Alex Massie

Alex Massie

Thursday

Alex Massie

Pray for Huckabee? God Help Us All.

From our UK edition

Yes, this is a site soliciting commitments (and email addresses) from those prepared to pray for Mike Huckabee to assist him make the anguished decision to run for the Presidency of the United States. Or not. It's not, his spokesman tells Ben Smith, an official Huckabee site, though it is linked to from his own Facebook page and he did write this gawd-help-us piece of simpering guff for his devotional followers: As many of you know, I am prayerfully considering an important decision about seeking the office of President in the 2012 election. I am asking for God's guidance now, and I humbly ask that you would join me in prayer as I seek to discern His will for my life. When I look across America, I see a country looking for answers.

Wednesday

Alex Massie

Labour’s Holyrood Campaign HQ? The Beach.

From our UK edition

YesterdayTom Harris MP wrote a savage-but-accurate appraisal of Labour's Scottish election failure for Labour Uncut. Pretty much every part of his analysis is persuasive, most notably his appreciation that Scottish Labour has grown fat, arrogant and complacent. Just as importantly, many voters think this too. There was a widespread perception that there had to be something better than what Labour were offering and that Alex Salmond would do as that something even if you disagree with the SNP on its flagship policy or, for that matter, much of the rest of its platform.

Alex Massie

Attacking Harry Flashman is a Fool’s Game

From our UK edition

So Ed Miliband brought up the Flashman thing at Prime Minister's Questions today. How rum. Now I think it would be sensible for the Prime Minister to be polite to his opponents. There's no need to belittle Mr Miliband when he does such a good job of doing so himself. If Labour think attacking Cameron's privileged background is a winning tactic then good luck to them. I rather suspect the public have already priced that in to their view of Cameron (and George Osborne) and so this ploy cannot do much more than entertain Labour's backbenchers. I suppose Labour are thinking of the Harry Flashman* of Tom Brown's Schooldays.That Flashman was a bully eventually expelled from Rugby (for drunkeness).

Alex Massie

Wouter Weylandt’s Cortege

From our UK edition

There was no racing in the Giro d'Italia yesterday. Instead the peloton rode at a funereal pace to honour Wouter Weylandt, the Belgian sprinter killed in a crash on Monday. Then Weylandt's Leopard-Trek team-mates came to the front to lead the field into Leghorn. With them was Garmin-Cervelo's Tyler Farrar, Weylandt's best friend in the peloton. Watch from the 25 minute mark if you like: Dignified. Emotional. Perfect. And something you never want to see again. As I said on Monday, however, it's amazing how rare these deaths are (and Weylandt, the pathologist reported, almost certainly died instantly).

Alex Massie

Just Say Yes, Dave

From our UK edition

When David Cameron was a backbench MP he condemned the "abject failure" of the War on Drugs. And when he campaigned for the Troy leadership he said it was time for "fresh thinking and a new approach" to drug policy. He correctly noted that "Politicians attempt to appeal to the lowest common denominator by posturing with tough policies and calling for crackdown after crackdown. Drugs policy has been failing for decades." While a member of the Home Affairs Select Committee he said the then-government should "initiate a discussion" at the United Nations to consider "alternative ways - including the possibility of legalisation and regulation - to tackle the global drugs dilemma.

Tuesday

Alex Massie

Newt 2012

From our UK edition

Having flirted with the idea on several previous occasions, Newt Gingrich has decided this is the moment America has been waiting for. So he's running for the Presidency. Alex Knapp supplies the only slogan - coming to a t-shirt near you soon, I hope - and commentary his opponents need: GINGRICH 2012: HE WILL ALWAYS LOVE AMERICA. UNLESS IT GETS CANCER See here for previous on this. As David Frum said, anyone can dump one sick wife. It takes a special man to dump two. UPDATE: Newt's daughter says the commonly-believed story about Newt ditching his first, cancer-stricken wife is not true. The legend, however, outstrips reality every time.

Alex Massie

Aunt Annabel Departs But the Tories Can Live Again

From our UK edition

So farewell then, Annabel Goldie. As Hamish Macdonnell says, your position was weakened by the inquest into last year's disappointing (let's be kind, here) Westminster results. But Miss (never Ms) Goldie can step down knowing that her party is better-off than either Labour or the Liberal Democrats. A cynic might suggest it's easy for a leader to be honest when they know they have little chance of being invited into government, no matter what result the election might produce. And cynicism always appeals. Nevertheless - a very Annabelish word - the election campaign went almost as well for the Scottish Tories as could have been hoped.

Alex Massie

The Size of Things to Come & Unionism Needs a New Story

From our UK edition

Recalling the collapse of RBS, Tyler Cowen suggests that Scottish independence might not be such a nifty notion: The conceptual point is simple.  If you think that the world is now more prone to financial crises (and I do), the optimal size for a nation-state has gone up.  Risk-sharing really matters. That's a pretty widely-held view and it is not, I think, wholly coincidental that Alex Salmond discovered* the apparently unlimited potential of renewable energy at roughly the same time banking began to seem a less useful foundation for future prosperity.   Risk-sharing**, however, is at the heart of it. It was the main reason why the SNP became a pro-EU party.

Alex Massie

Labour’s New Strategy: Fight the Tories

From our UK edition

You might think this should have been their strategy all along. But just as Labour in Scotland misidentified their primary enemy, concentrating on the Conservatives when they should have been opposing the SNP so Labour in London has spent the past year looking for monsters in all the wrong places. Peeved by being thrown from office after saving the world, Labour have since moaned and whined and whinged about how beastly the Lib Dems are and how, in some rum fashion, it's unfair that they've broken their promises and are dancing with the Conservatives. Never mind that the Tories made a better offer.  Still, while this has not been much fun for Nick Clegg and his camp followers it's been quite good news for David Cameron.

Monday

Alex Massie

Wouter Weylandt, 1984-2011

From our UK edition

I was all set to write a post complaining that, as usual, the Anglophone press never pays enough attention* to the Giro d'Italia but for the saddest of all possible reasons, that won't be the case tomorrow. Wouter Weylandt, pictured above winning the third stage of last year's Giro, died this afternoon after crashing on a descent some 20km from the finish of today's stage in Rapallo. CPR and atrophine injections and the arrival of an air ambulance weren't enough to save the young Belgian. A race designed to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Italy's road to unification will now be remembered for something else. Weylandt is the fourth rider to die during the Giro and the first cyclist to be killed during one of the Grand Tours since Fabio Casartelli crashed in the Pyrenees in 1995.

Friday

Alex Massie

Team A Thumps Team B

From our UK edition

What a year! First Fianna Fail in Ireland, now Labour in Scotland. If only all elections were this entertaining and satisfying. At long last the anti-Labour vote was organised properly. Indeed, the SNP have won a lop-sided victory of the type Labour have been accustomed to winning in Scotland, taking more than 70% of the constituency seats on 45% of the vote. This included a victory in Edinburgh South achieved with fewer than 30% of the votes. First Past the Post for the win, eh? Labour spent much of the night complaining that there was a ball and the Liberal Democrats ran away with it and gave it to the SNP and that wisnae fair. Too bad.

Alex Massie

An Astonishing Night in Scotland

From our UK edition

Scottish elecctions tend to be boring. Little happens. Small earthquake in Scotland, not many dead. Just for once, however, that has not been the case tonight. Labour's dismal, depressing, you-cannae-do-anything-right campaign met its deserved end. Even so, who predicted the SNP could win FPTP seats in Lanarkshire and Renfrewshire. Who thought they could win a majority of Glasgow city seats? Who foresaw their historic breakthrough in Edinburgh? Andy here's-how-you-wash-your-hands Kerr and Tom McCabe and many other senior Labourites were toppled. Even Iain Gray only survived by 150 or so votes. Labour spent much of the evening arguing that the story was the collapse of the Lib Dem vote. In some seats, such as Aberdeenshire West, this was so. But in most of Scotland it was not.

Thursday

Alex Massie

Osama bin Laden Was Not America’s Useful Enemy

From our UK edition

The Guardian is a great newspaper but, lord, does it ever print some claptrap. Via Messrs Geras and Worstall comes this dreadful piece by Adam Curtis. The headline, for which Mr Curtis is not responsible, is a warning of the nonsense to come: For 10 years, Osama bin Laden filled a gap left by the Soviet Union. Who will be the baddie now? From the off we're supposed to appreciate, I think, that bad as bin Laden certainly was, he was never as bad as you were led to believe and, gosh, certainly not as bad as the people for whom he was a useful, even necessary, enemy. The world, you see, is complicated and if you think al-Qaeda are the bad guys you've been duped my friend. Seriously.

Alex Massie

First, Hang the Administrators

From our UK edition

So England will have different captains for each form of cricket this summer. Fine. Nothing much to see there. Much more important, really, is the news from South Africa: Australia's forthcoming tour has been cut to just two tests. As usual, the over-crowded calendar is blamed. As usual this is a reasonable diagnosis. As usual it's test match cricket that suffers. And it suffers at the hands of people who claim to value test cricket above all other forms of the game. The sport's administrators say they want to protect test cricket while at the same time they sacrifice it any time there's a spot of fixture congestion or their coffers are runnig dangerously low. (Incidentally, one rather suspects less effort is put into promoting test cricket than other forms of the game.

Alex Massie

HMQ’s AV Victory

From our UK edition

The success of Prince William's wedding was one thing but if you want another indication that, whatever people think they think of Prince Charles right now, the monarchy is in no imminent danger consider the fate of the referendum on introducing the alternative vote for Westminster elections. I suggest that republicans are among today's losers. Assuming the polls are right, that is. If the British public rejects a relatively minor change to the electoral system there is almost no chance, at any conceivable point in any conceivable future, they will vote for a republic. Custom and the Burkean arguments for custom are powerful things (and probably the best arguments in favour of FPTP).

Wednesday

Alex Massie

Our Drug-Stuffed Prisons

From our UK edition

It's not that I disagree with this post by Blair Gibbs, nor that I don't think he makes a number of reasonable points. There's clearly a problem with drugs in prison even if it it's not, one supposes, on anything like the same level as the Cousins' difficulties in that area. Nevertheless, surely the most obvious point to make is that if we cannot keep illegal drugs out of prison at what point do even prohibitionists recognise that the War on Drugs can't be won*? Ah, they say, sure, perhaps it can't be, you know, won but that doesn't mean it's not worth fighting! Maybe. But at what point is reality allowed to intrude upon this fantastical approach to serious public policy?

Alex Massie

The Scotsman Sees Sense

From our UK edition

The Scotsman's endorsement of the SNP and the Scottish Conservatives is so thoroughly, even startlingly, sensible it could almost have been written by me*. [T]here is no other credible candidate for First Minister beyond Mr Salmond. Despite his party's apparently staunch commitment to statism, we also know the SNP leader is passionate about the role of business and free enterprise in generating jobs and growth for Scotland, within or outwith the Union. In that, he and many of his colleagues – finance secretary John Swinney is one – share the beliefs of the Tories, and we feel there may be common ground between them. SCOTLAND needs a strong First Minister and a strong government, and only the SNP under Mr Salmond has the potential to provide that.

Alex Massie

Stray Thoughts on the Execution of Osama bin Laden

From our UK edition

Just as it's difficult for death penalty opponents to be too upset by the verdicts of the Nuremberg tribunal, so it is hard to be upset by the assassination (let us not be coy) of Osama bin Laden. Nevertheless, it seems increasingly probable that al-Qaeda's titular leader was executed "after" a firefight not, rather tellingly, "during" a firefight. Capturing him was never an option. It's easy to understand why this "clean" end was preferable to capturing bin Laden with all the awkward questions about interrogation and trials and due process and torture and everything else that would have followed. Too much trouble. For everyone. That too is part of George W Bush's legacy. (See the depressing debate over "enhanced interrogation techniques" for instance.

Thursday

Alex Massie

Keynes vs Hayek: The Rematch

From our UK edition

Today's boxing theme continues: This is excellent. Perhaps someone can do something similar for George Osborne and Ed Balls? The first fight, if you missed it, is here.