All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
The Edlington case is shocking and depressing to think about. But I would urge you to watch Gavin Esler’s interview of Ed Balls on Newsnight where he challenged Balls over his reasons for not publishing the full case review. Newsnight, who were leaked a copy of the full case review in the Edlington case, pressed
Oh dear. After Massachussetts, it seems like the usual sneering about “populist” politicians, and about voters who aren’t happy with the bankers, is back. So here are a few facts of life for those knocking people who think the banking sector could still do with a lot of fixing: 1) The financial performance of the
I think Chris Morris’s new film Four Lions is probably the (English-speaking) world’s first suicide-bomber comedy. So it’s all but guaranteed to offend just about everyone. Splendid. Doubtless it’s a sign of terrible, even craven decadence to admit to looking forward to seeing it… Here’s a clip, anyway:
All American Presidents are elected on a platform of hope and change. Each arrives in Washington promising to be, in the words of George W Bush, “a uniter not a divider”. But few took possession of the White House quite as heavily weighed down by the burden of expectation as Barack Hussein Obama. The hopes
There are two big chunks of child-related outrage in our newspapers today (and tomorrow, I’d guess). The first is the story of a woman with learning difficulties who fled the country with her baby daughter because the local social services department argued that, effectively, she was too thick to bring the kid up. She has
The Tories are bracing themselves for an election campaign of smears and dirty tricks. Today the sniping begins. Attack dog Liam Byrne has criticised Cameron’s ‘Broken Britain’ speech in the following terms: “I think when people read what Mr Cameron is saying today they will see that it is quite an unpleasant speech…Mr Cameron is
In his Telegraph column today, Ben Brogan asks one of the most important political questions of all: do the Tories have a plan for dealing with the mess they face in government? They talk tough on debt and spending, for sure, but the details are still kinda lacking. Is there anything behind the rhetoric? And,
The government broke off relations with the Muslim Council of Britain over Daoud Abdullah, its deputy secretary-general, signing the Istanbul declaration, which the government believed encouraged attacks on British forces if they attempted to enforce a weapons blockade on Gaza. Last week, the government retreated; inviting the MCB back in despite Daoud Abdullah’s signature remaining
For some time, Labour has been trying to push the line that behind the Cameron facade there’s an old-school, “nasty” party waiting, drooling, for an opportunity to engineer the country as they see fit. Over the past couple of days, it’s become clear that they’ve struck on a new variant of that attack. Yesterday, we
Seriousness comes naturally to Gordon Brown and yesterday he gave a speech detailing how Britain is defending itself by striking at the heart of the ‘crucible of terror’. What Brown has in seriousness of delivery, he lacks in realism. Britain has not fought for such a sustained period since the high-water mark of empire; but
He may be a chateau-bottled shyster, but there is no better communicator of policy than Alastair Campbell. He has penned an article in the FT arguing that the lesson that should have been learned from the Iraq war was how to communicate strategic ideas and objectives. The lack of clarity that came to define Iraq
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I wouldn’t normally start the day by linking to a public sector website – but this one is actually worth your time. It’s the launch version of data.gov.uk, created with the help of Tim Berners-Lee among others, which aims to present statistics about government performance in a straightforward, easy-to-access way. You’ll get a sense of
Some observations on the Bay State Shocker: Candidates matter, don’t they? Yes they surely do. Martha Coakley’s campaign was so staggeringly inept, complacent, arrrogant and stupid that she threw away a Senate seat in a state Barack Obama won by 26 points a year ago. Yes, Republicans have won statewide before in MA but this
Labour’s tax on banks that pay big bonuses was budgeted to yield £550 million. But because the tax has failed to change behaviour it is going to bring in far more than that, at least 2 billion according to recent reports. This raises the question of what will Labour do with the extra 1.5 billion?
An idea that has received little media attention in Britain, but is giving Foreign Office diplomats sleepless nights, is David Miliband’s push for a “regional stabilisation council” involving Pakistan, India and Afghanistan, to be unveiled at the international conference scheduled for January 28. The idea is seen as an innovate way to bring the three
More on Massachusetts later, but Conor Friedersdorf makes a necessary point that applies to pundits from all quarters most of the time and not just to this election in the Bay State: It is particularly amusing to see folks call the outcome stunning in one breath and aver in the next that they can explain
Here’s a phrase. Dave blew it today. That’s a harsh verdict because he used PMQs to focus on Haiti and the Doncaster torture case. Naturally Haiti dominates the news and we all know that vulnerable kids have a very special place in Dave’s heart. But this is a political scrap and he needed to show
Here’s a surprise: a rather good speech on civil liberties and the government’s (English) DNA database from Chris Grayling. Later in the debate, however, David Davies, Tory MP for Monmouth and a man who really should not be confused with David Davis MP, made this contribution: “Most of the Bill’s provisions ultimately come down to
Another snippet from Jonathan Freedland’s column which deserves a separate post: “Labour has a harder task [on the economy], pressing voters to engage with the abstract arguments, asking them to accept that the deficit is not the only threat that matters. That effort is undermined by interviews like Alistair Darling’s with the FT [yesterday], in
Stay tuned for live coverage from 1200. 1200: Still waiting. You can watch live coverage here. 1202: And here we go. Brown leads with condolences for fallen soldiers, as well as for those affected by the earthquake in Haiti. 1203: First question from Danny Alexander on rural Britian losing out on broadband services. Brown says
How do politicians achieve that “unspun” look? Why, by emulating the spin of a soft drinks company, of course. This from Jonathan Freedland in the Guardian: ‘[The Labour campaign team have] taken a look at the branding of Innocent smoothies, hoping the authentic, unspun look might fit their own ‘unairbrushable’ product, G Brown. They were
There’s a few Early Day Motions in the House of Commons, one of which demands that I should not be made editor of the Independent newspaper, based upon a Guardian story that I was about to be. There are two signatories – the self-publicising, hypocritical pantomime dame Diane Abbott, with whom I have crossed swords
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Expect Labour to make much of today’s employment figures, which show that unemployment fell by 7,000 in the three months to last November. Already, Yvette Cooper has claimed it as a success for “government investment”. While Gordon Brown will surely repeat that message in PMQs. But is it really testament to government action? Or is
It must be stated from the outset – most drinkers are responsible and drink only on special occasions, with other people or by themselves. However, binge drinkers, or that caste of drinker whose evening is neatly rounded-off with a stomach pump, are a minority, albeit a growing one. Relaxed licensing laws and the government’s refusal
In a stunning result, the Republicans last night won Ted Kennedy’s old Senate seat in a special election in Massachusetts. The defeat is a major blow to President Obama as he begins the second year of his presidency. The loss means that the Democrats no longer have a filibuster proof majority in the Senate, calling
Many will claim that the Taliban’s recent attack in Kabul shows how powerful the insurgency has become. No doubt the psychological impact – the real aim of all terrorists – will be felt for some time. Faroshga market, one of the city’s most popular shopping malls, lay in ruins and the normally bustling streets of
First there was Ken, then Peter Mandelson, and now Jon Cruddas is the latest name to be linked with Labour’s campaign for the London Mayoralty. According to the Standard, the Dageneham MP is winning “high level backing” to take on Boris in 2012. As James said last week, there’s every reason to believe that Cruddas
Well hello there, Rompuy. We haven’t heard much from the new EU president so far – he was upstaged by Barroso at the Copenhagen conference, showing that the EU stage only has room for one super-ego*. But with the Lisbon Treaty ratified, in defiance of public opinion in Britain (and Labour’s manifesto pledge), he now
This morning’s Independent contains an almost incredible splash that £26bn has been wasted on IT projects over the last decade. It’s a litany of binary bungles – the incompetence: staggering; the forecasting: inept; and the planning (or lack of it): simply shocking. Contending with such absurdity whilst staring down the barrel of a £175bn deficit, you
Writing about stuff before it has even had a chance to become news has been a significant media trend this past decade. The internet accelerates this. So, even though voting in the election to fill Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat in Massachusetts hasn’t even started yet, it’s important to speculate on the outcome of the contest
Mervyn King, the governor of the Bank of England, is giving a speech tonight at Exeter University. King, as you would expect, avoids getting into politics. But one passage is attracting interest in Conservative circles: “Of course, there is a perfectly sensible debate about the appropriate timing of the withdrawal of the temporary fiscal stimulus
It is a sign of the problems that Obama is having that on the eve of the anniversary of his inauguration, the Democrats look like losing Ted Kennedy’s old Senate seat in Massachusetts. To put it in context, this is a bit like Labour losing Sunderland Central in a by-election. There are a whole host