Labour party

Saturday

Simon Walters

Always a murky business

From our UK edition

Lance Price is better placed than most to write about ‘spin’ in politics, having worked as a BBC political reporter and as Alastair Campbell’s deputy in Downing Street. Lance Price is better placed than most to write about ‘spin’ in politics, having worked as a BBC political reporter and as Alastair Campbell’s deputy in Downing Street. In August 1997, Price was on duty for the BBC the weekend that the story of Robin Cook’s affair broke. In Where Power Lies he describes the ‘unusually rich array’ of other stories in the papers to choose from that weekend. A juicy item in the Sunday Times stated that Chris Patten, Governor of Hong Kong, could be prosecuted under the Official Secrets Act.

Friday

Fraser Nelson

An interview packed with Brownies

From our UK edition

Brownies galore in our PM’s interview with the Economist. So many, in fact, that I thought I do a quick Fisk:   The Economist: The big worry seems to be the deficit—the deficit. What should the message should be? Gordon Brown: I actually think that the first thing that we’ve got to do as a global community—and I said it this morning and I’ll say it again—is that the reforms of the global financial system are not complete. As far as Britain is concerned, we are dealing with a one-off hit as a result of globalisation. FN: Let us pause, here, to consider the brazenness. Brown’s policies pumped the UK economy up with the steroids of debt. The banking collapse hit us harder than any country because he took the wildest risks.

David Blackburn

A tyrant surrounded by cowards no longer

From our UK edition

Well, the Chancellor’s not for budging. Alistair Darling stands by not “some of” but “all of” his “forces of hell” comments. Martin Bright wrote the politics column in this week’s mag, arguing that opponents are intimidated by the political mobsters surrounding Brown, and who Brown encourages a la Henry II. Martin names Charlie Whelan and Damian McBride as the goons, and Ed Balls is rumoured to be the consigliere.   Peter Watt claimed that Douglas Alexander admitted that most senior Cabinet ministers loathed Brown and his vicarious emotional terrorism, a sense reinforced by Darling’s comments. If that’s the case, why has Brown not been removed? Cowardice is an unpleasant but apt word.

David Blackburn

Is Brown about to call the election?

From our UK edition

Guido’s got the inside track that the Beeb have been told not to take the weekend off, and the Tory lead has been cut to five points in the Telegraph’s Ipsos Mori poll. A five point lead is hung parliament territory and Labour could win the most seats - further evidence, as if any were needed, that the force is with Labour. There are a couple of other reasons he may go now. Peter Hain has written an article for the Guardian, wooing Lib Dem voters (more on that later) – could that article be a prelude to the big announcement? Fourth quarter growth figures have been revised upwards, to a staggering 0.3 percent, which is encouraging but still low enough for Labour to run on a ‘Not The Time For Cuts' ticket.

David Blackburn

Cutter Brown

From our UK edition

Gordon Brown’s interview with the Economist is completely brazen. With a fine disregard for facts, and subsumed amid specious waffle, Brown declares that he’s been consistent on cuts. ‘I believe if you look at my interviews there’s absolute consistency in what I’m saying. We were saying right through the early stages of the crisis that it was important for there to be fiscal stimulus. And so the clear message was about fiscal stimulus. We said that at a certain point we would have to come in and announce our public spending plans for future years, but this was not the right time to do it. And it still isn’t the right time to have a full public spending round, because of the uncertainties.

Thursday

James Forsyth

Getting the Tories back on track

From our UK edition

At the beginning of this week the key figures in the Tory election campaign gathered together in Notting Hill to try and work out what was going wrong with the Tory campaign, why the Tory lead has halved since December. Our cover this week attempts to answer this question. My take is that the problem is largely caused by the structure of the campaign. Successful campaigns tend to have a chief strategist and a campaign manager. The strategist's job is to work out what the election is about and the campaign manager's role is to implement that vision and take charge of day to day tactics. The Tory problem is that they have no campaign manager and four men - Steve Hilton, George Osborne, Andy Coulson and George Bridges - who appear to be vying to be chief strategist.

David Blackburn

God stand up for bankers

From our UK edition

He’ll have to because nobody else will. As Robert Peston says ‘Poor RBS, poor Britain’ – today’s figures are catastrophic. Peston’s been digging and the news gets worse: ‘But perhaps the most chilling numbers are these: we as taxpayers put in £25.5bn of new equity into this bank last autumn, the second instalment of the £45.5bn we have invested in total; but over the past year, the equity of this bank has increased by less than £16bn to £80bn. So almost £10bn of the £25.5bn we've only just put into RBS has already been wiped out by losses. Which, I think, is probably the best measure of the degree to which RBS is still haemorrhaging.

Alex Massie

Immigration: The BNP are Winning and Britain is Losing

From our UK edition

One of the odder aspects of contemporary politics is the amount of attention lavished upon the goons at the BNP. Anyone would think they were about to win the election. But they're not. Nevertheless, grant Nick Griffin and his pals this: they've managed to hijack the debate - such as it is - on immigration. Despite what the media might have you think, there is no party of open borders in this country. Instead both the Tories and the Labour party effectively concede the argument to the BNP. Labour boast that they have immigration "under control" and then the Tories complain that the government isn't "cracking down" hard enough. The dreadful Phil Woollas and the likes of Damian Green may be more sophisticated than Griffin and his mob but they differ from him in degree, not in kind.

Peter Hoskin

Brown v Blair: a comedy

From our UK edition

First the tragedy, then the farce: if there was something dark, perhaps shocking, about last weekend's bullying allegations, then the latest Rawnsley revelations veer towards the hilarious.  They're centred around Brown's efforts to oust Tony Blair, and the Guardian covers them here.  I won't pre-empt your enjoyment of them, except to highlight this passage from the report: "Rawnsley reveals that Brown rang Blair while he was staying with the Queen at Balmoral. He was furious that Alan Milburn, Blair's close ally, had written a piece supporting the prime minister's right to stay at No 10. Rawnsley writes: 'The chancellor's fury was titanically demented even by his standards. 'You put fucking Milburn up to it,' Brown raged down the phone. 'This is factionalism!

Peter Hoskin

Back with a vengeance | 25 February 2010

From our UK edition

All of a sudden, the Big Banks are Big Politics again.  And who'd have it any other way, on the day that the 84 percent taxpayer-owned RBS announced losses for 2009 of £3.6 billion?  And that's alongside a bonus pool for its staff of £1.3 billion.  Yep - however hard they try, the exorcists of Westminster just can't shift the ghost of Fred the Shred. In which case, there'll be plenty about bankers' pay, and about getting taxpayers what's owed to them, over the next few days.  And rightly so.  But I often feel that these issues detract from even bigger ones, such as how to ensure that there aren't similar shocks in future.  After all, the financial furniture is arranged pretty much identically to how it was a couple off years ago.

Wednesday

David Blackburn

Many BNP voters’ concerns are legitimate and should be recognised as such

From our UK edition

Frank Field was characteristically forthright on the Today programme this morning. “I don’t believe, given the strains (on the economy), we will be able to maintain an open door policy without serious unrest on the streets,” he said, and this brings me to a Sunny Hundal article on the media’s approach to the BNP. Hundal is extremely eloquent but his premises are ill-conceived. He aligns the BNP exclusively with racism and immigration, because it follows that a racist is illegitimate and can be consigned to irrelevance. He writes: ‘If you want to vote BNP and think people of different cultures and races are scary, why not just say so? Every modern interview with a BNP voter is prefaced with: "I vote BNP, not because I'm racist but ...

David Blackburn

Ashcroft has unleashed hell in the marginals

From our UK edition

Alistair Darling’s sudden and poetic ejaculation is sure evidence that the government is a rabble of warring tribes. Against such opponents, the Tories should win, and win big. Daniel Finkelstein is adamant that they still could. He states the obvious: polls are general and do not account for specifics in key marginals. In-built boundary bias created the assumption that Cameron needs an 11 percent swing to win a majority of one. Finkelstein rubbishes that thesis; parties that win by 11 points win landslides: ‘In 1997 Mr Blair’s Labour built a new coalition, winning support across social classes. They therefore won in suburbs and prosperous towns that had always voted Tory in the past. Labour swept in with a huge victory.

Peter Hoskin

Darling throws one hell of a spanner into No.10’s election works

From our UK edition

So what's Alistair Darling up to?  When I first heard his "forces of Hell" comment last night – his description of those briefing against him from inside No.10 – I half suspected it was all part of Downing Street's grand plan.  You know, trying to defuse the bullying story by being honest – up to a point – about Brown's premiership, and then claiming that everything's alright really.  A bit like Peter Mandelson saying he took his "medicine like a man" – only with greater poetic license. Now, though, I'm convinced that this wasn't part of No.10's script.  The clue is in the hurried, and ridiculous, denials that have been issued since.

Tuesday

David Blackburn

David Miliband would set the people free

From our UK edition

What is it about the Blairite passion for abstract nouns? I ask, not out of facetiousness, but because I want to know what they mean by loose terms such as ‘empowerment’. David Miliband joins James Purnell among the progressive left’s thinkers who are reimagining the relationship between state and citizen, and he gave a concept heavy, substance light speech to Demos this afternoon. I’ve read it a couple of times and can’t get my head round it. Peering through the glass darkly, the central concept is attractive: Miliband wants to give more power to the people. Some valid policies season his argument. For instance, the 1 week cancer pledge would be a victory for the consumer over the bureaucrat, if only it could be afforded.

Peter Hoskin

Brown comes around to the Mandelson way of thinking

From our UK edition

Did I read it wrong, or did Brown really say this in his interview with the Economist? "[Our deficit-reduction plan] is probably the most ambitious of any of the G7 countries. It contains, obviously, public-spending economies, cuts in some departments, efficiency savings in others, but protection of the front-line services in health and education and policing. It contains tax rises ... I wish we hadn't had to do that but ... it is necessary to show that you have got a sensible and credible plan over a number of years..." Putting aside the question of whether it really is the most ambitious deficit plan in the G7 (other countries want to cut more, quicker), it's striking just how closely this cleaves to Peter Mandelson's strategy for presenting cuts – i.e.

Peter Hoskin

How not to calm the bullying row

From our UK edition

Phil Woolas, the immigration minister, probably thought he was being helpful to Gordon Brown by describing Christine Pratt as: "this prat of a woman down in - where's she from, Swindon?" But, erm, he wasn't.

David Blackburn

Brown the victim

From our UK edition

As Pete points out, the longer the bullying story runs the more chance there is that the public sympathise with Brown, as they did over the Jacqui Janes story. Now Ed Balls is playing the sympathy card for his mentor, saying that Brown has been deeply hurt by these false allegations. Whatever next? Damian McBride breaks his retreat in a seminary and says: “Brown’s the loveliest man I’ve met, never hurt a fly guv, honest.” The preposterous and the distasteful hang above this latest twist, but Downing Street’s spin operation remains terrifyingly focussed.

Peter Hoskin

The bullying story keeps on rolling, but will it affect the polls?

From our UK edition

Much confusion on the digital grapevine, last night, about YouGov's latest daily tracker poll.  Turns out, it doesn't have the Tories leading by twelve – but, rather, the positions are unchanged from the poll in the Sunday Times.  So that's the Tories on 39 percent, Labour on 33, and the Lib Dems on 17.  A six point gap between the two main parties. The poll was conducted between Sunday afternoon and Monday morning – so, after the bullying story broke, but, perhaps, too soon for it to have filtered through to the public consciousness.  Even so, Labour will be encouraged by what they see.  A below-headline question has more people rating Brown as "passionate" than a "bully" (by 28 percent to 24).

Monday

David Blackburn

Not a day to be a Pratt

From our UK edition

The unfortunately named Christine Pratt, her husband and the National Bullying Helpline have been completely demolished by one of the most well co-ordinated spin operations I can recall. The charity’s accounts bear no examination. Two Patrons, Cary Cooper and Mary O’Connor, have resigned – disgusted that Pratt broke the charity’s commitment to confidentiality, as indeed was Ann Widdecombe. The Charities Commission have been called in. She’s flip-flopped on her original claims at least twice: initially suggesting that Gordon Brown was a bully, then insisting he wasn’t and then recalling that he possibly might have been. Plainly, her memory of who calls her and what they say is as leaky as a philandering footballer’s.