James Forsyth

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 road traffic counts from last eight years; all legislation on a database for the first time; property prices listed with stamp duty yield; all motoring offences with the type of offence and the numbers, by county, for the top six offences. Farm survey data would also be available. The Prime Minister will point to the success of crime mapping as an example of where data openness helps citizens.” So far, so good.

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. The devices allowed the fighters to coordinate their strikes and, later, post videos of the attacks on the Internet to recruit followers. According to a former senior administration official who was present at an Oval Office meeting when the president authorized the attack, the operation helped U.S. forces to commandeer the Iraqi fighters' communications system.

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 rapidly distanced itself from Brown’s comments. Now, the New York Times is reporting that the ‘announcement is still likely at least two weeks away – perhaps more.’ Two weeks where Brown can’t say that Britain is winning in Afghanistan but equally can’t announce a new strategy is going to be corrosive of support for the Afghan mission in this country.

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 killed in Afghanistan in recent days saying that the coalition is winning there. Howarth asked the PM to help spread this positive message — prompting Labour cries of ‘tell The Sun.’ But in his reply, Brown conspicuously did not say that we were winning. Instead, he concentrated on paying tribute to the bravery of the British forces serving there.

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 focus turns to Afghanistan and Brown lacks a compelling rationale for the presence of British troops there. All the while, everyone is forgetting the announcements on the NHS which Brown was trying to showcase this morning. When you consider that even with Brown acting as a drag on Labour’s electoral fortunes, some polls only suggest that the Tories are on course for a single figure majority, one wonders whether Labour will finally dump him.

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 that the Tories could so out-spend and out–campaign Labour between now and the official start of the election campaign, with its attendant spending limits, that the Tory lead in the battle ground seats could be insurmountable even before the actual campaign has begun.

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 rely ever more heavily on the support of the worst elements in his circle making him an even worse partner than before. Second it downplayed the importance of democracy promotion. Some might claim that this was sensible pragmatism.