Uk politics

I just took a quick stroll around the block from Old Queen St, to check out the situation on the ground outside the Chilcot Inquiry.  The most striking thing is how few protestors there are – about ten at most, I’d say, and a fraction of the number that marched out against Blair a few weeks ago.  Brown doesn’t even make one placard’s list of – and I quote – “Lying R. Soles,” which includes Blair, Campbell, Straw and Goldsmith. It’s all rather suggestive of how Brown has managed, over the years, to separate himself from those who made the political and moral case for war.  But there lies the

Might Gordon Brown get away with it at the Chilcot Inquiry today? I suspect so. The media seems obsessed with the run-up to war, whereas the real crime was the betrayal of Basra. Brown made false claims to Parliament about the fall of violence in the city which, as he would have known, was being left in the hands of Shiite death squads. He would have known that, as the Chilcot Inquiry established, we had just a couple of hundred soldiers trying to keep peace in a city of millions. He misled Britain out of Basra as knowingly and mendaciously as Blair led Britain into Iraq – leaving the people

The various parties involved in the televised leaders’ debate have finally come to an agreement on how they will work.  You can read full details here, courtesy of Sky.  But the main points are: i) Topics and locations. The first debate will be hosted by ITV’s Alastair Stewart, in Manchester, and will cover domestic affairs.  The second will be Sky’s Adam Boulton, in Bristol, and will cover foreign policy.  And the third will be the Beeb’s David Dimbleby, in Birmingham, on the economy. ii) Structure. The rather rigid structure of each programme will be as follows: “Each leader will make an opening statement on the theme of the debate lasting

A striking passage from Peter Mandelson’s speech at Mansion House last night: “Starting in the 1980s we allowed the diversity of the British economy – or lack of it – to approach the limits of what was prudent. Sometimes there was an economic fatalism about manufacturing decline and falling British goods exports, rather than seeing them as something that policy and private enterprise should address. Our economy, and certainly our corporate tax base, became too dependent on the City. We were also carrying a huge hidden insurance liability for a sector that was taking badly understood and inadequately policed risks.” Yes, I know Mandelson takes things back to the 1980s

I wrote yesterday that Lord Ashcroft’s statement about his tax status should have drawn a “rather neat line under the issue”.  Sure, it’s hardly ideal that someone with such influence in our politics hasn’t been paying UK taxes on much of his wealth (something which could equally be said of Labour donors like Lord Paul and Lakshmi Mittal), and was keeping mysterious about it.  But at least, now, most of the uncertainty surrounding Ashcroft’s position has been removed.  And we have his indication that he will become a full UK taxpayer in due course.   But I hadn’t counted on the tenacity of Labour, who are trying to spin this