The Labour party now has three weeks to save itself from oblivion. The only question facing MPs is whether the open fratricide that would follow a challenge to Gordon Brown would be preferable to the death by a thousand humiliating cuts if the Prime Minister sits tight at Number 10. The European and local council
It was an honour to write the Spectator politics column this week. You can find my thoughts on the collaspe of Labour morale here.
I have been reading Marcia Williams’s 1972 memoir of her time with Harold Wilson, Inside Number 10 (no don’t ask why) and come to the chapter with the wonderful title The Inevitability of Gradualness. Here, Wilson’s former personal and private secretary weighs up the successes and failures of the 1960s Wilson governments. On the negative
We blithely say that politicians are despised even more than journalists. But those who work closely with MPs generally end up thinking they are a pretty decent lot. The revelations of the past week have changed all that. Speaker Martin’s intervention today was a new low point. Beyond embarrassing, it verged on the seriously chillling. Poor Nick
The real question for Labour now is how the party will rebuild itself. This has important democratic implications: we have witnessed how an over-mighty government can operate without the scrutiny of a strong oppoistion over the past decade and it is often not a pretty sight. But there is a serious problem for the Labour
So tomorrow’s Telegraph has the full gruesome details of parliamentary expenses. This is terribly embarrassing for the Cabinet and would have been no more than that in different times. But the problem is that the government has now become synonymous in the public imagination (or at least the media’s imagination) with the wider collapse of
If the Tory leader is as canny a political operator as I think he is then he should adopt Compass’s idea of setting up the Post Office as a not-for-profit company immediately. The idea from the left of centre think tank had been dismissed too quickly by Downing Street, which seems determined to alienate as
Mental illness has always taken up a lot of space in the lexicon of New Labour, I have always thought Alistair Campbell’s own brush with the black dog had something to do with this. From Ron Davies’s “moment of madness” to Gordon Brown’s “psychological flaws”, the terror of incipient madeness has always been a New Labour nightmare.
Hazel Blears knows exactly what she’s doing by intervening in print during the Labour Party’s darkest spring. Think of it the other way around. Ministers know that when the Prime Minister pledges 100 per cent support then it’s curtains. It’s a sign of the declining authority of Number 10 that this rule has now been inverted. Cabinet
It was vintage John Prescott on the Today programme today. Utterly incoherent, but the man just never, ever gives up. The way he dismissed the recent snipers was just so vicious. Only a party at war with itself could produce quite this level of high-class bitchiness. David Blunkett, it turns out, had refused to join
This month’s Standpoint carries a powerful piece by Nick Cohen about the recent bad behaviour in the court of the Prime Minister. I will say no more than that.
The rhododendron flowers are out, so it must be time for the big beasts of the Labour Party to stir again. Charles Clarke has said that he’s ashamed to be a Labour MP after the events of the past few weeks. Well, who wouldn’t be? Clarke says there are no signs of a leadership challenge, but
I thought the Cameron-Clegg show (or was it the Clegg-Cameron show?) provided us with an interesting new double-act today. Was this the dry-run for the coalition following the next election? The two men didn’t look entirely uncomfortable in each other’s company, I thought. The government’s position on the Gurkhas is so patently unjust that it provided
A truly magnificent piece by Gideon Rachman in the Financial Times yetsterday. An extremely nuanced argument, which ends with the following paragraph: “One of Mrs Thatcher’s most famous phrases was: “There is no alternative.” As yet, no major political figure in Britain or the western world has really articulated a coherent alternative to the free-market
It’s not often you find a full-blown leftie on the pages of The Times (or any British newspaper come to that). But Janice Turner’s attack o the undeserving rich today is magnificent. Get Thee To a Miserable Swiss Tax Haven is a wonderful, joyous broadside against the whingers who believe that the new 50 pence
For my views on the Galley case please go to my Index on Censorship blog post today. My point is that whistleblowers almost always end up getting stuffed. They are soon forgotten by the institutiojns which have benefitted from their information.
The ersatz English pride expressed by the entirely bogus St George’s Day celebrations is deeply creepy. I hate it. Wandering through London this week and bumping into people wrapped in red and white flags or dressed as knights has made me feel deeply embarrassed to be English. And how can Boris Johnson be so so
The papers make pretty depressing reading this morning, whether you are Alistair Darling, a Spactator reader facing the prospect of a 50p top tax rate or a member of the mythological “hardworking” family. Growth at its lowest rate since the war, stratospheric debt, unemployment over two million: the end of the first decade of the
It is so very tempting to storm in after a Budget and make sweeping assessments. Journalists are paid to do just that but they risk being blinded by ideology or government briefings. Fraser has already decided that this was the worst Budget ever. And the front pages suggest that editors are none too happy with
I was delighted to see Geoffrey Robinson’s letter in The Times today where he clarifies that my departure from the New Statesman had nothing to do with my sometimes critical attitude towards the Prime Minister and his government. Here is the letter in full in case anyone is interested: Sir, Paul Staines (“Guido Fawkes”, Opinion, April