Politics

Read about the latest UK political news, views and analysis.

Tuesday

The Spectator

The Gordon and Alistair show

It was the Gordon and Alistair show today, rather than the Brown press conference. And Darling did far more than the intro. He jumped into answer questions, with his message – that HMS Britain was built by Labour to weather a world economic storm. He detailed meetings with world leaders, as if to try and hammer home his point that innocent Britain is caught in a world economic problem, not our fault guv, etc. Anyway, here are five thoughts on each of them… DARLING 1) “Right across the world, this will be a difficult year”. But few face a UK-style slowdown. The average OECD economy grew by 2.7% last year

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The truth behind inflation

Is Brown right on inflation? TGF UKIP appeals for help: is it correct to say as he did in the Observer and on Marr that inflation is 4% in America, 3% in Eurozone and 2% in Britain?  I was thinking of Fisking the interview – but soon worked out it would be longer than the transcript. And perhaps Brown’s statistics are not supposed to be taken literally, like John Prebble’s books or the EU’s accounts. But for those who care, here’s the story on inflation.   It jerks around a lot, and Brown is lucky to have Britain in a dip and America in an upswing last month. The figures

Monday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Brown’s back – and doing a Hillary

Don’t mention the relaunch! That will be the motto today as Gordon Brown embarks on his, ahem, new year initiative kicking off with a big speech on health . Cameron is ahead of him: he made his health speech last week. Also Brown is off to India and China later this month (or so they say; Brits are the last to be told about their PM’s plans), where Cameron and Osborne made their visit last month. Anyway, here are a few thoughts on Brown’s 8.10am Today interview. 1) Health Personalisation of NHS service, he said, will provide the “doctor you want, time you want, hospital you want”. More than 25

Saturday

The Spectator

This week’s magazine – An Apology

An apology Yesterday the Spectator experienced production problems with this week’s issue. This has unfortunately resulted in some errors: namely that the last two words ‘Middle East’ are missing from the William Shawcross article and the Michael Gove article, as featured on the front cover, was not included. Please click on this link to view the Michael Gove essay. Please accept our sincere apologies for these errors that have occurred.  We at The Spectator wish you all a prosperous 2008

William Shawcross

We are at war with hatred, fanaticism and despair

Bernard-Henri Lévy, the French philosopher, points out that with Benazir Bhutto, they killed ‘a spectacularly visible woman’ who, whatever her flaws as a political leader, was astonishingly brave in fighting — uncovered, unveiled — for politics ‘and refusing the curse that, according to the new fascists [the jihadists], floats over the human face of women’. Lévy suggests that Benazir’s name should now become another password ‘for those who still believe that the good genius of Enlightenment will win out over the evil genius of fanaticism and crime’. But the Enlightenment will be lost unless we all realise that we have to fight for it. First of all we have to

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

Brown, like Major, is falling prey to the media’s habit of linking unrelated stories

Before Christmas, on the BBC’s Andrew Marr show, Sir John Major gave his thoughts on politics ancient and modern. Since leaving Downing Street Sir John has been sparing with his public appearances, and because he has always commanded personal respect and has a fair-minded way of talking, these occasional interventions get attention. The moderation of his language, however, should not distract us from the sharpness of his views. What attracted the headlines this time were Major’s pointed remarks about ‘sleaze’. He said that in the case of the present government, but not (despite media impressions) his own, sleaze had become ‘systemic’. He did not deny that during the last years

Con Coughlin

Musharraf may now be the last best hope of Pakistan

Forget Iran, forget North Korea, forget the emerging Chinese superpower and forget the resurgent nationalism of Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Even before Benazir Bhutto’s assassination, Pakistan was the country that arguably posed the greatest challenge to the West’s security. Now it is an even greater challenge. Pakistan is the first Muslim country to have acquired nuclear weapons. Her nuclear arsenal was developed in the 1970s by Benazir’s father, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, to protect the country from the possibility of attack by India. Whether Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is maintained purely for self-defence could now become a moot point, particularly if the Islamists make a strong showing in the forthcoming Pakistani elections —

Thursday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Is Brown finished?

“I think Brown’s character, specifically the lack of charisma or warmth will prevent him being able to bring it back. When problems hit Brown will never be able get away with a winning smile and a “I’m a pretty straight sort of guy” or “well, John is John”, he can’t charm he was out of problems, can’t convince people that, whatever has gone wrong, he is fundamentally a decent chap doing his best. Neither has he yet shown any ability to project a vision or purpose for his government that the public can relate to, perhaps in other circumstances that wouldn’t matter, competence would be enough, but to differentiate himself

Wednesday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Brown’s challenge in 2008

Jonathan Freedland has a typically smart piece on what Gordon Brown needs to do in 2008 in this morning’s Guardian. Freedland writes, “We will not vote on him this year, but after only six months in office – three that saw him soar, three that saw him plunge – we will form a settled view of him in 2008. If the Mr Bean tag sticks, he will be finished. He needs, at the very minimum, a few solid months of steady, unruffled, even dull competence: no more Northern Rocks, missing discs or tangled donations. Desperately required is a spell of quiet, so that the serial misfortunes of the autumn come

Monday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

We have a winner!

It’s a big ask, but someone has to write the worst article on the presidential election. Daniel Pipes steps up to demonstrate why the Republican party deserves to lose next year. This is how his faux-concerned piece on Barack Obama for Front Page begins: “If I were a Muslim I would let you know,” Barack Obama has said, and I believe him. In fact, he is a practicing Christian, a member of the Trinity United Church of Christ. He is not now a Muslim. But was he ever a Muslim or seen by others as a Muslim? More precisely, might Muslims consider him a murtadd (apostate), that is, a Muslim

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Brown needs help, but he won’t take it from the Blairites

Few columnists can claim to understand Team Brown better than Jackie Ashley, so her Guardian column this morning on this weekend’s Blairite overtures is particularly interesting. Ashley writes that Brown “is probably tempted to pick up this olive branch and use it to give the Blairites a thrashing.” But she warns the Prime Minister that this would be the wrong thing to do and that he needs the Blairites’s help “to find new ways to reconcile liberty and security, and to express them in ways that most people approve. He needs to find new ways of reaching out to older voters: at the next election the majority of voters will

Saturday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Could Cameron have survived an autumn election?

I was on BBC Radio Four’s Talking Politics today with Anne McElvoy of the Standard and Michael White of the Guardian – and Dennis Sewell in the chair. During it I made a point which I had thought uncontroversial: how close Cameron came to political destruction last autumn.   My theory is that if Brown had called that election, he’d have won. Cameron bluffed beautifully at Blackpool: his Etonian fearlessness saved him and his party. But his bold new policies would not have withstood the scrutiny of an election campaign (especially the back-of-the-envelope figures about non doms). A defeated Cameron would have had to quit, and the topic of discussion

Wednesday

Andrew Neil

Party Non-Etiquette

I gave two big Christmas bashes this year, one in London, one in New York. Both included friends who are celebrities, such as Joan Collins, Michael Winner, Tina Brown, Harry Evans, Candace Bushnell, Michael Heseltine and Emily Maitlis, as well as many more friends and colleagues who are not celebrities but who are always a joy to see at the holiday season.   Both parties were a great success, at least judging by the attendance and the jovial atmosphere: no doubt the plentiful booze and canapés contributed. I certainly enjoyed them. But a couple of things have struck on the post-party haze.   First, the paltry number of folks who

Sunday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Can the Prime Minister recover from his self-inflicted wounds?

Andrew Rawnsley’s column in The Observer on how Gordon Brown undid all the good work of the early months of his premiership with the election that never was is essential reading. As Rawnsley puts it, “the election debacle was shattering to his credibility and authority. It was like one of those sci-fi movies where a mad scientist throws a switch and all the polarities are instantly reversed. Virtually overnight, Gordon Brown had alchemised his positives into negatives.”  Today, a Labour overall majority after the next election is far less likely than an overall Conservative one—this is remarkable given just how many seats the Tories have to win to obtain a majority.

Saturday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Tony Blair becomes a Roman Catholic

With the news that Tony Blair joined the Roman Catholic church last night in a ceremony led by Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, I’d thoroughly recommend reading—or re-reading—Fraser Nelson’s piece on  the attitude of some Catholics in this country to Blair’s conversion. You might also be interested in Stuart Reid’s thoughts on the matter which he aired just before Blair left office.

Thursday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The Worst People in Europe?

My favourite comment of the year was left in response to Ross Douthat’s reply to this post of mine: This has to be the most useless post of the year. Why do conservatives like scottish independence? because they are as malevolent as the SNP. I mean, I like Slovakia, but breaking up Yugoslavia was, well, not the best thing in the world. Fairness demands I acknowledge that once his geography had been corrected, the same commenter rephrased his point thus: NDM, quite correct about my Slovakia/Slovenia mixup.  Up there with Mauritius and Mauritania. However, to judge the disaster that was the breakup of Yugoslavia by observing the Slovenia has done

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The Lib Dems need their A team on the field

Nick Clegg’s reshuffle illustrates the problems that he is going to have as Lib Dem leader. Three of the most talented and well know Lib Dems won’t be on the front bench. It is hard to imagine that a party as small as the Lib Dems can afford to have big beasts like Charlie Kennedy, Paddy Ashdown and Ming Campbell missing from the front line. The top team is, though, as Iain Martin argues, strong in certain aspects. Vince Cable is an impressive figure and if the economy goes south, he’ll make sure that the Lib Dems benefit politically. Ed Davey will be a more formidable foreign affairs spokesman than Michael

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Cameron and Osborne all smiles, for now

David Cameron and George Osborne are both singing from the same hymn sheet about the fact that there was no Granita style deal between the two of them in their joint interviews with the Mail and the Telegraph. The big difference between Cameron and Osborne and Blair and Brown is that Osborne was never the senior partner and as the younger man need not fear that he’s missed his turn. Probably the most likely source of future tension between the two of them is foreign policy. Where as Cameron is a classic Conservative when it comes to foreign policy, see his Berlin speech which was depressingly Hurdian, Osborne’s world view is far

Wednesday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Brown at it again on party funding

Gordon Brown is an accomplished expert in the art of misrepresentation, here’s a prime example is from his press conference today: On the political funding issue, I think the Conservative Party has exactly the same problems, revealed yesterday, in fact a problem in relation to foreign donors which is not lawful… I think the most important thing for party political party funding is that people can see this thing being sorted out as quickly as possible and that’s why I regret the fact that the Conservatives have walked away from the discussions that are necessary to get an all party agreement on this issue. Exactly the same problems? In his dreams.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Brown meets the press

The main news coming out of Gordon Brown’s monthly news conference is that nationalising Northern Rock is now clearly under serious consideration, with Brown and Alistair Darling both stressing that all options are on the table. The other notable thing was how Brown kept banging on about ‘the spirit of Christmas’ in, what came across on television, as a rather over the top fashion. One of the New Year’s resolutions for Brown’s media team must be to find a way of humanising him and allowing him to demonstrate some warmth and humour in a way that comes across as natural. PS Bob Marshall-Andrews, who’d be disloyal to himself if he