James Forsyth
James Forsyth is former political editor of The Spectator.
Friday
Clegg can bank on this policy going down well
Nick Clegg returns to the political fray today with an interview with The Times. What’s making news from it is this proposal: On the eve of the Liberal Democrats’ conference in Harrogate, Mr Clegg told The Times that these directors had shown that they were not fit to oversee companies.” This strikes me as very
Thursday
Blair did God a lot more and a lot earlier than the press realised
Stan Greenberg, who polled for both Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, spoke at the RSA earlier this week. In his talk, he revealed that during the 1997 campaign Blair had a separate team of faith advisors whose role it was to check that his politics were in line with his religious beliefs: Here is what
Free Roxana Sabieri
Those of us who report from Westminster, Washington or any other liberal democracy can sometime forget how lucky we are. We can write what we like and not fear that we will be arrested for it. Those journalists who report from authoritarian countries like Iran do not have this freedom. Take the case of Roxana
There is one group of people who will miss this government
Has there ever been a better Cabinet for headline-writers than the current one? As Prime Minister there is Brown with all the obvious gags. Then, as Chancellor we have A Darling—those headlines pretty much write themselves. The Schools Secretary, who has a tendency to verbiage, is called Balls. The most Machievllian member of the Cabinet
What do you make of this Darling?
Ed Balls, who is—remember—Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families—has just given an interview to Sky News (video after the jump) solely on the economy. (The invaluable Politics Home has quotes from it, here). Obviously, Balls knows a lot about the subject. But it seems odd that it is him who is put up
Would you take this bet?
Paul Krugman, the Nobel prize winning economist, and Greg Mankiw, chair of the Council of Economic Advisors under George W. Bush, are probably the most influential public intellectual economists in America from the left and the right respectively. The two take different-sides on the question of how effective the Obama stimulus will be and Mankiw is
Now Myners’ own pension comes up scrutiny
The Evening Standard reveals today that Paul Myners, the City Minister who signed off on Fred Goodwin’s pension, has a £4 million pension himself from Nat West which was, of course, taken over by RBS.
Wednesday
No game-changer
As Gordon Brown heads back to London he can content himself with the fact that his Washington trip has not turned into the disaster is threatened to during the whole not a ‘press conference but a pool-spray’ moment. His speech wasn’t up there with Blair’s 2003 effort, but his knowledge of American politics enabled him
Brown’s speech to Congress: Live blog
Gordon Brown is about to deliver his speech to a Joint Session of Congress. When Blair addressed one in 2003, he received 19 standing ovations. Brown by having the Queen offer the ailing Teddy Kennedy an honorary knighthood has sweetened the mood and guaranteed him a few standing ovations. One problem for Brown is that
Tuesday
Progressive ends, different means
Jenni Russell’s piece in The Guardian today about how the left should support the “progressive wing” of the Tory party has set tongues wagging. Tim Montgomerie has some interesting thoughts on it and attempts to identify “the important ten” who one Tory told Russell form the “progressive wing” of the party. Personally, I must admit
Hard cases make bad law
The row over Fred Goodwin’s pension reminds me of the debate over the alleged killers of Stephen Lawrence and whether the law of double-jeopardy should be altered to allow them to be prosecuted again for his murder. It is clearly morally wrong that Goodwin should be receiving such massive rewards for failure, a £693,000 annual
Monday
Base politics
Lexington, The Economist’s US political correspondent whose new blog is well wroth checking out, flags up an interesting post from New Majority, the site that is leading efforts to modernise the Republican party: “26% of the electorate is white evangelicals, and 74% of them voted for McCain. McCain pulled slightly less than 46% of the
Downing Street grateful for its “useful idiots”
Harriet Harman’s comment on Sunday that Fred Goodwin’s pension arrangements are “not enforceable in the court of public opinion” did suggest, as Alex argues, a belief in the rule of the mob not the rule of law. (It also raised the question of why on earth the government had effectively signed off on them when
Sunday
Trouble looming on the Home Affairs front for the Tories
One of the features of the Tory party now is that there is no defining split. But there are plenty of areas of difference. One, as Baeghot notes in his write-up of yesterday’s Convention on Modern Liberty, is on where the balance on civil liberties should be struck. Bagehot reports that: “Mr Grieve was obliged
How long will this go on?
The New York Times op-ed page features a string of short articles by various economic and financial figures on when the recession will end. The consensus view is that the American economy will come out of recession late this year. But Roubini and Niall Ferguson offer far more bearish takes. Roubini warns that “We now
Fighting words from Mandelson but is there a strategy behind them?
The Mandelson interview in today’s Observer is full of barbs at his internal opponents. Consider this exchange about the leaking of Cabinet discussions about the future of the Post Office: ‘”Unlike some of my colleagues, I don’t comment to the press on the internal discussions and workings of the cabinet and its committees.” So it was
Saturday
Britain at its best
Matt in his Sunday Telegraph column sums up perfectly why it was right that PMQs was suspended following Ivan Cameron’s death: “This was our unwritten constitution at its very best, as the Commons responded with nimble common sense to a practical dilemma presented by a private tragedy. It would have been grotesque to proceed with
Three very different Prime Ministers
Simon Hoggart’s column in The Guardian today has this great little anecdote: “The other day I heard a story about Sir Robin Butler, the cabinet secretary to three prime ministers. At a dinner he was asked their reaction when he said something they disagreed with. Thatcher, he said, simply blew up. John Major would not
Bagehot’s blog
Bagehot, The Economist’s political columnist, has started a blog which promises to be well worth reading. In one of his early entries, Bagehot wonders about the effect of the recession on non-economic areas of policy and life. It seems almost inevitable that the lack of money and the mounting public debt are going to lead