James has predicted that there will be a good news element to the Budget that no one has yet predicted. I do hope there is good news, but I also hope it isn’t presented with a last-minute flourish. The 10 pence tax fiasco should be warning enough on this front. Judged on his set-piece performances
I am always blown away by the Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression Awards. But for some reason, last night’s event seemd to throw up an even more astonishing roster of award winners than usual. It was also good that so many were there in person. (In a surreal touch, Paul Staines, aka Guido Fawkes,
Three pieces of essential reading today. Ian Kirby’s allegations in the News of the World placing Labour General Secretary Ray Collins in meetings about the Reg Rag website; Jonathan Oliver Isabel Oakeshott and Jon Ungoed-Thomas”s analysis of the Damian McBride smear scandal in the Sunday Times (Oliver himself has long been a target of the Brownites)
Shiraz Maher, the former HIzb-ut-Tahrir member turned thoughtful opponent of Islamist ideology has made his position clear on Harry’s Place. I commend this article to anyone who wants to understand why large sections of the left have got themselves into a terrible muddle over this issue. Maher was the author of a report on radical Islam for
Just to clarify. I didn’t intend to suggest in my last post that Damian McBride’s smear tactics would have been excusable if they had worked. Sorry if I gave that impression. I was simply trying to explain the thinking behind the operation. The smears were unacceptable in any circumsatnces The Prime Minister’s belated apology suggests
The revelations over the weekend about Damian McBride’s pitiful smear campaign have probably delivered the fatal blow to Labour’s chances of winning the next election. The only possible excuse for writing such filth would be that it served the interests of the battle against the Tories. It has had the opposite effect. Most decent people
It’s Easter Sunday and I have better things to do than think about sleazy emails. I’m unlikely to be able to post again about this again today, but I have much to say on the subject and Iain Dale in the Mail on Sunday has already quoted my previous comments about the thuggish company the Prime
The tawdry tale of Damian McBride’s “juvenile and inappropriate” emails about Conservative politicians is pretty grim as it is. But it is just possible to imagine how the situation might be worse. What if someone even closer to McBride were on the circulation list, for example? Someone like Charlie Whelan, for example. That would be
The official line from Number 10 is that Damian McBride’s emails were “juvenile and inappropriate” and that all staff will be reminded of the “appropriate” use of resources. Presumably they will also be reminded of how to be grown up. It has been an open secret for some time that there has been mission creep
Let’s make one thing crystal clear. When I refer to jihad in the headline of this piece, I mean it in the non-violent sense of “holy struggle”, rather than the nastier “holy war” kind. This is an important distinction and I’m happy to make it straight away. You can’t be too careful these days. I waded
Stephen Glover had an interesting take on the row between NIck Cohen and Sunder Katwala, head honcho at the Fabian Society, in his Independent column this week. Just to recap, Nick accused Sunder of being part of the left-wing consensus which failed to recognise the seriousness of the threat of extremist Islam. Sunder then gathered a group of writers and activists together to sign
I always get it in the neck here when I quote Polly Toynbee. But maybe I will get away with quoting her quoting Professor Danny Blanchflower, who, like me, is warning against losing a generation to the recession. Here’s the relevant passage from Polly’s column in today’s Guardian: “The man now on a mission to persuade Nos
I have stolen the headline to this post from a breakfast discussion held by “reputation management firm” Fishburn Hedges, where I was a guest speaker this week. Me and my fellow panelists were there to talk about the budget (coming your way on April 22nd) and give some idea of how the media gears up to
When I began making my film about Ken Livingstone last year it became clear pretty quickly that there were serious issues around the accountability of the Mayor of London. To his credit this was something that Ken always realised. When challenged about the fact that he ran London as his personal fiefdom, Ken agreed, because
At the height of the internal Labour Party coup against Gordon Brown just before the last Labour Party conference even the Prime Minister’s greatest detratctors agreed that he did the international economic stuff rather well. I remember one senior Blairite heavyweight suggesting that after his removal, Brown should be allowed to occupy a new role as
I can’t stay silent on the issue of Nick Cohen’s intervention at the Orwell Prize shotlisting event earlier this week. But I can’t really say too much either as Nick, in an act of over-extravagant loyalty, claimed it was a travesty that I had not made it from the longlist to the shortlist. I have
It wasn’t so long ago that senior Labour politicians were suggesting that Gordon Brown should use the coup of the G20/Obama visit to bounce straight into an election. It seems bizarre now, but such was the confidence of the Labour Party in those early days of the economic crisis that there were close allies of the
A lot of us have been wondering what Westminster might be like under the Tories. What, for instance, would the parliamentary press lobby look like under a Cameron government? A return to deference, perhaps. Would the gentlemen and the ladies of the press take their information dutifully from the PM’s spokesman or woman (who would presumably be
I’ve long been an acolyte of US new media guru Clay Shirky. His book Here Comes Everybody is essential reading for anyone interested in the future of the media and the future of… well, let’s just say the future. One of my students (thanks Alex) has just alerted me to these thoughts, entitled, Newspapers and Thinking the
I know I said I wouldn’t do this, but I have to plug one more article on the New Deal of the Mind. Suzanne Moore make a great contribution to the debate in Downing Street on Tuesday by warning that the initiative must not become just another opportunity for the arts lobby to hand out