Presidential debate was too little, too late.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Which Obama will we get if he is elected?

No conservative columnist has better understood Obama than David Brooks and his column today on Obama sums up both Obama’s strengths and his weaknesses quite brilliantly. Here’s how he concludes: “He doesn’t have F.D.R.’s joyful nature or Reagan’s happy outlook, but he is analytical. That’s why this William Ayers business doesn’t stick. He may be liberal, but he is never wild. His family is bourgeois. His instinct is to flee the revolutionary gesture in favor of the six-point plan. This was not evident back in the “fierce urgency of now” days, but it is now. And it is easy to sketch out a scenario in which he could be a

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Buffett says buy

The Sage of Omaha takes to the New York Times to explain why he is moving his personal investments from US government bonds to shares, a move that is the opposite of what most people are up to: “The financial world is a mess, both in the United States and abroad. Its problems, moreover, have been leaking into the general economy, and the leaks are now turning into a gusher. In the near term, unemployment will rise, business activity will falter and headlines will continue to be scary. So … I’ve been buying American stocks. This is my personal account I’m talking about, in which I previously owned nothing but

James Forsyth James Forsyth

What ‘big’ thing should Cameron do?

Steve Richards’ column this morning is thought-provoking. Here’s the central plank of his argument: “In some ways there are parallels for Cameron in the dilemmas Neil Kinnock faced during the miners’ strike under Margaret Thatcher in the mid 1980s. Kinnock was torn as to what to do. He instinctively sympathised with the miners, but disapproved of the leadership and strategy of Arthur Scargill. He was scathing about what he saw as Thatcher’s ruthless brutality and yet appreciated some of the arguments she was deploying. He wanted to say more, but knew that his party was largely in favour of the strike and felt constrained. Later he was to reflect that

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The cease-fire is over

The Tories returned to the fray on the economy with David Cameron’s speech in the City this morning. There is much to criticise Gordon Brown for in terms of his economic management but Brown has done a brilliant job in the last couple of weeks in setting out a narrative that because he can’t be blamed for everything that has gone wrong with the financial system, he shouldn’t be blamed for anything. One respect in which Brown is Churchillian is in his view that history will be kind to you if you write it. The Tories need to puncture this bubble with a set of clear and lucid arguments that

Thursday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Live-blogging the Bluster at Hofstra

So here we go again, campers. In just a few hours our long international nightmare will be over. Yup, there’ll be no more Presidential debates to entertain us. John McCain and Barack Obama are even now limbering up for their final tussle. By way of a prelude, I’d recommend reading this pre-debate symposium at Culture 11, especially Dave Weigel’s advice. Good stuff. The lads at the Confabulum will also, like half the known blogosphere, be live-blogging the nonsense. Here, we’re going to try something a wee bit different, using live-blog software from Coveritlive to, well, live-blog the debate. You can leave comments which I’ll then put into the live-blog, vote

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Department of Newspapers

Tee hee: The journalistic industry is perilously close to collapse after running out of days in the week to dub ‘black’ in the event of dire economic news. Financial journalism has virtually frozen up after last week’s so-called ‘Black Friday’, which exhausted the stock of slightly varied clichés. Reporters were close to panic last night at the prospect of having unimaginatively to sensationalise any further stock-market falls this week. The Government has been considering opening the markets at the weekend, in order to provide two new potential ‘black’ days for the media to gibber in horror about, but industry insiders are calling for much more radical moves. One broadsheet business

Alex Massie Alex Massie

McCain-Obama 3

Who won? Well the lads and lasses at Election Debates have a decisive, if split, decision: 5-2 to Obama. You can check out their adjudications here.

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The Camera Never/Always Lies…

Though publishing it does feel a bit like piling on, this picture – an actual, real, Reuters photograph – does sort of sum-up the campaign. Your suggestions for a caption please! UPDATE: Commenters point out that this was McCain pulling a deliberate “Doh!” type of face having initially tried to wander off the set in the wrong direction. So, unfortunate that the cameras caught him. And probably unfair for the whole world to blog it. Still, as I say, joke or not it does rather encapsulate the central campaign narrative: Obama cool, calm, collected; McCain crazy wee man.

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