Do check out Tom Bower’s superb article in this week’s issue of the magazine (you can read it here). It traces Gordon Brown’s personal journey from attacking the Lawson years as “a boom based on credit” to overseeing one of the most spectacular busts this country will ever suffer. I’ve pulled out Bower’s overview of the current crisis below,
Steve Richards’ balanced New Statesman article on the extent of the Brown bounce is well worth reading in full. But this passage jumps out: “Another view from inside the government is that Brown is too loyal to colleagues. As one minister who had been pressing for changes in Downing Street for months put it, ‘the
It’s 70 years to the day since Orson Welles pulled one of the grandest media stunts in history. His Mercury Theatre radio adaptation of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds was broadcast on 30 October, 1938, and – thanks largely to its faux-news bulletin construction – it convinced swathes of its listeners that an alien invasion was actually taking
The government’s demands that oil companies cut petrol prices are now getting beyond parody. Alistair Darling repeated them on GMTV this morning – blithely ingnoring the fact that fuel taxes account for well over half the cost of petrol at the pumps. Fern Britton, for one, wouldn’t have let him get away with it. The
Ok, so Halloween isn’t until Friday. But I thought I’d post a list of favourite horror films now, so that – should you wish – you’ve got some chance to pick them up on DVD. Two things before I get onto the films. First, many of these aren’t actually scary. On the whole, I like my horror films from
PMQs today must have been a political version of that optical illusion where one person sees a young woman and the other an old woman. Fraser saw a pretty unimpressive David Cameron, whereas I thought it one of his very best performances. And, if CoffeeHousers will indulge me, here’s why… My verdict sprang from what
Welcome to this week’s PMQs live blog. There’s plenty of stuff on the economy and for the Brown, Cameron and Clegg to debate – provided, of course, they don’t get mired in BrandRossgate. Things will kick off at 1200 – you can watch proceedings here. 1200: Adrian Bailey delivers the first question: “What measures are the government
According to today’s Herald, the betting markets are continuing to move towards Labour: “The bookmakers are making it an increasingly close contest. William Hill said yesterday that they had not taken any bets on the SNP winning the seat since Prime Minister Gordon Brown campaigned there at the weekend. The bookmakers have the SNP as narrow
So today’s the day; the day Alistair Darling will confirm that Brown’s current fiscal rules are to be scrapped. Now, the rules have always been more of a fiddle than a useful economic tool – to meet the “golden rule” that the budget remains balanced over the course of the economic cycle, Brown blithely changed
Full story here. It follows last week’s news that the Electoral Commission also declined to investigate the Shadow Chancellor.
According to the Financial Services Authority, home repossessions in the second quarter of 2008 were up 71 percent on the previous year. With the financial and economic crises now biting even deeper, the figures for the third and fourth quarters of the year will most likely be even grimmer. Of course, this tragic human element
When Gordon Brown appointed Peter Mandelson to his Cabinet he may have grabbed the newspaper headlines, but the general sentiment was: be careful Prime Minister, this could backfire. Already, Mandy’s return has prompted the whole Yachtgate scandal. And now the media have turned their attention to the recently-ennobled one’s links with Oleg Deripaska, Brown must
Today’s ComRes poll for the Independent has the Tories on 39 percent (down 1 from the ComRes poll in the Independent on Sunday a couple of weeks back); Labour on 31 percent (no change); and the Lib Dems on 16 percent (no change). That means the Tory lead has been more than halved in the past two months,
So, George Osborne’s admitted that he “made a mistake” getting chummy with Oleg Deripaska in Corfu, and the Westminsterati are prepared to draw a line under his involvement in the Yachtgate scandal. The Tories should now grasp this opportunity to completely remove themselves from the story. And – however great the temptation may be – that means not prodding Peter Mandelson over
Do watch Brown’s speech to Imperial College earlier, in which he defends the Govenrment’s plan to increase public debt in order to spend, spend, spend our way out of recession (or at least that’s the theory). It’s our PM doing what he does best – deviously shifting the economic narrative to suit his agenda –
Welcome to the latest CoffeeHousers’ Wall. For those who haven’t come across the Wall before, it’s a post we put up each Monday, on which – provided your writing isn’t libellous, crammed with swearing, or offensive to common decency – you’ll be able to say whatever you like in the comments section. There is no
There’s a sense this weekend that the media hurricane has moved on from George Osborne – leaving him bruised and bloodied, but unbowed – and is now bearing down on Peter Mandelson. Sure, the Tories are still experiencing some turbulence: a story about how they should repay a loan from the Rothschilds, as well as
60 years ago, in the economically-depressed aftermath of WW2, Britain successfuly staged an “austerity Olympics” – pared-down, efficient, organised and even profitable, it was widely considered a momentous success. In today’s Guardian, Simon Jenkins persuasively argues for another austerity Olympics in 2012 – the times call for it, he says. And it’s hard to disagree. Even if you
Oh dear. After Brown’s grandiose claim that he was “trying to get the oil price down”, No.10 must have hoped that the pre-existing downwards trend in prices, and the petrol pump competitiveness by supermarkets, would continue for some time to come – so our Dear Leader could claim all the credit. A shame, then, that the Opec
Do read Edmund Conway in today’s Telegraph for an admirably evenhanded analysis of Brown and Darling’s Keynesian rescue plan for the economy. It might work, he says, but the potential’s there for catastrophe. Here’s the worst-case scenario: “Keynes’s argument was not only that governments should borrow when times are tough, but that they should pay