James Forsyth reviews the week in politics Alistair Darling will stand at the Dispatch box on Wednesday and say that there is a plan to halve the Budget deficit in the next four years. His quiet delivery and demeanour of an Edinburgh lawyer will make this sound like a reassuring return to fiscal sanity. It
Reading the Observer on Sunday (don’t judge me, it’s my job) I came across the story of a Special Branch policeman called Officer A, who lived undercover with extremist left-wing groups for years in the mid-1990s. As a member of the Special Demonstration Squad, and distant from his wife and child, he grew a ponytail,
M. ‘I’ve spotted him!’ Me. ‘Where?’ M. ‘Down there. Having a coffee. On his own.’ Me. ‘Hey. Do you think he’d like it if we joined him?’ M. ‘I doubt it. He’s reading a book.’ D. ‘God, is he reading his own book? Unbelievable. He’s reading Yellow Dog.’ M. ‘No it’s not. I think it’s
James Forsyth reviews the week in politics MPs have a new favourite game: Hung Parliament. To solve this communal Rubik’s Cube you have to work out how a coalition could be put together if no party wins an overall majority — and what concessions would have to be made. But the real fun comes when
I’ve been interested in informal banking ever since, frustrated in a long Lloyds bank queue in the West End, I persuaded some American tourists queuing with me to exchange their dollars for my pounds at the rate of interest marked on the notice board. No customer is an island, as John Donne did not quite
James Forsyth reviews the week in politics The bar of the Brighton Metropole hotel was packed on Saturday night, with the sort of people locals would want to avoid. It was the Tory spring conference, and the journalists and aides were drawn to the bar not only by the prospect of doing a whole conference’s
‘I am Howard Roark in a world of Ellsworth Tooheys…’ I tweeted in a fit of depression the other day, though I rather wish I hadn’t. I’m not an architect — and if I were I definitely wouldn’t be a humourless monomaniac into concrete and influenced by Le Corbusier; I don’t have hair ‘the exact
Last week, when Ed Vaizey declared that 6 Music should be exempt from these pending BBC cuts you’ll have heard about, he should not have sounded so odd. Last week, when Ed Vaizey declared that 6 Music should be exempt from these pending BBC cuts you’ll have heard about, he should not have sounded so
Last Friday (as I write) I chaired the meeting to select a prospective Conservative parliamentary candidate for the constituency of Stratford-on-Avon. I say ‘chaired’ but the modern term is (I learned) ‘mediated’. My preference for the more old-fashioned verb will have been shared by almost all the assembled ranks of the Stratford-on-Avon Conservative Association: we
James Forsyth reviews the week in politics Having to work on a Sunday is a chore — doubly so when that Sunday is Valentine’s Day. But there were plenty of worker bees at Labour headquarters on Victoria Street last Sunday, devoting themselves to the passion of their life: hounding Conservatives. They came to rebut a
No it’s OK, I didn’t mind one teeny tiny bit that Matt Ridley wrote an entire Spectator cover story on Climategate and the blogosphere last week without once mentioning the name of the brilliant Spectator journalist who broke the story on his Telegraph blog, and popularised the name Climategate, and got 1.5 million hits in
Back when I was a diary columnist, they’d publish my email address in the paper every day. I did love the emails from lunatics. And we’re talking proper nuts here, not just xenophobes, or people with unusually strident views about Israel. My favourite was a guy from Glasgow, whose emails were all either impenetrable tracts
James Forsyth reviews the week in politics If a committee of David Cameron’s advisers were to design what they regarded as the perfect Tory candidate, the result would look something like Joanne Cash. She is intelligent, successful, a talented lawyer, educated at a state school and with staunch, considered conservative principles. She was duly earmarked
We are driving in inland New South Wales. We could be driving across grassy English lowland. Wide green hills roll towards a dove-grey horizon, and wisps of white curl down from wet clouds to touch the higher ground. Here and there a stand of trees dots a meadow, and small woods fringe pasture; but there
James Forsyth reviews the week in politics Even the Tories accept that they can’t go like this. For a while, David Cameron thought he could maintain his safety-first strategy and leave Labour to tear itself apart. But with the polls returning to hung parliament territory, the high command now accepts that there is a need
If I’d written the film it would have been called Four Funerals and a Wedding, because personally I find funerals much more fun. Not all funerals, obviously. But the funeral of someone who’s not a close relative and who’s had a good innings can be a very splendid occasion — as I was reminded the
Am I the only person who hears David Cameron say ‘Burglars leave their human rights at the door’ and thinks immediately of Pulp Fiction? Am I the only person who imagines Cameron and, say, George Osborne as two American hick security guards who capture burglars and punish them in a sort of Tarantino-esque manner I
James Forsyth reviews the week in politics When David Cameron and George Osborne move between their suite of offices at the eastern end of the parliamentary estate and the Commons chamber they do so with a pomp that would not embarrass a medieval monarch. A crowd of attendants accompanies them, constantly changing positions but never
I have a theory about Gordon Brown and the Chilcot inquiry. It’s a bit half-baked, but you shouldn’t mind that. You want a fully-baked political theory, you don’t come around here. You want the Parris page for that, or one of those Nelson or Forsyth bits up front. Back here you get the leftovers. The
The phenomenon I’m about to describe will be infuriatingly familiar to older readers, but will have been encountered by people of any age. Even in childhood we meet it, and as we grow old it happens more and more often. So common is the experience that it would surprise me if there was any language