The Tories seem very close to adopting the idea that children shouldn’t be allowed to pass into secondary school until they have passed certain tests as party policy. In the Independent today, Michael Gove, Shadow Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, makes a passionate case for it. “Earlier this week, our party’s policy
No one in modern politics is better at coming up with a pithy sound bite that sounds like a piece of home-spun wisdom than Bill Clinton. Just take this line of his from a TV interview when asked about the criticism of Hillary that says she is too much of an insider to change things:
News is coming through that a huge terrorist attack on US interests in Germany has been foiled. Generally, the best place to follow these things is on The Blotter, a blog from the investigative team of ABC News.
This account of how George W. Bush has tried to mentor Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi Prime Minister, is fascinating. Bush sees his role as giving Maliki the confidence to lead. He tries to gee the Iraqi PM up by both giving him support and through some frat-boy ribbing. The whole approach is summed up by
Last night’s GQ Men of the Year Awards were, as ever, a glittering occasion and a tribute to the talents of the magazine’s editor, Dylan Jones (whose most recent Spectator Diary you can read here). Plenty of excellent choices for the 10th annual ceremony, including the editor of the year, Will Lewis, editor in chief
I was just settling down to write something about Michael Ancram’s rather odd pamphlet knocking David Cameron for distancing himself from the party’s past, when I saw this on Comment Central which explains a lot. The more you read it does sound like Ancram just didn’t realise how the media would seize on this story. The
Rachel Sylvester’s column in The Daily Telegraph today sums up brilliantly what Brown is up to with his call for a new politics. As Sylvester writes, “[Gordon Brown’s] aim is to crush David Cameron and the Conservative Party, not just when the country next goes to the polls but for ever. He shares Chairman Mao’s
Nobody in Australia has every come back from poll numbers this bad, this close to an election. According to Newspoll, Labor now leads the government 59 to 41 with 48% of voters preferring Ooposition Leader Kevin Rudd as Prime Minister to 37% for John Howard. Opinion polls in Oz are a lot more accurate than
Given that Tony Blair misled Britain on the way into war in Iraq, Gordon Brown had better be very careful not to mislead us on the way out. Are Iraqi forces really able to take on the militias of the warring Sadr and Hakim families? That’s what we’re told, but look at these two quotes
Boris is back: back Boris! Here at 22 Old Queen Street, the blond bombshell’s Spectator support team are punching the air. It wasn’t that we let the nay-sayers get to us, or that we ever, for a moment, fell for all that guff about him not being serious – it’s just that now we have
Moments into Gordon Brown’s speech about a new kind of government, it is already clear what the speech is about: copying David Cameron. Addressing a group of voluntary organisations, he has already talked about “top-down solutions” no longer working; the revolution he is announcing is precisely the revolution Cameron has been talking about for months.
There is nothing new in Gordon Brown’s taste for citizens’ juries and new forms of consultation – the cornerstone of his speech on the “New Politics” today – although his plan to review the Speakers’ Conference will repay careful study as part of what will clearly amount, in the end, to a substantial package of
Gordon Brown’s interview in the Daily Telegraph sums up how Brown thinks he can appeal to small ‘c’ conservative voters. He talks, as he did on the Today Programme this morning, heavily about service; telling the Telegraph that, “The only purpose of being in politics is to serve your country. If you are not able
There is a must-read account of George W. Bush’s private mood in the New York Times this morning. Robert Draper, who has interviewed the president for a new book coming out next week, reveals that Bush is more introspective than he appears in public. Bush tells Draper, “I’ve got God’s shoulder to cry on, and I
What would Field Marshal the Duke of Wellington, the coolest of heads, have made of poor William Shawcross’s overwrought emotional plea that we must stay on in Iraq as a kind of act of faith (‘Britain must stay in Iraq’, 25 August)? A menace of our making Sir: What would Field Marshal the Duke of
This is the last weekend before the US presidential primaries kick into top gear. At the moment, Rudy Giuliani and Hillary Clinton are comfortably leading their respective fields. But a subway series is far from certain. Hillary might find that the electorate develop an acute case of Clinton fatigue if tawdry scandals begin to dominate
The Populus data James mentions has been a major factor in soothing nerves within the Tory ranks. I had been told about these figures on two separate occasions by Shadow Cabinet members, but asked not to use it. The data is central to Operation Don’t Panic, Cameron’s main mission since returning from Brittany. Within some
Tony Blair — remember him? — was better at diagnosis than cure. ‘I think most people would say that in virtually every aspect of their life things are better than they were 30 or 40 years ago,’ he told the Sunday Telegraph in November 2005. Tony Blair — remember him? — was better at diagnosis
Over at the always thought-provoking Open Kingdom blog, Anthony Barnett makes an interesting point about class, you knew that good only English obsession had to get an airing today, and the rise of emotionalism in the country. Barnett writes that, “At its best (there were also worsts) upper-class behaviour was about good judgement providing the steel
Matt’s cover a few weeks back illustrated how the Royals had absorbed the lessons of Diana’s life and death. There is little doubt that Diana has had a huge impact on the monarchy–which is, as Matt notes, in a far more secure state today than it was in the mid 1990s–but I wonder if she