Alex Massie is Scotland Editor of The Spectator.
One of the rules of American political journalism is that every four years there must be an attempt to guage the likelihood of a “serious” third party challenge that will change everything we’d previously thought we’d known about American politics. Happily, this year is no exception. TIME’s Alex Altman asks “Can a Well-Heeled Group of
Jonathan Bernstein is mildly miffed that now that Newt Gingrich’s self-inflated bubble is collapsing too few people are remembering those who always said this would happen. I quite agree. (Complete Newt-scepticism collected here.) As I said and still say: Perhaps Republican voters aren’t yet willing to “settle” for Mitt Romney but despite the Union-Leader and
I’ve been away and then laid low by some bug, so am late to writing anything about the sad news of Vaclav Havel’s death. Pete has already noted his 1990 New Year speech, but I’d also recommend reading David Remnick’s profile of Havel, published by the New Yorker in 2003. There’s plenty of good stuff
It was only yesterday that I remembered I should read Christopher Hitchens’ latest article for Vanity Fair: a touching, mordantly funny, survey of life, Nietzsche, Sidney Hook and death. Though one knew the occasion would not be long delayed, it remains wincingly sad that it must be one of the last things the great fighter
As someone who finds the Cult of Reagan a depressing, even nauseating spectacle, I doff my hat to Victor Davis Hanson for this paragraph published at National Review Online: I hope the present primary race does not keep descending into monotonous boasts of who is the more Reaganesque of the candidates, in which we do
Brother Korski is, as always, the voice of urbane reason on all matters european. I have little idea whther David Cameron done brilliant in Brussels lately or whether he’s blundered badly. Neither verdict seems satisfactory or sufficiently nuanced. There is this, however: in one respect he has done the rest of europe a favour: had
Let us hope they are. A wailing letter to the editors of the Lancet, signed by Stanton Glantz and other anti-tobacco fanatics, complains that the Dutch government “is all but closing down its tobacco control operations”. One can only hope this is the case and wish that other governments might follow suit. Apparently: It would
Ahoy Londoners! This Thursday, the good people at the Adam Smith Institute are holding a pre-Christmas cheer-fest at which your blogger will be speaking. It’s titled 2012: The End of the World As We Know It?* and the panel comprises Douglas Carswell, Brendan O’Neill, Jamie Whyte and, er, me. It all kicks off at 6.30pm
It would take a heart of stone not to laugh when reading about Australia’s latest cricket crisis and, reader, I’ve no heart of stone. Much more of this and we’ll have to wonder if the Aussies really deserve a five test series these days. The present crew are, apparently, “The Lowest of the Low”. To
This is a question that meets the classic definition of John Rentoul’s famous-to-them-that-ken series of Questions To Which The Answer Is No. That is, the people asking the question think the answer is Yes when in fact it is No. This question, like many of the SNP’s other witticisms, is the brainchild of Angus Robertson,
In the end your view of the battle for the Republican party’s presidential nomination comes down to the degree of confidence you have that Republican voters, especially but not exclusively in the early primary states, remain capable of remembering that the election that matters takes place in November, not the spring. If you doubt they
This is, according to the Spitfire & Bullshit brigade, a great triumph for David Cameron and, more generally, for euroscepticism. If so, I’d hate to see what defeat looks like. What, precisely, has the Prime Minister vetoed? It seems to me that the Franco-German european mission remains alive and well and, if viewed in these
This is scarcely the most important part of today’s EU shenanigans but, post DSK and all that, one must admire French diplomatic flair when it comes to this sort of thing: The French are very angry – one French diplomat says that Britain is acting “like a man who wants to go to a wife-swapping
A typically swell post from Chris Dillow: Take four recent developments: – Joey Barton provokes “fury” by saying that suicide is selfish, with some of his critics invoking the weasel work “inappropriate“. – Over 30,000 people complain to the BBC about Jeremy Clarkson’s “shoot the strikers” comment. – Luis Suarez gives Fulham fans the finger,
So spake the Taioseach, a Mr Enda Kenny of County Mayo, on Sunday night. Difficult choices are never easy. There is something near-fabulous about the phrase. It has certainly prokoked Fintan O’Toole most severely. He’s in rasping form this week Savour the phrase. Hold it to the light. Swirl it round the glass. Stick your
There are many, many, many reasons why Newt Gingrich will not be the 45th President of the United States (assuming, as I do not and actually think pretty unlikely, he wins the GOP nomination) but among them is his habit of saying stuff like this: That’s from 2008. Here’s my transcription of what he says
A post arguing that this is a Question To Which the Answer is No has been cropping up on my Facebook feed lately and now I see that Andrew Sullivan has linked to it as well. As Waldo Jaquiath puts it, the cheeseburger was until relatively recently an impractical concoction. Not impossible, perhaps, but one
Meanwhile, in more examples of sloppy Labour arguments here’s a tweet Jim Murphy sent this afternoon: Oh dear. Murphy is usually better than this. I know and everyone else who pays any attention to Scottish politics (this includes Jim Murphy) knows that Alex Salmond has long admired the Republic of Ireland’s low corporation taxes; he
Ed Balls is a bonny fighter and even his opponents often appear to enjoy being wound-up by the Shadow Chancellor’s pleasingly-shameless* approach to opposition. There was a typical piece of Ballsian chicanery during this afternoon’s debate on the economy when Balls accused George Osborne of stubbornly sticking to a failed “Plan A” and, to buttress
Three cheers for Bagehot for this superb post on the Guardian/LSE’s abject justification for inquiry into this summer’s riots. Mr Rennie puts it exceedingly well: Now, put me in many contexts, and I am quite the hand-wringing bourgeois liberal. Watching Newsnight yesterday evening, I fear I came over all Judge Dredd. The researcher’s contention, in