All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
It is worth pointing out, because it is so different from what was happening a few weeks back, that the Tories are having another good day today. Gordon Brown has been forced to admit at PMQs that he had got his defence statistics wrong when addressing both the Commons and the Chilcot inquiry, the Unite
…when it comes to the Lib Dem’s offical election song, performed by the Liberal Democrat Community Choir: You can, er, buy it on iTunes if you like. Hat-tip: Guido
So, we have a date for the Chancellor’s debate. Channel 4 News will host Darling, Cable and Osborne on Monday the 29th of March at 8pm. I have a suspicion that George Osborne will come out of this debate rather well. He doesn’t have an expectations problem, unlike Cable, and is quick on his
If two things fuelled the rise of the BNP last year, then they were probably the mainstream parties’ reluctance to talk about immigration and a general disillusionment with Westminster politicians in the wake of the expenses scandal. There are tentative signs that the parties are getting their act together on the first. And, now, Nick
Is Piers Morgan going to be an MP? I suspect that this is one of those questions to which, as John Rentoul would tell you, the answer is no. (UPDATE: Indeed it is!) So Fraser has to be joking, right? I mean Piers Morgan is ubiquitous enough as it is without raising the chill prospect
Could you vote for Piers Morgan? In an interview with Freddy Gray in The Spectator tomorrow, he says he’s tempted to stand for Parliament – and it’s not such a surprise. He has weirdly inserted himself in the political process in recent weeks, defining Nick “no more than 30” Clegg and giving Gordon Brown probably
He did it. We saw him. It actually happened. History was made at PMQs today as Gordon Brown finally gave a direct answer to a direct question. Not only that, he admitted he’d been wrong about something. Tony Baldry (Con, Banbury) informed the PM that his assertion before the Chilcot Inquiry that defence spending has
Michael Savage observes that Cameron’s denunciation of Brown’s ‘weak’ premiership recalled Tony Blair’s famous savaging of the ‘weak, weak, weak’ Major government . Here it is: After watching that, I chanced upon an exchange between Blair and Cameron, dated November 2006. Their subject? NHS budget cuts. The first two minutes of the clip reinforce just
Stay tuned for live coverage from 1200. 1201: And here we go. Brown starts with condolences for fallen troops, and also for the late Labour MP Ashok Kumar and his family. For the first question, Tony Baldry takes on Brown over his claim that defence expendintue has risen in real terms under Labour. A note
The Tories Unite strategy has been so effective, even Peter Mandelson is peddling it. Led by Mandelson, Labour’s isolated right has questioned Unite’s influence over candidate selection. James Purnell’s preferred successor, Jonny Reynolds, was omitted from the Stalybridge and Hyde shortlist, compiled by the NEC, which has two Unite members on its board. Mandelson and
One of the defences that Labour types are mustering over Unite is, bascially, that it’s better to be funded by a body which represents some two million workers than by Ashcroft type figures who may have their own personal agendas. In which case, the question is: do Charlie Whelan and his coterie really represent the
I don’t, alas, believe for a second that this magazine cover is real but, my, how I really, really wish it were. Anyway, it seems that Mike Tyson is going to be appearing in a new reality TV show about, yup, pigeon racing. Really, right now, I’m pushed to come up with a better TV
Matt Yglesias and Jonathan Chait have some fun with Charles Krauthammer’s argument that resistance to Obama’s health care plans is rooted in a certain concept of American exceptionalism. Here’s Dr K: This spirit of being independent and not wanting to be controlled by the government is something that is intrinsic in America. It’s the essence
I hate to say this, but there is a very good article in The G***d**n, which you can see online here. It’s by Dr Tony Sewell, a sociologist who runs charities for young black kids, and who is almost always a fount of plain speaking and common sense. He suggests that the educational under-achievement of
I enjoyed Ross Douthat’s column this week in which he contemplates the inadequacies of Hollywood’s response to the Iraq war. (Hey – at least Hollywood has responded: has the British film industry? There haven’t been too many British stories told, as opposed to Britishers telling American stories. Which is a little different.) The narrative of
Whisper it quietly, but there is a sense that the Tory campaign is getting back on track. The Tories have had three good days in a row, have Labour on the back foot over Unite and the polls appear to be moving in their favour. Certainly, Tory morale is better than at any point since
The Daily Politics featured a telling exchange between Stephen Timms and Ken Clarke. Their arguments were unclear and their hypotheticals relentless – they were debating deficit reduction. A football phone-in DJ had been invited onto the programme to adjudicate. After 7 minutes he broke his befuddled silence and declared, understandably, that Clarke and Timms were
A lot of things, you will agree, have changed since 1983 – even in the world of diplomacy. For one, the EU has moved from a loose federation of states towards a new kind of polity – never a United States of Europe, heaven forbid, but more than just a loose arrangement of member-states. But
Continuing the current vogue for sensible economic debate, here’s what Nick Clegg said on Radio 4 just now: ‘We’re not entering into this dutch auction about ringfencing. Good outcomes aren’t determined by drawing a redline around government departmental budgets.’ Given the current speculation about a hung parliament, you’ve got to wonder what this might mean
So, the Tories have declared war on Charlie Whelan and Unite – what Eric Pickles calls the “great untold story of British politics”. He was joined by no less than two more shadow frontbenchers – Michael Gove and Theresa Villiers – at a briefing attacking the union’s political influence this morning. And that’s not all:
The decision by David Cameron to pull the Tories out of the EPP and form the ECR was a victory of principle and party politics over pragmatism. While many Tory grassroots howled with joy, it is worth examining the practical consequences on Tory influence in the European Parliament – not to reverse the decision, but
Yes, I know, cause and correlation aren’t the same thing – but Mike Smithson’s latest graph over at Political Betting is still incredibly striking. It shows that the Tories’ strongest poll position over the last few years coincided with a high in the petrol price. It also shows that the smallest gap between Labour and
Now here’s a turn up: according to Nick Robinson, the Tories are going to announce details of what spending they would cut in the forthcoming fiscal year after next week’s Budget. So it looks like Cameron might come good on his promise, after all. We’ll have to wait and see before judging whether those cuts
So I had an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times yesterday in which, inter alia, I compared Britain’s fiscal position with Greece’s (but at least we have the Elgin Marbles…) and the lack of faith in the political process to California’s own dysfunctional system. Matt Yglesias thinks this exaggerated and, well, “pretty flawed” For one
David has already blogged about George Osborne and Jeffrey Sach’s article in the FT this morning. But it’s worth returning to what is as clear and as unalloyed a statement of Tory policy on the public finances as you’ll have seen over the past few months. What I find most impressive about the article
Gordon Brown must be feeling generous today, for he did the Tories two favours on Woman’s Hour earlier. David has already mentioned the first one: Brown saying that he would “keep going” as party leader even if Labour loses the next election, which ups the potential for more summertime Sturm und Drang on his own
Heaven forbid that the Tories and LibDems end up in coalition – but the Guardian asked me to write a piece war-gaming what would happen if they did. The result is here. I really do believe it would be a short-lived calamity because no one would be playing for the long-term. The Westminster system does
Things have come to a pretty pass when the Secretary of State for Education endorses ignorance and scoffs at knowledge pretending, one is given to understand, that it’s just a kind of posh irrelevance favoured only by the terminally stuffy and fuddy-duddy and out-of-touch. Such, however, seems to be the case for you poor English
At last, Gordon Brown has been forced from the comfort of silence on the Unite/BA strike. Yesterday, Lord Adonis said that he “absolutely deplored the strike” because the “stakes were too high”. Brown has done nothing more than echo those sentiments, but that is at least a step in the right direction. Obviously, the strike
…here are some of the posts made at Spectator.co.uk over the weekend. Fraser Nelson uncovers Brown’s latest confidence trick. James Forsyth argues that the LibDems should receive more scrutiny, and spies electoral politicking amid Labour’s Lords reforms. David Blackburn thinks that David Cameron’s interview with Sir Trevor McDonald was a success, and reckons that Edward
George Osborne has long been in the City’s crosshairs, and criticism peaked last week when less than a quarter of a City panel believe he has the mettle to be Chancellor. Today, Osborne fights back in the FT, with a piece co-penned by Jeffrey Sachs. The pair set out an argument for immediate ‘frugality’, rather
David Cameron held, what he called, his ‘first election rally’ this evening. In a trendy venue in Shoreditch—lots of exposed brick and video screens, Cameron—tieless and noteless—debuted his stump speech. It is a speech that strikes the right balance between attacking Labour’s record and promoting the Conservatives’ own policies. The economic message still needs to
Photo: Eric Piermont/AFP/Getty Images Cato’s Tad DeHaven and Think Defence each have good posts on the future of the increasingly troubled Joint Strike Fighter. Costs have risen by 50% since 2001 and the plane is already looking like it will be delivered years late. Since the main justification for the JSF was that it was
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 – providing 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