James Forsyth is former political editor of The Spectator.
Reading today’s Independent report on Nick Clegg’s town hall meetings, I thought they sounded like a copy of Cameron Direct, the Tory leader’s QandA sessions across the country. But it turns out Clegg held his first town hall on the 10th January, 2008 and Cameron didn’t launch Cameron Direct until the third of June. So
Paddy Ashdown has an open letter to Barack Obama’s Pakistan and Afghanistan envoy, Richard Holbrooke, in The Times today. In it, Ashdown makes a crucial point about talking to the Taliban: “In the end it will probably be necessary, provided they will put aside the gun in favour of the ballot box. But they are
Matthew d’Ancona calls the next election for David Cameron. Fraser Nelson says that Brown’s language about ‘British jobs for British workers’ has laid the ground for recession rage and Clive Davis is unimpressed by Peter Mandelson’s response to the strikers. James Forsyth argues that it is time to stand up to those who wants to
If you doubt the trouble the government is in over the wildcat strikes, just listen to Peter Mandelson’s testy interview on the Today Programme. Mandelson was making the case for economic openness, for the benefits that accrue from the free movement of people (a case I, like Alex and Fraser, broadly agree with). John Humphrys
David Broder, the dean of the Washington press corps, notes in his column today that Barack Obama needs the stimulus package to get Republican votes in the Senate if he is to maintain his momentum. Certainly, passing such a huge piece of legislation on a party line vote in both houses of Congress would undercut
The appointment of Sir Paul Stephenson as the new commissioner of the Metropolitan Police has been broadly welcomed. As this magazine puts in its editorial this week, “Unlike his predecessor, Sir Ian Blair, and his chief rival for the job, Sir Hugh Orde — head of the Police Service of Northern Ireland — Stephenson is
One question we don’t spend nearly enough time discussing is where, once this crisis has passed, will the growth come from in the British economy. Gordon Brown serves up platitudes when asked about this, as he did on the Politics Show today, and the Tories are doing their most interesting thinking on this question in
Here’s the lede of The New York Times’ story on today’s Iraqi provincial elections: “Iraqis voted on Saturday for local representatives, on an almost violence-free election day aimed at creating provincial councils that more closely represent Iraq’s ethnic, sectarian and tribal balance. By nightfall, there were no confirmed deaths, and children played soccer on closed-off
One of the biggest dangers for the Republican Party right now is that it becomes a rump, a regional party. So, it is hugely encouraging that the newly elected head of the Republican National Committee, the titular leader of the party, is from the Democratic voting, mid-Atlantic state of Maryland. The Republicans will have to
Ben Brogan’s piece in the Mail today about a possible reshuffle in June after the local and European elections which would see Alistair Darling and Jacqui Smith moved from their current posts, contains the first report of a rumour that Peter Mandelson might be sacked. It ends with this line: “There are also fears that
Matthew Parris’s column in The Times today contains this excellent advice for the Tories: “The Tory task is to move the angry inquiry forward from the geography of origin to the geography of recuperation. Which economies will heal first? Which fastest? And when chaos recedes and a weakened West picks itself up again, who will
The incoming Tory government are going to inherit a mighty mess. Not only will the economy still be in bad shape but the military will have been running hot for seven years without adequate funding, the country will be on the verge of an energy crisis as soon as the economy starts growing again and
On Monday, The Guardian reported that the Muslim Council of Britain has boycotted the “Holocaust Memorial Day commemoration in protest at the Israeli offensive in Gaza this month”. This was a big deal as the government had made clear that attendance at Holocaust Memorial Day was a “significant factor” in the government’s view as to
Rod Blagojevich, the Illinois governor accused of trying to auction off Barack Obama’s old Senate seat, has been convicted in a unanimous vote of the Illinois Senate in his impeachment trial. Blagojevich has come up with a string of increasingly bizarre and amusing defences, for more see Alex’s post from last Friday, and his closing
The contortions that Labour and its supporters are going through over the third runway at Heathrow are increasingly comic. The attraction of backing a third runway was all political to Brown central. It hoped that it would show Labour as pro-business, prepared to take the ‘tough decisions’ that the Tories duck and, above all, split
Alex has an intriguing post on the failure of the SNP to get its budget through at Holyrood. Here’s his view on what will happen next: “Will there be an election? I hae ma doots as we say up here, not least because I doubt any of the parties can truly afford a fresh campaign
Tory sallies into Labour territory on fairness and progress, two words that the left have long taken for granted as their own, are beginning to worry folk in the Labour party if Jon Cruddas’s interview in The Independent is anything to go by. Cruddas, who was at the launch of Phillip Blond’s Progressive Conservatism Project,
Sky News’s John Craig has a must-read on reports of Gordon Brown’s behaviour before the vote on the third runway for Heathrow which Labour won narrowly: ‘Labour MPs claim a “tearful and dewy eyed” Prime Minister called the Labour waverers into his Commons office one by one and pleaded with them to back the Government.
Obama’s $819 billion stimulus package has just passed the House, albeit without a single Republican vote. But too often lost from the conservation about the stimulus and how effective it will be is what the US economy will, and should, look like once this storm has been weathered. In short, where will the growth come
One of the big questions of the Obama presidency is can he actually use his popularity to go over rulers’ heads and straight to their people. Obama’s interview with Al Arbiya, a 24 hour Middle Eastern news channel, was an attempt to do just that. Obama emphasised his willingness to listen and repeatedly talked about
