Read about the latest UK political news, views and analysis.
The TV cameras trooped in to film the beginning of Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling’s meeting with various oil big-wigs this morning. After Brown thought they’d stopped filming, he announced: “Well that was an unreal start to a meeting… Now we can relax!” This really is Potemkin politics. It is hard to imagine that many voters will be fooled by today’s ‘summit’.
Kevin Maguire was widely tipped to be Gordon Brown’s Alastair Campbell but in the end the Mirror man stayed at his paper rather than heading to Downing Street. His columns, though, have always been fairly supportive of the Brown government which is what makes his piece today—“Gordon Brown must make sweeping changes”—so interesting. Maguire wants Brown to dump a whole bunch of policies including the planned 2p increase in fuel duty, ID cards and 42 day detention. In their place, he wants Brown to put: “a living wage in excess of £7 an hour to replace the minimum wage, free school meals for every kid, axing of NHS prescription charges
Gordon Brown wants you to blame somebody—anybody—else for the rise in the price of fuel. So, this morning he takes to the pages of The Guardian for some OPEC-bashing hoping that aggrieved motorists will curse this cartel rather than Brown when they see how much it costs to fill their tank. Later today, Brown and Darling, who rumour suggests is rather fed up with his next door neighbour, will meet with oil industry chiefs in Aberdeen. As Michael Millar points out over on Trading Floor, nothing productive is likely to come out of this meeting. But Team Brown hopes that it will provide the public with someone else to blame
Via Samizdata, this seems to be a quite appalling story. The Guardian reports that: A masters student researching terrorist tactics who was arrested and detained for six days after his university informed police about al-Qaida-related material he downloaded has spoken of the “psychological torture” he endured in custody. Despite his Nottingham University supervisors insisting the materials were directly relevant to his research, Rizwaan Sabir, 22, was held for nearly a week under the Terrorism Act, accused of downloading the materials for illegal use. The student had obtained a copy of the al-Qaida training manual from a US government website for his research into terrorist tactics. Mind you, I don’t think
One of the many good things about Ken Livingstone’s defeat in the London mayoral election is that Islamic extremists will no longer be feted at City Hall. One person who should never have been invited and praised by the Mayor was Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who was not—as Livingstone claimed—someone “who preaches moderation and tolerance to all faiths throughout the world” but a preacher with vile views. Stephen links to a review, which I’d thoroughly recommend, of Qaradawi’s book which shows just how wrong Livingstone was about him.
Tom Bower, who wrote a rigorously researched and extremely critical biography of Gordon Brown, delivers a devastating summing up of Brown’s record to date in today’s Evening Standard: “Thatcherism and Blairism were easily defined but what exactly is Brownism? Obsessed that the state knows best, Brownism can best be described by its dubious achievements: record taxation, hyper-regulation, the biggest debts in Europe, the destruction of private pension schemes, post office closures, appalling public transport and a looming energy crisis.”
Jack Straw has emerged from his self-imposed purdah to offer his support to Gordon Brown on The World at One. Straw declared “I’m absolutely convinced that Gordon Brown is the very best person to lead the Labour party and the government through these difficulties and beyond.” He went on to say that, “Nothing that has happened has changed my view that he is the best man for the job” (which makes me think that Straw holds his colleagues in rather low regard). Just in case he hadn’t sufficiently reassured the Brownites who have been so enraged by his silence, he concluded: “There is no contest, there will be no contest
William Hill have just sent through their latest odds on Brown’s prospects. Brown is 6/4 to go before the next election 7 to 2 to leave this year 15/8 to be replaced in 2009 11/10 to go in 2010 The small odds on Brown going before the next election suggest that the punters are more bearish on Brown than the pundits. I suspect that, if you don’t mind your money being tied up for so long, the value bet might be on Brown going in 2009. If the party get absolutely slaughtered in the European and local elections on June 4th then Labour MPs might decide that, to save their
The Mirror and The Sun both devote their lead editorial to arguing against the planned rise in vehicle excise duty and the rising cost of fuel. The Mirror—which is the one reliably pro-Brown paper in Fleet Street—leader will cause particular concern among jittery Labour MPs. It warns that the “rebellion…has the potential to be more damaging than the row over the 10p tax rate.” It urges Brown to “act now, signal that a 2p rise in fuel duty will not go ahead and make clear he is listening on vehicle excise duty.” 42 days and the vehicle excise duty revolt will give us our first guide to how much Brown’s
Jon Cruddas, the Labour backbencher who came third but with the most first preference votes in last year’s deputy leadership contest and is tipped by many as a good outside bet to be the next Labour leader, has an interesting piece in The Independent this morning. He argues that the calls for an instant change of leader are misguided but contends that Labour can’t carry on with the same set of policies. These are what Cruddas would like to see as the new set of dividing lines between Labour and the Tories: “Where the Tories would rely on market forces to bring down living costs, Labour can enforce fairer prices. Where the Tories want more
Jackie Ashley’s column in The Guardian today shows just how downhearted those who yearned for a Brown premiership now are. It is an admirably frank piece. One point in it, though, needs rebutting. Ashley rather dolefully writes that: When one looks at the success and popularity of Boris Johnson in London, it seems obvious that Brownites underestimated the importance of style and swagger, certainly humour, in this celebrity and television-driven age. We thought people might find a non-flashy, dour, rather private man a refreshing change. We were mistaken. This view that somehow the public are to blame for wanting a celeb-PM doesn’t tally with the facts. The two biggest blows
Today’s Guardian reveals that Brown, unsurprisingly, plans to hang on until the last possible moment before going to the country. Brown hopes that two years will give him time to turn thing round or—more realistically—that something will turn up in this period. More immediately, though, all eyes seem to be on Jack Straw who is, word has it, putting himself forward as the man who could tell Gordon the game is up. The Guardian reports that: Eyebrows were raised when Straw pulled out of a planned broadcast interview on Friday in the wake of the byelection defeat. It is not clear when he will next appear on the media. “Jack
There’s a seductive narrative emerging that places all the blame for Labour’s problems on Gordon Brown’s personal and presentational failings. It has obvious appeal to those Labour MPs who believe that if Brown would go all would be well and to our personality-driven media. But as Matt writes in The Sunday Telegraph, “It is certainly an epic delusion to imagine that the removal of Mr Brown and his instant replacement by A N Other would do the trick.” The truth is that Labour has been directionless for quite a while now. Tony Blair had towards the end of his premiership a clear idea of where he wanted to take the
David Miliband was on Adam Boulton’s show today and described reports that he is manoeuvring for the leadership as ‘fiction’. But his denial of interest in challenging Brown left him plenty of wriggle room : “I am not in the market for any job other than the one I have at the moment.” If Miliband really wants to show that he is not signalling to Labour MPs that he would step in if other people would do the dirty work of getting rid of Brown then he needs to issue a Shermanesque statement. Sherman, a Union Civil War General, denied all interest in running for president in1884 with the statement
Helmand Province, Afghanistan I have adopted the Gordon Brown strategy and disappeared after a bad by-election result for Labour. My excuse is that I’m now in Afghanistan, finding out how things are in Helmand. Afghanistan is an amazing country whose people combine abject poverty with the ability to endure weather of -20c in winter to 50c in summer. Such hardiness makes for resolute fighters, but it seems the Taliban have failed to recruit for this season. The poppy harvest ended three weeks ago, and the fighting usually starts immediately as the hired $10 Taliban” swap ploughshares for Kalashnikovs. Not this time, though. As one solider told me “the problem with
The Sunday Times reports this morning that David Miliband is readying himself for a run at the leadership. A source close to Miliband tells the paper that “David is not going to do anything until a vacancy arises, but he is ready to go for it. There will be no public display from him in the next few weeks but he and his supporters will be making it clear to backbenchers that there is an alternative to Gordon.” Miliband’s plan reflects a phenomenal sense of entitlement. He plans to leave to his colleagues the grubby and difficult task of prising Brown from Number 10. He will then glide into the
There is a classic letter from Alistair Campbell in The Times today disputing Cherie Blair’s account in her book of how Campbell swore at her hairdresser. Sir, Before “you’re only a f***ing hairdresser” replaces “we don’t do God” as my most quoted remark, could I make clear that while I did say “we don’t do God” to an American magazine journalist, I have never described Andre Suard as “only a f***ing hairdresser” to anyone. There are other direct quotations attributed to me in your recent serialisation of Cherie Blair’s book which were not accurate, but this is the one I would like to deny, not least since it goes
John McCain and Barack Obama have been involved in a fierce back and forth about Obama’s willingness to meet with the Iranian leadership without preconditions. McCain claims that Obama’s willingness to do this shows that he does not have the judgement or the experience to be commander in chief, while Obama argues that McCain’s refusal to sit down with America’s enemies proves that McCain comes from the George W. Bush school of diplomacy. David Miliband has now waded into this debate. The Times reports that when Miliband met with Obama’s foreign policy team he queried the wisdom of Obama’s proposed approach. This is fantastic news for the McCain campaign who
Gordon Brown has survived the first 30 hours after Crewe and Nantwich. In public, the cabinet has remained supportive and even among backbenchers those prepared to openly call for leadership contest are few and far between. Behind the scenes, though, things are different—just look at the string of anonymous quotes in today’s papers. But no one is yet prepared to be, in Martin Kettle’s phrase, ‘Labour’s Geoffrey Howe.’ One man to watch in all this is Stephen Carter, the man that Brown hired to create and market ‘new Gordon.’ If Carter were to walk it would be taken as proof that Brown is incapable of change and that Labour has
Peter Riddell is rightly regarded as the dean of the Parliamentary press corp. He is not a man prone to exaggeration or over-excitement which is what makes the conclusion to his column this morning so important: Ministers and MPs have to decide whether to continue with him, or to change leader again in the hope of reducing, if not preventing, electoral defeat. The combination of the May Day elections and Crewe and Nantwich has persuaded Westminster that the Tories will win the next election with an overall majority; the conversation has now shifted to how Labour can minimise its loses. One wonders how much stomach the new hired hands at
