Society

Benny Morris’s op-ed in The New York Times is essential reading. He sets out how any Israeli, as opposed to American, strike on Iran could easily escalate into a nuclear war. I’d urge you to read the whole thing, but here are the key paragraphs: “But should Israel’s conventional assault fail to significantly harm or stall the Iranian program, a ratcheting up of the Iranian-Israeli conflict to a nuclear level will most likely follow. Every intelligence agency in the world believes the Iranian program is geared toward making weapons, not to the peaceful applications of nuclear power. And, despite the current talk of additional economic sanctions, everyone knows that such

Ken Livingstone has confirmed to The Guardian that he will run for Mayor of London in 2012. It is hard to see how anyone could stop Livingstone from winning the Labour nomination so we will likely have a reprise of this year’s Ken v. Boris race. Livingstone is presumably betting that it will be harder for Boris to win with a Tory government in power than it was with a Labour one. The thought that he would, provided the Tories win the next election, be the most powerful Labour figure in the country must also be tempting him as well as the thought of being Mayor during the Olympics. The

The Unions have 130 demands that they intend to lay before Labour’s National Policy Forum, Patrick Wintour reports this morning. These range from extending the minimum wage to those under 21 to making union subscriptions tax deductible. This strikes me as exactly the right approach for the Unions to take. Labour is in no financial shape to reject all these demands. Equally, it cannot be seen to cave in on everything. So, Brown will make a big show of resisting a few of the Union’s big ticket demands while conceding on everything else. 

It feels rather unseemly to be discussing Margaret Thatcher’s funeral arrangements while she is still very much alive but I doubt that giving her a state funeral will divide the country in the way that Kevin Maguire and Sunny Hundal are predicting. Take the example of Ronald Reagan, who in many ways was as controversial a figure as Thatcher. I was working in Washington when he died and no one was quite sure how this very liberal city would react to his funeral. But everyone actually behaved respectfully and with affection for him, the streets were lined as his funeral cortege passed.  Talking to people at the time, it wasn’t so much

Nick Cohen has a fantastic post at Harry’s Place, questioning why Demos was happy to participate in an event at Islam Expo organised by the British Muslim Initiatives. Here’s the key section of his argument: “Demos says it is slyly using one brand of Islamism to fight another. Will Demos employ the same cunning plan against the white far right? Given that the BNP, like the Muslim Brotherhood and Jamaat, does not specifically advocate communal violence, but merely, like the Muslim Brotherhood and Jamaat, is at the beginning of a continuum whose terminus is psychopathic hatred, surely Demos should attend BNP rallies and host BNP debates. After all, like the

Alistair Darling’s Budgets really should come with the words “subject to change” stamped across them. Darling has just done another u-turn, postponing the 2p rise in fuel duty. (In the Budget he announced that he was delaying its imposition until October, he has now delayed again.) Darling’s quote explaining why he has done this is classic: “Today’s decision will help motorists and businesses get through what is a difficult time for everyone.” Indeed, Chancellor. The Labour party clearly feared how the public would react to a further hike in the price of petrol. Given the money being funnelled to the victims of the abolition of the 10p tax band and