James Forsyth is former political editor of The Spectator.
The financial crisis has rather got Brown out of his reshuffle hole. The word in Westminster is that there will be a relatively minor reshuffle tomorrow. To my mind, the most interesting question is who will Brown make Chief Whip? That choice will give us a good idea of how secure Brown thinks his position
The Telegraph is reporting that David Cameron won’t reshuffle the shadow cabinet. This is a mistake. There’s some dead wood in the shadow cabinet that needs chopping out – last year The Spectator revealed that Cameron only thought 10 of its members were up to being ministers – some apparent conflicts of interest that need resolving
Team Cameron will be beaming about the press coverage that the speech has garnered. The Sun pretty much endorses Cameron in a leader entitled ‘He’s ready.’ It offers him The Sun’s highest praise, declaring that his “speech could have been lifted straight from a Sun editorial.” The Mail is not quite as keen but does
The revised Paulson plan passed the Senate by the comfortable margin of 74 to 25 with both Obama and McCain voting for it. Most people expect that the House will now OK it on Friday, the addition of various tax breaks and an increase in the Federal Deposit Insurance limit have made it more palatable
The financial crisis might be giving Gordon Brown a temporary boost but when you consider the issues the next election is likely to be fought on you see that Cameron has quite a distinct advantage. By the time of the next election, the economy will be—or will have been—in recession, shining a light on Brown’s
The continuing inability of any politician to seize the moment produced by this financial crisis continues. David Cameron’s speech today was fine—well crafted and delivered with just the right amount of passion—but an opportunity to demonstrate his command of the economic question was missed. It was always going to be impossible for Cameron to top
These are not the circumstances that David Cameron would have wanted or expected to deliver his conference speech in. But today does provide him with an opportunity to show the electorate that he is ready to lead in these economically challenging times. Up to now, talking about the economy has not been Cameron’s strong point.
Martin Wolf’s column in the FT this morning well-worth reading, one statistic in it really does bring home the problem of over-leveraging: “the gross liabilities of the US financial sector have soared from just 21 per cent of gross domestic product in 1980 to 116 per cent in 2007.”
The Senate is expected to vote on a mildly revised version of the bailout proposal sometime today. The bill will include tax breaks for both businesses and people designed to help the bill garner more support in the House when it returns there. With both Obama and McCain backing the bill as well as the
A crisis presents politicians with an opportunity. But no politician on either side of the Atlantic has seized the one presented by the current financial turbulence. Gordon Brown is benefitting not from anything he has said or done but because he is ‘experienced’ and voters think that because he was Chancellor he must know the
There is talk coming out of Washington that the Senate will pass the bailout bill and send it back to the House, almost daring it to vote it down again. Speaking this morning, President Bush made it clear that he’s going to keep pushing for a bill, and enough House members might have been scared
There are few events that can break through the conference bubble but the failure of the $700bn bailout has undoubtedly been one of them. Most worryingly, no one knows what happens next. In Washington, the bailout seems doomed. It was never politically popular to begin with and neither the Democrats nor the Republicans will want
The general consensus here is that the Osborne speech did the business: yet another hurdle has been cleared by the Tories. However, folk here are buzzing about tonight’s Dispatches programme on Tory funding. To my mind, the issue is not whether short sellers are donating to the Tories, but Lord Ashcroft’s tax status. It is
Dotted around this rabbit-warren of a convention centre are cut-outs of David Miliband based on that infamous photo of him posing with a banana. The Tories might now not to get to run against Miliband, but he has replaced Nick Clegg as the man they love to mock.
This was new, serious George. In a soberly-delivered speech, Osborne went a long way to reassuring voters that he is ready to be Chancellor. He stressed financial and fiscal responsibility and deftly threaded the political needle on criticising the excesses of the City without committing to more regulation. Osborne was so keen to demonstrate his
Even though it is Tory conference week, I think the most important political story of the week might be the expected Cabinet reshuffle. If Brown gets it wrong, the chances of him being pushed out before the next election will increase dramatically. Judging from today’s papers, it seems that the Brownite poision is now being
Martin Ivens has a fantastic column in The Sunday Times about what the Tories need to do this week in Birmingham. “Their task is to meld two seemingly contradictory messages into a seamless whole. First, they must steal two favourite words from Brown’s old lexicon, prudence and stability, and attach them to their own economic
There has been a lot of talk about how the Tories must avoid becoming complacent. Indeed, one-half expects to find that champagne is only available under the counter in Birmingham. But just as great a danger is posed by indiscipline. Take today’s papers. Dominic Grieve, the shadow Home Secretary, has stepped on the Tory economic
Having watched last night’s debate properly and read the press coverage of it, it seems pretty clear that it was a draw. There was no ‘global test’ moment for either candidate and neither of them managed to put the other on the canvas. Obama should be a lot happier with this result than McCain. First
There are couple of very revealing interviews with David Cameron in the papers today. Talking to James Chapman and Peter Oborne of the Mail, Cameron expounds on the Tory policy response to the financial crisis. Here’s the key passage: At a time when some economists are projecting that Government borrowing is set to crash through