Alex Massie

Alex Massie

Monday

Alex Massie

New American Leadership, Same American Leadership Style: Do As You Are Told.

From our UK edition

Times change, of course. It wasn't so long ago that the American left wondered why Democrats in Congress couldn't "stand up" to the Bush administration in the way that, say, France and Germany opposed the American-led War in Iraq. Now that the worm has turned in Washington, of course, everything is different. Why won't those annoying europeans do as they're told? This time it is the failure of Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy, among others, to endorse the Americans' "solution" to the financial crisis that is irritating pundits in Washington and New York. Hence, Michael Tomasky*: "confidence has never been especially great here in the states that, even with Obama's massive worldwide popularity, European nations would just do what America wants." Oh noes!

Alex Massie

Forgetting the Armenians, 2009 Edition

From our UK edition

At the New Republic Mike Crowley picks up where this post left off and lays-out the familiar arguments on US recognition of the Armenian genocide. It's tough for the Armenians: all they have on their side is principle (and Obama's campaign promises) while, as Crowley points out, the Turks have realpolitik and a well-oiled lobbying machine (that currently employs the combined efforts of Dick Gephardt and Denny Hastert) that takes opposing any formal, President-endorsed recognition of the genocide very seriously indeed. As Mike reports: Obama can be forgiven for dodging the explosive subject of genocide while he is a guest in Ankara next week. But, when the Armenians' annual day of genocide remembrance comes on April 24, the White House will be expected to release a statement.

Alex Massie

All the News that’s Fun to Print

From our UK edition

At the Washington Independent Dave Weigel - Delaware's finest* - has an entertaining piece on some of the differences between the British and American attitudes to journalism. The occasion for this rumination is the departure from DC of Tim Shipman**, formerly the Sunday Telegraph's man in Washington, who is returning to Blighty to be Deputy Political Editor at the dear old Daily Mail. Weigel's piece is suitably entertaining, but perhaps my favourite bit was this: That isn’t the view of Democrats who have been burned by the Telegraph’s stories. “They use anonymous sources to a degree that makes you wonder if they actually have them,” said Bob Shrum, the retired political consultant who managed the presidential campaigns of Al Gore and Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.).

Alex Massie

Better Speechwriters Please

From our UK edition

I'd been thinking that there's no need to pile on further and that at some point the proper criticism the Prime Minister is receiving - wherever in the world he travels - starts to look mean-spirited and ends up being not much more than a pretty brutal case of schoolyard bullying. Happily - since scorn, like wrath, must be nursed to keep it warm - the Prime Minister keeps encouraging one to think the worst of him. Take, for instance, his speech to the European parliament during which, as Matthew Parris relates, Mr Brown said this: “So I stand here today proud to be British and proud to be European: representing a country that does not see itself as an island beside Europe but as a country at the centre of Europe, not in Europe's slipstream but firmly in its mainstream.

Thursday

Alex Massie

Gordon Brown is Not My Leader, Whatever Labour MPs Think

From our UK edition

Tom Harris didn't much care for Dan Hannan's speech setting about Gordon Brown. Fair enough, as a Labour MP you wouldn't expect him to find it a hoot. But then he says this: What was truly repugnant about his speech was the total absence of any sense of patriotism. Some Tories on the extreme right of the party share the problem of some Republicans in the States: they don’t regard the head of government to be the nation’s leader unless he or she is also a member of their little party. Gordon Brown isn’t just Labour’s prime minister; he’s Britain’s prime minister, and for any UK politician to launch such a disgraceful, personal attack on his country’s leader — in a foreign country — is nothing short of disgraceful.

Alex Massie

Why Germany Won’t Play Ball

From our UK edition

It's not just Gordon Brown who wants the rest of europe to splash some cash to get us out of the mess we're in. There are plenty of commentators on the American left - Paul Krugman for one - who also fret that unless european countries join the massive stimulus bandwagon they threaten to delay, or even cancel, everyone's recovery. Enemy number one, obviously, is the Germans. But as Tyler Cowen points out, the Germans might have some good reasons for their reluctance to go on a spending spree. They remember the costs of German unification and can recall how spending massive quantities of money wasn't a magic cure-all then either: The two countries united, lots of money was spent and lots of money was borrowed...The results were less than wonderful.

Alex Massie

Tony McNulty, Benefit Cheat

From our UK edition

Exhibit A: From the Daily Mail, November 8th 2008. Man caught in £30,000 benefit fraud: After the case, employment and welfare reform minister Tony McNulty said: "Lying to the DWP to get money you aren't entitled to is a crime. Expecting to get away with it is criminally stupid. This man thought he could live a life of Riley at the taxpayers' expense. He was wrong. Our investigators caught up with him and now he'll face the penalty for his crimes.

Wednesday

Alex Massie

Has Obama Already Failed?

From our UK edition

Bartle Bull thinks he has! Already! His article in Prospect is a curious thing indeed. Part of it, perfectly reasonably, is deeply concerned by Obama's economic agenda. When the numbers are mentioned in trillions, not billions it's sensible to be sceptical of some of the more grandiose and sweeping promises the new administration is making. But some of the piece is also a mash-note to the Clintons, accusing Obama of "dismantling President Clinton's economic legacy" as though nothing at all had happened in the last eight years. Then there's this: Thus the big question in Democratic circles today: “What does Hillary do about this?” Her supporters still feel that the election was stolen from her.

Alex Massie

The BBC Tries to Catch-Up with its Audience

From our UK edition

Apparently the BBC is finally going to show The Wire. Hurrah. Previously it's only been available on FX in Britain. Well that's all fine and dandy. But it's not as though the series was a mystery. It debuted in 2002 and has received rave reviews form critics for at least the last three years. And yet no BBC (or Channel 4) executive thought to buy it before now? Strange. Rum too that the corporation should wait for much of its target audience to have already seen the show before deciding to screen it themselves. Just about anyone who has purchased the DVD box sets (all five series currently lie in the top 12 box set chart at Amazon.co.uk) is likely to have lent them to someone else who will in turn have introduced yet more people to the show.

Alex Massie

The Problem with Working Hard

From our UK edition

So El Gordo is in New York today, ostensibly to drum up support for his G20 gabfest. According to the Telegraph's report: At a breakfast for business leaders, Mr Brown said that values such as “honesty, integrity and working hard” may have been absent from the financial system in recent years. One might agree about honesty and integrity but the problem with the financial sector is not that people there abandoned the "value" of "working hard". Quite the contrary. They worked too hard. We might not be in quite this mess if there'd been less hard work and more leisurely lunches and 4pm finishes. Greed and incompetence were problems but so too as a culture that prized, nay demanded, 17 hour work days. That is, long hours and very hard work were part of the problem...

Alex Massie

The Naked Taoiseach

From our UK edition

Brian Cowen: Frightening when clothed; terrifying when naked. Photo: JOHN THYS/AFP/Getty Images Meanwhile in Ireland there's much hilarity over the story of a Banksy-style prankster who hung portraits of the Taoiseach, Brian Cowen, at the Royal Hibernian Academy and the National  Gallery of Ireland. It turns out Mr Cowen is indeed an oil painting. Or two, in fact. As the Irish Times reports: "He was shown holding his underpants in one painting and a toilet roll in the other." All a spot of harmless japery you might think. But no, apparently not!

Alex Massie

Obama and the Blair Succession

From our UK edition

There was the pretence that all government spending is "investment" and there was some familiar-sounding talk of "bubble and bust" but most of all Barack Obama's press conference was designed to send the message that, look, "I'm a pretty straight kind of guy". As we know, that's what Tony Blair said once upon a time and as we also know the public, more or less, believed him. So no wonder something in Obama's demeanour seemed so oddly familiar to British viewers. There are differences - there always are when comparing British and American politics - but Obama has essentially spent recent days imploring the public to ignore the details and embrace the bigger picture. This too was an essential element of Blairism. Dont sweat the small stuff, feel the ambition. And, above all, trust us.

Alex Massie

Mexico is the new Colombia?

From our UK edition

That seems to be the message from the Obama administration anyway. Mind you, that was the message from the Bush administration too as the War on Drugs - so successful in Colombia and, for that matter, Afghanistan - was expanded to Mexico. Hillary Clinton is in Mexico City today, just as her boss announces that Washington will send hundreds more federal agents to police the Mexican border. All in all: The administration will spend $700 million this year and more in the future on a wide variety of bilateral security programs, including improving cross-border interdiction efforts, upgrading intelligence-gathering methods and establishing corruption-resistant police agencies and courts.

Tuesday

Alex Massie

An Irish Grand Slam and a Lions Party

From our UK edition

It wasn't a great championship this year, though few in Ireland can be expected to give a damn about that. And while there are plenty of folk who might think that Ireland's Grand Slam (sixty one years in the waiting) was hardly vintage stuff, that's often been the case with Grand Slam winning sides. The great England team of the early 1990s didn't play much champagne rugby while outside observers might say the same thing, and with some reason too, of Scotland's twin triumphs in 1984 and 1990. Nonetheless, there's little denying that there was no truly outstanding team in the championship this year. Apart from their performance against France Ireland were efficient rather than spectacular and rather too reminiscent of to many joyless Munster teams of years gone by.

Monday

Alex Massie

45p is Not the Problem; 40p is the Problem

From our UK edition

I think James and Danny Finkelstein are correct. Political considerations trump the need to satisfy the Conservative party's right-wing. And that means that, regrettably, George Osbourne is probably right not to promise to abolish the new 45% income tax band for the rich. At the very least this should be an aspiration not an immediate priority. But the problem is not so much the 45p band, but the number of people trapped by the existing 40p band. This has been one of gordon Brown's most successful stealth taxes, drawing more and more middle class voters into his clutches every year. Even this years' widening of the bands does little to redress the matter. The effect is that an awful lot of middle-income earners are paying high-income taxes.

Alex Massie

Living with a nuclear Iran

From our UK edition

Dan Drezner asks his "realist colleagues" if they can think of any reason why Iran should or would give up its nuclear ambitions. Stephen Walt offers some reasons why, unlikely as it might seem, Iran should consider doing so for its own advantage. I think Walt makes some good points but that they may not seem quite so persuasive when viewed from Tehran. In the end, too much of his argument is based upon the notion that the United States is Really Crazy, which risks leaving Walt making an argument that is the mirror image of the Mad Mullahs are Mad and Cannot Be Trusted Not to Do Mad Things line that often surfaces when Iran is the topic for discussion.

Alex Massie

English Cricket Welcomes the Enemy

From our UK edition

The news that England hope to host the IPL  is as unsurprising as it is depressing. After all, what better way to start an Ashes summer than with the distracting influence of a cricketing circus? Never underestimate the greed of those charged with looking after the game, howver. As soon as the Indian government declined to offer satisfactory security guarantees it was inevitable that English cricket administrators, dazzled as always by the prospect of raking in more cash, would prostitute themselves in a mad dash to grab a piece of the action. It is hard to see any advantage in this. Better by far if the circus were taking place in South Africa.

Alex Massie

Railway Dreams

From our UK edition

Place your bets, please, if you think this is actually likely to happen: The fastest, most frequent train service in the world could run between London and the North within 12 years, according to the chairman of the government-owned company planning the high-speed link. Double-deck trains travelling at 225mph (360km/h) and carrying up to 800 passengers would depart every four minutes, cutting the journey time from London to Birmingham to 30 minutes and from London to Manchester to just over an hour. I mean, it would be grand if it did but given this country's record on large scale infrastructure projects this seems a highly improbable venture. After all, in this part of the world it's taking the best part of 15 years to reopen the Waverley line from Edinburgh to the Borders.

Alex Massie

A Hungarian Lesson for Gordon Brown

From our UK edition

This seems an idea worth copying, doesn't it? Hungary's Prime Minister said today he is resigning because of his government's low popularity amid a worsening financial crisis. Ferenc Gyurcsany, of the ruling Socialists, told the party's congress that he considered himself a hindrance to further economic and social reforms. Alas, I can't imagine Brown being quite this, er, bold or noble.