World

If I say that Bob Diamond richly deserves his promotion to chief executive of Barclays, I do not intend any snide reference to the fact that he is enormously rich. If I say that Bob Diamond richly deserves his promotion to chief executive of Barclays, I do not intend any snide reference to the fact that he is enormously rich. The giant fortune he has amassed in bonuses during 12 years at the helm of Barclays Capital, the group’s investment banking arm, is held against him by his detractors — among them Business Secretary Vince Cable, who once told me he regarded Diamond as ‘the most grievous example’ of City

Though the London press has barely noticed the fact, it’s possible that Andy Coulson will be in court later this month at which point, presumably, he will be asked, under oath, about the News of the World’s newsgathering methods. Coulson may be asked to testify during Tommy Sheridan’s perjury trial. This may just be a publicity stunt but the defence – for Coulson will be called by Sheridan’s legal team – will presumably have something to say about the News of the World and its “techniques”. Coulson, as editor at the time, is an obvious witness to call in this regard and, if my understanding of the law is correct,

Step forward the FT’s Jim Pickard: Some sceptics have often asked why Tony Blair was happy to help rid the world of some dictators and not others. The example most often cited is that of Robert Mugabe, who could have been deposed with even less effort than Saddam Hussein. Blair tries to justify the contradiction in his book, far from convincingly. “You need to ask if such action is feasible and practical. People often used to say to me: If you got rid of the gangsters in Sierra Leone, Milosevic, the Taliban and Saddam, why can’t you get rid of Mugabe? The answer is: I would have loved to; but

Liberaltarianism is, in case you haven’t been following this mildly esoteric debate in Washington, the notion that rather than hitch their wagons to conservativism American libertarians and libertarian-minded folk should also explore relations with (US) liberals in order to further the libertarian agenda. This has proven an oddly controversial idea and, generally, has been dismissed as a) a joke, b) a fool’s errand or c) simply impossible. Now Brink Lindsey, who first coined the awkward term “liberaltarian” in a now famous-for-DC essay in the New Republic and his colleague Will Wilkinson* are leaving the libertarian Cato Institute. This has tongues wagging. In some circles anyway. See Tim Carney’s Washington Examiner

I continue to be impressed by how thin the case against Faisal Abdul Rauf is. You’d have thought that by now the staunch defenders of liberty crazies would have found either a smoking gun or a ticking bomb. To be fair, Pamela Geller* certainly thinks she has found evidence that he’s just as bad as his critics would have us believe. Or maybe even – and this may make your (my!) weak dhimmi-flesh creep – worse… But, actually, all she has unearthed from a 2005 talk Rauf gave to, of all places, the Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Centre, is evidence that Faisal Abdul Rauf could be considered a neoconservative. That

Today’s most intriguing political story is that David Rowland will not become Tory Treasurer after all. The press release from the Tories says that this is because of the ‘expansion of his global business interests.’  Others, though, are begging to differ. ConservativeHome’s piece on the matter is headlined ‘The Daily Mail sinks the Tory Treasurer’, the paper has run a succession of interesting pieces on various aspects of Mr Rowlan’s life.     For all we know, Mr Rowland’s expanding global business interests may well be why he is stepping down. But the feeling among political journalists this afternoon is that the Mail has claimed another scalp and that the

Two weeks old, but I’ve only just seen this and it’s sufficiently splendid – and a new if also awful twist on an old fortune teller joke – to share with you just in case you didn’t see it either: A man was jailed by a Kemerovo region court on Thursday for assaulting a Gypsy fortune teller who predicted that he would be jailed, the Investigative Committee said. Gennady Osipovich tried to kill the unidentified female fortune teller, who told him she saw a “state-owned house” — a Russian euphemism for jail — in his future, the committee said in a statement on its web site. The woman managed to

Matt Yglesias has a splendid post bemoaning the utterly unecessary regulation of barber shops and hairdressers in Washington. His commenters think he’s being silly and that hairdressers should be regulated. James Joyner and Kevin Drum also bring their clippers to the fight. Unsurprisingly, this regulation in DC produces regulatory capture. In fact, in regulating hair Washington is a little like Iran… Matt’s critics say that anyone using sharp objects or chemicals such as peroxide needs to be regulated and inspected. This, my friends, is a reminder that the American mania for credentialism (cf journalism) frequently travels well into the realm of the absurd. Happily, this sceptered isle is a freer

Whither American conservatism? Well, there’s the path trod by Reihan Salam, Josh Barro and Ross Douthat, each of whom have produced sane and humane pieces on the Burlington Coat Factory Community Center otherwise known as the “Ground Zero Mosque” or you can hitch your wagon to Newt Gingrich’s caravan and cheer when this self-styled man of ideas splutters: “Nazis don’t have the right to put up a sign next to the holocaust museum in Washington,” This is at least admirably clear and eliminates any requirement one may feel to give Gingrich the benefit of the doubt. He doesn’t even have the excuse that any of his family were murdered at