Interviews

The transformation of Nick Clegg from moderate Europeanist to a populist continues apace. The Lib Dem leader is very serious about capturing the anti-politics mood among the electorate – no easy feat for some who looks as Establishment as the rest. Though he will likely be pleased with today’s Observer interview, I wonder whether he will, in retrospect, feel comfortable with his view that a small Tory majority would somehow make a Cameron government illegitimate and that Britain could be plunged into “Greek-style unrest” if cuts were introduced. Where to begin? The electoral system works the way it does. It has many inbuilt problems – particularly for the Tories –

Another day, another party leader on the Today Programme.  This time it was David Cameron, and his interrogator was Evan Davis.  My quick capsule review would be that the Tory leader did quite well, sounding measured and reasonable for most of the twenty minutes – which is certainly better than Brown managed yesterday.  But for more, read on… Unsurprisingly, Davis led on this morning’s FT interview with Peter Gershon, the Tories’ efficiency advisor, who has fleshed out some of the party’s spending plans.  This was the most aggressive segment of the interview, with Davis asking how many job losses would be incurred by a “£2 billion saving on public sector

Last week, the Tories strengthened their tax-cutting credentials with a smart policy on national insurance.  I’m sure you didn’t miss it.  But one part of the recent Tory resurgence is, to my mind, being underplayed: they now have a much stronger message on government waste.  After all, the NI policy is being funded by cutting waste.  And then there was that spoof website which pulled the limelight onto Labour’s wasted spending.  And then there are the interviews in which Tory frontbenchers – such as William Hague today – say stuff like: “If there’s waste in government spending, which the Labour Government says there is, we should be saving the waste,

David Cameron said as much in his Today Programme interview, but now we know for sure: we’ve heard everything we’re going to about Tory spending cuts this year.  George Osborne confirms the news in an interview with the Guardian today: “In the interview, the shadow chancellor also disclosed, for the first time, that he would not reduce public spending by more than £6.5bn in the current financial year. He said £6bn would come from efficiencies, and £500m from cuts to child trust funds and working tax credits for the better off. There would be no further ‘in year’ cuts in his emergency budget, scheduled within 50 days of a possible

Want some more David Cameron?  Well, the Tories are happy to oblige.  After their party leader’s speech yesterday, he is interviewed in the FT and appeared on the Today programme earlier.  The FT interview was certainly the more comfortable of the two.  In it, Cameron stikes a confident note – saying that his party have “come a long way,” and that “people are gagging for change”.  And he stresses that he thinks – and, apparently, Ken Clarke thinks – that George Osborne is “the right person” to be Chancellor. But Cameron had a tougher time in his Today Programme interview.  It started well, with Today highlighting the supportive letter that

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 views and interests of Unite’s members?  And, in answer, it’s worth pulling out two snippets from today’s papers. EXHIBIT A, courtesy of Danny Finkelstein: “A Populus poll of Unite members last year showed the majority preferring David Cameron to Gordon Brown and opposing Unite donations to Labour.” And EXHIBIT B, from Ben Brogan’s interview with

So what next for the new, more human, Gordon Brown (as seen on TV)?  Well, according to today’s Times, there are some ministers who want him to take the show on the road.  The idea is to let voters tackle Brown directly – but about the topics Piers Morgan kinda skipped over: the economy, MPs’ expenses, Afghanistan, and all the other big stuff.  And the hope, in turn, is that this “masochism strategy” will make the public respect Brown more. Would it work?  Well, just like the Morgan interview and its wider impact, that’s something which is difficult to pre-judge from the confines of Westminster.  Of course, dealing with anger

Brown is very lucky to have a friend in Piers Morgan. He did him a great service in the ITV interview tonight – and while it would have made CoffeeHousers nauseous (if they watched it), it will be the best television the PM will get this year and probably ever. Mark my words: the Labour Party will not produce anything that shows Brown in such a sympathetic light. It was powerful, I’d say, because it was not party political propaganda: Morgan genuinely likes Brown and did his utmost to project the human side of him. Those hours of coaching from Alastair Campbell paid off. He kept smiling in a credible

Strange that there’s really only one major political point arising from Gordon Brown’s interview in the Standard today.  But, then again, maybe that is the point.  Like the PM’s interview with the News of the World a few weeks ago, the emphasis is far more on the personal than anything else: his relationship with Sarah Brown, the death of his daughter Jennifer, his upbringing, and so on.  We even learn why his handwriting is so bad (“due to the way he was taught to write at school,” apparently).  And with a TV appearance alongside Piers Morgan in the schedules, it does seem that Brown is keen to present a more

Here, CoffeeHousers, is my take on this morning’s Cameron interview: 1. General demeanor: excellent, articulate, confident. The complete opposite from Brown. It does make you think that he should wipe the floor with Brown in the TV debates. 2. “Last week we saw William Hague and George Osborne going to Afghanistan together. First shadow Chancellor, the man who is going to be in charge of the money, on the frontline seeing what is going on in Afghanistan”. Indeed, but the NHS pledge and deficit cut pledge imply deep cuts to the military. To govern is to choose, and Cameron has made his choice: NHS spending before the military. If I

Well, well, well – Darling’s Times interview, which James reported earlier, sure is a significant moment, and one which more than deserves a place on the spending cut timeline which I put together last week.  In fact, let’s see what it would look like alongside a few of the most recent entries: 9 December 2009: Pre-Budget Report 2009 forecasts Public Sector Net Borrowing of £176 billion, and Public Sector Net Debt of £986 billion, in 2010-11. 10 December 2009: Alistair Darling puts in a bizarre performance on the Today programme, claiming that the PBR implies that departmental budgets would remain “pretty much flat.” 10 December 2009: The IFS works out

As Andrew Sparrow says, it’s well worth reading Iain Dale’s interview with John Bercow in the latest issue Total Politics.  It’s a fun read, mostly because the Speaker is remarkably candid – a quality that’s normally to be admired in a politician.  But I can’t help thinking that he made a mistake in admitting this:   “I received various approaches from various senior people in the Labour party saying: ‘Aw, you know, we’d love to have you on board. We think you’re being discarded by the Conservatives. We think you’d be quite at home with us.’ Senior people, not in a formal setting, but people sidling up to you –

It has taken eight years, but Tony Blair has finally leveled with the British public and admitted that the WMD thing didn’t really matter: he wanted to depose Saddam Hussein anyway. That’s what he has said in a BBC interview, presumably to pre-empt his appearance before the Chilcot inquiry. His chosen confessor: Fern Britton. His medium: BBC1 on Sunday. It has been trailed to the newspapers, including tomorrow’s Times. As it says: “He said it was the ‘threat’ that Saddam presented to the region that was uppermost in his mind. The development of weapons of mass destruction was one aspect of that threat. Mr Blair said that there had been