I have always had a theory that within the anarchic millennial Byron that is Pete Doherty, there lurks an incredibly well-behaved middle-class boy. Doubtless it was the “mad, bad, and dangerous to know” pop poet that first appealed to Kate Moss. But it is surely the well-concealed Jekyll within that has persuaded judge after judge
Interesting row brewing over at Guido Fawkes. Should I and other hacks have shown our faces at the Lord Levy party last night (see my earlier post)? Yes, of course. That’s the point of access. You go along and then you pass on what you find to your readers. Which is why I went and
Republicans have had very little to cheer recently. The party’s approval rating in the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll is at a record low of 28% and the implosion of the Bush presidency is threatening to drag it down even further. So the news that the billionaire mayor of New York Mike Bloomberg has decided to quit
Like father, like son: my old friend Malcolm McLaren’s son, Joe Corre, has rejected his MBE, accusing Tony Blair of being “morally bankrupt”. As manager of the Sex Pistols, Situationist art student and all-round subversive, Malcolm revelled in such acts – famously releasing the single God Save the Queen during the Silver Jubilee. I gave
Sometimes a book is so compelling you have to recommend it before you’ve finished it. I might have known that Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia by John Gray (Penguin) would be good, but this time the master really has excelled himself. Iraq, Gray writes, “has ceased to be a contest in
Yesterday, I was happily thundering away against all the hand-wringing over the Rushdie knighthood when a friend brought me up short my making a rather good case against it. The argument goes that we defended, rightly, the Satanic Verses on free speech grounds and we are always telling these protestors, Voltaire-style, that while we might
And so the cavalcade of farewell parties proceeds towards the terminus of June 27 and Tony Blair’s last bow. Last night, it was the turn of Lord Levy to say goodbye as the PM’s Middle East envoy at a reception in the garden of Lancaster House. Mr Blair paid fulsome tribute to his old ally,
Today’s Guardian reports that Brown is considering bringing a Lib Dem or two into the government. My gut reaction is that the Lib Dems would be fools to accept the offer, it would be far better for them to sit tight and negotiate from a position of strength in the hung parliament we’re likely to
Fred Thompson, the man many are hailing as the saviour of the Republican party and who you probably know best from his roles in Hunt for Red October, In the Line of Fire, Die Hard 2 and the TV show Law & Order, is in London right now and I went to hear him speak
I can’t really comment on Salman Rushdie as a literary figure, since I tried and failed three times to get beyond the opening 50 pages of Midnight’s Children. I can comment on him as a public figure, however, having followed his career attentively since the fatwa of 1989. I supported Mrs Thatcher’s response of cutting
The departure of Nick Ross from “Crimewatch” is a sad victory for the worst kind of criteria now being applied in television. Nobody disputes the importance of appearance on screen – it would be odd if it were otherwise – but Ross is scarcely senescent and looks a pretty sprightly 59 year old. Having dined
Two days to go and already the European Union summit is promising to be a cliffhanger. Will Blair sign? Will the Poles and the Czechs save him, and veto? No10 appears to be furious that Gordon Brown is holding out the prospect of a referendum and says there will be none “because we will not
This front page story in The Guardian about the Blair Brown relationship is essential reading for anyone who thinks that the whole Blair Brown feud is something got up and exaggerated by the ‘feral’ media. It has yet more examples of just how dysfunctional the relationship at the very top of the government was and
The death of Bernard Manning marks the end of an era in comedy and will force liberals once again to wrestle with the question: why was a man who ought to have been offensive so bloody funny? Answer: Because he was bloody funny. That’s it. That’s all there was to it. Those who think he
This New Yorker piece by Sy Hersh on the Pentagon’s indifference to the investigation into the Ahu Graib torture scandal makes for depressing reading, although the general in charge of it does come out as a honourable man. Donald Rumsfeld’s total contempt for reality still has the capacity to shock despite all that we already know about
Why Tooting Broadway? Of all the places in London, why would David Cameron choose this decaying corner of South London to launch his new agenda? It is in the public memory thanks to the opening credits of Citizen Smith, where Wolfie Smith started out shouting “power to the people”. And just a few yards away,
It seems that as part of the Cameroon mid-course correction, they’ll no longer be talking about being the heir to Blair. I think this is a big mistake, but I accept that I’m probably the only person outside W11 to believe this. Gordon Brown will ruthlessly demagogue any Tory plan for public service reform as
David Cameron’s rebalancing speech is getting strong reviews from Conservative Home, The Telegraph and Iain Dale. The speech is certainly more conciliatory towards his party than much of what Cameron has said recently. There’s no ‘swallow your medicine’ passage in it while the emphasis on marriage will be music to the grassroots’ ears. But I
A big day for David Cameron. His speech on what divides the Conservatives from Gordon Brown is billed in the Telegraph as the speech of his leadership. Their political correspondent has plenty of advance material, the most interesting line of which is ”We get the modern world, he [Brown] doesn’t”. This is Dave’s strongest pitch:
Denis Macshane, Blair’s former Europe minister, has an interesting piece in the Observer making the pro-European case against a grand constitutional-style treaty. He argues that Europe is working as it is and that an endless debate about structures will destroy this momentum. His conclusion: “If Blair’s last European hurrah is the production of a neat
