There is a terrible desperation about the Tory approach to the Lib Dem surge. There is a clear desire to find some sort of killer story about Nick Clegg or a killer strategy to reassert David Cameron’s claim to be the candidate of change. What is odd is that Cameron seems to have forgotten what
I cornered Ken Clarke after the press conference on employment and welfare today and asked him a direct question about my pet subject – Margaret Thatcher’s Enterprise Allowance Scheme. I couldn’t get in a question during the press conference itself, which was dominated by journalists from Channel 4 (three questions, come on chaps, fair’s fair!) and some
Labour’s press conference this morning was a surprisingly cheery affair. Peter Mandelson was very much in control of proceedings and the media mob was clearly feeling benevolent on a lovely spring morning. I’m not sure it was entirely wise to run a spoof post-election news broadcast on the double-dip recession caused by Tory economic policy.
Gordon Brown should have done it at the beginning of the recession. He and David Cameron should be thinking very seriously about it now. Perhaps national government is an idea whose time has come. Again. With the prospect of a very close election, in which people are clearly sick of the conventional two-party system, there
I must say I had a chuckle at Alastair Campbell’s tweet during the leaders’ debate: “Clegg done well on style, Cameron clear winner on shallowness, GB winner on substance”. I had another chuckle when Alan Johnson used the line in the post-debate analysis and now I see David Miliband congratulating Alan Johnson for using it and
Shall we stop being cynical for a moment and congratulate Brown, Cameron and Clegg for being the first political leaders in Britain to take part in a televised election debate? Indeed, we should particularly congratulate Gordon Brown for agreeing to this. He had by far the most to lose. There is absolutely no doubt that
After reading Seumas Milne and Timothy Garton Ash in the Guardian and then looking at the advert for the New Left Review on the back of the London Review of Books (“Good Riddance to New Labour”), I do wonder what these people want from a centre-left government. God knows I have been critical of New
I had my first experience of frontline canvassing in a marginal at the weekend, when I visited my mum in the west country for a few days. She lives in a village in Nick Harvey’s North Devon constituency, a key target seat for the Tories. As a lifelong Labour and former activist she is torn
With the publication of the Labour and Conservative manifestos we should now have some idea of the real differences between the two largest parties. But I am more struck by the similarities. I know we are supposed to believe that Labour is the party of the enabling state, but it chose to emphasise how it
I have no doubt that history will vindicate Gita Sahgal in her decision to challenge Amnesty International over its relationship with former Guantanamo detainee Moazzam Begg and his organisation Cage Prisoners. She has now left her job, as The Times reports today. This will be a great loss to Amnesty, which has lost a deeply
Stuart McLennan, Labour’s candidate for Moray, has resigned over his Twitter stupidity and quite right too. What a repellent individual. And how obvious he made the fact by tweeting his every last small-minded thought. So what of Battersea MP’s Martin Linton’s outburst warning about the “tentacles” of Israel that were buying the election? As I
Although it does not really make any difference to my original argument (which was about political quick thinking rather than the origins of the thought), it does seem that David Lammy has every right to be irritated that the idea of civic national service ended up as Tory rather than Labour policy. He first wrote
It is difficult to fault Cameron’s idea of a national volunteer force. While the Labour Party was forced to spend today defending the National Insurance hike, the Tories were able to seize the intiative with a genuinely far-sighted proposal. All the more galling for the government that this idea has been rattling around in Labour
I really enjoyed Anne McElvoy’s Standard column today. She is absolutely right to identify the false notes of day one of the election campaign. Gordon Brown really was talking nonsense about his ordinary middle-class background and David Cameron should certainly drop the glottal stop. She is right to say that neither has any clarity of
Geoffrey Wheatcroft has kicked off the election campaign with possibly the most depressing article I have ever read about British politics. Jetting off to the States for an academic engagement, the old curmudgeon says he feels no regret at missing an election in which he has lost interest. This say more about the author of
Those of you who have been following the fortunes of my New Deal of the Mind project with a mixture of interest and scepticism will perhaps wish to read the report we have published today with the Arts Council. Creative Survival in Hard Times is an attempt to grapple with the issue of employment in
Readers of The Bright Stuff may be interested in the launch of Arguing the World, a new blog from Dissent, the American journal of the American democratic Left. The idea is to collect the thoughts of journalists and academics in Britain and America in a format beyond the usual long-form essays and reviews printed in
My friend and colleague Jo Phillips has been roaming the country promoting the must-read book of the forthcoming election. Why Vote? — which she has co-authored with David Seymour, the former political editor of the Mirror Group, who won’t mind me calling him a veteran political commentator. The book is a jaunty affair, designed to
I agree with Fraser that there is a welcome modesty about Alistair Darling’s budget. It was also good to see Maggie Darling outside Number 11, a wife of whom the Chancellor is justly proud. But I did wonder where the measures are for tackling the joblessness, which will be the likely consequence of the public
I have had the pleasure of meeting two major figures of the American intellectual left over the past two weeks: Washington Post columnist EJ Dionne and Michael Kazin, co-editor of Dissent magazine. I’m sure there are as many differences as similarities in the politics of these two men, but what struck me about meeting them