It is an odd summer in Westminster. The political big beasts have stayed around because of the Olympics. Government ministers have international schmoozing to do; and in any case, like their senior shadows, they would not want to risk being seen scrambling back from abroad in the event of a national emergency. They are not,
In the end, after sniping and carping and moaning for months about how ghastly the Olympics was going to be, I thought the opening ceremony rather wonderful and therefore felt ashamed of myself for having been so aloof. I had not expected such a breadth of vision, nor such beauty, nor indeed the copious room
Back in 2006, I broke a great story in the Times about Tony Blair’s tie. Yep, that’s me, always the heavyweight. But it was good stuff. What we’d noticed — me and Simon from the picture desk — was that whenever Blair felt particularly under pressure, he’d pop out the next day in his special Olympic
The Lib Dems have been thoroughly ineffectual in the coalition. So much so that some of us — including Hugo Rifkind in this magazine — have asked why they bother to turn up for work. I wonder whether the Lib Dems press on with the coalition because they can’t face admitting to its failure. They
Have you been following Mitt Romney’s ‘gaffes’? In Britain, he said that there were some concerns about security before the Olympics. In Israel, he said that the ‘economic vitality’ of Israel compared favourably with its neighbours and attributed this in part to ‘the power of culture’. He said that Iran should be confronted, not appeased.
A ‘triple dip’ sounds like a move that might defeat a drug-pumped Olympic gymnast, but it’s what some City pundits now expect the UK economy to perform. After a 0.7 per cent drop in GDP between April and June — the third consecutive quarter of the double-dip recession — a ‘technical bounce’ should make the
