All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
I missed Robert Kaplan’s latest dispatch yesterday, but this passage is still worth flagging up: “How do you fight unconventional, sub-state armies empowered by ideas? You undermine them subtly over time, or you crush them utterly, brutally. Israel, unable to tolerate continued rocket attacks on its people, has decided on the latter course. Our own
The appointment of Leon Panetta to run the CIA in the Obama administration has sent shock waves through the US intelligence community. Panetta, who was Chief of Staff in the Clinton White House, is a budget hawk who in the past has argued for tougher control of intelligence spending. At the same time, he has
A typically insightful piece by Rachel Sylvester today; this time on the Obama administration’s precarious commitment to the “special relationship”. The key revelation is about a report doing the rounds among British defence and diplomatic officials: “Perhaps most important of all, the military alliance between Britain and America – which has cemented the political alliance
The National Gallery of Scotland needs to raise £50m to prevent the sale of Titian’s Diana and Actaeon from being sold. The painting, part of the Bridgewater Collection, has been loaned to the gallery for decades but is now being sold by its owner, the Duke of Sutherland. Well, £50m is quite a lot of
Since coming to power in 1997 Labour has created 3,605 new ways for you to break the law. That’s an average of 320 new offences a year or, to put it another way, more than one new offence is created every day Parliament is in session. Time to dust off an old and favourite proposal:
As Waterford Wedgwood goes bust and its obituaries written, it’s worth noting its contribution to an area for where it gets little credit: outlawing the slave trade. Much rot is spoken about the abolition campaign, mainly due to the vanity of MPs who like to portray it as the result of a parliamentary initiative. Rather,
Here are some articles from Spectator.co.uk that you may have missed over the Christmas and New Year break: Andrew Lambirth previews some of the best exhibitions in the year ahead. Douglas Murray writes that studying Islam has made him an atheist. Fraser Nelson says that David Cameron needs a robust economic policy that will stand
Like James, I applauded Cameron’s tax-cutting plan – the right cut, in the right direction, for the right people. But there is one slight hitch. It is promised only if there’s an election this year. The 2009-10 budget starts in April, by which time Cameron probably wont be in power. If there’s an election next
Here are some of the articles made over the weekend on Spectator.co.uk: Fraser Nelson highlights another Brown job James Forsyth picks up on Father Brown’s double-standard, and reports on rumours of talks between Labour and the Lib Dems. Peter Hoskin wonders whether there’ll be a second bailout, and observes Brown smiling for the camera. Melanie
And so it continues. Not content with discovering “passive” smoking, the health boffins have now discovered something called “third-hand smoking” – all the better, presumably, to drive the last remaining smokers into the mountains (be they the Rockies or the Western Highlands) where, armed with only our wits, a lighter and a dwindling supply of
When he finally gets off his bike (again), does Armstrong see a future in politics? Looks like it. Interviewed by the Daily Beast he puts it like this: If you feel like you can do the job better than people who are doing it now, and you can really make a difference, then that’s a
Matt Yglesias correctly suggests that these photos are the Obamas attempt to reduce the “National Cuteness Deficit.” But there’s something else too: besides being charming, it’s striking how these photographs of Malia and Sasha preparing for their first day at a new school are both so very ordinary and yet also a reminder of howit
One habit the Tory party should aim to cure itself of in 2009 is its over-reliance on David Cameron to gets its message across. Some Tories defend the heavy use of Cameron by arguing that he is both the party’s most attractive face and the only way they can guarantee getting their message reported in
The economic crisis is so bad that it is often easy to forget that the foreign policy challenges that so dominated the news a year or so ago have not gone away. The mission in Afghanistan will present General Petraeus with an even tougher challenge than Iraq, Iran’s nuclear ambitions will have to be confronted
The first order of business for the incoming Obama administration is going to be a stimulus package. With Obama’s vacation over and the President-elect moving from Chicago to DC, the details of the plan are beginning to become clearer. The Wall Street Journal reports that the administration will urge Congress to make 40 per cent
I wrote yesterday that the race is on between Brown and Cameron to appear the best to lead us through the post-recessionary landscape. That race became even more competitive today, with both Brown and Cameron serving up their “optimistic” visions for the future. Our Dear Leader’s came in a speech to the Regional Economic Council,
Fraser is at David Cameron’s event so he’ll have more on the Tory announcement that they’ll abolish the basic rate of tax on savings and raise the personal allowances of pensioners by £2,000 My initial reaction is that it is a savvy political move, the population is getting older and old people vote in higher
The whole economic meltdown is less of an opportunity for the left in Britain than the US for the simple reason that Labour was in power here in the years leading up to it. Today, Jackie Ashley bemoans that Brown’s refusal to admit that mistakes were made means that the left might miss the opportunity
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
Although I agree with the ultimate conclusion of Yasmin Alibhai-Brown’s column today – that we shouldn’t, as a nation, “blame the outsider,” and that we should work towards greater integration – the tirade she launches before it is astonishing, and not in a good sense: “A new government report finds that [the white, working classes]
Will anyone take Gordon Brown’s claim to create up to 100,000 jobs seriously? As a statistician will tell you, “up to” includes the number zero. And as any economist will tell you, government can’t create jobs. The best it can do is move jobs, from the private to the public sector via tax – or
There were all manner of reasons for Barack Obama to pick someone other than Jim Webb as his running-mate (though there was a case to be made for Webb too). But, via Ross Douthat, here’s a reminder of why Webb is, as he might put it himself, a serious politician: This spring, Webb (D-Va.) plans
Some New Year cheer, courtesy of the Daily Telegraph’s obituaries column. The deceased, in this instance, is Lady Anne Cavendish-Bentinck, one of Britain’s largest landowners who, had she not been born on the distaff side, would have been the Duke of Portland. Anyway… Her grandfather, the 6th Duke, a younger half-brother of the Countess of
You probably heard about the new school in Sheffield that won’t call itself a school because that word has “negative connotations”. Watercliffe Meadow will instead call itself a “place of learning”. Seriously. It’s all very Decline and Fall : “We class schools, you see, into four five grades: Leading School, First-rate School, Good School, School
We were here for the primary debates last year. We covered Obama vs Clinton. We live-blogged the Presidential debates and we dared not miss Biden vs Palin. But all of that was but a warm-up for the main event tonight. Yup, taking live-blog absurdity to new heights, we’ll be live-blogging the final of the World
In general, I suppose I don’t have too much against the idea of a cricket Hall of Fame though given that we’ve managed to get along fine without one for centuries there doesn’t seem any pressing need for one. But if you are going to have such a Hall, then for god’s sake include the
Until today the transition had gone pretty much perfectly for Obama. His appointments were impressive and warmly received, his poll numbers have risen to record levels and the scandal about Governor Blagojevich allegedly trying to sell off Obama’s Senate seat has not hurt Obama or any of his staff. But today the transition hit a
There is a classic example of government waste and arrogance in today’s Observer. The Department of Health has taken to paying celebrities to appear in public health announcements. The thinking (and it is rather dubious if you ask me) being that a celebrity is more likely than anyone else to persuade us to eat five
In The Observer today, Peter Oborne argues—as he has in the past—that David Cameron is far more of a radical than most people realise: “[Cameron] has been accused, especially by supporters, of being long on ambition, short on principles. This is almost the complete opposite of the case. I have read most of his speeches
In his speech to the Labour conference, Gordon Brown launched a highly personal attack on how David Cameron treats his children: “Some people have been asking why I haven’t served my children up for spreads in the papers And my answer is simple My children aren’t props; they’re people” But Brown seems to have no
Optimism, optimism, optimism. That’s the line that Gordon Brown pushes in his interview with the Observer today. He quotes Barack Obama; says he’s going to create jobs the Roosevelt way; claims that British goods are “the products the world will want to buy”; and seems dismissive of any black clouds on the horizon, as in
There are times when it’s good to be away from the hurly-burly of American politics. Doubly so when the subject of gay marriage comes up. Here, for instance, is a story it is hard to imagine happening in the United States: Nick Herbert, the Conservative party’s Shadow Justice secretary has apparently become the second member
Back then and not before time. Or, rather, back rather sooner from a holiday hiatus than was the case last year. Anyway, I hope you all had a splendid Christmas and New Year. Matters were quietly entertaining here. Christmas in the Borders and then Hogmanay at my sister’s place in Perthshire. All very agreeable, capped
Thanks to David Brooks’s Sidney Awards, I’ve just caught up with Michael Lewis’s article ‘The End’, which appeared in Portfolio magazine last month. It’s one of the most incisive and exhaustive pieces on the credit crunch that I’ve read so far – exactly what you’d expect from the man who wrote the supremely readable account