Quote of the day | 14 September 2009
…comes courtesy of one Gordon Brown, in interview with Robert Peston: “Well, I’ve never been someone who myself has been interested in running up personal debts or borrowing huge amounts of money.” Ahem.
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All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Monday
On a scale of 0-5, how much does this look like leadership positioning?
Scoopmeister Paul Waugh has a cracking developing story over at his blog. He revealed earlier that Harriet Harman’s people have been canvassing Labour party members with questions like: “Who do you think is the best person to sell the Labour party?” “On a scale of 0 to 5, how do you rate Harriet Harman?” But,
Blairites and the Left are on an inevitable collision course
I suspect that union leaders have always believed that they ought to drive the Labour party’s agenda. But now, after a year of economic misery and electoral disasters for the centre-left party leadership, the old left’s confidence is back and ought implies can. In a blatant assault on Blairism, rabble-rouser-in-chief Derek Simpson branded Peter Mandelson,
Striking the right balance
How worried should we be about national debt? I just had a rather enjoyable spat with Will Hutton on Simon Mayo’s Five Live programme. The situation is atrocious, I said. And that set him off: why did I use such a word? I replied that we are spending more in debt interest than educating our
Name a famous Victorian…
I’ve become obsessed with a woman. I think she is going to crop up in this blog quite often because I can’t get her out of my mind. She is the last thing I think about before I sleep at night. I wake with her name on my lips. I feel shivery and bereft when
Welcome to my new blog
I’ve always rather liked the idea of blogging, as it seems – from the available evidence – to be motivated by two qualities I have a lot of time for: narcissism and spite. So I hope that this new blog of mine comes, in time, to be the very apogee and spitefulness and narcissism, on
Mandelson loses his touch
Peter Mandelson got rather badly caught out on the Today Programme this morning. Mandelson tried to deny that the Labour line was shifting, saying: “You know, I did ask [Robinson] recently when exactly the prime minister had defined this simply and crudely as Labour investment versus Tory cuts, and Nick was unable to [put] his
CoffeeHousers’ Wall September 14 – September 20
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
The Debate Begins
A very nice piece from Ian Burrell in today’s Independent about my new appointment at the Jewish Chronicle. Regular readers here will perhaps be surprised that I am worried about being seen as making the journey from left to right. Here are the key bits: Martin Bright starts work today as the first non-Jewish political editor in
Just in case you missed them… | 14 September 2009
…here are some of the posts made at Spectator.co.uk over the weekend. Fraser Nelson believes the politics of decline are back. James Forsyth argues that the government’s child protection initiative does more harm than good, and wonders if Brown will last until December. David Blackburn finds Lord Myners not toeing the party line over cuts,
Can Labour re-engage with its core vote by attacking middle class benefits?
Derek Simpson’s complaint that Labour has failed to keep in touch with its core vote and his half-threat to withdraw Unite’s support over cuts feature prominently across the papers this morning. Simpson’s observation concurs with the consensus that Labour’s disastrous showing in June’s local and European elections and the Norwich by-election was the consequence of
Sunday
The government’s latest ‘child protection’ idea is positively harmful
Alsadair Palmer neatly sums up the absurdity of the government’s new child protection plans in the Telegraph: “Once it receives your application, the ISA will invite people to submit information about you. The ISA’s officials will be looking for any claim to the effect that you have done something which might have caused “physical, emotional,
Hey big spender
Perhaps Lord Myners hasn’t seen the cuts memo because he appeared on Sky News this morning trying to convince the world that Britain can and must maintain its current spending levels. Despite concerns over the budget deficit, a reality that even the Prime Minister acknowledges, Lord Myners said: “We’re keeping people in their jobs we’re
Graphs Menu: a work in progress
xxx New template: Six templates: 3. Line chart, no nav, decile x-axis: ywulob 6. Date x-axis, with navigator: efubow 7. Area chart: azuseb 8. Column chart, no nav, disappearing values above each bar: ekusyq 9. Line chart with linked series: opigab 10. Bar chart: orekyg GRAPH 3. Line chart with decile x-axis. Code: ywulob Click here to edit: https://cloud.highcharts.com/charts/ywulob Could you
Unite: Labour can’t function without our money
With the TUC conference coming up, Derek Simpson, leader of Unite, flexes his muscles in an interview with The Independent. He tells Jane Merrick that Labour couldn’t fight a proper election campaign without Unite’s financial backing: “What are the consequences of us not giving Labour money? That will really impair, fatally damage, any chance of
Saturday
Should John Denham Shut Up About the Extreme Right?
It’s the perennial problem: platform or no platform, anti-Nazi campaign versus no oxygen of publicity. You’d have thought we’d have sorted this one out by now. I agree with David Blackburn that John Denham’s comments comparing the English Defence League to Mosley’s Black Shirts risk overstating the significance of this “organisation”. It is always tempting
Can Brown make it through December?
The question of Gordon Brown’s leadership won’t go away, but there’s a feeling that nothing will happen for a while yet. Andrew Grice writes in The Independent today that the coup might come in December: “Labour’s hard left and the trade unions are the dogs that have not barked. The assumption is that they stick
John Denham’s Mosley comparison merely sensationalises race-tensions
Communities Secretary John Denham has compared the English Defence League (EDL), the group that has organised protests against what it describes as the ‘Islamification of Britain’, to Oswald Mosley’s Union of British Fascists. Whilst announcing that the government plans to re-engage predominantly white working class voters who are being seduced by the BNP, Denham said:
Tory guru: Financial system riskier now than it was before the collapse of Lehman Brothers
There’s a good article in the New York Times today about how little has changed in the way Wall Street does business since the collapse of Lehman—employment in the sector is only down eight percent, Goldman employees will earn on average $700,000 this year and derivatives are still not being traded on an open exchange.
Cameron’s public caution masks the party’s private preparations
David Cameron doesn’t give much away in his interview with the Telegraph. He again commits the Conservatives to making cuts and implies that taxes will have to be raised. But there are no specifics given. On the one hand, the lack of detail is frustrating—surely the party would have more of a mandate in government
Friday
The week that was | 11 September 2009
Here are some of the posts that have been made on Spectator.co.uk over the past week: James Forsyth analyses Jon Cruddas’s intervention, and reports on Alistair Dalring’s public spending speech. Peter Hoskin says it’s mission accomplished for Cameron’s cost-cutting speech, and claims that Labour will struggle to outflank the Tories on reform. Daniel Korski wonders
Holding out against the internet
There’s a great post on the Telegraph website highlighting 50 things the internet is killing off. Hand-writing, desk diaries, things like that. But what about those precious activities and institutions the internet was supposed to destroy and hasn’t? Here are six to get the ball rolling: Bookshops Each time I pass a bookshop, especially the
The government needs to get a grip on its CRB craziness
That the news that the government wants everyone who gives children a lift anywhere to be CRB checked broke on the same day that it emerged that Haringey council had sent a child to live with the ringleader of the airline bomb plotters is beyond satire. How have we got to a state where parents
Balancing defence spending
There’s an intriguing story in today’s Times suggesting that the Tories may “backtrack” on some defence spending commitments, and are thinking about shelving the Trident replacement. Here’s a snippet: “Liam Fox, the Shadow Defence Secretary, pledged last year to protect the three most expensive equipment programmes: aircraft carriers, an armoured vehicle system known as FRES
Heckling Obama
I’ve a piece up at the Daily Beast arguing that Congressman Joe Wilson shouldn’t have apologised for heckling Barack Obama during the latter’s campaigning health care speech the other night: Trivial though it may seem, this brouhaha highlights a great flaw in the American system: You elect a monarch. In olden days and on the
What to make of the Simpson intervention?
“What did he mean by that?” is the question one is left with after reading Derek Simpson’s interview with the Mirror. Simpson tells the paper that New Labour is dead and that “if you could convince me there is somebody who could take over and go down the Old Labour route without hesitation I’d share
8 years on
Last night’s “tribute in light” for the victims of the World Trade Center attack on September 11th, 2001.
Clarke and Cameron, in conversation
A neat little anecdote in Steve Richards’ column this morning: “When David Cameron bumped into Charles Clarke at the end of the summer, the former Cabinet minister told the Tory leader in relation to the attempted coup: ‘Don’t worry… we’ll be back’. Cameron replied to him only half jokingly: ‘That’s exactly what I am worried
Thursday
Bonfire of the Quangos – Full Version
I had the pleasure of chairing the Editorial Intelligence/Policy Exchange/Policy Review/Cass Busines School (Phewee!) debate on the future of the quangocracy last night. I was expecting little common ground between Douglas Carswell, the Tory hammer of the quangos and an audience I thought would be packed with his ideological enemies. But it wasn’t like that at
Clarke tries to get a left hook through Brown’s defences
Charles Clarke has sounded off so often during the Brown premiership that it is tempting not to pay too much attention when he does. But his latest broadside is interesting in that Clarke is having a go at Brown as much from the left as from the right. He again attacks the abolition of the
Cutting public spending, Canadian style
It first aired a couple of nights ago but, as Benedict Brogan says, this ITN news feature on how the Canadian government cut public spending by 20 percent in the late-1990s is well worth watching: P.S. I doubt we’ll be seeing repeats of the hospital demolition which comes at 2:19. P.P.S. Perhaps the most striking
Obama & The Competitive Principle
I’m not qualified to offer an opinion* on Obama’s health care speech last night. So I won’t, beyond observing that his refusal to countenance the possibility that the kind of reforms he wants don’t involve any trade-offs of any sort was, even by Presidential standards, unfortunate and, frankly, enough to make one suspect that there’s
A question of commitment
Punchy stuff from Michael Fallon in today’s Telegraph. The Tory deputy chairman of the Treasury Select Committee sets out five ways for his party to “get real” over public spending cuts. Over at ConservativeHome, Tim Montgomerie dwells on perhaps the most striking of those five: a recommendation that the Tories should think again about national
The thinking behind Mandelson’s double-dip warning
Peter Mandelson’s warning of a double-dip recession is in pretty much all the papers today. There’s no doubt that there is a risk the recession could turn into a W shaped one because the underlying problems in the financial sector have not been properly dealt with. But it also plays into Labour’s political strategy which