Alex Massie

Alex Massie

Monday

Alex Massie

Yes, Virginia, History Matters: Eurozone Edition

From our UK edition

Broadly speaking, there are two ways of viewing the eurozone crisis: it's a problem of economics or a problem of politics. Neither explanation quite suffices, of course, since it is both but the emphasis you place on economics vs politics plays a part in how you'll view the situation and how likely you are to think there's any kind of solution that can satisfy the politics and the economics of the situation. Which is by way of suggesting that plenty of American commentators seem to think the problem is easy to solve and the main thing lacking in europe is the political will to do something about it. (Exhibit A: James Surowiecki of the New Yorker).

Alex Massie

The Difficult Matter of Praising George W Bush

From our UK edition

Will Inboden is frustrated that Barack Obama so rarely has anything nice to say about President George W Bush even when his administration has benefitted from US policies Obama inherited from his predecessor or when he has found it convenient to adopt and sometimes even take further Bush-era views on a given subject (such as a wide swathe of civil liberties issues or medical marijuana). In part this frustration reflects a Beltway preference for civility (or, rather, the appearance of civility) and the time-honoured pleasures of bipartisanship. There remain plenty of people who regret the increasingly parliamentary style of Washington politics and many more who have yet to grasp its implications.

Alex Massie

Club Rules, Brussels Edition

From our UK edition

Ben Brogan's latest post offers a revealing glimpse into the oddness of the eurosceptic mind. He begins: To the dismay of many of his colleagues preoccupied by the euro crisis, the Prime Minister has been adept at nurturing strong personal relationships with Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy. Instead of confrontation he has engaged constructively with them, to the extent that they listen to him and are willing to consider his attempts to press the British interest. The German chancellor was delighted to discover that Mr Cameron was not the swivel-eyed euro loon she had feared, but a charming and reasonable young man. The French president meanwhile bonded with mon ami Dave over Libya and – pace the odd shouty moment – likes doing business with him.

Saturday

Thursday

Alex Massie

Outrageous Outrage

From our UK edition

Gosh! Jeremy Clarkson - a muckle tube, for what it's worth - said something silly/stupid/offensive/boring and now everyone's twittering that he must be sacked or arrested or hung, drawn and quartered. Who cares? Plenty of people, it seems, but the mustering of outrage is itself becoming an outrageous feature of British life. We are becoming rather too American, in this regard. This, unlike Clarkson being Clarkson, is no hyperbole. I was going to despair some more about all this but, mercifully, Heresy Corner has said it all for me. Unison, clwons and clods as ever, are demanding "action" or something. Grim stuff: It's all there.

Alex Massie

First, Shoot All the Teachers*

From our UK edition

Our local paper, the Southern Reporter, reports that "2,000 public service workers" took the day off work yesterday. Sorry, withdrew their labour to protest against a monstrous government regiment that should horrify and disgust all sensible people. Soon, you know, armed resistance will be necessary. Fine. But, in these parts at least, it is interesting to see which taxpayer-funded workers struck. The Southern reports that: 1,200 teachers were on strike (78% of all teaching staff). 400 non-teaching staff (45% of all non-classroom staff). 68 of 1,400 people in the social work department did not report for work. 23 of 900 workers in the infrastructure department were out. 28 of 400 staff in "white-collar" jobs in Finance, IT etc withdrew their labour.

Alex Massie

1707 And All That

From our UK edition

In the midst of a futile* call for partisans on either side of Scotland's great constitutional debate to avoid twisting history for their own ends, Professor Richard Finlay and Dr Alison Cathcart write: One feature of a mature democracy is the respect it accords to its past, which means accepting it in its entirety, warts and all. There are good points and bad points in all national histories and accepting both is vital to avoiding the pitfalls of narrow, triumphalist chauvinism or debilitating defeatism. Neither of which is healthy. One of the problems of using history to make the case for or against the Union is that it tends to polarise the debate towards these extremes. What often happens is that we throw our political prejudices back into the past where they do not belong.

Wednesday

Alex Massie

Oborne: Cameron Will Eventually Have To Sack Osborne

From our UK edition

My old chum and occasional cricket skipper Peter Oborne is at it again. Causing mischief, that is. Peter - who once compared David Cameron to Disraeli and still, I think, has great hopes for the Prime Minister - thinks the time will soon come for Cameron to sack his Chancellor. That's not quite what he says but it is the logical implication of a column in which he complains that George Osborne is not much more than a part-time Chancellor of the Exchequer: Cameron is addicted to Osborne, in rather the same way that Tony Blair was addicted to Peter Mandelson, and for the same reasons. He feels that he cannot do without Osborne’s ingenious political brain. This, while understandable, does raise other very serious issues.

Alex Massie

Newt Gingrich: Serial Hypocrisy

From our UK edition

A splendid ad released by Ron Paul's campaign: Youtube has been great for political ads and while ads alone can't kill or win a campaign they greatly increase the gaiety of the circus. British politics may not enjoy (or, if you prefer, be afflicted by) TV advertising on the American scale but surely the creatives in the business can start producing quality work like this to be seen online? For entertainment, if nothing else...

Alex Massie

The Political X-Factor: Empathy

From our UK edition

In the midst of a piece explaining how Jon Huntsman bungled his Presidential campaign, Ross Douthat offers this: Voters don’t necessarily need to like a candidate to vote for him, but they need to think that he likes them. This is good, though really a small twist on the need for politicians to have some understanding of, or feel for, the electorate. Still, likeability is a two-way thingy. Al Gore was never tremendously likeable but he was also done in by the sense that he didn't much care for voters either. On the other hand, Margaret Thatcher was not obviously likeable but she liked her kind of voter and understood them too. Charlie Haughey had some similar qualities. Tony Blair managed both; Gordon Brown neither. Of course, navigating this river is tricky.

Alex Massie

Ed Miliband’s Strange Political Judgement

From our UK edition

I know Ed Miliband isn't trying to persuade me or, for that matter, many Spectator readers but I still don't understand what he's up to or trying to achieve. At PMQs today he had an obvious choice: attack the government on the economy or on today's strikes by government-paid workers. Bafflingly he chose the latter, wrapping himself in the red union flag. Not for the first time, one's left questioning Miliband's political judgement. The easy answer, much-used by the Prime Minister today, is that Labour is paid by the Trades Unions without whose contributions the party would be bankrupt. Plainly there is some truth to this and perhaps Miliband has been persuaded that he might as well attempt to make a virtue of this since the accusation will be made anyway, whatever he says.

Alex Massie

When FIFA Meets the Bilderbergs*

From our UK edition

Via Norm, Verso are publishing a very silly book by Marc Perelman titled Barbaric Sport: A Global Plague. Norm reports what the publishers promise: Marc Perelman pulls no punches in this succinct and searing essay against the global phenomenon of sport, which he describes as both a "recent form of savagery" and "the opium of the people." The charges leveled against sport are damning and numerous: sport is an instrument for racism and the bolstering of repression, with global events such as the Olympics used to legitimize major political crackdowns; doping must be understood as an imperative rather than an aberration of sport.

Tuesday

Alex Massie

The Autumn Statement Makes a Tory-Lib Dem Electoral Pact More Likely

From our UK edition

Amidst the economic doom and gloom (though all the forecasts are always wrong so who knows how things will look by 2015?), the politics of the coalition government remain interesting. So Danny Alexander's performance on Newnight tonight was very interesting. The Chief Secretary of the Treasury told Jeremy Paxman that the Liberal Democrats were committed to the new spending and borrowing plans announced by George Osborne yesterday. Furthermore, the spending cuts announced for the first two years of the next parliament (though said plans can only be aspirational since they cannot, surely, bind the next parliament?) would be part of the next Liberal Democrat manifesto. I doubt Tim Farron or Simon Hughes or even Vince Cable think this a good idea.

Alex Massie

Ron Beats Boris and George

From our UK edition

The question of who will succeed David Cameron is, in every essential, a pointless parlour game. Obviously, then, it's great sport for the press and just the kind of thing to entertain hacks and everyone else at Westminster. The "rivalry" between George Osbore and Boris Johnson is the sort of thing that, if it did not exist, would have to be invented by journalists. (Oh: hang on...) It is the successor to Tony vs Gordon and the Tory counter to the Warring Milibands and is a show that won't close, we're told, until 2018 or 2019. So you've only to endure another seven or so years of George vs Boris sillyness. This will be fun for everyone! In which light consider these pieces by wise birds Nicholas Watt and Tim Shipman.

Alex Massie

Annals of Pointless security Theatre

From our UK edition

There's really no need to switch off your phones and iPods and iPads next time you are on a plane. Over to James Fallows: - 100% of the pilots making those landings and approaches have GPS receivers right there next to them in the cockpits, of the kind you would have to turn off if you had one in your lap in seat 38F; [...]- More and more pilots have iPads turned on through the entire flight, including United pilots who are being switched en masse from paper to iPad navigational charts. I now use an iPad extensively when flying, because the program I use, Foreflight, is so much more adaptable and informative than the paper charts it replaced. It would make things riskier, rather than safer, if I had to turn it off at arbitrary times.

Alex Massie

Doctor Paul’s Splendid Isolation

From our UK edition

Meanwhile, the New York Times' Gail Collins makes the case for Ron Paul: Paul says he believes that the federal government (“the wealth-extracting leviathan state”) shouldn’t be doing anything that’s not specifically enumerated in the Constitution, which once caused him to vote against giving a Congressional medal to Mother Teresa. He doesn’t really believe in global warming, but, even if he did, he doesn’t think government is smart enough to be able to do anything about it. He also doesn’t believe in, well, let’s see: gun control, the death penalty, the C.I.A.

Alex Massie

In the Bleak Midwinter; Some Republican Entertainment

From our UK edition

British politics is pretty depressing at the moment so thank god for the entertainment provided by the Republican candidates squabbling to become their party's Presidential nominee. Dark times demand dark comedy leavened by appropriate measures of farce. Hurrah for Newt Gingrich, then. We are advised that he must be taken seriously now that he's been endorsed by the Manchester Union-Leader even though that paper has in the past supported the likes of Steve Forbes, Pat Buchanan, Pete DuPont (1988) and Richard Ashbrook (1972). What's more, the Union-Leader's publisher thinks it sensible to say Newt "resembles" Winston Churchill. Yes, all this is supposed to be an important symbol and the kind of credential Newt needs to establish himself with conservative voters. Perhaps so.

Monday

Alex Massie

Mitt vs Mitt

From our UK edition

The Democrats come to the GOP party with this reminder that Mitt Romney's the most credible general election candidate the Republicans have. That doesn't make Mitt some kind of Captain Invincible. But this is not actually some kind of double-bluff. Democrats really would like to run against Newt Gingrich or Rick Perry. Mitt has his problems but he's not, well, you know, Newt.

Saturday

Friday

Alex Massie

Let the Telegraph be the Telegraph

From our UK edition

Few things on Fleet Street are as reliably embarrassing as the Daily Telegraph's efforts to appeal to the Yoof market. Experience is a tough dominie however and, unabashed, the paper still strives to attract a younger, hipper type of reader even though said types of reader should sensibly be banned form purchasing the Telegraph. It is all very silly. We want the Telegraph to be the Telegraph. Three cheers then for Rev Dr Peter Mullen, Rector of St Michael, Cornhill and St Sepulchre-without-Newgate in the City of London, who has written this splendid, trencant piece asking, with good reason, Why is every BBC programme invested with a blast of pop music? Why indeed and even on Radio 4?