David Beckham’s attempt to crack America continues apace. Last week, The New York Daily News reports, Beckham was given a private tour of the White House. His presence sparked confusion amongst those staff members not familiar with Brand Beckham, with the president’s private secretary asking him if he was a relative of Bush’s or a
Any Coffehousers still hunting for a holiday read should pick up a copy of Alex James’s Bit of a Blur, which is keeping me company in Andalucía. For those who care, this is the second indispensable account of Nineties culture to appear (the first being John Harris’s The Last Party). For everyone else, this is
Do read this excellent essay in the IHT about why India and Pakistan’s fortunes have diverged so much since partition. While the 60th anniversary of Indian independence, is as good an excuse as any to re-read Nehru’s wonderful “tryst with destiny” speech.
The BBC’s coverage of the Redwood report has come in for much criticism, notably from The Sun and Iain Dale. Helen Boaden, the director of BBC News, has now responded, conceding that the BBC’s use of footage of Redwood failing to sing the Welsh national anthem was inappropriate but defending the substance of the reporting. Boaden lists
Tensions between Tehran and Washington will reach new levels with the news that the US intends to designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organisation. This allows the US to disrupt the organisation’s funding and take steps against those companies that do business with it. The Revolutionary Guard is the first governmental entity that
Why do photos of world leaders on holiday hold such fascination for us? The shots of Vladimir Putin fishing seem to be everywhere today, I’ve spared you the one of him topless, while the New York Times has an entire collection of vacationing politicians snaps up on its site. Anne Applebaum has an entertaining column
The Sun reports this morning that Gordon Brown’s holidays are over. He’ll be working for the rest of the summer from his constituency in Scotland. So, Brown took a total of four hours and five minutes off before heading back to London to deal with the foot and mouth crisis. Is this the shortest holiday
No one is more crucial to the future of the Coalition effort in Iraq than David Petraeus, the US commander there. Petraeus is seen by hawks as this war’s Ulysses S. Grant, the man who can turn around the mistakes of his predecessors and forge a victory from unpromising beginnings. This New York Times profile
Watching the Bush-Rove conference, it was impossible not to feel that this was the end of an era. The president admitted he soon be gone too; telling Rove “I’ll be on the road behind you here in a little bit.” While both Rove and Bush were clearly moved by the moment. Rove’s departure signals that
As the 10th anniversary of Diana’s death approaches we’re going to spend a lot of time debating whether or not the public reaction to her death ushered in a new, more emotionally open Britain or whether it was a mawkish display of grief which we all ought to be rather embarrassed about. As Jonathan Freedland
I am almost certainly in a minority of one on this, but I suspect that John Prescott’s memoirs will be a lot more interesting than people are expecting. On all the Blair retrospective programmes, it was noticeable how frank Prescott was about how bad things had got between Blair and Brown. I also can’t help
The case for Heathrow getting a third runway is overwhelming. It is mad that the world’s third busiest airport in terms of passenger numbers only has two runways while Amsterdam’s Schipol airport, 12th on the list, has five and Charles De Gaulle in Paris, seventh, and Barajas in Madrid, 13th, have four each. On the
If you want to get an idea of how important Karl Rove was to George W. Bush imagine if Peter Mandelson, Philip Gould and Alastair Campbell had all been rolled into one person who advised Tony Blair. In some ways, even this doesn’t do Rove justice as he had been with Bush long before he
Karl Rove, the architect of President Bush’s two election victories, is resigning from the White House at the end of the month. Rove was convinced that he could re-align US politics and create a permanent Republican governing majority. But, partly through his own missteps, Rove has blown that chance. In many ways, he has never
When you are ten points down in the polls everything you do is seen through that prism. So whenever the Tories announce a policy or talk about a topic, the media examine it for evidence of whether or not David Cameron is trying to shore up his right-wing or not. Everyone is looking to see
Damian Green, the Tory Immigration spokesman, sets out how the Tories plan to end forced marriages in an op-ed in The Observer today. There are some good suggestions in it, including the idea that anyone who is going to marry abroad should have to name the person they are going to wed before leaving the
Gordon Brown has restored Labour’s fortunes to pre-Iraq levels, according to a YouGov poll in tomorrow’s Sunday Times. The poll puts Labour on 42, the Conservatives 32 and the Lib Dems 14. The internals of the poll don’t offer much comfort for the Tories either: 55% of voters think David Cameron is doing a bad
In his interesting and positive account of Gordon Brown’s visit to America, Matthew d’Ancona reveals that Brown’s thinking on the causes of terrorism has ‘shifted’ since the recent so-called Islamist ‘doctors’ plot’ to set off car bombs in the West End and at Glasgow airport. Why’s Brown so slow? Sir: In his interesting and positive
I do not know whether, as was so often claimed, Tony Wilson, who has died aged 57, was a genius. But, as music mogul, club entrepreneur, loudmouth and zealous Mancunian, he was certainly one of the most important and remorseless figures in British popular culture of the past 30 years. Immortalised by Steve Coogan’s performance
Given the boost in the opinion polls enjoyed by Gordon Brown following the recent floods, a cynic might wonder whether the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in Surrey has been staged in order to give the Prime Minister an excuse to break off his holiday in Dorset and earn brownie points by taking control of a