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There is a great tick-tock in The Times this morning about how the bank recapitalisation plan came into being. The take-away point is that the Chancellor was much more the driving force behind it than the Prime Minister. Here are the key extracts: The Times can reveal today that the Chancellor believed that recapitalisation was
I’ve read and re-read Cameron’s speech on the economy, hoping that I had somehow missed the radical message to answer Gordon Brown. I have given up. Britain is facing a tsunami of unemployment, two years of recession if we’re lucky and what do the Tories have to say? They’ll set up a new quango, and
The appointment of Sir General David Richards as head of the British army, effective from August 2009, is the government’s first inspired military appointment for a long time. A former Nato commander in Afghanistan and the “Saviour of Sierra Leone”, General Richards will bring to the job a keen understanding of the military’s new tasks
Turbulent times in the Dreher household: Ramesh Ponnuru, seeing parents in his neighborhood encouraging their kids to be Obamatons, rightly says he doesn’t get people who delight in politicizing their children. Completely agree. For some reason, though, my two boys — ages nine and four — are crazy for Barack Obama, and have been for
It’s too late now, of course, but there’s at least one head of state Sarah Palin has something in common with. King Carl Gustaf XVI of Sweden who has just come out in favour of shooting wolves. Bonus: Sweden’s moose-hunting season opened last week, and moose – or elk – hunting is increasingly popular amongst
PMQs is frequently derided as something that is only of interest to the Westminster Village. That may be true but it helps frame the way that political reporters and commentators see the battle between the parties and plays a crucial role in determining the mood of the parliamentary parties. This week’s clash will be one
Fraser Nelson reveals Gordon Brown’s new plan to bring down national debt, and begins the illustrated guide to the Brown bust. James Forsyth asks whether there’ll be a manifesto commitment to privatise the banks, and reports on the demise of 42-day detention. Daniel Korski says the appointment of Sir General David Richards as head of
No conservative columnist has better understood Obama than David Brooks and his column today on Obama sums up both Obama’s strengths and his weaknesses quite brilliantly. Here’s how he concludes: “He doesn’t have F.D.R.’s joyful nature or Reagan’s happy outlook, but he is analytical. That’s why this William Ayers business doesn’t stick. He may be
The Sage of Omaha takes to the New York Times to explain why he is moving his personal investments from US government bonds to shares, a move that is the opposite of what most people are up to: “The financial world is a mess, both in the United States and abroad. Its problems, moreover, have
Steve Richards’ column this morning is thought-provoking. Here’s the central plank of his argument: “In some ways there are parallels for Cameron in the dilemmas Neil Kinnock faced during the miners’ strike under Margaret Thatcher in the mid 1980s. Kinnock was torn as to what to do. He instinctively sympathised with the miners, but disapproved
The Tories returned to the fray on the economy with David Cameron’s speech in the City this morning. There is much to criticise Gordon Brown for in terms of his economic management but Brown has done a brilliant job in the last couple of weeks in setting out a narrative that because he can’t be
British households are far less able to deal with the credit crunch because taxes have risen by the equivalent of £6,520 per household compared to 1996/97 levels. This ratcheting up of the tax burden has been a steady feature of the Brown years but it is being felt with particular force now. During the boom
So here we go again, campers. In just a few hours our long international nightmare will be over. Yup, there’ll be no more Presidential debates to entertain us. John McCain and Barack Obama are even now limbering up for their final tussle. By way of a prelude, I’d recommend reading this pre-debate symposium at Culture
Tee hee: The journalistic industry is perilously close to collapse after running out of days in the week to dub ‘black’ in the event of dire economic news. Financial journalism has virtually frozen up after last week’s so-called ‘Black Friday’, which exhausted the stock of slightly varied clichés. Reporters were close to panic last night
Who won? Well the lads and lasses at Election Debates have a decisive, if split, decision: 5-2 to Obama. You can check out their adjudications here.
Though publishing it does feel a bit like piling on, this picture – an actual, real, Reuters photograph – does sort of sum-up the campaign. Your suggestions for a caption please! UPDATE: Commenters point out that this was McCain pulling a deliberate “Doh!” type of face having initially tried to wander off the set in
Bagehot in The Economist makes the sensible—but overlooked—point that Brown’s strengths are his weaknesses and vice-versa: “In his response to the crisis, Mr Brown has demonstrated many of the traits that contributed to his ruination before. One is a fondness for plagiarism. He is a natural copycat, as he demonstrated to his cost last year
There is a fascinating story in the Washington Post today about how Pakistan is looking to China for $3 billion worth of emergency assistance. Pakistan, which is on the verge of bankruptcy, desperately needs funds but knows that in the current circumstances the United States is unlikely to come through. China with $1.9 trillion in
McCain should have done this months ago.
As Iain Martin says you couldn’t make up the fact that the Audit Commission has £10 million in Icelandic banks. Oxford University also has £30 million in Icelandic banks, the BBC reports.
Some are saying that you can’t hold Brown in anyway responsible for the current situation because no one saw it coming. But as Martin Bright points out in the New Statesman this week, this simply isn’t true: “Brown’s assiduous biographer, Simon Lee of Hull University, noticed the warning signals contained in the report. He wrote
Last night, John McCain turned in his best performance of the debate season. He clearly distanced himself from President Bush, he drew contrasts with Obama on taxes and he appeared confident in his answers. In short, he did tonight what he needed to do in the first debate. (However, it should be noted that the
I’d been meaning to blog about the Canadian elections but then realised that, dash it, despite Canada actually being an interesting place stocked with charming, affable people I really didn’t have very much to say beyond, “hmm, Canada is having another election”. The BBC evidently thought so too since the elections didn’t make the 10
I am hearing that Brown is to make up his own debt measurement, after losing a battle to have Northern Rock struck from the official national debt. It will be used in the pre budget report, exclude Northern Rock, and would show the figure Harman gave in PMQs today, national debt falling from 43 percent
Ben Brogan spots this gem from an interview with the Prime Minister of Luxembourg, Jean-Claude Juncker: Gordon Brown “begged” to turn up at the Eurozone meeting last week. Brown desperately wanted to turn up so that could present to a domestic audience this carefully crafted image of Brown the Saviour, the man called in to
How bad can unemployment get during the Brown Bust? Predictions of two or three million unemployed miss an important point. The concept of the “dole” has changed: unlike in the 1980s it has become a way of life, as well as a safety net. There were 5.2 million on out-of-work benefits last February of which
The Brown Bust: house prices This is the first in a short series on the illustrated Brown Bust, we’ll show you graphs looking at the various aspects of the bursting of the Brown Bubble. After failing to control monetary policy – giving the Bank of England an inflation-only remit – the out-of-control money supply led
Harman v. Hague with Fraser Nelson from noon: 12:00 I’m still cross with William Hague for pitching up at that Lake Como villa at the Barclays Wealth shindig that was in the papers before he left. Utter idiocy. Sure, he arrived on its last day to accompany his wife who works there. But his political
In 2004, George W Bush “won” the Ground Game. This time? Well, every indication is that Barack Obama has built a vastly more formidable organisation than John McCain. To help give readers a sense of what’s happening out there in the field, I’m delighted to say that super-smart Democratic operative “Josh Lyman” is going to
Fraser in his politics column, available online tomorrow, argues that in the current climate Brown’s lack of emotional intelligence will be less of a problem for him. This is one of those rare instances where I disagree with Fraser. It is one of Brown’s great faults that he doesn’t do empathy or apologies. I think
Gerri Peev’s story in The Scotsman today has a quote in it from Nigel Griffiths which takes the biscuit: Nigel Griffiths, the Edinburgh Labour MP who is close to Mr Brown, said: “I can describe his response to the financial crisis in one word – Guinness. Pure genius.” Mr Griffiths, who has been campaigning in
Tonight is the last McCain-Obama debate and McCain goes into it needing a game-changer; three polls out today have him down by 14, nine and 10 respectively. To compound McCain’s problem, the economic news is so bad that it is virtually impossible for a message on any subject other than the economy to cut through.
Tim Montgomerie, who spent a lot of time with the Canadian Conservatives during the campaign, has a good piece up on yesterday’s election in Canada which saw the Conservatives maintain their status as the largest party but fail to win an overall majority. The one issue I would take with Tim on is green taxes,