James Forsyth is former political editor of The Spectator.
From our UK edition
The Tories are, understandably, crowing about the result in Norwich North. Getting another half a percent of the vote to break through the psychologically important 40 percent mark would have been the icing on the cake for them. I thought one possible fly in the ointment for them could be the size of the UKIP
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Ben Brogan’s column, which Pete flagged up earlier, contains this intriguing insight into how Brown sees himself: “Mr Brown is currently obsessed with Winston Churchill, and how to avoid his fate. Those around the Prime Minister describe how he is preoccupied by the idea of a war-time leader who guided the nation to safety through
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A story tucked away in today’s Sun shows just how short of helicopters our force in Afghanistan is: “BRITISH troops in Afghanistan have only a quarter of the Chinook helicopters required under the MoD’s rules of war, the Tories claimed last night. A force like the one deployed in Helmand should have at least 47
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The New York Times has been briefed by the ISI on the Pakistani perspective on the situation in Afghanistan. The paper’s distillation of what it was told, is depressing reading: “Pakistani officials have told the Obama administration that the Marines fighting the Taliban in southern Afghanistan will force militants across the border into Pakistan, with
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Open Left, the new Demos project headed up by James Purnell, has invited various people to explain why they are on the left not the right. The answers are thought-provoking, not least because they show what those on the left think the right is. Peter Hyman, the Downing Street advisor turned teacher who wrote a
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The Tories are clearly sensing victory in Norwich North, David Cameron and George Osborne will both travel up there and be canvassing tomorrow morning from 5.30am. The Tories think that a victory would send them into the summer with the momentum and show that they are the party in poll position after the whole expenses
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Mark Malloch-Brown started off in government with an interview in The Daily Telegraph where he said too much and he is ending his stint in government the same way. Malloch-Brown stresses that he doesn’t want to cause any trouble for Brown but then says a string of things that are damaging to the Prime Minister.
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There hasn’t been much good news for the Republican party in recent years. But David Brooks, who is hardly a partisan, argues in his column today that the Democrats are throwing away their chance of a permanent majority in much the same way that the Republicans did: ‘We’re only in the early stages of the
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Andy Coulson is now giving evidence to the DCMS select committee, we’ll have live coverage. 12.15pm Coulson stresses that he has had no contact with Mulcaire. He says that he regularly paid five figures for a story or a picture and so the payments to the firm of investigators did not stand out. 12.20pm Coulson
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Journalists complaining about libel laws can come across as just special pleading. But the effect of this country’s libel laws is far more pernicious than just causing problems for journalists; they are chilling public debate in this country. The real problem, as my colleague Martin Bright notes, is not the high-profile cases but the
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The well-connected Jim Hoagland has a preview of how the Obama administration hopes the next year or so of its foreign policy will pan out. On Iran, still the biggest foreign policy challenge facing this administration, Hogland writes: ‘The next diplomatic trampoline for Obama is the G-20 summit [on September 24th], which he will host
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Andrew Grice has a very interesting column in today’s Independent based on a look at Labour’s private polling. As always with internal polling, you can’t be sure you are getting the whole story. Grice uses the data to provide insight on the question of whether Cameron has sealed the deal or not; his conclusion is
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One of the things that will show us what kind of Prime Minister David Cameron will be, is what he does with the defence budget. It raises two fundamental questions. First, is Cameron committed to Britain remaining a frontline nation? We believe, for reasons we set out in our editorial this week, that it is
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John Hutton’s resignation from the Cabinet was the oddest of the recent spate of them. Hutton, who was once one of Brown’s fiercest critics, quit his dream job in government but simultaneously professed his loyalty to the Prime Minister. But in an interview with Andrew Neil to air this weekend, Hutton is critical of Brown’s
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Ken Clarke’s interview with the FT is full of the blokey charm that makes him come across as more human than most politicians. But there is one exchange in it which is one of the most interesting reflections on the Cameron project from someone inside the tent. Clarke is asked what the driving purpose of
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Reading the Telegraph story about the tensions between General Dannatt and the Labour party which Pete flagged up earlier, my first thought was has the Labour party lost all of its political survival instincts? James Kirkup quotes a Labour Minister as saying, “Once he’s gone, we can have a go at him. He can write
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There is something intensely depressing about the news that Human Right Watch is trying to raise money in Saudi Arabia out of its work on alleged Israeli human rights abuses. As Jeffrey Goldberg reports: “…the director of Human Rights Watch’s Middle East division is attempting to raise funds from Saudis, including a member of the
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This week’s issue of the New Statesman contains some great stuff, a fantastic piece on Mervyn King by Alex Brummer and a revealing interview with Douglas Alexander. However, there is one piece of cheap journalism it that is not worthy of a magazine of the New Statesman’s quality and standing. James Macintyre writes in his
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Pete has already highlighted Sir Gus O’Donnell’s interview with The Times, but I was struck by the difference in emphasis between O’Donnell and Brown during his appearance before the Select Committee heads this morning. Here’s how O’Donnell talked about Canada and its example of 20 percent cuts this morning: “Asked whether he agreed with a
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The New Statesman’s interview with Douglas Alexander is making waves for Alexander’s admission that he was briefed against by Brown’s inner circle following the election that never was. The treatment of Alexander, a man who had been a Brown loyalist for his entire political career and was only following instructions, was particularly brutal. But what
