All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Increasingly I suspect that George HW Bush may be one of the most under-rated American presidents since the Second World War. Politically, sure, he wasn’t the smartest, sharpest or smoothest and some of his greatest achievements – most notably the management of post-Soviet eastern europe – owed something to a policy of what was, in
This is irritating but should not come as a surprise: Washington refused to endorse British claims to sovereignty over the Falkland Islands yesterday as the diplomatic row over oil drilling in the South Atlantic intensified in London, Buenos Aires and at the UN. Despite Britain’s close alliance with the US, the Obama Administration is determined
At the beginning of this week the key figures in the Tory election campaign gathered together in Notting Hill to try and work out what was going wrong with the Tory campaign, why the Tory lead has halved since December. Our cover this week attempts to answer this question. My take is that the problem
He’ll have to because nobody else will. As Robert Peston says ‘Poor RBS, poor Britain’ – today’s figures are catastrophic. Peston’s been digging and the news gets worse: ‘But perhaps the most chilling numbers are these: we as taxpayers put in £25.5bn of new equity into this bank last autumn, the second instalment of the
One of the odder aspects of contemporary politics is the amount of attention lavished upon the goons at the BNP. Anyone would think they were about to win the election. But they’re not. Nevertheless, grant Nick Griffin and his pals this: they’ve managed to hijack the debate – such as it is – on immigration.
First the tragedy, then the farce: if there was something dark, perhaps shocking, about last weekend’s bullying allegations, then the latest Rawnsley revelations veer towards the hilarious. They’re centred around Brown’s efforts to oust Tony Blair, and the Guardian covers them here. I won’t pre-empt your enjoyment of them, except to highlight this passage from
Don’t you think that ‘The Ship Money Movement’ is a more appropriate name for a British anti-tax forum? You know, given the connotations of ‘Tea Party’ in these climes? Titles are instructive, and, as James wrote yesterday, the British right has a growing fascination with its American counterpart. Perhaps I’m over doing it, but it
Liam Byrne has caught the Brown bug – not for raging in his underpants you understand, but for fiscal conceits. Tony Wright, the Public Administration Select Committee Chairman, called Liam Byrne (and the opposition as well) to task for misleading the public on the dire effects of cuts. Wright may be proved right: frontline services
The latest issue of the Spectator is published today. Inside, James Forsyth argues that the Tories’ situation is now verging on critical; Martin Bright says that Brown’s henchmen are the problem; and Rod Liddle says that bullying has become the latest Public Sector growth industry. If you are a subscriber you can view these articles
All of a sudden, the Big Banks are Big Politics again. And who’d have it any other way, on the day that the 84 percent taxpayer-owned RBS announced losses for 2009 of £3.6 billion? And that’s alongside a bonus pool for its staff of £1.3 billion. Yep – however hard they try, the exorcists of
Does it matter if this story is actually true or not? It’s clearly going to be a movie soon. All that needs to be decided is the casting: A lingerie model is believed to be the mastermind behind an all-women drug gang that smuggles cocaine into Britain. An international arrest warrant has been issued for
Bob Gates’ criticism of european defence shortcomings yesterday was couched in unusually harsh terms. Then again, NATO faces an uncertain future and there’s a growing sense in the United States, I think, that europe is failing to lift its weight when it comes to defence matters. As Gates pointed out just 5 of NATO’s 28
Jeb Bush that is. And, it’s fair to say that he doesn’t seem enormously enthusiastic about Palin’s political prospects: My personal belief is that for Governor Palin to be a successful candidate for higher office, she needs to take this charisma she has and also add to it some depth of understanding of the complexity
The obsession of British politicians – and political journalists – with American politics is often mocked. But there’s a clarity to American political messages that is often missing in this country. So it is good to see George Osborne borrowing a line from the Reagan playbook, and pointing out that people are now worse off
Frank Field was characteristically forthright on the Today programme this morning. “I don’t believe, given the strains (on the economy), we will be able to maintain an open door policy without serious unrest on the streets,” he said, and this brings me to a Sunny Hundal article on the media’s approach to the BNP. Hundal
‘Any closer and they’ll start kissing,’ said Cameron. The PM and his beloved chancellor were seated side by side at PMQs today, chatting showily throughout. Their rhubarb-rhubarb conversation was intended to quell the rumours of civil war in Downing Street. The ploy misfired. Two men conversing don’t both speak at each other simultaneously. But that
Two related points, worth repeating. The first from Ben Brogan: “Mr Brown is on surer ground on a narrow point, in that in all likelihood he did not explicitly order his Eighth Circle chums to unleash hell against Mr Darling. Then again, he didn’t need to. His reaction to the Chancellor’s Guardian interview will have
Stay tuned for live coverage from 1200. 1200: Alistair Darling is sat next to Brown. How cosy. 1201: And we’re off. Brown starts with condolences for fallens soldiers – sadly, seven names to read out. 1202: Labour MP Jamie Reed asks Brown for reassurances that the public will one day see the taxpayers’ cash that’s
Some more nasty opinion poll news for David Cameron, with an ICM poll showing the Tory lead down to seven per cent. “Hung Parliament Looms as Tory Support Crumbles” was the splash in The Guardian, which you might have predicted. You might have predicted Michael Heseltine wading in to the debate too, suggesting that the
Alistair Darling’s sudden and poetic ejaculation is sure evidence that the government is a rabble of warring tribes. Against such opponents, the Tories should win, and win big. Daniel Finkelstein is adamant that they still could. He states the obvious: polls are general and do not account for specifics in key marginals. In-built boundary bias
So what’s Alistair Darling up to? When I first heard his “forces of Hell” comment last night – his description of those briefing against him from inside No.10 – I half suspected it was all part of Downing Street’s grand plan. You know, trying to defuse the bullying story by being honest – up to
The imminent Dutch withdrawal from NATO’s Afghan mission will ignite the question of allied troop contributions. But what are the real numbers and how do they compare to past missions? In a new article for the Spanish think tank FRIDE, I have done the sums, as part of a broader analysis of transatlantic “AfPak” policy
You don’t have to look too far here, or elsewhere for that matter, to find plenty of concern about the Conservatives’ readyness for government. So it’s useful, occasionally, to step back and notice how the party and, more broadly, the British right, looks like to outside observers. Here’s Ross Douthat for instance: [W]hen you compare
I missed it but Alistair Darling’s interview with Jeff Randal seems to have been quite remarkable. He talked about ‘the forces of hell’ being unleashed against him by No 10 after he talked about how bad the recession would be in August 2008. When pressed on McBride and Whelan’s alleged involvement in the briefing against
“Going Dutch” will take on a whole new meaning now that the collapse of the Dutch government looks set to result in the country’s departure from Afghanistan. Withdrawal had been on the cards for at least a year – especially as the coalition Labour party had campaigned to return Dutch troops at the last election.
What is it about the Blairite passion for abstract nouns? I ask, not out of facetiousness, but because I want to know what they mean by loose terms such as ‘empowerment’. David Miliband joins James Purnell among the progressive left’s thinkers who are reimagining the relationship between state and citizen, and he gave a concept
Phil Woolas, the immigration minister, probably thought he was being helpful to Gordon Brown by describing Christine Pratt as: “this prat of a woman down in – where’s she from, Swindon?” But, erm, he wasn’t.
As Pete points out, the longer the bullying story runs the more chance there is that the public sympathise with Brown, as they did over the Jacqui Janes story. Now Ed Balls is playing the sympathy card for his mentor, saying that Brown has been deeply hurt by these false allegations. Whatever next? Damian McBride
The sight of two unelected members of the legislature and John Prescott lecturing Andrew Rawnsley about political propriety on Newsnight last night was one of the more surreal moments of the past week. Lord Steel in particular has very little right to the moral high ground as a longstanding member of the board of General
The Channel Four television programme Tower Block of Commons, which concluded last night, may have been a stupid and opportunistic idea, but it may too have one beneficial outcome. No matter how reviled and loathed are our politicians, set alongside some of the untermensch featured in this show they appeared paragons, saints, beacons of decency.
Much confusion on the digital grapevine, last night, about YouGov’s latest daily tracker poll. Turns out, it doesn’t have the Tories leading by twelve – but, rather, the positions are unchanged from the poll in the Sunday Times. So that’s the Tories on 39 percent, Labour on 33, and the Lib Dems on 17. A
Did I read it wrong, or did Brown really say this in his interview with the Economist? “[Our deficit-reduction plan] is probably the most ambitious of any of the G7 countries. It contains, obviously, public-spending economies, cuts in some departments, efficiency savings in others, but protection of the front-line services in health and education and
Although it’s been overshadowed by the fiscal crisis, it remains the case that the closest thing the Conservatives have to a Big Idea is their twinned-commitments to a “Post-Bureaucratic Age” and a future in which local communities enjoy much greater control over their affairs. As Dave has put it, “There is such a thing as
You think you’ve seen everything, and then Dizzy goes and unearths this Taiwanese news report about Brown and the bullying allegations. The computer dramatisations, from the 35 second mark on, are simply jaw-dropping: