Society

Tuesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

FCO vs Hacks

It seems like Sir Nigel Sheinwald’s assessment of Barack Obama was leaked to the Telegraph months ago. But it was in fact published earlier this month. I’d meant to write about it at the time, but the moment passed and that seemed to be that. Still, Slate has republished the memo, permitting one to observe blogospheric rules of timeliness and revisit the affair. Affair, of course, is putting it too strongly. Our Man in Washington’s report is decidedly cautious. There is not a scrap of controversy in it. On the contrary, it is dry, sober, even-handed and judicious. It could, if it were less dull, be a Financial Times profile.

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Tito the Builder?

Apparently he’s the new go-to guy in this daft Presidential election. Of course, it shows how out of touch I am that when I saw Tito was the headline act I found myself wondering quite how Yugoslav politics had become an issue. Then I realised that it was the lovely Sarah Palin who’d been talking about Tito, so obviously it had to be something else entirely. UPDATE, October 27th. Ana Marie Cox braves the nonsense: Obviously, the big draw in Leesburg this morning was Tito the Builder, aka Tito Munoz, aka defended of Joe the Plumber. If you had ever wanted to hear a crowd of Northern Virigian White People

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Department of Academia

I’m indebted to Nathan Origer for drawing my attention to a fascinating event at the University of Maryland: Subject : Provost’s Conversation: “Re-presenting Disability: Million Dollar Baby, Tropic Thunder and Anti-National Sexual Positions” When : Monday, October 06, 2008 12:00 PM – 1:30 PM Where : Stamp Student Union : Charles Carroll Room Event Type(s) : Lecture A Conversation with Robert McRuer, Professor of English, George Washington University This talk examines a few of the films that have sustained intense criticism from disability activists and theorists over the past few years. Reading these films within a queer theoretical perspective and through the cultural logic of neoliberalism, McRuer affirms and extends

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The Tories need an enforcer who can protect the shadow cabinet from themselves

The evidence all seems to strongly suggest that George Osborne did nothing illegal in Corfu. But that does not mean he should escape without criticism. What he did was clearly foolhardy in the extreme. If Osborne has just googled Deripaska he would have seen enough material to make him hesitate about even being in his vicinity, let alone meeting with him on his yacht. These unforced Tory errors need to stop. What the party need is someone in Central Office powerful enough to demand to be told of anything even potentially controversial that a shadow cabinet member is planning to do and if necessary order them not to do it.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Osborne on Deripaska

George Osborne’s performance at a press conference just now was typically confident. He even ended with a flourish: ‘the journalists say follow the money, but in this case there is no money to follow.’ Osborne stuck to a denial of the specific charge that he had solicited a donation, repeatedly stressing that he ‘neither asked for, nor received, money.’ The frustrated press pack kept asking whether Osborne has discussed a donation with the oligarch at all, but the Shadow Chancellow repeatedly batted that away, which will not play well in the media. Osborne said that he went on board Mr. Deripaska’s yacht twice, once with Mandelson and once with Feldman. But perhaps the

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Corfued

The Battle of Corfu, the first encounter in the Mandelson-Osborne war, just escalated with Nathaniel Rothschild’s allegation in The Times that “George Osborne, who also accepted my hospitality, found the opportunity of meeting with Mr Deripaska so good that he invited the Conservatives’ fundraiser Andrew Feldman, who was staying nearby, to accompany him on to Mr Deripaska’s boat to solicit a donation. Since Mr Deripaska is not a British citizen, it was suggested by Mr Feldman, in a subsequent conversation at which Mr Deripaska was not present, that the donation was “channelled” through one of Mr Deripaska’s British companies.” The Tories emphatically deny this. This whole story started with the

Monday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Behind the Security Theatre Curtain

Airport security? A complete joke. This has been apparent for some time, of course, but all the “security theatre” nonsense at least makes it seem as though something is being done. And that is the important thing, isn’t it? The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg has a good piece demonstrating just how pointless the mania for “security” is. No chance of a return to sanity of course. That would mean the terrorists are winning. Anyway, Goldberg successfully passes through the security checkpoints using a fake boarding pass: We were in the clear. But what did we prove? “We proved that the ID triangle is hopeless,” Schneier said. The ID triangle: before a

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Can’t buy a car? Call the government!

Yes, I would vote for Barack Obama rather than John McCain. But that doesn’t mean that one expects too much from an Obama administration. Consider this startling passage from a speech the candidate gave in Toledo last week: I also believe that Treasury should not limit itself to purchasing mortgage-backed securities – it should help unfreeze markets for individual mortgages, student loans, car loans, and credit card loans. Car loans? Really? As Nick Gillespie says: Clinton was a free trader and interested in policy innovation. By contrast, Obama never misses a chance to mention China in a disparaging way and all of his plans seem to revolve around throwing money at

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Britain deserves better tham Ambassador Winfrey

Gideon Rachman floats, on his blog, the rumour that Obama might make Oprah Winfrey Ambassador to London, and no it is not April Fool’s Day. I doubt very much this will happen, there are other ambassadorships I’d expect she’d prefer, but it does illustrate a long-standing weakness in the way the United States appoints its ambassadors. The plum jobs nearly always go to big campaign donors. This is a practise the United States cannot afford now that it is involved in a struggle for international support for its actions in a 24.7 media environment. It needs the best people for the job that it has regardless of whether they gave

Peter Hoskin

One to watch | 20 October 2008

A friend of Coffee House has flagged up the episode of the Tonight programme screening on ITV at 8pm this evening.  Here’s the premise of it, taken from the show’s website: “New Labour has gone back on its promise to hold a referendum on a new European constitution – despite most people wanting one. Tonight steps in, organising a special poll in Luton. Do its voters want to be in or out of Europe?” I’m in the dark over what the result of that “special poll” is.  But – whatever the outcome – the very fact that programmes like this are getting commissioned hints at the depth of public feeling over the

James Forsyth James Forsyth

A distorted cause

I’d recommend to everyone today’s editorial in the Washington Post. I’ve posted a couple of key extracts below but if you have a couple of minutes it really is worth reading the whole thing, it is a fantastic corrective to the current narrative about the causes of the crisis: “[T]he problem with the U.S. economy, more than lack of regulation, has been government’s failure to control systemic risks that government itself helped to create. We are not witnessing a crisis of the free market but a crisis of distorted markets. … We’ll never know how this newly liberated financial sector might have performed on a playing field designed by Adam

Peter Hoskin

CoffeeHousers’ Wall, 20 October – 26 October

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

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Cameron chooses his battleground

On The Today Programme this morning, David Cameron came out firmly against any extra public spending financed by more borrowing. For the first time in this financial turmoil, there is now clear blue water between the two main parties. Cameron argued that such a move would only prevent the Bank of England from reducing interest rates—which he seems to regard as the most important step that can be taken at the moment—and lead people to believe that taxes will rise in time. Labour, I suspect, will not be displeased by Cameron’s opposition; they will see this as an opportunity to fight another Labour investment versus Tory cuts campaign. The challenge

Sunday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Obamas Money Mountain

Blimey: Obama’s September fundraising explains why he’s been able to outspend John McCain so widely: He raised over $150 million in September alone, adding 632,000 new donors. At some point it becomes difficult to actually spend all this cash. Hence reports of Obama advertising on country music stations in Miami or on video games. Anything to, you know, get rid of all this cash… Notable too that the Obama campaign is expanding its list of target states once more, this time buying time in West Virginia.

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Status: Enraged but Unsurprised

OK, this is from the Sunday Times so the usual weekend caveats apply. But a) this story does seem to be confirmed by official sources and b) it turns out it isn’t actually April 1st: Everyone who buys a mobile telephone will be forced to register their identity on a national database under government plans to extend massively the powers of state surveillance. Phone buyers would have to present a passport or other official form of identification at the point of purchase. Privacy campaigners fear it marks the latest government move to create a surveillance society. A compulsory national register for the owners of all 72m mobile phones in Britain

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Has the financial crisis catalysed the globalization process?

Thomas Friedman argues in his New York Times column today that the end result of this financial crisis will be more globalization not less. “The real and sustained bailout from the crisis will happen when the strong companies buy the weak ones — on a global basis. It’s starting. Last week, Credit Suisse declined a Swiss government bailout and instead raised fresh capital from Qatar, the Olayan family of Saudi Arabia and Israel’s Koor Industries. Japan’s Mitsubishi bank bought a stake in Morgan Stanley, possibly rescuing it from bankruptcy and preventing an even steeper decline in the Dow. And Spain’s Banco Santander, which was spared from the worst of this

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Powell backs Obama

Colin Powell’s decision to endorse Barack Obama is a blow on a personal and a political level to John McCain. Despite being on opposite side over the best way forward in Iraq, the two men remained close. When McCain’s primary campaign was in deep trouble, Powell donated to it. Cynics will accuse Powell of trying to cleanse his reputation of the stain of his UN presentation on Saddam’s WMD. But to my mind, it is typical of Powell’s mo of moving cautiously and ending up in the establishment consensus position. So, he fully backed the invasion of Iraq once war was perceived to be inevitable and now endorses Obama once

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The Office of Budget Responsibility could be a very useful political shield for the Tories

As Pete notes, Darling has committed the government to a Keynesian stimulus package. This is going to be funded by yet more borrowing, worsening the government’s already bad debt problems. If the Tories win the next election, this spending spree is going to leave them facing some tough questions about cutting public spending. This is where the Office of Budget Responsibility, largely derided as a gimmick when it was announced just before conference, comes in. If the OBR demands spending cuts to reduce government debt, it will give the Tories cover for taking some of the tough decisions that are going to be needed to reduce what by 2010 is