Society

Thursday

Peter Hoskin

The shadow cast by the Davis agenda

Some eye-caching comments from David Davis, speaking at the launch of the Convention on Modern Liberty earlier.  Here’s how the Guardian reports them: “I talked to Chris Grayling the day he was appointed to make sure that he was signed up to the what I call Davis agenda, and he is – maybe not quite as passionate as I am but it would be insane to be as passionate as I am on this issue,” he said… …However, Davis said it was the justice secretary, rather than the home secretary who had the “most important role” on the issue of liberties, adding that shadow justice secretary, Dominic Grieve, was “brilliant”.

Peter Hoskin

The Tories are having a great and terrible day

So far as the Tories are concerned, today’s brought news of both the extremely encouraging and extremely ominous variety.  The good news is all for the short-to-medium term.  For instance, there’s been the constant drip, drip, drip of Labour leadership speculation, which undermines Brown’s position within his own party.  And then, this afternoon, there’s been a damning indictment of Brown’s economic approach from the CBI’s Richard Lambert.  Here’s what he said: “The government appears to have been fighting a series of forest fires rather than building a platform for economic recovery. There’s little sense of a coherent strategy about what’s happened to date … It’s hard to remember – let

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The British Foreign Secretary gets stood up

Jason Cowley’s profile of David Miliband in the New Statesman is an engaging read. But one line in it stood out to me: “we waited for a group of Indian politicians to arrive for dinner (in fact, only two of the expected nine turned up)” How did it come to this, a British Foreign Secretary, and we are after all a permanent member of the UN Security Council and the fifth largest economy in the world, is not considered worth turning up to dinner with? This is more worrying than anything else that I’ve heard about Miliband’s (disastrous) India trip. It suggests a decline into irrelevance. PS I’ve put in

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Stanford Calamity? Only for Antigua, not for cricket

There’s some good stuff in Michael Henderson’s column on the so-called Stanford debacle* today, even if he indulges himself with a rather rosy,soft-focus view of cricket’s past. The ideal of the village green bathed in evening sunlight with the vicar standing as umpire and children playing by the boundary and all that is a powerful, enduring image for sure but this English arcadia is only one thread running through the game’s history. A history that has been tougher, more scandalous and, often, meaner, than Henderson’s cosy view would have one believe. That’s to say, the sport’s history is well-stocked with cads and frauds and bounders and Allen Stanford is but

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Is the Yvette Cooper for leader rumour really a kick at Balls?

The Evening Standard’s scoop that Yvette Cooper is being urged to stand as a ‘stop Harman’ candidate has sent the Westminster bush telegraph into overdrive. The speed with which the Cooper story is spreading is proof that we have now entered the stage of Labour party’s decline where no rumour is too far-fetched to be dismissed. Although, it is only fair to point out that the makeover and media training Cooper has had have worked; she has gone from being one of the worst frontline Labour performers to one of the best. Her intellect—if not her judgement—should also not be in doubt. Treasury civil servants say she has a far

Peter Hoskin

Johnson tries to scratch the “Cameron veneer”

Alan Johnson’s sure putting himself about.  After interviews last week with the Sunday Times and with Fraser in our own magazine, he’s now got a comment piece in today’s Guardian.  Aside from the exaggerations it contains about Labour’s record on public service reform, it makes a rather odd argument.  Johnson’s first point is that Tory health policy is beholden to provider interest and too light on reform – which is, to some extent, true.  But – perhaps mindful that the same things could be said of Labour’s approach on education – he then goes on to attack the Tories’ transformative schools model for basically being too heavy on reform.  Here’s the

Peter Hoskin

Brown’s take on Harman

The rest of Labour seems sure that Harriet Harman is on manoeuvres, but Gordon Brown was adamant yesterday that there’s no truth to the Westminster gossip. He’s lying, I thought; it’s not as though he’d admit his deputy is undermining his position. But then this in today’s Telegraph: According to one key adviser, [Brown] does not believe reports that [Harman] is jockeying for position – not because he believes she is devoted to his cause, but because “he just thinks it’s preposterous anyone could even consider Harriet could lead anything”. Whether it’s true or not, the Harman story now has an irresistible momentum.  Quotes like that above, while designed to

Wednesday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The Spectator Inquiry–Part Two

We’ve had a great response to our call for help in The Spectator’s wiki-inquiry into the causes of the recession. Our hope is to draw on the collective wisdom of our readers – and we’ve received plenty of it already. So here is the second draft of our inquiry. Please bend it, shape it, any way you want it. Suggestions very much still welcome – on what we can add and, just as importantly, remove: we don’t want to overcomplicate this. If you made a suggestion earlier that is not incorporated and you think it should have been, please leave a comment saying so. If you want a question inserted

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Scrapaccino

Peter Mandelson’s outburst about the chairman of Starbucks is set to go down in political folklore as the bookend to the mushy peas guacamole tale. (Before I’m corrected, I know it wasn’t actually Mandelson who said it, but that is the legend and, as they say, print the legend). The spiritual leader of New Labour attacking the head of the company that brought lattes and cappuccinos to middle Britain feels like the end of an era. But to be serious, it is interesting that Mandelson got so riled by what the foam man said. I suspect that Jane Merrick is right in her analysis: “the strength of his words in the

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The Politico Future

At the New Republic, Gabe Sherman has a fun piece about the rise and rise of Politico, DC’s in-house paper for political intrigue and gossip. There’s plenty to consider: Politico is essentially a web-paper that carries ads in a small circulation print edition circulated on Capitol Hill and K Street. At the moment – though they say this is changing fast – it’s the print edition that makes the profits. Nonetheless, as a niche, but obsessed, audience there’s no doubting the impact Politico has made. The most entertaining bit of the piece is the sniffiness with which “old media” regard this whipper-snapper: Politico’s pace and self-promotion has irritated some in

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The Obama administration must pursue a unified Iran policy 

The greatest foreign policy challenge the Obama administration faces is Iran. The problem posed by Iran is compounded by the sheer number of ways in which Iran is a problem for the US. First and foremost, there is Iran’s nuclear programme. But then there is also Iran’s support for Shiite extremists in Iraq, its role as the major backer of the rejectionists of Hamas and Hezbollah and its desire to make life even more difficult for the US in Afghanistan. This makes policy coordination essential, it is no use the US pursuing one policy in one area only to undercut it elsewhere. But Michael Crowley’s excellent piece on Hillary Clinton’s

Martin Bright

Can the Artists Transform Our High Streets?

It can’t have escaped people’s notice that shops in our high streets are being boarded up at quite an alarming rate. I’ve noticed it in central London, but also in north Wales last week and in Sussex and Surrey this week. Lewes was looking particularly down-at-heel as I passed through: like it was bracing itself for something even more awful. I felt mixed emotions at the Guardian’s piece on the re-use of shops by artists. For all sorts of reasons, I am cheered by the fact that creative people are thinking their way out of the recession. But at the same time this really does confirm just how bad things have become.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

America rules the skies

Mark Bowden’s piece in The Atlantic on American air superiority and the danger of it waning is well worth reading. It is quite remarkable that no American solider has been killed by an enemy air attack since 1953. But the statistic that really grabbed my attention was this one: “The F‑15, the backbone of America’s air power for more than a quarter century, may just be the most successful weapon in history. It is certainly the most successful fighter jet. In combat, its kill ratio over more than 30 years is 107 to zero. Zero. In three decades of flying, no F‑15 has ever been shot down by an enemy plane—and

Daniel Korski

Obama’s “mini surge”

President Obama’s decision to deploy 12,000 more combat forces and 5,000 support personnel to the Afghan mission has drawn huge attention. USA Today’s front-page headline blares “Obama’s war: Deploying 17,000, the president raises the stakes in Afghanistan.” But the US soldiers were already planned to rotate into the theatre and, though the White House is keen to portray this as a Commander in Chief moment and the President making good on his campaign promises, it does not represent a new US Afghan policy. That policy is still being drawn up by Bruce Riedel, the former CIA analyst and Iran expert. In the end, more troops will be needed. But they

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Watford can’t live up to these expectations

One of the key parts of political spin is expectations’ management. But Labour seems to have completely forgotten this when it comes to the G20 summit. The way Labour is talking it up, it if it doesn’t end with Obama chairing Gordon Brown on his shoulders through the streets London while proclaiming that Brown has saved the world it will be a bit of an anti-climax. In reality, the summit probably will give Brown a bit of a boost. It will allow him to play the statesman on the world stage and associating with Obama can’t hurt. (Although the idea of a joint Brown-Obama Wembley rally, which reportedly made it

Peter Hoskin

Brown’s press conference: live blog | 18 February 2009

Stay tuned for live coverage of Brown’s press conference from 1200 onwards.  You can watch proceedings here. 1209: Brown’s taking his time.  Still no sign… 1213: Here’s Brown now, striding to the lecturn. Expect much ado about bonuses. 1213: He’s just come from meeting the heads of the IMF and World Bank.  Leads off saying that the government’s priority is “looking after hard working families”. 1214: Roll call of world leaders he’s meeting: “I thinking we’re fashioning a global solution”. 1215: This may not be PMQs, but it sounds quite similar so far.  Plenty of talk about the government’s “real action”.  No bashing of the “do nothing” Tories, though… 1215:

Lisa Hilton

Italy’s apathetic attitude towards corruption

Another day, another Berlusconi outrage. Writing on the “embarrassment” Silvio Berlusconi must have felt at having received the news of David Mills’s conviction for bribery whilst in conference with Nancy Pelosi, the British press have rather touchingly missed the point. The news is not that Mills has been found guilty, nor that due to Italy’s statute of limitations law he will be unlikely to serve a single day of his sentence, nor that Berlusconi’s government have exempted their leader from trial, nor yet that the “Alfano lodo” is likely to be further manipulated to prevent the judicial conclusion in the Mills case from being permitted as evidence in any future

Peter Hoskin

Redrawing Labour’s rhetoric

On the day the FT reveals that Mandelson is to “redraw [Labour’s] recession rhetoric”, the Times have this breaking story: Lord Mandelson, the Business Secretary, has attacked the chairman and chief executive of Starbucks, the American coffee giant, in a foul-mouthed tirade for talking down the British economy. Howard Schultz, who built the coffee chain which is now struggling in America, said in a television interview last night: “The concern for us is Western Europe and specifically the UK. The UK is in a spiral.” Lord Mandelson later said, within earshot of journalists: “Why should I have that guy running down the country? Who the **** is he?”