You have to hand it to her. Cherie Blair has beaten her husband to it, and signed a book deal. Blair hasn’t event started writing up his memoirs, but there’s cash to be had so the “bolshie scouser” (copyright T. Blair) is wasting no time. Read all about it at The Bookseller. Can any Coffee
Tonight, The Spectator and Intelligence Squared are hosting the first in a series of debates. This evening’s topic is Zimbabwe and an all star cast of speakers will be debating the motion ‘Britain has failed Zimbabwe’ at the Royal Geographic Society here in London. If you can’t make the debate in person, never fear. We’ll
Andrew Neil’s blog (Daily Politics) Archbishop Cranmer Bagehot’s Notebook Benedict Brogan Ben Smith Boulton and Co. Comment Central (£) ConservativeHome Conservative Voices Dizzy Thinks EU Referendum Euroseptic FP Passport FT Westminster Blog Guido Fawkes Harry’s Place Iain Martin John Redwood, MP John Rentoul Jonathan Martin LabourList Left Foot Forward Marbury Mark Steyn Muse, the Apollo
The details of the polls this morning make for even grimmer reading for the Tories than the headline figures. Populus reports that, astonishingly, Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling’s lead over David Cameron and George Osborne on the economy has actually grown in the past ten days from 34 points to 38. While the ICM poll
The latest poll news isn’t good for David Cameron. ICM has the Tories eight points behind Labour and Cameron with the worst personal ratings of all the party leaders. The Lib Dems will be cheered to find themselves hitting that psychologically important 20% mark while Labour will be buoyed by reaching the 40% level. Grim
As Clive noted earlier, the whole of the New York Times will be free online from midnight tonight. I’d thoroughly recommend that you take the opportunity to start reading David Brooks, his column runs on Tuesday and Fridays. As well as being America’s most perceptive conservative commentator, Brooks writes absolutely fascinating stuff about the brain. Here’s
Last night’s Newsnight interview with Ming summed up the problems the Lib Dems face. First of all, Ming only got 15 minutes at the end of the show compared to the full length, star attraction treatment that Brown and Cameron got. Second, the interview revolved around the Lib Dem’s leadership troubles—a trend Campbell exacerbated by
An intriguing development in the US presidential race, Bush senior just came very close to endorsing John McCain. McCain is currently on a ‘No Surrender’ tour designed to reenergise his candidacy based on his staunch support and advocacy for a strategy that might actually succeed in Iraq. At a stop in South Carolina, the McCain
Last night, The Spectator hosted its first book launch at our new home in Old Queen Street. And how apt that it should be in honour of The Triumph of The Political Class (Simon and Schuster, £18.99), by our very own Contributing Editor, Peter Oborne. You can read some of the arguments advanced in this
The government’s unprecedented decision to guarantee every bank deposit in the country should be enough to stop the queues outside Northern Rock branches and any further meltdown in the financial system. However, no one has covered themselves in glory during this episode. Adam Applegarth, the chief executive of Northern Rock, has delivered a master class
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