There was some rather touching Twitter activity from Charlie Whelan over the weekend (I have corrected the spelling). “Just got message from old pal Graham Sharpe at William Hill. Hung Parliament odds slashed to 2/1. Says ‘Shrewd punters’ are on this.” This is the nearest I have seen to an official admission that a hung
There has been a general consensus that Tony Blair was a class act in front of the Chilcot Inquiry. Even those who see him as a liar and a war criminal must have been impressed by the way he handled himself – although choosing to show no contrition in a room of people that included
It’s possibly the most important whistleblowing site in the world, but Wikileaks has suspended activity due to lack of funds. Azeem Azhar of Viewsflow has aleady set up a Facebook group to raise support for the site, which won the Economist 2008 Freedom of Expression Award and Amnesty International’s 2009 New Media Award. The site has been
I have just received what I hope is the last of a series of letters from the parliamentary commissioner, John Lyon. He has informed me that a complaint against me has finally been resolved, which is something of a relief. When I first heard from him I must say I was irritated. Someone called Mark
He’s the man who managed to be the campaign manager to Tony Blair and then Gordon Brown. Just after the election-that-never-was in 2007 he let it be known that he had counselled against a snap election. Now the Sunday Times publishes the memo he sent to Tony Blair suggesting that the war might turn out
As the Labour Party descends further into student union gesture politics, it is perhaps appropriate that the last backbench rebellion before the election is set to be over Israel and the Palestinians. As James has pointed out on Coffee House, disgruntled Labour MPs are preparing for battle over the issue of universal jurisdiction, which blew
It seemed odd when universities were given their own mini-department under John Denham. Remember the Department of Innovation, Universities and Skills? It lasted a matter of months before being sucked into the giant Business, Innovation and Skills department. But at least with a Cabinet-level representative, universities had a voice at the top table. University vice-chancellors
It is just plain bizarre that Gordon Brown has announced that he will serve a full term if Labour wins the next election. He should be playing down his role in the forthcoming election (difficult I know, when he is Prime Minister) not reminding people that he will be around for another four years. It
I am forced to admit that I misjudged the nature of the Hoon-Hewitt plot. I credited them with having lined up some sort of serious Cabinet-level support (I have to say I assumed they had squared it with Mandelson). Whatever flaws you might attribute to the pair, they were once serious players in the New
As Ben Brogan has pointed out, if the GH/PH plot was not conceived with the say-so of Peter Mandelson (or at least the nod) then it won’t be going anywhere. At the same time, if Mandy tells Gordon that he must agree to the secret ballot then he will find ot very difficult to resist.
This really is a clever little wheeze from Geoff Hoon and Patricia Hewitt. Why did no one think of a secret ballot before? People have been fixated on Cabinet delegations and rebels instead of calling Gordon Brown’s bluff on this most serious of issues – democracy. The Prime Minister whom no one has voted into
Apart from the odd terrorist plot and the beginning of an already very nasty election campaign, nothing much has happened in my absence! Yes I had a nice Christmas and New Year, thanks. It certainly made a change from being threatened with a libel action by an Iraqi billionaire as I was last year. And
As the perfect end to the political year, the three wise men of our main political parties have brought the newborn infant of our renewed parliamentary system the gift of a televised debate. This could actually be quite exciting. David Cameron was soundly beaten by David Davis in at least one of his leadership debates
Since working at the Jewish Chronicle, I have discovered that many in the Jewish community will have nothing to do with The Guardian. This is based on the pre-conception that the newspaper of choice of the chattering classes is a pro-Palestinian rag which condones terrorism on the one side while never missing an opportunity to
What a bizarre decision by Channel 4 News to invite the Muslim Council of Britain’s Daud Abdullah on to talk about the attempt to arrest the Israeli politician Tzipi Livni for her involvement in Operation Cast Lead in Gaza. And even more peculiar that Jon Snow tried to stop the Jewish Chronicle’s Stephen Pollard raising
I was struggling towards an analysis of the true meaning of the PBR in Friday’s post, but a couple of the Sunday commentators were a little closer to the mark. John Rentoul, in an article with the provocative headline Labour is Unelectable Again the Independent on Sunday’s chief political commentator has finally announced the death of
Six years ago I wrote a review for the Observer about Paul Berman’s Terror and Liberalism, a quite brilliant polemic about the way the legitimate liberal desire to overturn the conventional or the bourgeois can so often turn to murderous terror. I recognised at the time that it was an extraordinary book, but I couldn’t
Labour’s Pre-Budget Report has been interpreted as a cynical electioneering exercise, a last-ditch attempt to to open up clear blue water between Labour and the Conservatives. Perhaps paradoxically, I thought it was a sign that the Government knows the game is up. Of course the Labour Party has to fight the election – it can’t
My posh Tory friends get really irritated when I talk about class. Almost as annoyed as my posh Labour friends. The idea that class was somehow excised from the political discourse by New Labour is absurd. We live in a country where the two dominant political parties are essentially representative of their class. And why not?
It was great to see the cover story in Progress about this country’s pernicious libel laws. The magazine did well to commission Jonathan Heawood, the rather brilliant director of English PEN, who really knows the subject. Central to his argument is the point that the government risks being outflanked by the Tories on this issue: