All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Of all the revelations about Saturday’s brutal terrorist attack on Massereene Barracks, Co Antrim, those in today’s Times are among the most unsettling: “Armed security guards employed to protect the military base in Northern Ireland where two soldiers were shot dead did not open fire on the terrorists, even when they stood over the injured
There’s something cool, yet creepy about Rune Guneriussen’s work… [Via Andrew]
The government’s signature policy for dealing with the Islamist challenge inside Britain is the Prevent policy. But Prevent is aimed only at preventing violent extremism. For this reason, it has—as a phenomenally important pamphlet from Policy Exchange, which will be released tomorrow, argues—done little to counter extremism and in a disturbingly large number of cases
Peter Hain makes a double-intervention this Sunday: an article in The Independent and an interview in The Sunday Telegraph. Both are couched in terms of trying to be helpful but—as Martin notes—they undoubtedly position Hain to the left of Brown. Hain has no intention of totally burning his bridges, he tells Melissa Kite that if
Why is it Left wing to allow millions to live on benefits, and let children get each other pregnant? Tom Harris asks this question in an excellent article in the Mail on Sunday today. He’s right to get angry about a situation that means one in five UK children are brought up in workless households,
One of my favourite features at Marginal Revolution is Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok’s occasional look at countercyclical assets – ie, products and economic sectors that are doing quite nicely at the moment. They include: Safes, Atlas Shrugged, the Mafia, Economic Disaster Tours, Tinned Soup, Matchmakers, Prayer, Second Life’s economy, Cobblers, Tasers and Alpacas. So
There’s an intriguing entry in Chris Mullin’s diaries, this Sunday sees the final part of the Mail on Sunday’s serialisation of them, from January 2004. “To the Parliamentary Party, where there was discussion about the next Queen’s Speech. Ann Cryer [MP] said we needed a managed immigration policy, based on ability to find jobs; not
Reporting this Compass / YouGov poll, the Sunday Telegraph concentrates on the news that Labour members think Peter Mandelson is doing a better job than Harriet Harman. Yet, to my eyes, there’s a more a striking finding in there. 74 percent of respondents think that David Miliband is doing a good job. And that after
The story is out. For days there’s been gossip in Westminster that the Prime Minister had a Brown out on the plane to Washington, losing it when journalists asked him if he was going to apologise for the mistakes he had made as Chancellor and Prime Minister which have exacerbated this crisis. Now, Simon Walters
A good mini-scoop from the Independent on Sunday based on an article from Peter Hain. News stories based on articles by politicians are often the last refuge of a political journalist who has run out of road. But this piece by Jane Merrick and Brian Brady is an exception. The former Work and Pension Secretary
Barack Obama’s sit-down interview with The New York Times, the first he has granted the paper since becoming president, contains this exchange: Q. Mr. President, we need to turn it to foreign policy. I know we have a review going on right now about Afghanistan policy, but right now can you tell us, are we
“Attacks are at the lowest level since September 2003, falling 70 percent since last March.” So reports The New York Times in its latest piece on the situation in Iraq. The level of progress in Iraq since the US changed strategy in early 2007 and surged troops into the country has been quite remarkable. If
I bumped into a Labour MP the other day and he asked me a good question, why is Harriet Harman the only one getting it in the neck for her leadership positioning? Several other members of the Cabinet clearly have an eye on a post-election leadership contest, notably Ed Balls, but they aren’t receiving anywhere
Recommending what sounds like a prescient report by Edward Chancellor, Crunch Time for Credit? (2005), Charles Moore writes the following in his column today: “Although some of Chancellor’s work is technical, it benefits from a historian’s understanding of what people have done in reality rather than a narrower economist’s obsession with ‘modelling’. It has strong
Astute readers will have noticed that I’ve finally got round to adding a blogroll. All blogs listed are, of course, recommended. I’d particularly like to highlight, however, a couple to which I have not, I think, linked in some time: The League of Ordinary Gentlemen is a group blog that sustains an impressively high level
Matthew Parris’s column brilliantly skewers the utter predictability of the policy announcements coming out of Number 10. “Much the same may be said of the problem-solving programme known as Mr Brown. Focus-grouping tells him voters are angry that top British bankers have been paying themselves fat salaries and bonuses. Key words in these reports trigger
Plenty of posturing from the Lib Dem corner today, as their Spring Conference continues in Harrogate. Both Nick Clegg and Vince Cable are laying into the Thatcher Years and, by extension, the Tories. Here, for instance, is how the Guardian quotes Cable: “[The Tories] have been completely caught flat-footed by this crisis … They
Two stories in the papers today illustrate just how badly placed Britain is to get through this recession. In The Times, Patrick Hosking speculates about the possibility of Britain losing its triple A credit rating now that the Bank of England has resorted to quantitative easing. He notes that Moody’s has said that Britain’s triple
My politics students at City University in London were delighted to have a visit from a master hack today. Kevin Maguire was an entertainining and marvellously indiscreet guest. The final question was straight and to the point: “What did Mr Maguire think Harriet Harman was up to?” Kevin thought for about a second before replying: “She’s at
There’s a rumour doing the rounds in Washington, which I mention in the magazine this week, that the reason Gordon Brown was invited to address a Joint Session of Congress is that the Obama administration isn’t yet ready to have a detailed conversation about the agenda for the G20. This is largely because the Treasury
With Gordon Brown appearing doomed the level of chatter about the Labour leadership contest that will follow the next election is increasing, Fraser did his political column on it this week.One of the more intriguing ideas out there, which Allegra Stratton floated on Tuesday, is that Cruddas and Purnell might team up on a ‘Stop
In National Review, John O’Sullivan, a former advisor to Margaret Thatcher, wrote an essay about what lessons—if any—there were for the Republicans from Cameron’s modernisation of the Tory party. Alex Massie took issue with it. Here, John responds to Alex’s critique. Alex Massie begins his criticism of my National Review article on the Cameron project
Although there are encouraging noises coming from Latin America, much of the western world remains deaf to common sense. Still, let’s hear it for the Economist which this week repeats its call for legalisation: Next week ministers from around the world gather in Vienna to set international drug policy for the next decade. Like first-world-war
There is a crisis in Britishness right now. Much of it has been brought about by the doctrine of multi-culturalism, you can’t have both mass immigration and multi-culturalism, so it was good to see Dominic Grieve setting out his opposition to it this week. Grieve’s views on community cohesion issues have been a cause of
Australian foreign minister Steven Smith sees trouble ahead: “This was very much an existentialist threat to Pakistan itself,” he said. Quite so. Readers are invited to pair schools of philosophy with the countries they threaten… [Hat-tip: James Joyner.]
The British Crime Survey shows that most people do not have confidence in the ability of the police and their local council to tackle crime and anti-social behaviour. Only 46 percent of people in England and Wales do, according to the survey. In a way this is not surprising, you see the police on the
Whether the Conservatives like it or not, their agenda in government will be the “more for less” agenda. That is, having to cut public spending and find ways to improve services at the same time. This is far from impossible: after all, Labour has proven in the last 12 years that you can virtually double
Nick Clegg returns to the political fray today with an interview with The Times. What’s making news from it is this proposal: On the eve of the Liberal Democrats’ conference in Harrogate, Mr Clegg told The Times that these directors had shown that they were not fit to oversee companies.” This strikes me as very
As Clive has noted, the financial press did not exactly cover itself in glory in the run-up to the present economic difficulties. No-one ws a bigger cheerleader of heroic capitalism than CNBC. As Jon Stewart so ably demonstrates here. Added bonus: Allen Stanford gets a mention towards the end: The Daily Show With Jon
Stan Greenberg, who polled for both Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, spoke at the RSA earlier this week. In his talk, he revealed that during the 1997 campaign Blair had a separate team of faith advisors whose role it was to check that his politics were in line with his religious beliefs: Here is what
Those of us who report from Westminster, Washington or any other liberal democracy can sometime forget how lucky we are. We can write what we like and not fear that we will be arrested for it. Those journalists who report from authoritarian countries like Iran do not have this freedom. Take the case of Roxana
David Frum called in to Mark Levin’s radio show the other day to respond to, inter alia, “debate” the suggestion that Rush Limbaugh does not represent a profitable future for the Republican party. It’s a remarkable exchange, even if it also demonstrates the folly of trying to engage in any sensible, coherent, interesting or adult
For those who love email trails, the Public Administration Select Committee has served up a feast – the emails flying around when Brown released premature knife crime figures last December. You can read the full trail here, Email Trail PDF . From my reading, it seems that the decision to use unready statistics came straight