I always worry about attacks on the so-called elitism of our top universities. It strikes me that academic excellence must always be the “sine qua non” of access to the best institutions in the country. It must be in the interests of those institutions to open their doors to the widest possible pool of talent.
I had the pleasure of guesting on Jon Pienaar’s political podcast yesterday. Inevitably we ended up talking about the death of Ivan Cameron and found ourselves lost for words. But Jon made a very interesting point. He noted that the story showed how little we really know about the lives of our prominent politicians, however
A friend has just pointed out this extraordinary quote from The Times article on Fred Goodwin (I have stripped him of his knighthood as the government should). “The handout means that RBS will have received more than £45 billion in public funds, equivalent to a penny on income taxes for more than a decade” I
I was very sad to hear the news that Ivan, David Cameron’s six-year-old son, has died. This is a terrible blow for him and his family. There is really not much more I can say.
So Jack Straw has been the subject of an email scam. I hear some fraudster was putting it about that he was a politician of principle. His veto on the release the Cabinet minutes in the run-up to the Iraq war is a disgrace. The man who introduced the Freedom of Information Act has become
I’m still recovering from Lord Mandelson’s deeply peculiar behaviour during his interview with Nick Robinson on the Ten O’Clock News. He was talking perfectly calmly (too calmly) about the row over his plans to sell of 30 per cent of the Post Office. Nick Robinson made the perfectly valid and uncontroverisal point that it may seem
The Conservative Party’s reliance on Michael Ashcroft has always mystified me. How a once great political party has allowed itself to become quite so dependent on one man, I will never know? The conventional wisdom is that his money rescued the Tories from the abyss. It is certainly true that Ashcroft’s pamphlet, Smell the Coffee, was a
As the Cabinet meets in Southampton today there is one issue that will be strictly off the agenda: the Brown legacy. I have it on very good authority that Gordon and those around him will not even allow the subject to be discussed in case it suggests that he knows the next election is lost.
Francis Elliott’s story in The Times this morning is well-sourced and identifies the dangerous faultline that runs through the Labour Party right up to the Cabinet. Francis reports that Lord Mandelson is (once again) considering ripping up the equality legislation announced inthe Queen’s speech because of fears of its effect on small businesses during the
I’ve been teaching the politics specialism at City University’s journalism course and I’ve been pleasantly surprised how much fun it has been. I was warned before I started that my student would be barely literate, apathetic lumps with just a passing knowledge of British politics. I was surprised how few of them regularly read a newspaper,
I was always shocked by the level of vitriol among New Statesman and Guardian readers when a writer stepped away from the comfort zone of received wisdom and cuddly “I’m a nice person too” leftie-ness. Suggest that perhaps Hamas is anything other than a resistance movement or that people who vote Conservative might be people too
I have already been teased by the readers of this blog for suggesting that it was possible to feel sympathy for Tessa Jowell and her family over the conviction of her solicitor husband David Mills. Now you have the chance to read my thoughts on the Olympics minister at more length in today’s Observer, where I have
If there is one message Labour and Conservative politicians should take into the next election it is never to underestimate the Liberal Democrats. They always do better than you expect them to, especially in an electoral system where there is no rational reason to vote for them. There have now been two opinion polls this
It’s perhaps a step too far to mix a reference from a popular work of 1980s satirical fiction with a phrase borrowed from baseball in the headline of this piece, but somehow it seemed to capture the situation. With increased speculation about Harriet Harman’s leadership ambitions the time has come for the younger generation of Labour
It can’t have escaped people’s notice that shops in our high streets are being boarded up at quite an alarming rate. I’ve noticed it in central London, but also in north Wales last week and in Sussex and Surrey this week. Lewes was looking particularly down-at-heel as I passed through: like it was bracing itself
Two stories with no connection really, apart from their capacity to raise an eyebrow. I wondered if David Mills, the estranged husband of Olympics minister Tessa Jowell would ever be convicted but that day has finally come. I remember having lunch with Jowell just after she split from Mills (at the Savoy Grill, naturally) and
I know we are not supposed to take ComRes polls too seriously but there’s one aspect of the Independent on Sunday poll at the weekend that I really rings true. It may not quite be the case that Lib Dem support is up by seven percentage points and Labour down by seven. But I am convinced that
From the response to the last post on this subject I get the impression that people around here don’t much care if the government can did itself out or not. Some readers of The Bright Stuff have asked how I can justify wanting Labour to win the next election? But more of that later. First
Anyone who has ever been on a protest march or felt the heady frission of student rebelliousness should check out Hugo Rifkind’s piece in the Times today. A really subtle piece of reporting, with no hint of the usual establishment sneer. What’s fascinating about his observations the history of student revolt is how similar the
If you just read one newspaper today you’d know things were getting pretty bad for Gordon Brown. Let’s take the Observer for example: not exactly a hostile paper to the government over the years. Beyond the story of the defection of former DWP advisor David Freud to the Tory front bench, there’s a terribly damaging piece of analysis