The beauty contest begins: read Polly Toynbee in the Guardian today and her praise for James Purnell, the arch-Blairite Work and Pensions Secretary who is making a speech calling for Labour to emphasise fairness and social justice. David Miliband also enters the lists this week with a lecture in honour of his father, Ralph. Charles
Greetings to all CoffeeHousers from the 29th Floor of Millbank Tower, where the faithful have gathered to toast our new Mayor – who, poor fellow, is stuck at the count waiting for official public confirmation of the triumph that Downing Street conceded hours ago, the bookies have already accepted, and the Evening Standard has announced
We have had the debates. We have had the interviews. We have had acres of newsprint, some sensible, some way off the mark and some downright scurrilous. Can anyone doubt that this has been an exciting mayoral race? But it isn’t just about excitement. This is the real thing: Londoners, today you must vote for
Further to James’s observations about the Mail on Sunday’s coverage of Lord Levy’s book: I was struck, to say the least, by the disclosure that His Lordship was deputed by the Blair inner circle to have a word with the then PM about the lengthy massages he was receiving from Carole Caplin. The account of
Boris Johnson has confounded his critics, says Matthew d’Ancona. The contest will go to the wire, but our man has proved himself to be both shrewd enough and serious enough to take charge ‘Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the next Mayor of London…’ A January dinner at the Dorchester in honour of Boris Johnson, and
Sometimes music speaks not only to your mind and heart, but grabs at your very viscera in the most primal way imaginable. Such was the experience of last night’s world premiere of Harrison Birtwistle’s The Minotaur at the Royal Opera. Demanding and disturbing, the overture, played against the backdrop of dark and menacing waves, warned
Take two: Gordon did better in his interview with the BBC today than in his exchange with Nick Robinson last week. As I wrote in the Sunday Telegraph, Brown answered Robinson’s questions in the earlier exchange about people’s anxieties over the economy without a shred of apparent empathy or feeling for worried mortgage holders and
It is a modern ritual that when a party political leader’s fortunes plummet – and Gordon Brown’s certainly fit that category – there is talk of a leadership contest and, specifically, of a “stalking horse” candidate. Here’s an entertaining look in Slate at the origins of the phrase. But, for most of us, the words trigger
There is a must-read piece in the Mail on Sunday by the impeccably connected Sue Cameron, who provides a compelling inventory of the Brown administration’s dysfunctions. My favourite detail – so rich in irony – is that Number Ten is frustrated by the poor flow of information from the Treasury, and that the PM’s aides
As Jonathan Freedland and Coffee House favourite Steve Richards have pointed out, the row over school admissions is turning into a proper Left-Right punch-up. And quite right, too. For much too long, the most publicly visible battle lines (expertly drawn by Gordon Brown) have been between “Labour investment versus Tory cuts” – mostly nonsense, but
Hugo has a terrific lead item in his Times column: namely that John Cleese is offering his speech-writing services to Barack Obama. Having had the amazing opportunity to co-write a short script with the great man years ago, I can heartily recommend him to the Senator for Illinois. And one can only wonder where such
Salman Rushdie tells Matthew d’Ancona that the idea at the heart of his new novel set in 16th-century Florence and India is that universal values exist and require robust champions The last time I interviewed Salman Rushdie was, as he remarks, a lifetime ago. That was in February 1993, in a safe house in north
It was Eddie Murphy who pointed out, brilliantly, that white people make the terrible mistake of thinking that Rocky is true. His stand-up riff on the subject involved an Italian who had just seen one of Sylvester Stallone’s boxing epics picking a fight with a much taller black man – and ending up in hospital. Hillary
It all depends who says it, doesn’t it? I hold unfashionably robust views on the proposed extension of pre-charge detention for terrorist suspects (the arguments are familiar now: see my article here). I have traded blows on air with opponents of the change and I respect most of their anxieties. David Davis is one of the
I have known David Selbourne for almost a decade and a half, and have long admired his trenchant, impeccably argued analysis of the state of modern society (as well as his many other writings). His book The Principle of Duty (1994) was one of the earliest moral road-maps for the Blair era, a copy of
Nicolas Sarkozy’s address to both Houses of Parliament was a remarkable political performance, bristling with confident charm, and a reminder that, for all his travails, the French President is a politician of the first order. Flanked by his new wife, Carla Bruni, Sarkozy gave a speech that Jacques Chirac or, for that matter, Ségolène Royal
Like Mother Theresa, it was Arthur C Clarke’s historic misfortune to die in the same week as someone with more “celebrity” (Anthony Minghella in his case, rather than Diana). But Clarke was a hugely important figure. Much has already been made of his prophetic abilities as a scientist, notably on satellite communications and moon exploration.
Who’s laughing now? Boris has stormed ahead in the polls today, with a 12 point lead over Ken in the Standard’s YouGov survey. With 45 days to go, 49 per cent versus 37 is a strong position – and quite remarkable for a Tory candidate in a city that Livingstone has run (to use his
My prize for comment of the day goes to CS responding to my earlier post on Patricia Hewitt: “Just saw Old Pat on the TV slagging off her opponents’ ‘unfunded policies’. If the government has a budget deficit which it keeps having to revise upwards, doesn’t that mean that its own spending is unfunded?” This
Some initial responses on the Tory side: 1) The troops are delighted with Cameron’s performance which was very assured: they think their man is getting better, learning on the job. The “gradient of leadership”, as one former Cabinet Minister described it to me, is heading in the right direction. 2) Darling is broken. The target