All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
George Osborne’s article today is a breakthrough in the public debate about cuts. I argued in the NotW yesterday that, so far, no party is telling the whole truth because the Tories have been using phrases like “spending restraint,” which is hardly commensurate with the cuts in prospect. That point is now out of date.
Here are some of the posts made over the weekend on Spectator.co.uk: Fraser Nelson sets out the two sorts of cuts. James Forsyth reports on a morning of Mandelson and Miliband, and says that the next Speaker must command cross-party support. Peter Hoskin watches Ken Clarke both clarify and muddy the Tory position on Europe,
Isn’t it funny how things work? Andrew Lansley gaffes in a radio interview last Wednesday and, as a direct result, George Osborne today writes the kind of article on public spending that he should have written months ago. Rather than shying away from the idea of cuts, he actively pushes them as a necessary measure
TEHRAN, IRAN – JUNE 14: Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad holds a press conference on June 14, 2009 in Tehran, Iran. Photo: Majid/Getty Images. Well, you’d be chuckling if you’d stolen an election too, wouldn’t you? Suggestions for what Ahmadinejad is saying here are, of course, encouraged…
After the jump, the best case for Scottish independence. Oh yes. I especially like Big Jock’s assertion that anyone living south of Edinburgh is, whether they ken it or no’, actually English. That’s a sentiment he might think about keeping to himself, should he ever find himself in these parts. Granted, all political parties attract
Peter Mandelson dominates the Sunday newspaper; it seems that everyone has a long profile of him. But the best anecdote is in Jonathan Oliver’s Sunday Times piece: One aide recalls the recent humiliation of a junior member of the cabinet: “We were called into Mandelson’s huge office. Peter said to my minister, ‘You look dreadful,
What happens when tragedy has already slipped into farce, and the farce requires new material? Gordon Brown creates another government committee, that’s what. As the Sunday Telegraph reports, the latest Committee for Rescuing Labour and Thereby Gordon’s Premiership is composed of Brown himself along with seven Cabinet ministers: Peter Mandelson, Ed Balls, Alan Johnson, David
One of the questions that – understandably – just won’t go away is what the Tories intend to do about the Lisbon Treaty. Their constant refrain has been that if it’s not ratified by the time they’re in government, then they’ll hold a referendum on it and campaign for a “No” vote. But what if
I have written an essay for a Demos pamphlet called What Next for Labour? In it I have compared two campaigns, John Prescott’s Go Fourth and my own New Deal of the Mind. I recommend you look at the whole collection of essays but my argument is pretty simple. I suggest the Labour Party needs to rediscover
And so it continues. Gordon Brown may have prevented his own immediate demise over the past ten days, but the idea that he’ll be toppled before the next election still won’t go away. The most intriguing of all the leadership stories in the Sundays is the News of the World’s scoop that Ed Balls
This is the graphic to my News of the World column, representing the choice at the next election: two sorts of cuts. If Gordon Brown were smart, he would argue that his cuts would be better-aimed and more compassionate. Instead, he chooses to lie, saying – as he did in PMQs – that the choice
The nights will soon be drawing in. That is all.
Since I’ve been sceptical about some of Barack Obama’s rhetoric on democracy promotion and human rights, Stephen Hayes’s comments at the Weekly Standard merit some attention: Obama could tap into the enthusiasm and frustration of the protesters with a few well-chosen words about democracy, the rule of law, the will of the people, consent of
I don’t pretend to have a sophisticated grasp on the complexities of Iranian politics and society, but it’s worth noting that Ahmadinejad had support outside Iran too. To wit, Daniel Pipes: while my heart goes out to the many Iranians who desperately want the vile Ahmadinejad out of power, my head tells me it’s best
Frank Field is right that the new Speaker must be able to “command support amongst all the parties here at Westminster, including their own.” Field, who would make a fine Speaker, is right that it would be inappropriate for him to run unless he can gain considerable Labour support over the next couple of days.
Elections in Iran are neither free nor fair. Even before anyone started campaigning, the Iranian theocracy had barred any candidate they perceived to be a threat to the Islamic revolution from standing. So, it is not surprising that there appears to have been considerable interference with the voting process to give Ahmadinejad victory in the
The Telegraph’s interview with Peter Mandelson and The Guardian’s with David Miliband are setting the news agenda this morning. Mandelson tells the Telegraph that he expects there will be another attempt to topple Brown from a “small group who keep coming back”. While Miliband admits he considered resigning on Thursday night. Both push the message
A subject close to my heart is the fear of mental collapse that lies just below the surface of New Labour. So I wrote about it for this week’s Spectator magazine. You’ll find it here.
Gordon Brown does not change his ways, or his tactics. It will have shocked him to find the newspapers rejecting as a lie his claim that he would not cut spending. But he’ll be thinking, “they’ll get bored of this rebuttal and I won’t get bored of my attack.” So his strategy is to bulldoze
General Petraeus’s comments yesterday, reported by the Washington Post, that violence in Afghanistan is now at its highest level since the toppling of the Taliban shows how bad the situation has got there. But interestingly: “Two-thirds of all the attacks in Afghanistan are concentrated in about 10 percent of the country’s districts” If the coming
There’s a fascinating story in the New York Times today about how some al Qaeda terrorists are moving from the tribal areas of Pakistan to Somalia and Yemen. The key question is why are they doing this, is it because Pakistan has become a less hospitable place for them both because of US drone strikes
Charles Clarke’s interview with Andrew Neil for Straight Talk is going to make news. In it, Clarke makes clear that the moves to oust Brown are suspended not ended. As he tells Andrew: “It will depend how events go but more importantly than any other single thing it will depend how the people of the country
In this week’s Economist, Bagehot has an interesting thought about the dynamics of the Mandelson Brown relationship: “The official line is that [Peter Mandelson] and Mr Brown have buried the hatchets they once deployed against each other, and revived the understanding they shared before their falling out. Perhaps; but perhaps his succour itself contains a
Just to prove that Brown ‘n’ Balls haven’t locked Alistair Darling in the basement of the Treasury, the official Chancellor gets an interview in the FT today. Plenty of stuff in there about green shoots, oil prices and those darstardly Germans, but it’s this passage which jumped out at me: “The chancellor is quick to
I wouldn’t ever dream of debating economics with Paul Krugman*. Politics, however? Well that’s a horse of a different colour. The Nobel laureate is, it seems, in Britain and he has this to say: Weird politics here in London, with Gordon Brown desperately unpopular even (or maybe especially) among those who surely share his general
Now that Gordon Brown’s central attack line of ‘Labour investment v Tory cuts’ has been exposed as a lie, what will he do? His claim that he has planned no cuts under Labour has now been comprehensively exposed as false by Fleet Street today. Plus bloggers are producing figures and proofs – Dizzy and Chris
Alan Johnson to the New Statesman: “When Gordon steps down after ten years of successful leadership I’ll be too old anyway.”
Aside from the failure of other ministers to follow his lead, one of the saddest aspects to James Purnell’s resignation is that the DWP has lost an extremely capable minister. Yes, I know he’s not a particular favourite of CoffeeHousers – but he was instrumental in getting David Freud’s welfare reform agenda accepted as government
In a sign of the times, Andrew Lansley’s gaffe—which sent Tory high command into a rage—seems to be hurting Labour most. Andy Burnham, the new Health Secretary, has just told the NHS Confederation “I can’t write the spending review – it would be ridiculous.” But last night on Channel 4 News, Burnham seemed to be
For real: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Wednesday accused his election rivals of adopting smear tactics used by Germany’s dictator Adolf Hitler and said they could face jail for insulting him. Ahmadinejad was speaking at a rally in Tehran on the final day of an increasingly bitter and hard-fought election campaign, in which he faces
PR Week, which has delivered an impressive string of scoops during the Brown era, has an interesting little anecdote about Caroline Flint’s resignation: “Westminster sources said Flint toned down her resignation letter on the advice of friends. One insider even claimed it originally contained words such as ‘devious’ and phrases such as ‘sexist pig’.” If
Like Julian Sanchez, I consider Reason’s compilation of 40 years of Time magazine’s addiction to hysteria a real treat. This 1972 effort – warning, as you can see, of the inexorable rise of Satanism in the United States – is just the beginning of it. From there it’s but a hop, skip and jump to
It is easy to lose money down the back of the sofa, less so to lose a debt. The Treasury has long tried to hide the value of the pension promises made to public sector workers. Now, though, the present administration or its successor must start to be honest about the true size of the
Martin Bright makes a very good point on his blog about why the press will dismiss the protestations of loyalty and unity coming from the Cabinet: “Too many conversations have been had by too many ministers with too many journalists about the inadequacies of the Prime Minister to believe the words of solidarity.” In the