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Sunday 31 January 2010

Sunday, 31st January 2010

Because of Blair, Britain will now be shaped by the world

Fraser Nelson 5:57pm

It's striking how Tony Blair, the most successful election winner in Labour party history, is now so despised in the country that gave him three landslides. This matters politically, because he has - I fear - poisoned the cause of liberal interventionism.

I look at this in my News of the World column today. Blair's Chicago speech of 1999 laid out what I regarded as a bold and coherent foreign policy case. It was time to stop letting genocides happen because they take place within the borders of sovereign states protected by the...

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Could Jacques Chirac add to the Chilcot inquiry?

Daniel Korski 3:39pm

The Iraq inquiry is making the political weather, much more than Gordon Brown expected. By the time of the general election, every key diplomat, soldier and politician involved in the war will have given evidence.

But there are people that have played pivotal roles who should be given the chance to put their views across - not about the war as such but about Britain's diplomatic and war record. I'm thinking of senior US officials, from President Bush down the hiearchy but also then-French President Jacques Chirac, former UN chief Kofi Annan and...

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It’s war!

David Blackburn 11:51am

Politicians have to shout to be heard over the lurid tale of John Terry's bordello, but Ed Miliband’s fervour for climate change is sufficiently shrill. He has declared “war” on “sceptics”, who have been rather jaunty of late.

As Fraser noted yesterday, the press’ climate change narrative is shifting – scepticism, in its proper sense, is replacing blind subscription. In this context, Miliband’s comments are extraordinary. His intellectual complacency is irritating, his sanctimony nauseating and his hypocrisy palpable.

“It's right that there's rigour applied to all the reports about climate

...

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Tories making contingency plans for a second election in 2010

James Forsyth 10:50am

With another poll showing the Tories ahead but not by enough to secure an overall majority, The News of the World reports that the party is making contingency plans for a second election: The idea would be to take action on immigration, householders’ rights and business taxes and then go to the country again seeking a stronger mandate.

To boost the Tories’ prospects, the paper says that Cameron plans to hold a boundary review beforehand. I’d be surprised if it was possible to do that quickly enough for new seats to be...

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Saturday, 30th January 2010

Rawnsley revelations put Brown's temper on the agenda

James Forsyth 11:43pm

Stories of Gordon Brown’s temper are commonplace in Westminster. But they rarely make it into print. This, though, is about to change. The Mail on Sunday reports that Andrew Rawnsley’s follow-up to Servants of the People contains a string of revelations about Brown’s behaviour. The paper reports that Rawnsley has investigated whether the Prime Minister has hit a senior adviser, pulled a secretary out of her chair because she wasn’t typing fast enough and sworn at aides over the Obama snub. Downing Street is rubbishing these allegations. However, Rawnsley’s record is so good...

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The return of IDS

Fraser Nelson 11:09pm

What to do with Iain Duncan Smith? The Sunday Telegraph tomorrow says he will be given a Department for Children and Social Justice - an idea that has been in the pipeline for a while now. At first, I was against IDS returning to the front bench given what amazing influence he has had as a backbencher. I fancied him as a Frank Field/Wilberforce type - someone used his public platform to advance radical ideas. But that changed when Theresa May was promoted to welfare reform, something which did more to damage my...

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The Tories need to evoke Micawber

David Blackburn 5:54pm

I’ve been flicking through the British Social Attitudes survey this afternoon, and what a conflicted bunch of socially liberal and economically conservative people we are. The British decry the state’s interference in each facet of life and at the same time we are displeased that more has not been done to limit cannabis’ availability. There is no point in extrapolating out of the morass of contradictions: the British people cannot be defined in monolithic terms. However, there is one figure that will worry Mr Cameron: 50 percent want spending and taxation levels to remain as they are; only 8 percent...

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A tale of two FTs

Fraser Nelson 3:54pm

The Spectator isn't in favour of many taxes, but we are calling for a mandatory insurance premium for banks. Depending on which version of the FT you picked up today, it seems the banks are agreeing to this too. But are they agreeing to a tax, or a fee? Even the FT isn't sure - and has two different versions in two editions (pictured). "Some of the world's most prominent bankers have come out in favour of a global tax on banks," says the first edition with a report from Patrick Jenkins in Davos....

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Polls aplenty

James Forsyth 3:05pm

If we neede d a reminder not to get overly excited about small variations in the opinion polls, it comes today with two surveys from the same pollster taken at pretty much the same time which return slightly different results. The YouGov survey for today’s Telegraph has the Tories on 38, down two, Labour on 31, up 1, and the Lib Dems on 19, up two. While the one for the People has the Tories on 40, Labour on 31 and the Lib Dems on 18. There are also two...