Society

Friday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Labour in crisis: Union boss tells Brown to declare Blairism dead

Tony Woodley, the joint general secretary of Unite, has an op-ed in Friday’s Guardian demanding that Gordon Brown declare that “Blairism is dead”. Woodley claims that “Brown has one last window of opportunity. Face down the Blairites within. Clear the apologists for the big bonus brigade out of the cabinet and make Labour once more the party for state intervention for social justice.” Now, it is no surprise that Woodley—who is a long standing opponent of Blairism—is calling on Labour to move to the left. But given Labour’s current difficulties both electoral and financial, Woodley’s words matter more than they did in the past. If the leadership go to Warwick

James Forsyth James Forsyth

SNP: “We have had a very good day in Glasgow East”

The coverage is increasingly tilting to the idea that the SNP has pulled off a remarkable upset in Glasgow East. The SNP MPs being interviewed are sounding confident while the Labour MPs are on the defensive. I’ll now be surprised if Labour hold on. For the record, turnout was 42.5 percent.

Thursday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Crick: Glasgow East wil be “very, very, very close”

On Newsnight just now, Michael Crick—who is at the count in Glasgow East—reported that the result is going to be very close. The Guardian is reporting a rumour that the SNP has won. If Labour has lost its 25th safest seat, then Gordon Brown is in even bigger trouble than we thought.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Not up there with Kennedy or Reagan’s but Obama’s Berlin speech did its job

‘Politics stops at the water’s edge’ is one of the most frequently invoked rules in US politics, so giving a campaign speech overseas carried a risk for Obama. However, he carried it off fairly well and his campaign will have been delighted by the visuals; the paean to America with which he ended the speech was pitch-perfect for campaign ad. The Obama campaign’s decision to start the speech with the Berlin airlift was astute as it allowed Obama to praise the city he was speaking in and deploy some good old fashioned anti-Communist rhetoric. Indeed, several times Obama flicked at phrases from the great Cold war speeches that Kennedy or

James Forsyth James Forsyth

A failing mark

Liz Brockelhurst, who marked Key stage 2 papers for a decade, has done a great piece for the magazine this week on the marking process for Sats. She points out that the “marking process itself was also dictated by idiotic rules, designed to help children scrape through.” Two of the examples that Liz gives, illustrate just how rigged the whole mark scheme is:  “And if the child wrote the correct answer, but then, on second thoughts, decided it was wrong and crossed it out, the crossing-out still gained the mark. On one paper this was carried to ludicrous extremes. A child had written an answer in pencil but then rubbed

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The People’s Party

MPs who return from canvassing in Glasgow East are full of talk about the broken society or the challenges of urban regeneration, depending on which party they belong to. But Kevin Maguire rather wickedly reports that the Labour deputy leader had a very different experience: “To the Glasgow East by-election, where Labour foot soldiers swap stories of a 90-minute state visit by Hattie Harperson. The multitasker was directed to a swanky road in the deprived constituency where detached houses nudge a million quid each. Up the gravel drive she went, past the new 4x4s, to canvass. Twenty minutes later she returned. What did Hattie discuss with the owners? Tax credits?

Wednesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Facebook fun

A wee reminder: Facebook now permits you to sign up as a “fan” of this blog. It’s not altogether clear what the point of this is but it seems certain that there must be one. Perhaps you can sign up and be entered into a draw to win exciting Debatable Land merchandise. Or something. Anyway, you click on a button here.

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Department of Appalling Self-Promotion

Iain Dale wants you to vote for your favourite political blogs (written by Britons or furriners resident in the United Kingdom). Obviously this means you can vote for this one. All you need to do is go here or (better) email Iain here and leave your list of ten blogs in the comments section. What could be simpler than that? And if you felt like mentioning this one somewhere in the upper echelons of your list, well, that would be dandy…

James Forsyth James Forsyth

A breathtaking mix of incompetence and inertia

The minutes of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority board meeting on the 21st of May have just been published and they show a complete failure by the board to engage with the Sats crisis. This meeting occurred just after David Laws, the Lib Dem education spokesman, had questioned Ed Balls in the Commons about the “shambles that we have seen over the past couple of weeks in the marking of 1.2 million key stage 2 and key stage 3 test papers”. But the minutes record that David Gee, the acting managing director of the National Assessment Agency, informed the board that:  “the school experience had been good; that there had

James Forsyth James Forsyth

How reform-minded Labour MPs should convince the party to topple Brown

If I was a reform-minded Labour MP trying to persuade my like-minded colleagues to move against Gordon Brown, these are the arguments that I would deploy: Things are as bad as the polls suggest: The latest ICM poll (which Pete blogged earlier) has the Tories on 47, twenty points ahead of Labour. Electoral Calculus predicts that on a crude swing this would lead to a Tory majority of more than 200. People tend to discount these numbers as traditionally the incumbent party recovers as the campaign goes on, as the election moves from being a referendum on the government to a choice between the parties. But given, as Mike Smithson

Theo Hobson Theo Hobson

Doing the Lambeth walk

Theo Hobson reports from the Lambeth conference.  Do take the time to read Theo’s magazine piece from a few weeks ago, on a Church of England “damaged beyond repair” – Pete Hoskin The first press conference is taken by the Archbishop of Brisbane, Philip Aspinall. It’s a bit like the press conferences in The West Wing: authority is wearing a friendly, jokey face, but with the expectation of having to fend off awkward questions any minute. Like C.J., Aspinall is conspicuously calm about the negativity-hunger of the hacks. The subtext is something like this: ‘We are completely ready for the cynicism that you the media are bringing – and we forgive you. Watch

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Will Brown lose the Obama PR war?

One could almost feel sorry for Gordon Brown on reading that Barack Obama will meet Tony Blair in London on Saturday morning. Blair excels at this kind of grip and grin occasion and one can easily imagine footage of Obama and Blair beaming at the cameras as Obama pays tribute to Blair’s work in the Middle East. Poor old Gordon won’t be able to compete on the star power front. To make things worse, as Obama is doing a solo press conference outside Number Ten’s famous front door, Brown could end up on the cutting room floor before the evening news is broadcast in the States. If this happens, news

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Don’t mention the Afghan–Pakistan war

At a recent dinner party in the British embassy in Kabul, one of the guests referred to ‘the Afghan-Pakistan war’. The rest of the table fell silent. This is the truth that dare not speak its name. Even mentioning it in private in the Afghan capital’s green zone is enough to solicit murmurs of disapproval. Few want to accept that the war is widening; that it now involves Pakistan, a country with an unstable government and nuclear weapons. But in fact the military commanders know that they are dealing with far more than just a domestic insurgency. Weapons, men and suicide bombers are flooding in from Pakistan every day. Like

Paul Johnson

And Another Thing | 23 July 2008

For anyone interested in fine painting, as distinct from ‘great art’, there is a treat at the Tate for them: a display of works by British artists, from the 17th to the 20th centuries, who depicted the Orient and those who liked to dress up in Eastern style. Many of the pictures are from private collections, and this is a rare chance to see them; they are often in their original frames, well preserved and of great beauty. The pellucid waters of this subject were thoroughly stirred and muddied by the polemicist and troublemaker Edward Said, who invented ‘Orientalism’ as a term of political and racial abuse, and won himself

Anna Blundy

‘Make him sit and wait’

The lady in the orange baseball cap is shouting to be heard. It is true that she hasn’t got much choice — the barking has become deafening. ‘You have to teach them to respect you!’ she screams. Owners tug sheepishly at their dogs’ leads and attempt to shush them without appearing to be unworthy of respect. ‘Otherwise they can make your life completely miserable.’ It occurs to me that this is a point that could be made about creatures other than 12-week-old puppies. While, for Marmite, Tip Top training is about getting little chunks of garlicky cheese for doing fairly rudimentary things on Hampstead Heath (though it is true that

Christopher Ondaatje

The stuff of legends

There have been many biographies of Sir Richard Burton, the renowned and enigmatic Victorian explorer, ethnologist, archaeologist, author, translator, and one of the greatest linguists of his era. Curiously, however, there have been no major novels based on Burton’s extraordinary life. Iliya Troyanov, in a remarkable German novel Der Weltensammler, has corrected this omission. The English translation of his work, The Collector of Worlds, has created a sensual adventure, and an exploration of Burton’s behaviour. Burton was a brilliantly charismatic scholar and adventurer. Even from an early age he set out to learn all he could about swords and guns. Duelling, riding, smoking, gambling and experiments with various forms of

Tuesday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Guess who didn’t come to dinner

Downing Street has just released the names of all those who have received official hospitality at Chequers. Most of the Cabinet are on the list but there are some notable omissions. It is rather surprising that the Chief Whip and the deputy leader of the Labour party have not been entertained at the PM’s country residence. While Douglas Alexander’s omission lends credence to the rumours that the International Development Secretary’s role in letting the speculation about an early election get so out of hand has seen him expelled from Brown’s inner circle More worrying, though, is that at a time when the country is fighting two wars, neither the Foreign

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Glasgow East: still difficult to call

The news that Pete just posted about how the odds on Labour winning Glasgow East have shortened is, perversely, bad news for Gordon Brown. Labour holding Glasgow East is now priced into Brown’s share price and so he’ll get no bounce from Labour avoiding defeat. However, if the SNP were to pull off a spectacular upset it will be an even bigger story for everyone having written off their chances. Personally, I’m extremely dubious of anyone predicting the result from Glasgow East with any certainty. By-elections are notoriously hard to call and the social make-up of the constituency makes this one particularly hard to predict. Mike Smithson, the genius behind

James Forsyth James Forsyth

How can Obama say that, knowing what he knows now, he would still have opposed the surge?

Only someone wearing ideological blinkers could claim that the surge has not transformed the security situation in Iraq and provided the space necessary for political progress. So, it is depressing to see Obama claiming that – even knowing what he knows now, and after seeing the progress in Iraq at first hand, and being briefed by General Petraeus – he still would have opposed the surge if he had to go back in time and make the decision again (see video below). Indeed, Obama’s answer to this question displays his Bush-like quality of refusing to allow the changing facts on the ground in Iraq to influence his thinking. Rather than admit