Politics

Black Wednesday exercises such a grip over our imagination that we sometimes forget that governments collapse because of the slow erosion that precedes the big storms. It is the drip-drip, not the tsunami, that does for them. In John Major’s case, it was the daily farce of Back to Basics and the never-ending saga of ‘sleaze’ – as much as Britain’s ignomious exit from the ERM – that ensured electoral disaster for the Tories in 1997. For Gordon Brown, the involvement of Alan Johnson in yet another donations story must be the cause of something approaching despair: were any of the candidates for the Labour deputy leadership paying attention to

James Purnell made his Marr debut today, filled with the Brownite script. Our new Work & Pensions Secretary should have looked more closely at those fake statistics he was given to regurgitate, because he repeated the most outrageous claim they make: that Britain has reached full employment. As he told Marr:- “We used to even worry as the Labour Party if we could commit to aiming for full employment. Now we’ve reached it. We have the lowest unemployment for 30 years.” If he genuinely believes this, God help us. I recommend he downloads this table (click here) from his own department, memorises its most egregious points, and sees what “full

Nick Clegg continues to say the right things. This passage from Steve Richards’s interview on GMTV Sunday Programme this morning: “We understand that the years of unprecedented increase in public spending, and let’s remember the increases in public spending since 2000, three years after New Labour came into power, is probably without precedent anywhere in the Western world since the war.  There’s been an explosion in public spending.  That is not going to continue, in fact it’s going to very much level off.” Of course, he “envisages” that taxes will lower – while the Tories say taxes will fall “over the cycle”. So the Tory policy is still harder. But

If you think that Gordon Brown’s having a tough time of things at the moment, then spare a thought for Romano Prodi.  For – following defeat in a vote of no confidence – Mr Prodi yesterday resigned as Prime Minister of Italy. Opposition senators even uncorked bottles of champagne to celebrate his departure – in the main debating chamber, no less. All of which heralds the likely return of Silvio Berlusconi to the prime ministerial role.  Berlusconi has clawed his way back to a position of enormous popularity with Italian voters, and his advisors expect him to be back in power “within months”. Yes, those “strangely charming” gaffes are set to tread the world stage once again.   Crucially

I wrote yesterday that Gordon Brown’s New Year relaunch is in tatters.  Now he’s in the uneviable position of having to relaunch the relaunch.  How should he go about it? We’ve already witnessed Brown’s new approach to personnel – that is, to draft youthful faces into the cabinet.  Now his comment piece in today’s FT indicates one of the central planks of his policy agenda – the reform of financial systems: “Most political and business leaders gathered at the World Economic Forum this week agree on one thing: the global economy is facing its biggest test in more than a decade ….  But we should also agree that turbulent conditions, throughout history, have been an opportunity for

Andy Burnham was named “minister to watch” at the Spectator/Threadneedle parliamentarian of the years awards 2006. He has not disappointed us, replacing Purnell as Commissar of Culture. He reacted as if he’d won the pools. His beloved Liverpool being European City of Culture in 2008, and all that (quite right too, splendid city). But I suspect his joy comes from moving out of the Treasury when he was struggling to explain his way out of Northern Rock and the credit crunch. Just as ageing pop stars surround themselves with models in pop videos to look younger, so Brown brings the young bucks centre stage. If only he’d done this sooner,