Society

Thursday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The new CW

One of the political winners of the last quarter of this year has been Ed Miliband. He gave one of the best speeches of the conference season and then was promoted in Brown’s reshuffle to one of the sexiest portfolios in government. James Macintyre in his predictions for 2009 says: “Ed Miliband will emerge as the up-and-coming politician of 2009 and come to be regarded as Brown’s natural successor.” One of the smartest commentators on the centre-left said something similar to me the other day citing Ed’s popularity across the party and the fact that the political energy is now on the more statist left where Ed has always been. His

James Forsyth James Forsyth

One meeting Peter Mandelson isn’t invited to

Westminster is in awe of Peter Mandelson’s power. There is no doubt that he has almost unparalleled access and a remarkably wide-ranging remit; as Rachel Sylvester noted he sits on 33 of 39 cabinet committees. But it seems there are still some Brownites who are not yet ready to welcome him into the inner circle. Kevin Maguire, no friend of Mandelson, reports in his New Statesman diary  that: “The great guessing game over the date of the election has overlooked a regular gathering in No 10 on Wednesday afternoons. Chaired by Gordon Brown’s mini-me, Ed Balls, the eclectic collective includes Miss Moneypenny Sue Nye, the spinner Damian McBride, the union

Peter Hoskin

May responds

Here are Theresa May’s answers to the questions put forward by CoffeeHousers: john miller “Why have Government ministers been able to spout the most outrageous lies over the last few months, effectively unopposed by the Conservatives? The Tories seem to lack a short succinct rebuttal that gives a voice to the feelings of the public.” On the contrary, I think we have shown ourselves to be highly effective in opposition, continually questioning the government’s actions and putting forward a coherent alternative.  There are people who have vowed to vote Conservative in the next election who would never even have considered us before.  We still have a lot more to do

Peter Hoskin

Christmas culture picks

I’ve just uploaded my set of culture recommendations, which you can read here.  If CoffeeHousers have any culture picks of their own, please give them a mention in the comments section to this post.

Wednesday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The Osborne general election predictor says it is dead-level between Cameron and Brown

In 2004, George Osborne wrote a piece for The Spectator setting out ‘The 13 keys to Number 10’. It was adapted from one of those American guides that predict who will win presidential elections. In 2004, Osborne predicted Tory victory using it but that was more due to some scoring decisions that were based more on loyalty than reality. Indeed, going through it in a more sober fashion would have given you the correct result. Anyway, here are the 13 keys and my thoughts on who has the edge on each: 1. Real per capita economic growth during the parliament equals or exceeds the mean growth during the previous two

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Comic – but not in the way intended

This press release from the Tories just landed in my inbox: Commenting on Harriet Harman’s comparison of Gordon Brown to Superman, Shadow Cabinet member, Chris Grayling, said: “Gordon Brown is the Lex Luthor and not the Superman of British politics.  He gets us into a deep mess and all his ideas about how to get us out of it just aren’t working.” ENDS Notes to Editors Lex Luthor is a fictional character that appears in comic books published by DC Comics. The character first appeared in Action Comics #23 (Apr. 1940), and was created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. Luthor is described as “a power-mad, evil scientist” with incredible

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Three suggestions for how the Tories can get their groove back

How the Tories can get back on the front foot was the talk of the Christmas parties and bars of Westminster last night. There’s a general feeling that even though the Tories lead in the polls and the political fundamentals favour them, they are not doing as well as they should be and that they need to improve their poll standing if voices in the party are not to start sounding off. I suspect that a lot of Coffee Housers would like to see the leadership rip up its whole playbook. That’s not going to happen and it would be a mistake if it did: a string of flip-flops would

James Forsyth James Forsyth

PMQs live blog | 17 December 2008

Gordon Brown is in Iraq today, avoiding the final PMQs of term, so we have Harman versus Hague again. Contrary to what people expected, Harman has held her own in these encounters. The Tory benches could certainly do with cheering up today, though. 12:05 Harman starts off with condolences for the family of the British solider who died in Afghanistan and informs the House that Brown will make a statement to the House on his return from Iraq. 12:06 Harman promises to change the law to force energy companies to pass on the fall in fuel prices if necessary. 12.07 Hague gets in his first gag of the session, joking

Daniel Korski

How to deal with captured terrorists?

One of President Elect Obama’s key challenges in 2009 is going to be how to deal with captured terrorists. During the campaign, Obama pledged to close Gitmo. But the recent guilty-plea of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks means Obama will face a dilemma. By Inauguration Day, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and five other defendants may have been sentenced. Any sentence will have to be signed off by the President. This means that Obama will either have to agree or disagree with the verdicts which could include death sentences. If Obama seeks to change the system, for example by having them retried in an ordinary U.S court,

Peter Hoskin

The Royal Mail protest picks up pace

The Labour protest over the Government’s plan to allow foreign investors to take up a stake in Royal Mail has just been ramped up a notch by the resignation of Jim McGovern as PPS to Pat McFadden, Minister of State for Employment Relations and Postal Affairs.  All signs now are that this could turn into one of the biggest rebellions that Gordon Brown’s faced during his premiership – and certainly something that could punctuate the general stream of positive coverage that’s been flowing his way recently. Given the quantity of foreign cash that’s propping up the British economy – albeit mostly in sectors that don’t have quite the same national-sentimental kudos as Royal Mail – one thing to look out for is whether this

Peter Hoskin

UK troops to leave Iraq by July 2009

The mutterings about this have been around for a while, but now it’s been confirmed: UK troops will be leaving Iraq by July 2009.  In a joint statement just now – at the start of a surprise visit to Iraq by our PM – Brown and Nouri Maliki claimed that UK forces will have “completed their tasks” by then.  Expect plenty of questions over all this: are those tasks really complete?  Are the Iraqis being abandoned?  Is the withdrawal operation too rushed?  But, as I see it, the most important conflict zone for us is Afghanistan; or, more specifically, the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region.  Any signs that the Afghan mission is

Tuesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Paying Tribute to the New Emperor

One of the odder characteristics of a certain strain of British right-wing thinking is the terror that British Prime Ministers might ever disagree with the American president. It’s almost as if there’s a fear that if Britain takes an different view then Washington will chuck us overboard and find a new european friend with whom to play. (Sometimes that’s the Germans, though at the moment the French might be thought the more likely rivals). Such fears are, I suspect, overdone. Still, here’s Con Coughlin today: But the quid pro quo for a bigger American military commitment to Afghanistan is that Washington’s European allies – which includes Britain – step up to

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Senate Selection

Joe Klein on the self-styled Worlds’ Greatest Deliberative Body: The point is, that the Blagojevich fiasco and now the Kennedy play have turned the selection of new Senators into a skeevy travesty. The best way to change the story would be go in the exact opposite direction–go completely high-minded. He suggests some worthy folk, but nothing so high-minded as, you know, an actual election. Sure, it would be expensive but all the pols are telling everyone they should spend some more money, so consider this a stimulus for the political consultancy industry – a trade that’s been badly battered by the bursting of an inflationary bubble in the first week

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The Lessons of Madoff

Actually, as Megan explains, the lesson of Bernie Madoff’s scam is that there really aren’t any lessons that can be drawn. As she puts it, “Everyone just screwed up”. That leaves us in the unsatisfying position of having no-one, apart from the remarkable Mr Madoff, of course, to blame. Sometimes stuff really does just happen and there aren’t any deep and meaningful lessons to learn or “underlying” or “contributory” villains to blame. As Megan says, this disconcerts, since it deprives us of the endlessly satisfying consolations of sweet vindictiveness and righteous indignation. A con-man is a con-man is a con-man. His status as such does nothing to advance the case

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Name That Child

Turns out there is a list of approved hipster baby-names. (I assume there’s a comparable British list somewhere?) James Poulos lists his favourites but unfairly targets Magnus for opprobrium. Nothing wrong with Magnus,  it being a fine, sturdy old Norse-Scots name. On the other hand, it probably sounds daft in Americaland. Anyway, the best hipster infant names are clearly: Elvis, Dashiell, Orson, Dixie, Matilda and Iris. And the worst: Kai, Roman, August, Atticus, Kingston, Dexter, Lennon, Mamie, Pearl and Sullivan (sorry Andrew!). Bonus: Piper is one of the names on the list! Just as well this didn’t come out during the election isn’t it? Might have undermined Sarah Palin’s claims

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Not the Christmas present Cameron wanted

The latest ICM poll for the Guardian has the Tories dropping below forty percent. The party is down seven points on last month at 38 percent but it is still five points ahead of Labour.  The Lib Dems are on 19. It seems that it is doubts about their economic competence which is pulling the Tories down: Brown has an 11 point lead over Cameron on the question of who is most likely to get the economy back on track. He also has the edge on who is most likely to make the right decisions in tough circumstances and, in a reversal from two years ago, Brown is rated as

Daniel Korski

How to fight the pirates

In the midst of an emerging West/East struggle, a security issue has come unexpectedly to the fore that everyone can unite around: the safety of the sea lanes.   The growth of global commerce in the past two decades has crowded the oceans with cargo vessels and supertankers loaded with every good imaginable. The world currently transports 80 per cent of all international freight by sea, a figure which will increase once energy prices start to rise again, and there are more than 10 million cargo containers moving across the world’s oceans at any one time.   Both new and old powers use the sea lanes. More than 99 percent

Peter Hoskin

Where the money could go

The Telegraph’s Iain Martin makes the key observation over the two outrageous government waste stories (here and here) in the papers today: “This is not simply a bureaucratic failure, it is a moral failure too: taking high taxes from a public feeling the pinch and then throwing it away when it could have been put to work by individuals to pay their bills and care for their family or rebuild their savings.” The downturn – and the human misery it catalyses – makes wholesale government waste all the more disgraceful.  From a political perspective, this strengthens the Tories’ core economic message – although there’s still a sense that the Cameroons could

James Forsyth James Forsyth

There’s a really easy way for Brown to kill off the early election speculation 

Labour insiders have been busy pouring buckets of cold water over al the chatter about an early election. They clearly realise how damaging any suggestion that the Prime Minister is playing this crisis for partisan advantage would be to their prospects. Certainly, the one who told Ben Brogan, “No chance. There’s more chance of getting Gordon and David Cameron to record a duet of Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree,” deserves marks for originality. But there is only one definitive way for Labour to stop all this speculation: have Brown rule out an election in 2009. At the moment, all we have is off-the-record denials from unnamed officials. Brown’s own statements