James Forsyth is former political editor of The Spectator.
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You can say this for the European Union, it never misses a chance to disappoint. The first EU president is a Belgium Prime Minister who is obscure even by Belgium standards and its first foreign minister is a Brit who would be treated as a joke if they had been made Foreign Secretary. From
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Today’s Evening Standard features an interview with Bernice McCabe, co-director of the Prince’s Teaching Institute. McCabe tells the paper that: “He [the Prince of Wales] is very passionate about the fact that children need a good grasp of literature and that all children need to understand the history of our country,” she said. “He is
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When it comes to the position of the first European President, the worst thing to be is the frontrunner as Tony Blair found out the other week. As soon as you emerge as the favourite, everyone concentrates on why you might not be suitable for the job. So, I suspect that Herman Van Rompuy, the
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The story, ‘Afghan Minister accused of taking bribe’ might seem depressingly predictable. But the accusations in today’s Washington Post are shocking even by the standards of the Karzai government. The paper reports that a US official has confirmed that there is a ‘high degree of certainty’ that the Afghan Minister of Mines took a $30
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Today’s Daily Telegraph reports that: “As a prelude to next week’s announcement Mr Brown will today set out his plans for “a smarter, more efficient and more responsive government.” Among the plans Mr Brown wants 2,000 sets of data up and running and available to the public from January. It would include areas like the
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Chris Grayling’s speech tonight to the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies at KCL is an attempt to set out the intellectual underpinnings behind the Tories’ home affairs policies. To my mind, the two most interesting things in it are how Holland is influencing Grayling thinking and his reassertion of the Tory commitment to elected
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The Times has a fascinating story on how Labour’s lack of cash is forcing it to give up on seats and groups of voters. The paper reports that seats with a majority of less than 3,000 have been effectively written off. So even before the campaign has begun, Labour is basically forfeiting 60 seats. By
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Towards the end of a government, the u-turns come thick and fast. So, after last week’s letter from a group of ex-ministers to Gordon Brown complaining about his plan to abolish a childcare tax break, the credit will now only be scrapped for those paying above the basic rate of income tax. (The Sunday Times
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The Obama White House’s drift on Afghanistan, sadly, shows no sign of coming to an end. A report in the New York Times today suggests that the administration is now worried about the cost of sending more troops. The paper says that Obama is insisting that every option contains a quick exit strategy as part
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This week’s National Journal has a fascinating piece about how in May 2007 the US used cyber-war tactics to decapitate the insurgency in Iraq. Here’s the magazine’s account of the importance of the effort: “Bush ordered an NSA cyberattack on the cellular phones and computers that insurgents in Iraq were using to plan roadside bombings.
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James Forsyth reviews the week in Politics After a good meal, Tory MPs like to play a game: guess the first resignation from David Cameron’s Cabinet. For a party that loves plots and intrigue, this goes some way to making up for the fact that everyone will be on their best behaviour between now and
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Gordon Brown is in a nigh-on-impossible position on Afghanistan until President Obama makes up his mind about how many more troops he wants to send and what strategy he wants to pursue. Yesterday at PMQs, Brown said with a sense of relief that there would be a decision from Washington in days. The White House
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The moment that stuck out for me from today’s PMQs came right towards the end, the exchanges between the leaders were not particularly enlightening. Gerald Howarth, a member of the Tory defence team, rose from the backbenches to tell the House of an email he had received from a friend of one of those men
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Watching Gordon Brown’s press conference you realise how on the ropes he is. The opening questions are all about the letter and Brown’s misspellings. Brown doesn’t have an answer that can shut this damaging story down and it is noticeable how he lacks the easy, public empathy of a Blair or a Cameron. Then the
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The row over Gordon Brown’s spelling mistakes in a letter to the mother of a soldier who had been killed in Afghanistan shows how badly run Brown’s Downing Street is. It is well known in Westminster that Brown’s handwriting is poor because of his bad eyesight. There is little that can be done about that
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The news that Labour’s financial problems are restricting its campaigning activities with its call centres running at a quarter of their usual pre-election level does suggest that Brown might decide to go to the country earlier than the expected election date of May 6th, as Isabel Oakeshott notes. For Labour there is a real danger
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Tory health policy is often criticised for not being radical enough. But Andrew Lansley’s announcement last week that the Tories would encourage John-Lewis style employee ownership and provision of services in the NHS is to be hugely welcomed. The scheme would cover outpatient clinics, health visitors and community nurses among others. The idea is what
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The Obama administration did not inherit a good situation in Afghanistan. But decisions it has taken have made the situation there worse. First, during the transition it flirted with the idea of withdrawing US support from Hamid Karzai but did not follow through. The result of this was that Karzai—worried about losing American support—came to
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James Forsyth reviews the week in Politics To step into the House of Commons nowadays is like gatecrashing a wake. In happier days, its corridors were full of MPs quietly plotting. Now, the scene is members being offered a supportive squeeze of the shoulder by a colleague. The ones being consoled are those who have
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On Wednesday afternoon few of us would have thought that the row over the Tories’ Europe policy would appear to have died down by Friday afternoon. There have been a couple of resignations from the Tory front bench in the European Parliament, a few MPs have mouthed off and a French foreign minister has launched
