Society

Tuesday

Peter Hoskin

Darling enters the lion’s den

Is Alistair Darling in for a mauling at the TUC conference later today? The official line from the brothers is that he’ll get a “frosty but polite” reception. But given that the Chancellor is most likely going to turn down calls for public sector pay rises, it’s anyone’s guess as to how long the politeness will last. Whatever happens, there’s certainly an extra buzz about this latest union get-together. Rachel Sylvester nails it in her column today, when she writes: “[The TUC conference] in Brighton this week is worth watching … because it could actually be a picture of the future. The union leaders promoting an ever-more left-wing agenda –

Monday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Bouncing along

The Real Clear Politics polling average now has McCain ahead by 2.9 percent, the largest lead he has ever had by this measure and the first time he has been ahead in it since April. Now, this number obviously needs to be taken with a pinch of salt: McCain is currently enjoying both his convention and his VP bounce. But if anyone had offered the McCain team the chance to enter the post-convention sprint level, or even slightly ahead, a few months ago they would have bitten your hand off. Yet the reasons they’d have bitten your hand off—a flagging economy, an unpopular incumbent Republican president, and the fundamental problems

James Forsyth James Forsyth

How Osborne and Cameron differ on Iraq

Fraser has already commented on the economics side of George Osborne’s interview in The Guardian today, but this little bit about Iraq stood out to me: “I still have rows with my mother about the Iraq war,” Osborne says. Felicity Loxton-Peacock, noted debutante, anti-Vietnam war protester and former deli owner, feels particularly strongly on the war from her experience as an Amnesty International desk officer, he adds. “Her area was the Kurds, dealing with the brutality of Saddam Hussein’s regime – a point I make to her when we discuss the Iraq war.” This is a very different tone from the one that David Cameron uses about Iraq. Here is

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Miliband maintains the truce

Andrew Sparrow flags up a quote by David Miliband at today’s Cabinet away-day in Birmingham: “I think Gordon is leading us with more vigour and determination and will prove people wrong … I am absolutely convinced that Gordon can lead us to victory. He has enormous values, drive and vision.” Now, as Andrew admits one can try and read too much between the lines. But I think he’s right that the “more” does seem significant. It is at the least proof that the truce between Brown and Miliband is holding.

The Spectator

CoffeeHousers’ Wall, 8 September – 14 September

Welcome to the latest CoffeeHousers’ Wall. For those who haven’t come across the Wall before, it’s a post we put up each Monday, on which – provided your writing isn’t libellous, crammed with swearing, or offensive to common decency – you’ll be able to say whatever you like in the comments section. There is no topic, so there’s no need to stay ‘on topic’ – which means you’ll be able to debate with each other more freely and extensively. There’s also no constraint on the length of what you write – so, in effect, you can become Coffee House bloggers. Anything’s fair game – from political stories in your local

Theo Hobson Theo Hobson

A matter of faith

Is the debate about faith schools becoming more constructive and intelligent? The reason for hoping so is the launch of a new campaigning group called Accord which calls for major reform of the system, but in a relatively nuanced way. It is composed of more than the usual atheist suspects, who think that anything religious is intrinsically demonic. Its chairperson is Rabbi Jonathan Romain, and there are a few Anglican vicars on board. The core aim is not to ban faith schools but to make them open to all locals; to end selection on the basis of parental religious allegiance. It is good to hear from believers who don’t toe

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Freddie and Fannie

The ‘conservatorship’ of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae represents, as Steven Pearlstein notes in the Washington Post, the most direct role for the federal government in the “workings of the financial system” since the great depression. Clive Crook points out that the eventual nationalisation of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae will bring 25 more times more loans onto the public balance sheet than the nationalisation of Northern Rock did in Britain. It is an illustration of how bad things are that there has been almost no political dissent about the move. Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae have long stood as examples of how political problems get kicked down the road

Sunday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Andrew Sullivan and Sarah Palin

Let me make something very clear: I like, admire and respect Andrew Sullivan and his writing. I can’t remember when I first started reading his blog, but I think it must have been in early 2001. Certainly before 9/11. Since then I suspect I must have read more words written by Andrew than by any other journalist or blogger. Before his blog moved to Time and, subsequently, The Atlantic, I regularly contributed to his bi-annual pledge drives. I’d recommend his book, The Conservative Soul to anyone interested in the subject. Heck, he’s often been kind enough to link to this blog  and, indeed, I once helped fill-in for him while

Alex Massie Alex Massie

You’re ever Alone with a Strand (or a government consultation)

What a shower. From Simon Clark’s Taking Liberties blog, comes this unsurprising element of the government’s latest consultation on smoking: “Question 12: Do you believe that more should be done by the Government to reduce exposure to secondhand smoke within private dwellings or in vehicles used primarily for private purposes? If so, what do you think could be done?” This is, I assume, a consultation that only applies to England but doubtless there’s something just as depressing and invasive being planned in Scotland too. The sad thing, of course, is that the Tories will be little, if at all, better. It’s enough to make one consider moving to the Matanuska-Susitna

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Clegg’s electorally confused tax strategy

Nick Clegg’s interview with the Sunday Telegraph today is a punchy affair. He derides the Tories as “the flaky party” on the economy and tells Melissa Kite that the Lib Dems are looking to go further than the 4p cut in the basic rate of income tax that they have already promised. Now, those of us who support easing the tax burden should be happy about this. A  Lib Dem policy of tax cuts means that it can hardly be portrayed as a policy of the extreme right and should encourage the Tories to offer some more before the next election. But it seems an odd strategic decision for the

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The mess that was Iraq policy

Bob Woodward’s latest book on the Bush administration is being serialised by the Washington Post this week and is a grim reminder of just how badly Iraq strategy was run for so long. This exchange between Condoleezza Rice and General George Casey in Iraq in, presumably, November 2005 illustrates the almost total lack of policy co-ordination: “Excuse me, ma’am, what’s ‘clear, hold, build’?” Rice looked a little surprised. “George, that’s your strategy.” “Ma’am, if it’s my strategy, don’t you think someone should have had the courtesy to talk to me about it before you went public with it?” To be sure, President Bush deserves credit for deciding on and pushing

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Fear factor

“If GB goes down, he’s going to take everybody with him.” John Rentoul reports, in his column today, that this is what Nick Brown has told various Labour backbenchers. Leaving aside the sub-Godfather nature of the rhetoric, it is clear that the Brownites have decided to fight the enemy they know how to beat: their internal opponents in the Labour party. It appears that there is now a concerted effort on to make Brown’s critics in the Labour party fear him again. Meanwhile, the Tories have a largely free ride. Conservative Home reveals that the Tories intend to use this space to issue a more limited commitment to matching Labour’s

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The dithering party

Andrew Rawnsley hits the nail on the head when he says that a “Prime Minister cannot be on perpetual probation”. At some point soon if it is not to go down to total disaster at the next election, Labour will either have to back or sack Brown. But as Rawnsley points out, Labour is in too much of a shambles to do either. There is, though, a reason other than incompetence preventing Labour from making a decision. Everyone assumes that the Brownites will do all they can, and that is still an awful lot, to stop whoever topples Gordon from succeeding him. So, if you’re one of the non-Miliband possible

Saturday

Tony Parsons

Diary – 6 September 2008

The earthquake wakes me up. One moment I am sleeping and the next it feels as though I am on a waterbed with Hugh Hefner and four Playboy Bunnies. All I can do is hold on. There is an earthquake every day in Japan and most of them feel like mild indigestion. But then you get this kind, the scary kind, and you immediately wonder — is this the big one? When it is happening, you just don’t know. All you can do is go to the window and see if buildings are collapsing, roads buckling and the earth opening up. This isn’t the big one. On the Richter scale,

Tamzin Lightwater

Diary of a Notting Hill Nobody | 6 September 2008

Monday Everyone’s gone Palin crazy! Poppy, Jenny, Lucy and Ellie all came in with their hair teased into frightening up-dos this morning. I might have to go through Mummy’s wardrobe and see if she’s got any hairpieces left over from the Sixties. Must say, I find this Sarah woman deeply scary. I don’t mind that she thinks the earth is flat — this sort of daring new thinking I find quite refreshing. It’s the picture of her sat in an office draped in dead bears and mooses that worries me. I’m as partial to a bit of fox-hunting as the next Tory Girl, but I’ve never much liked staring at

Dot Wordsworth

Mind Your Language | 6 September 2008

The Earl of Cottenham’s surname is Pepys. He doesn’t pronounce it peeps, like the diarist, but peppiss, stressed on the first syllable. It’s almost impossible to know how to pronounce English family names. The former deputy editor of this magazine, Andrew Gimson, pronounces his with a soft g. Jeffrey Bernard stressed the second syllable of his. James Michie, the late Jaspistos, rhymed with sticky. Christopher Fildes’s name rhymes with wilds. The BBC booklets on pronunciation published in the 1930s, about which I have been writing this month, had reached number seven by 1939, ‘Recommendations to Announcers Regarding the Pronunciation of some British Family Names and Titles’, still edited by Arthur

The Spectator

Letters | 6 September 2008

Heartbeats of delight Sir: Few would disagree with Paul Johnson’s view that prolonging the human lifespan is of little value if it merely gives us extra years of Alzheimer’s and debility (And another thing, 30 August). But we do not all live for the average span, and one reason for the increase in average age since the early 19th century has been the massive reduction in child mortality. It is difficult to believe that in his historical studies Johnson has not encountered the miseries caused by the death of beloved children. Numerous books, for example, describe the pain which Charles Darwin suffered as a result of the death of his

Alex James

Slow Life | 6 September 2008

Brad, who has been my constant companion for the last couple of months, was just starting to appreciate the strange power of television. The terrible authority, the ridiculous effects of time on the small screen had taken a while to become apparent. By the time the first show went out, we’d already been filming for a month, shadowed by camera crews, asking us to say things again, do things again, explain how we felt about this, that and the other, and after the first episode he was a bit ruffled. ‘I can’t believe it! Four weeks of cameras and microphones and I was only on screen for three seconds! What

Jeremy Clarke

Low Life | 6 September 2008

I’m down in the bar underneath the stand at half time and everyone’s exceedingly jolly. The team isn’t playing badly for a change. At least we’re trying. Plus, we’ve got a new bloke who can actually pitch over an accurate corner kick. And the sun’s shining. The police run a tight ship at football matches these days. We aren’t allowed to stand up during the game, or smoke, or consume alcohol. And we have to watch what we say or sing because certain subjects are strictly off-limits. Shirt-sleeved policemen sitting in a control room closely monitor our behaviour on CCTV screens. They are assisted in this task by hundreds of

Taki

High Life | 6 September 2008

Gstaad ‘Goblins and devils have long vanished from the Alps, and so many years have passed without any well-authenticated account of a discovery of a dragon that dragons too may be considered to have migrated.’ So the Alpine Club was informed in May 1877 by Mr Henry Gotch, the secre-tary, and the news set off great celebrations among sporty but superstitious Englishmen. The golden age of mountaineering, as it was then known, began in 1854 and ended with a bang around 1865, the year five Englishmen fell to their death climbing the Matterhorn. Among the dead was Lord Francis Douglas, whose older brother went after Oscar Wilde some 30 years