John Kampfner has a piece in The Guardian today urging caution on Labour and its supporters about the party’s electoral prospects because of the amount of resources Lord Ashcroft is pumping into the Tory’s target seats. Kampfner’s argument is that that the Tory money advantage combined with the fickle nature of the press means that
The Tories have dug up a rather good story. When Mark Malloch Brown was still at the UN he was a strong advocate of the EU having one collective seat on the Security Council, saying that it should happen “as quickly as possible. I’m a huge fan of it.” Now admittedly, Malloch Brown wasn’t in
One of the most notable features of the 2008 presidential race is the amount of attention being lavished on the spouses of the candidates. Just today we have a New York Times interview in which Judith Giuliani responds to a scathing Vanity Fair profile of her and pieces in the Washington Post and Newsweek looking
Iain Dale is compiling a list of the best political blogs in the UK and wants to know what y’all think. If you want to take part just send iain AT iaindale DOT com an email, type Top 20 in the subejct line and then list your top twenty, or at least top ten, political blogs.
With Brown celebrating what Matt rightly calls a triumph of a first month, it is a strange time to consider his retirment as I do in my column in today’s News of the World (not online). My information is that Brown believes he has only one election in him: he’ll fight it, then hand over.
The Ali Miraj saga takes another twist with a piece by him in The Sunday Times alleging that a current member of the shadow cabinet offered him a peerage soon after 7/7. Miraj writes that: “What is not commonly known is that I was, in fact, asked whether I would consider accepting a seat in
Sir: Graham Lord (‘Is it a tough ask to speak proper English?’, 28 July) gives a clue to the increase in use of bad English when he points out that recent immigrants from eastern Europe speak our language much better than many of our own young people do. English lessons Sir: Graham Lord (‘Is it
The Times has a cracking story this morning about how everyone in Whitehall is coping—or not—with Gordon Brown’s ferocious appetite for work. Apparently, “His weapon of choice is the mobile phone, which will ring from 6.30am, with the bright-eyed, perky Prime Minister demanding papers, discussing strategy and even asking for feedback.” The Times reports that
Those who have exchanged fierce views on the invasion of Iraq have a fresh challenge this week: how to react to the UN resolution, tabled by Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy with support from George W. Bush, to send 19,000 peacekeeping troops to the Darfur region of western Sudan. This is one deployment of foreign
The Conservative Home team are currently touring the Anglosphere and reporting back on the state of conservatism in these countries. This week’s report is on Canada under Stephen Harper (pictured) and makes for interesting reading considering the Tories current predicament. After all the Canadian Conservatives came back from a defeat far more crushing than 1997. To
Matt notes in his report on Brown’s US trip this that Gordon Brown has, thankfully, abandoned the intellectual lazy assumption that poverty causes terrorism. But Brown should still get hold of a copy of What Makes a Terrorist: Economics and the Roots of Terrorism by the Princeton professor Alan B. Krueger before he heads off to Dorset
Some strikingly martial language from Cameron who is now promising to “give the government a bare knuckle fight over the NHS”. What a shame that his strategy is to do this on behalf of the unions, rather than the patients. There is still time to rewrite his dismal NHS policy. Brown is dumping the
Iain Dale has his monthly table of shadow cabinet media mentions up and as always it makes for interesting reading. Amazingly, Peter Ainsworth, the Tory environment spokesman, got a mere 57 mentions in July despite the 24/7 media coverage of the floods. Indeed, his Liberal Democrat opposite number Chris Huhne got more attention than Ainsworth
The Guardian has a story in today’s edition suggesting that Gordon Brown has pencilled in spring 2008 as the time for an election. Apparently, campaign professionals are being sounded out about working for the campaign with polling day planned for sometime before May 1st. This date would have the advantage of short-circuiting the Cameron project without Brown
Some dumb things are said during every presidential campaign but few statements in campaign history can be as reckless, irresponsible and downright idiotic as Republican Presidential contender Tom Tancredo’s proposal that the United States announce that in response to a nuclear terrorist attack it would nuke Mecca and Medina. Tancredo thinks that this would
There is both a must-read and a must-hear on the Boris for London front this morning. First the must-read, Matthew Parris‘s column in this week’s magazine on what Boris needs to do to win. His thoughts on how Boris could prove that he’ll put city above party are particularly smart. While the must-hear is Ken talking
Philip Gould’s memo laying out what Gordon Brown needs to do to win an early election makes for fascinating reading. Especially notable is Gould’s belief that elections can’t be won on ‘schools n’ hospitals’ or ‘investment versus Tory cuts’ any more. He writes that: “There is no doubt that the political landscape is changing: Crime,
Barak Obama just delivered the most important speech of the 2008 campaign so far. Having stepped to Hillary’s left on the issue of meeting with Castro, Ahamdinejad, Chavez et al, he is now going to her right by pledging himself to military strikes on al Qaeda safe havens in Pakistan if Musharraf won’t deal with
If you have read all seven of the JK Rowling books and still haven’t sated your appetite for knowledge of Potter and friends, then read this QandA between the author and some of her most dedicated readers. (Don’t click on the link if you haven’t yet finished Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows and want
The BBC are reporting that Ed Davey, Ming’s chief of staff, is floating the idea of his officemate Lembit Opik running for mayor of London. This strikes me as a rather desperate attempt by the Lib Dems to get someone with Boris or Ken level name recognition on the ballot. But there’s no denying that