Newspapers

Ben Brogan’s column in the Telegraph today is a rum one. His thesis is that David Cameron’s job is not merely to present himself as a plausible Prime Minister in waiting but also to persuade voters that they can and should trust politicians again. So, not a tricky job then. [W]e have lost our ability to suspend disbelief and take at face value what politicians tell us. The MPs’ expenses scandal has had the purgative effect Parliament desperately needed, but the collateral damage has been a growth in cynicism and a loss of trust. And no one is suffering the consequences of that more than Mr Cameron. His strategy has

The worst column I’ve read* today was written by the Washington Post’s Richard Cohen who, I think, likes to style himself some kind of liberal. Note: this doesn’t mean he’s my kind of liberal. Anyway, here’s how his execrable piece begins: There is almost nothing the Obama administration does regarding terrorism that makes me feel safer. Whether it is guaranteeing captured terrorists that they will not be waterboarded, reciting terrorists their rights, or the legally meandering and confusing rule that some terrorists will be tried in military tribunals and some in civilian courts, what is missing is a firm recognition that what comes first is not the message sent to

I had a pretty keen dislike of Gordon Brown long before it was popular or profitable to hold the Prime Minister in low regard, but it’s now obvious that the time for anger or disappointment or fury has passed. The only humane response to the Prime Minister’s predicament is pity. The grotesque, trumped-up, “row” over the Prime Minister’s hand-written letters to the widows and mothers of fallen servicemen is sickening. The British press corps has rarely been known for its sense of decorum or restraint, but there come moments when legitmate criticism crosses some kind of line and becomes bullying. This is one such instance. Clearly it’s regrettable that the

So I was wrong. It was a mistake to suggest that the alleged Neather Plot – that is, the conspiracy to “swamp” Britain with Labour-voting imigrants – was the kind of cockamamie scheme that could only be the work of over-excited junior clever chaps at the Home Office. Not so! It turns out that it’s even simpler than that: the scheme didn’t exist at all. Remember, Mr Neather originally claimed that a report from Downing Street’s Performance and Innovation Unit saw immigration as a massive political opportunity for the government: But the earlier drafts I saw also included a driving political purpose: that mass immigration was the way that the

Brother Liddle is right to despair at the latest local government absurdity: banning parents from children’s playgrounds unless they’ve undergone a criminal background check to prove that they’re not paedophiles. There would appear to be no limit to local government lunacy. O tempora, O mores indeed. This sort of thing, however, also poses a problem for David Cameron. The Tories’ “localism agenda” is by some way their most interesting and, at least potentially, important idea. But there’s one obvious drawback: it means giving more power to local councils. And, as we are reminded on a daily basis, local councils are more than amply-stocked with fools. Decentralisation is an admirable and,

This time, perhaps even the lawyers have gone too far. It’s hard to recall, even in the long history of appalling gagging orders, a more disgraceful injunction than this: The Guardian has been prevented from reporting parliamentary proceedings on legal grounds which appear to call into question privileges guaranteeing free speech established under the 1688 Bill of Rights. Today’s published Commons order papers contain a question to be answered by a minister later this week. The Guardian is prevented from identifying the MP who has asked the question, what the question is, which minister might answer it, or where the question is to be found. The Guardian is also forbidden