I am still reeling from Antony Barnett’s Dispatches investigation into MPs and lobbying. Truly brilliant TV. Horribly watchable. Exquisitely awful. I watched half of it from behind my hands. This was Curb Your Enthusiasm meets the Office: political Dr Who for grown-ups. Why is it always the Blairites who get themselves into these messes? Is it
Anyone who cares about political debate should read the essay by the historian Tony Judt in today’s Guardian. It is an astonishing piece of work which argues for a renewal of social democracy in response to the failure of the New Labour experiment (which Judt considers as evidence of the redundancy of the philosophy of
Hats off to my good friend Julia Hobsbawm for sparking a debate over delivery in the public sector via her Editorial Intelligence organisation. I had the pleasure of chairing a discussion as part of her D4Deliver campaign on Thursday and you can listen to the podcast here. The top-notch panel included Mary Riddell of the
It is difficult to imagine two more unappealing characters than Michael Ashcroft and Charlie Whelan. Just when you thought the Westminster culture couldn’t get more decadent, these two great toads come forward to squat on the body politic. The sight of senior politicians lining up to trade insults about which of the men is more
The Liberal Democrats have developed a reputation for being able to face in two directions at the same time. Their Janus-like qualities have stood them in good stead during their rise to parliamentary credibility over the past decade. This week, Nick Clegg has appealed to Conservative voters in the pages of The Spectator, while my
On the back of Andrew Rawnsley’s revelations, I decided to write about Gordon Brown’s “bad citizens” for the politics column of the Spectator. Under the magazine’s new online rules, this is only available a week after publication. But now you can read the filth and the fury in all its sordid glory. I have since
There is an excellent piece on the Ashcroft affair from Martin Ivens in the Sunday Times today. He quotes a member of Team Cameron: “Why didn’t David just take Ashcroft out and shoot him? His work is done. What’s the point of him hanging about?” Well said. No one has quite got to the bottom
It is now established in that nether world somewhere between the media myth-making machine and the public imagination that Gordon Brown is a brooding paranoid who cannot control his temper. John Major tucked his shirt into his underpants; Gordon Brown pushes secretaries out of chairs. Some stories stick to politicians not because people know they
The sight of two unelected members of the legislature and John Prescott lecturing Andrew Rawnsley about political propriety on Newsnight last night was one of the more surreal moments of the past week. Lord Steel in particular has very little right to the moral high ground as a longstanding member of the board of General
The parliamentary pass system is supposed to be strictly adhered to in order to stop lobbyists and interest groups getting undue access to politicians (indeed I recently received a slap on the wrist for not updating the journalists’ register of interests immediately after I left the New Statesman. And quite right too). Guests of passholders
So Nick Clegg has acted against Jihad Jenny Tonge following her statement to the Jewish Chronicle that there should be an inquiry into stories that the Israeli army was harvesting organs in Haiti. But by removing her as health spokesperson in the Lords without removing the Lib Dem whip, he may just be prolonging the agony. If he
The most exciting news of recent weeks (slightly underplayed by the Guardian which had the scoop) is the news that a group of freedom of information campaigners are planning to turn Iceland into a haven for free speech. This is potentially an extraordinary idea. Iceland would attract media organisations and start-ups by protecting them from
Listening to George Osborne on Today (and stripping away the visceral prejudice I always feel at his sneering patrician tone) I have to recognise that he was saying something very interesting. The idea of throwing open the public sector to worker-control is very, very intriguing. Co-operatives are the future of Britain: this is not something
It’s not hard to see why the Prime Minister opted for a soft interview with Piers Morgan as his latest attempt to relaunch himself with the British public. Forget that he said he wasn’t the kind of politician who used his family as political props (always a daft thing for someone in public life to
I am pleased to report that the New Deal of the Mind Think Tank Clash at the Soutbank Centre on Tuesday went down a storm. The event sold out the Purcell Room, which suggests that there is an audience for ideas out there. We wanted to have a series of quickfire debates (two minutes
I am the last person to speak ill of the New Statesman. But even during those golden years when I worked at the magazine, I have to admit we struggled with a tendency towards earnestness. During the Kampfner era, the senior editorial team tried time and again to introduce a little levity among the wonkiness
I first became aware of another Martin Bright with an interest in radical Islam a couple of years ago when a neighbour commented on remarks I had supposedly made on Any Answers. “Bit strong”, he said. As I hadn’t called the programme, I just thought he was being a bit weird. Then he mentioned another
Gita Sahgal has now published a statement following her suspension from Amnesty International. I have seen it at Stroppyblog, but please circulate it as widely as possible. Gita has been an active member of Women Against Fundamentalism for many years. Perhaps the publicity around this case will allow their voices to be heard. Amnesty International
It is not often that my cynical jaw drops open at a story in the papers. But the piece on page 13 of the Sunday Times provoked just such a reaction. Congratulations to Richard Kerbaj for blowing the lid on Amnesty International’s relationship with former Guantanamo detainee Moazzam Begg and his organisation Cage Prisoners, who
The MPs’ expenses scandal has taken another extraordinary turn. Jim Devine, David Chaytor and Elliott Morley were already humbled and now they face criminal charges. With political scandals there are rarely any smoking guns. Cash for Honours was the last police investigation to come close. But this time it doesn’t look good for the miserable