All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Can someone please tell Angela Merkel that the world is behind Gordon Brown in a great consensus? Because the German Chancellor seems to have forgotten. After rejecting Brown’s casino approach to public finance (borrow like mad, and encourage the public to do the same, then hail yourself as an economic genius), Germany has two things
The New Statesman’s Martin Bright writes a more positive account of the Pre-Budget Report than you’ll find in most other places. But he does highlight one potential problem with the package: “There is at least one area where Darling remains vulnerable, however, and that is over the policy to abolish the 10p tax rate, which he inherited
The BBC are reporting that the hostages in Mumbai’s Taj Mahal Palace hotel have now been rescued. There are still thought to be hostages in the Oberoi Trident hotel. We can only hope that this situation resolves itself without further loss of innocent life. UPDATE: The BBC are now reporting the situation at the Taj
Home. Monday afternoon. Oddly calm.
Roger Scruton reviews Kingsley Amis’s Everyday Drinking, now happily reissued: At the start, Amis announces certain ‘general principles’ to be followed in creating drinks, all of which can be derived, by natural drinkers’ logic, from the first of them, which holds that ‘up to a point [i.e. short of offering your guests one of those
When I was in Mumbai in February I stayed at the Taj and ate the best fish curry I have ever tasted at Leopold’s: both targets in tonight’s shocking attacks. Even as the angry flames light up the sky of this extraordinary world city, it is clear that this was, at least in part, a
Can David Cameron make national debt into a campaign issue? He tried in PMQs today asking if Brown can confirm he’s doubled the debt to £1 trillion. Problem is: few knew “trillion” was a real word until recently. When Brown decided not to have a payback plan he figured no one would really care. It’s
The Standard’s keen-eyed Paul Waugh has already flagged it up, but it’s still worth highlighting Frank Field’s assessment of the PBR in his latest blog post. Even coming from Labour’s insurrectionist-in-chief, some of the remarks are surprisingly cutting. Take this passage, for instance: “Will the package work? I dearly hope so, but I doubt it.
Today China cancelled the long-planned EU-China summit because French President Nicolas Sarkozy was planning to meet the Dalai Lama later in the year. Such short-sightedness serves no one. Though it appears to be shielded from the financial tumult, China will eventually be hurt by the current crisis. China needs 9-10% growth if it is to
Nice to know that frivolity still has a function in politics, if only as admirable sang froid in the face of Armageddon. The Bad Sex awards at the In and Out club last night had a Regency air, from the torches outside to the Rowlandson physiques of the burlesque group Satanic Sluts. Accepting her award
Courtesy of Politics Home, here’s footage of the party leader exchanges in today’s PMQs:
The revelation that a rise in the VAT rate was being considered by the government up until the very last minute, and apparently in the PBR figures themselves, is part of a greater truth that the level of borrowing that the country has embarked on means that taxes will have to rise considerably or there
Welcome to Coffee House’s live blog of PMQs. After Monday’s PBR, you can expect the economy to be the main topic of debate – with Cameron and Clegg trying to highlight the weasels and tax bombshells that Brown has in store for us. Things will kick off at 1200, so join us then. 1203: Here we go. 1204: First
Gordon Brown is hoping that the sheer size of the borrowing numbers that Alistair Darling announced on Monday will stop people from comprehending them. But we hope that this video—adapted from the brilliant one that won MoveOn’s competition to design an ad against Bush in 2004— will bring home the consequences of this debt. On
What to make of the YouGov poll in today’s Telegraph? It was conducted in the aftermath of Alistair Darling’s Pre-Budget Report statement – on Monday evening and throughout yesterday – and came out with the following headline figures: Conservatives — 40 percent (down 1) Labour — 36 percent (no change) Lib Dems — 14 percent
Despite its increasing resemblance to ‘Heat’ magazine, I was reassured on Tuesday morning that my beloved Guardian has not lost the courage of its convictions. Running an ill disguised-spoiler of next month’s Tatler cover (ha ha, vile toffs, we know who Daisy Lowe is, too!), Hadley Freeman pondered “that almost parodic monthly recorder of Britain’s
One of the things that distinguishes a good columnist from the ordinary, run-of-the-mill shill is the ability to treat their own party’s failings as severely as they would condemn the blunders committed by the other lot. Similarly, there’s something to be said for the rigour that consistency demands. Polly Toynbee may be correct (though I’d
I’ve too much respect for my friends at The Times to ask if Rupert Murdoch dictated that this Peter Brookes cartoon appear on the paper’s front page today… The Thunderer’s leader column makes it pretty clear, I think, that the Times will not be endorsing Labour at the next election: Tony Blair and Gordon Brown
Conrad Black: The US is now a carceral state that imprisons eight to 12 times more people (2.5m) per capita than the UK, Canada, Australia, France, Germany or Japan. US justice has become a command economy based on the avarice of private prison companies, a gigantic prison service industry and politically influential correctional officers’ unions
Commenting on this post Ian Leslie – aka Marbury – argues that we’re on the brink of a new era and that just as Callaghan was right to appreciate that one era had ended in 1976, so Darling and El Gordo may be correct to suppose that another has been shipwrecked now. Maybe. Look, I’m
Chris Dillow – always worth your time – casts a weary eye over a number of government policies and concludes: What this shows, I think, is that New Labour’s claim to believe in technocratic, evidence-based policy is a sham. They are not technocrats at all, but either priggish moralists or cowardly panderers to mob prejudice.
I’d been meaning to write something about how all the cheering at the supposed brilliance of Obama’s cabinet picks was reminiscent of the huzzahs that greeted George W Bush’s peronnel choices. But Ezra Klein has beaten me to it: “Isn’t it amazing,” asks Krugman, “just how impressive the people being named to key positions in
Another lovely obituary from the Daily Telegraph (of course) that is, as always, written with panache: Nick Mills, who has died aged 54, was a country vet with a practice which took him across the world as an anaesthetist for wild animals, an insurance adviser to the racing industry and a “sex therapist” to thoroughbreds
Robert Barnett, the Tibet expert, has a commentary in The New York Times that claims that Britain has changed its position on Tibet in exchange for China giving more money to the IMF. Here’s the key part of Barnett’s argument: “Last month, for example, Gordon Brown, the British prime minister, asked China to give money to
Grant Shapps – the Shadow Minister for Housing, and MP for Welwyn Hatfield – has kindly agreed to a Q&A session with Coffee House. Just post your questions for him in the comments section below. And, on Friday, we’ll pick out the best ten and put them to him. He’ll get back to us with
A devastating blow against Brown’s “tax the rich” plan from the Institue of Fiscal Studies today. How much will the new 45 percent tax rate for those over £170,000 raise? “Approximately nothing” says the IFS and adds that “HM Treasury would raise more with, eg, a 44 percent rate”. This reminds us why most developed
While I admire Charles Moore’s willingness to inherit the mantle of Mary Whitehouse, I don’t think he has quite put his finger on the essence of the Brand-Ross business. The large public outcry provoked by the call to Andrew Sachs can’t be channelled into a general war on smut at the BBC. I don’t think
The free sheets in London are leading on Boris’s attack on Gordon Brown in his Telegraph column this morning. The column is full of good knock-about stuff but what has attracted the papers’ attention is this passage—the banner headline on one of them ‘Like a drunk’: “He is like some sherry-crazed old dowager who has
The IFS post budget briefing is becoming as anticipated by the media as the budget itself, and I’m sitting at the back with the crowds. The IFS spotted the 5 million losers from the abolition of the 10p tax band which Brown claims to have only noticed afterwards. So what do they see this time?
With The Sun, The Times and The Daily Mail declaring the death of New Labour, it is worth thinking about what a New Labour government PBR would have looked like. For an idea you can look at a PQ that Stephen Byers, someone who has kept and advanced the New Labour faith, asked back in
Commerce has always deferred conversationally to art. It’s assumed that painters and writers are fascinating talkers, but from the Mermaid to the Colony room, I think they’ve only ever had one subject: money and their lack of it, or the outrageously unfair amounts of it bestowed on (naturally) less talented peers. The legendary wit of
Polly Toynbee’s column in The Guardian today contains these jaw-dropping couple of sentences: “Even if unemployment reaches 3 million, that still leaves 90% in secure jobs. Most people will suffer not at all in this recession: on the contrary they will do well as prices fall and the real value of their earnings rises.” Can
One of the most dangerous elements of yesterday’s Pre-Budget Report for the Government was Alistair Darling’s claim that the economy would start recovering by the third quarter of 2009. It’s an optimistic prognosis, and gives the Tories an open goal if things aren’t on the up by then. But has Darling already started backtracking on
Flicking through this morning’s papers, it’s even clearer how much of a flop the Pre-Budget Report was. Sure, it has some cheerleaders (cf. Polly Toynbee, Will Hutton and Steve Richards). But the best thing that most of the papers can bring themselves to say about it is that it’s a “gamble” – whilst a few