Alex Massie is Scotland Editor of The Spectator.
Well, I was wrong. I thought Mitt Romney might do rather better than it seems he has. As I type this CNN has just called Ohio for Barack Obama, confirming that the President will be re-elected to serve a second term as President of the United States. It looks as though Nate Silver’s projections are
Asked my prediction a few days ago, I looked at all the possibilities and plumped for Obama 294, Romney 244. This is tediously in the middle of the general range of possible outcomes and therefore not the kind of wild-assed, long-shot punt anyone can occasionally ride to more fame than they merit. Sometimes even lousy
No matter the result of today’s Presidential election, it will not be Morning in America tomorrow. Of course the successful candidate will talk of America’s essential greatness. He will promise a fresh era of co-operation and respect in Washington (this time for real). Hope will be on the agenda and perhaps, if the final polls
Hats-off to Bloomberg’s Max Abelson for this delicious, bone-dry report on how Wall Street’s finest have coped with the impact of Hurricane Sandy. Wall Street turned to Bordeaux, sushi and faxes as Hurricane Sandy wreaked the most havoc in the history of the city’s transit system and closed stock markets on consecutive days for the
So, for the third time in the last four American elections it looks as though this contest is gonna be a close one. As in 2004, however, the narrow-but-significant advantage still lies with the incumbent President. Indeed it is possible that this is one of those rare occasions in which the electoral college actually hurts
Apparently so. You can always count on the British left to sneer at the United States. (You can count on quite a bit of the British right to do so too.) According to Jon Snow, the veteran Channel 4 news presenter, the United States should probably recognise that it brought Hurricane Sandy on itself. If
If two things could have been predicted about Hurricane Sandy it was that, first, far too many people would waste time pondering the likely impact of the storm upon next week’s presidential elections and, second, that someone would look upon Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s steady leadership and ask why he’s not running for President. I had
Philip Hammond is one of those ministers who seems to be held in greater esteem by those inside the Westminster hamlet than those of us who live beyond its boundaries. Westminster’s natives may, of course, be right, but it is striking how often the Secretary of State for Defence prefers to cast his arguments in
Monday morning in dreich late October. What more appropriate moment to ponder the questions of corporation tax and Northern Ireland? The question of whether the Northern Ireland Assembly should control the rate of corporation tax payable in the two-thirds of Ulster for which it is responsible won’t go away, you know. Nor, despite the fact
I’ve written a piece for today’s Scotsman noting that there are some parallels between Scotland’s independence stushie and the pre-Iraq War rammy a decade ago. Only this time it’s the nationalists who are, if you will allow the comparison, the neoconservatives. Just as pro-war advocates back then (and I was one of them) cheerfully labelled
How hard can it be to tell the difference between a samurai sword and a white cane? Relatedly, how difficult is to be accepted as the kind of person qualified to serve as a member of the Lancashire police? The news that a 61-year old blind man was tasered by police searching for a “suspect”
Barack Obama won the second of the three Presidential debates last night but he did not beat Mitt Romney as thoroughly as he had been beaten by the challenger in their first encounter. If you were compiling an aggregate score for the debates so far the President would still be behind. I doubt Republicans will
See them there? That’s Nick Clegg and Chris Huhne rallying for Gary McKinnon before the last election. This alone should have been enough to persuade the Daily Mail to rethink its mighty campaign on behalf of Mr McKinnon. Apparently not, however, and so the Home Secretary today passed her responsibilities to Paul Dacre and bravely
Here’s David Torrance with the kind of acute observation I wish I’d thought of first. There is, he writes, a comparison to be drawn between Alex Salmond and Boris Johnson: [Salmond’s] approval ratings also remain remarkably high, but then Salmond enjoys a very specific sort of popularity. Asked who best “stands up for Scotland” he
Yesterday Fraser asked: Scotland has a tragically long list of problems (especially with inner-city poverty) and [the No campaign] can ask: which of these problem would independence solve? This is a fair question, albeit one that offers the retort: and which of them are being solved by the Union the noo? Of course, this question
So now’s the day and now’s the hour at which, if you will forgive the mixed allusions, we may discern the beginning of the end of the beginning. Eight months of often tedious wrangling ends this afternoon as David Cameron and Alex Salmond agree some kind of “deal” to fix the terms and conditions of
British politics is returning to normal. The two-party system is back. That, it seems to me, is the chief conclusion to be drawn from this year’s conference season*. The opposition have been supplanted by Labour and we’re back to the familiar sight of watching the Conservatives and Labour knock lumps out of one another. It
For months now, David Cameron and his government have been pursued around the ring. Chased by Labour and harassed by events they have often been caught on the ropes. Off-balance and out of position Cameron has struggled to respond to Labour’s jabs. No wonder he’s behind on points. The Prime Minister’s speech to the Conservative
Dr Liam Fox is no dummie so I’m not sure quite what he means when, as reported by Isabel, he told Tories gathered at a Carlton Club fringe event: What I want is to see us keeping faith with the British people and I want to see us having a slogan at the next election
These days, alas, the only time the leader of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist party makes it onto the front pages of the nation’s newspapers is if she’s made some almighty blunder. Sadly, Ruth Davidson’s speech to a fringe meeting in Birmingham this week was a calamity. That’s the subject of my latest Think Scotland
