It’s a strange business this campaigning lark, isn’t it? William Hague was in these parts this morning. I learnt this from his Twitter* feed. He can’t have spent much time in Hawick**, mind you, since he was soon in Edinburgh as part of a day-long tour of nine Scottish constituencies. Tour, of course, vastly overstates
Unsurprisingly the lads at the Daily Mash are enjoying themselves: GORDON Brown’s claim to be an ordinary, middle class Briton backfired last night as millions of ordinary middle class Britons stressed just how much they hate themselves. The prime minister kicked-off Labour’s campaign by contrasting his spite-filled ordinariness with the rich and happy background of
Give Gordon Brown credit for chutzpah at least. Then again, what else if left to the poor man? It’s tough to be the incumbent and run a campaign based on the promise of Change. But this seems to be what El Gordo is attempting. Good luck with that. Labour appear to have accepted that they’ve
Well, on Day One of the Great Campaign no-one seemed to be talking about immigration. This is understandable given that it’s a subject that discomfits most of the parties and, for that matter, many voters. This is to say nowt about the potential it offers for demagoguery and cheap and easy populism. But while one
Lord knows that in these trying, perhaps even desperate, times we need some light relief. So here’s Chris Kamara cheerfully admitting that he hasn’t a clue what’s going on in the Portsmouth vs Blackburn Rovers game the other day. Now, if only political pundits and broadcasters were this honest… And no, I’m not knocking Mr
Sunder Katwala thinks that Dave’s talk of the “Great Ignored” carries echos of Nixon’s “Silent Majority”; Hopi Sen doesn’t much care for the phrase either and wonders why Cameron didn’t go for Chesterton or Kipling instead. This seems sound advice though I wonder if eloquence and allusion can carry a message these days without being
David Miliband’s blog during this election promises to be very interesting, not simply on account of what he writes but because, if Labour lose and Gordon steps down then, well, you know, he could be the next leader of the Labour party. So, tea leaves and all that. Here’s his first campaign post: It seems
And so it begins. At last. The phoney war is over and now the grapeshot will be flying thick and fast. There will be casualties aplenty, decency, honesty and your patience amongst ’em. I’m sticking to my view, which is neither especially daring nor unconventional, that the Conservatives will win and finish with a majority
Is Barack Obama really a closet Tory? That’s the question Andrew Sullivan asks in the light of this passage from David Remnick’s new Obama biography. Speaking about race in America and his election, Obama says: “America evolves, and sometimes those evolutions are painful. People don’t progress in a straight line. Countries don’t progress in a
Tim Montgomerie has a nice way with understatement. His capsule-sized overview of the campaign to come, published by National Review Online, contains this passage: Cameron will not be to the liking of every U.S. Republican, but he’s much closer to American conservatism than the ruling Labour Party or the third party, the Liberal Democrats. The
Courtesy of Stephanie Flanders, the BBC’s Economics Editor: Welcome to the election. If we’re to believe Alistair Darling, the Conservatives’ ‘credibility gap’ on tax and spending has shrunk by 34% since January, or about £11bn. If they carry on like this, they might be thoroughly credible by election day. Naturally, that is not how the
Not much news came out of Washington last week which doubtless explains why my old chum Toby Harnden used his Telegraph column to chew over the Petraeus 2012 “speculation” one more time. This won’t be the last we hear of this, I assure you. Alas, as Toby laments, the good General stubbornly refuses to play
As mentioned, one of the things we talked about during the House of Comments podcast was what, if anything, British pols can learn from the Obama campaign. The answer: much less than the press might have you think. Sure, there’s puff piece after puff piece about how both parties are snapping up Obama “advisors” in
Regular posting to return later today. Meanwhile I was a guest on the latest House of Comments podcast hosted by Mark Thompson and Stuart Sharpe. Labour List’s Alex Smith and I chatted about the Chancellor’s debate, Tony Blair’s (brief) return to Britain, lessons that might or might not be learnt from the Obama campaign and
Another rare old tune from a marvellous concert we’ve featured here before. This time they’re performing an old Carter Family tune The Storms are On the Ocean. Terrific stuff.
This is obviously John Rentoul bait but, though one loves the eccentricities of the House of Lords, it remains the case that the US House of Representatives can bring the crazy like no other legislature on earth. Behold, people, Representative Hank Johnson (D) whom the good people of Georgia’s Fourth Congressional District have seen fit
Meanwhile, can there be any doubt that the House of Lords remains, despite everything, the finest legislative body in the world? The people who want to put us through yet more elections must be stopped, if only because stuffing the place with more “real” politicians might deprive us of splendid discussions such as this recent
Sorry for the unscheduled absence: there’s been no electricity in these parts for the past 36 hours thanks to, one supposes, a combination of snow, gales and lord knows what else. And no electricity means no internet which means it’s like living in the Dark Ages or something. Such are the perils of life in
Who knows how bad Wayne Rooney’s ankle injury is? Not since Metatarsal Watch in 2006, however, has there been such troubling news for the England camp. One mobs’ rain is another lots’ sunshine however and the Agony of Wayne’s Ankle is a gift to our never under-excited press. We can expect Fleet Street to
On the other hand, this tripe is also ridiculous: It is impossible to write about Nelson Mandela these days and not compare him to another potentially transformational black leader, Barack Obama. The parallels are many. … And while it took twenty-seven years in prison to mold the Nelson Mandela we know, the forty-eight-year-old American president