James Forsyth is former political editor of The Spectator.
David Cameron’s speech to Spring conference was summed up by the line, ‘In time we will set out the hard choices’. With 14 months to go until the election, the clock is ticking on this pledge. The speech did contain two important points. First, Cameron talked about what government should do when it was asking
Eric Pickles just told a story that bears an uncanny resemblance to one of the most famous cricket sledges ever. Pickles says he was walking along Millbank when a Labour MP, who sounded like Prescott, heckled him saying “Pickles you are too fat to be party chairman”. To which Pickles says he replied, “It is
Last night a Tory candidate was telling me what her message to voters was on the doorstep. It was a very cogent critique of Labour. But when I asked her what her positive message was, I just got the same answer back with a slightly different top on it. Her inability to set out a positive message illustrated a
The Mail on Sunday reports this morning that: “One eye-catching change being mooted is the appointment of Peter Mandelson as Foreign Secretary – a job he has always coveted – in place of David Miliband, who is said not to be enjoying the brief. Mr Miliband could then be moved to the Home Office in
Cheltenham The Tories are gathered here in Cheltenham for their Spring Forum. They are unsurprisingly in confident mood but there is a real sense of worry about just what a mess they will inherit. The dire numbers in the Budget, which in reality are even worse, seems to have concentrated minds. Caution, however, is still
Robert Crampton’s interview with Peter Mandelson in The Times magazine today is compelling reading. Mandelson talks frankly about the Blair-Brown marriage and how he ‘was the third person in the marriage. I was the casualty.’ It is this that Mansdelson thinks ‘wrecked’ his political career. Mandelson is remarkably candid about how divided things were. At
Today’s Daily Telegraph contains a story that is as amusing as it is predictable: those close to Blair are grumbling about the 50p tax rate and complaining that he never would have done it. One friend of Mr Blair said: “Tony thought the original proposal to raise the top rate to 45 pence was just
As the 100 day landmark approaches, it is day 95 of the Obama presidency today, the punditocracy are coming up with their Obama verdicts. (You can read The Spectator’s 100 days special here). Obviously, rating a president this early is slightly absurd. At the 100 days mark, Jimmy Carter looked like he was going to
The torture debate has been dominating American politics ever since the Obama administration released the legal opinions of the Bush administration on what interrogation techniques American operatives could use. There is little doubt that many of the techniques sanctioned would be considered torture by most people. However, Bush administration officials—most notably former Vice President Cheney—have
The Budget’s press coverage, which was already pretty negative, just keeps getting worse. Today’s Evening Standard headline is: “Darling’s fantasy Budget exploded” The headline refers to the Office for National Statistics saying that the economy shrunk by 1.9 percent in the first quarter not the 1.6 percent that Darling predicted it would in the Budget on
Do read Andrew Sparrow’s account of how the Prime Minister’s official spokesman responded when asked about whether today’s story about Brown’s printer rage was accurate: This is what the prime minister’s spokesman said in reply: I think it is the sort of unsubstantiated, unsourced nonsense that you would expect to read in Sunday newspapers, not on
Bruce Riedel, who ran Obama’s review of Afghanistan and Pakistan policy, makes a telling point in his interview with the Indian magazine Outlook: “It’s worth noting that the first trip abroad by the new director of the CIA, Leon Panetta, was to New Delhi. That’s a signal that the US recognises that it needs a
The 50p rate is designed to cause the Conservatives problems. But it has also damaged Labour. It has reinforced the adage that Labour governments always end up breaking their promises on tax. It has also shown that when the going gets tough, Labour resorts to economically destructive class warfare: the FT and all those financiers
Listening to David Cameron being interviewed on the Today Programme this morning, I was struck by how nearly all the questions came from the right. Cameron was pushed to say that more things would have to be cut, that he would scrap the 50p tax rate and that he would take the opportunity this crisis
The first voting intention poll since the Budget suggests that the Budget and smear-gate have hurt Labour badly. The poll has the Tories stretching their lead to 18 points with Labour dropping seven to 27 percent. With all the usual caveats, this poll implies a Tory majority of more than 150 seats after the next
James Macintyre, who is well sourced with the Mandelson camp, has an interesting piece in this week’s New Statesman on the fight Mandelson thinks Labour should pick with the Tories. The Mandelson view is, apparently, that Labour should make cuts and emphasise that only certain things can be afforded and then challenge the Tories to
I know we are all still picking over the Budget, but this story from today’s New York Times strikes me as phenomenally important: “Pushing deeper into Pakistan, Taliban militants have established effective control of a strategically important district just 70 miles from the capital, Islamabad, officials and residents said Wednesday. The fall of the district,
Just to follow up briefly on Matt’s post, this from the end of Hamish McRae’s column today sums things up well: “No government for 30 years has sustained tax receipts above 37 per cent of GDP. Yet we are now proposing that spending rises to 48 per cent of GDP, almost as high as the
Jeremy Paxman has just rattled through the front pages and they are all bad news for Labour. The Daily Mail’s headline is the rather droll ‘Alistair in wonderland’. The Telegraph blasts ‘The return of class war’. The Guardian’s has ‘Darling’s great squeeze’. The FT’s is ‘Darling gambles on growth’. The Sun lists the bad economic
Besides the Budget, there’s been another important political development today: the failure of Brown to achieve a consensus among the party leaders on reform of MPs’ expenses. This is hardly surprising since Brown issued his proposals yesterday without consulting Cameron or Clegg. All parties have tended to be cautious about making too much politically out