Mike Smithson has an interesting piece up at Political Betting arguing that if the Lib Dems are to be taken seriously by the media they need their very own Campbell or Coulson. Certainly, when you read about Ming Campbell declaring in a conference QandA “Well of course I’m a failure” the case for some proper
The YouGov poll in the Sunday Times has got the Lib Dem conference off on the wrong foot for Ming Campbell. The poll finds that only four percent of voters think that he is the most impressive of the three party leaders. Even among Lib Dem supporters, Gordon Brown outscores Campbell and 65 percent of
Darling is losing his grip. He got his figures wrong twice on the World This Weekend and his exasperated stuttering hardly inspired confidence at a time when it is so badly needed. His job is to exude calm and savoir faire, for the benefit of anxious savers listening at home. Instead, he went on about
The YouGov poll in Sunday Times which shows that Labour is five points ahead also contains some instructive data on the public’s reactions to the policies suggested by the Tory Quality of Life policy review group. Whenever there is a genuine combination of carrots and sticks proposed there is popular support for the ideas. So,
Lift sanctions on Iran Sir: The resolution of the Iranian nuclear crisis is breathtakingly simple, were sanity to prevail (‘Iran will be next’, 8 September). Iran does not need an atom bomb to attain the status of a regional superpower: the size of her population and territory, her vast natural resources, her access to the
Earlier today, like many people around Westminster, I received a text message from John Reid letting me know that he will be standing down as an MP at the next election. As sorry as I am – John was an invigorating presence on the parliamentary and Whitehall scene, and one of the few ministers who
The credit crunch is global. So why has there only been a run on the banks in Britain? Alistair Darling suggests Northern Rock is a mere domino in a chain which started in America. But John Redwood’s blog points out that the first domino was knocked over by the clumsy fingers of the Labour government.
On Thursday I thought that Gordon Brown had pulled off a masterstroke by inviting Margaret Thatcher to tea at Downing Street, but now I’m not so sure. Marina Hyde’s column is a good guide to the shifting reactions to it and is well worth reading. As Hyde writes, “This piece of gesture politics – even
Sir Menzies Campbell’s call for a referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU is a desperate bid to preserve party unity on the eve of what may be his last conference as Lib Dem leader. No less than Harold Wilson in 1974-5, he seeks to avert a party split by backing a plebiscite. The trouble
The long quest to find a purpose for the Lib Dems is the modern equivalent to the probably apocryphal story about the child asking his mother about Lord Randolph Churchill: ‘What is that man for?’ The long quest to find a purpose for the Lib Dems is the modern equivalent to the probably apocryphal story
If you’re planning a visit to the cinema this weekend, I recommend you bypass the cold, albeit visually impressive, ‘Atonement’, in favour of Julie Delpy’s first effort as an actor, writer and director, ‘2 Days in Paris’. The premise is simple: a couple round off a tour Europe by spending two days with the girl’s
The old Latin rite of Mass is officially reinstated today. It’s not easy to explain the significance of this to non-Catholics (or even to Catholics under the age of 50), but it’s as though Rome had closed all the great cathedrals of Europe and stripped them bare and had now decided to re-open them and
President Bush’s speech on Iraq last night showed how reliant he now is on others for credibility on Iraq. Take the two key paragraphs that set out the shift in policy: “Because of this success, General Petraeus believes we have now reached the point where we can maintain our security gains with fewer American forces.
Back in May, the American pollster (and Spectator contributor) Frank Luntz advised Gordon Brown to make a virtue out of his reputation for being boring. The Prime Minister has today taken this advice. The new Labour logo is to be “Not flash, just Gordon”: precisely the right message. But this message will work best in
Margaret Thatcher is taking tea with Gordon Brown, Ben Brogan has the scoop. This is just about the last thing that David Cameron needs today as he tries to defuse the Gummer Goldsmith report. He’s now bound to get questions about whether he feels snubbed and if he’ll be inviting her round for a cuppa
When you hear people talk about the importance of the NetRoots in left-wing politics in the US they’re largely talking about MoveOn.org which was founded to try and get the country to move on from the Monica Lewinsky affair and the Clinton impeachment. It has now become a powerful voice in Democratic party politics and
Do not miss Toby Young’s new weekly column Status Anxiety, starting in tomorrow’s magazine. As any fule kno, Toby is the laureate of metropolitan angst so it seemed only fair to give him a weekly slot in which to fret publicly. His first despatch from the psychic borderlands of West London is a beauty, too,
A book has just landed on my desk with Chris Huhne’s beaming, discoloured face on its cover. The LibDem environment spokesman is carrying a placard saying “green taxes now”. So yes, it seems the Liberal Democrat leadership contest has begun. My political column tomorrow is on the LibDem wake/conference next week, and how it will
On the list of things that should keep us up at night, Pakistan has to be pretty high. It is a phenomenally unstable state with nuclear weapons. Much as I worry about Iran’s nuclear ambitions, Pakistan is currently the country that terrorists would be most likely to get a bomb from. So I was actually
