James Forsyth is former political editor of The Spectator.
It says a lot about Gordon Brown’s lack of a domestic policy message that the news line in his interview with The Times is that he has no intention of quitting any time soon. He does attempt to provide some kind of agenda on public service reform, what John Rentoul calls the Blair-shaped hole in
Reading this week’s Economist, I was struck by this point it is editorial on retirement: “only Denmark has taken the radical step of indexing the pensionable age to life expectancy.” This seems like an eminently sensible idea. Not only will it save money but by pegging the retirement age to life expectancy it is fair
The New York Times is reporting that a Farsi-language web site, gooya.com, is claiming that Moussavi, the supposedly defeated candidate in the presidential election, is under house-arrest. More as we get it.
The BBC have now published the details of the expenses of some of their senior staff, you can see them here. But the salary of individual performers will stay private despite the fact that the license fee pays for them.
Kevin Maguire, who is extremely well connected within the Brown circle, has an interesting little item about what Gordon Brown might do once the electorate, or the Labour party, have given him his marching orders: “Academia may not be Brown’s sole destination, whenever he departs No 10. The Talibrown speculate about the Lords. John Major
Tony Blair is back in the news with the whole debate over the Iraq inquiry so I was intrigued to watch this interview of Blair by Graydon Carter, the notoriously anti-war, anti-Bush editor of Vanity Fair. It took place on Tuesday and what is striking about it is just how much more comfortable in his own skin
The married Labour MPs Ann and Alan Keen are in real trouble with the news that Hounslow council is threatening to repossess what is, according to their expenses, their main home because it has been unoccupied for so long; seven months according to one council source spoken to by the BBC. Just to compound the
Judging from what Andrew Sullivan and the New York Times are hearing, there might have been considerable violence used to repress a demonstration in Tehran today. More as we get it. Update: From the New York Times’ Tehran reporter: It was impossible to confirm first-hand the extent of the new violence in the capital because
Brown starts with condolences for the families of a solider killed in Afghanistan and the hostages who were murdered in Iraq. We start with a patsy question from a Labour backbencher about housing. Cameron goes straight in on whether Brown was accurate in what he told the House last week about spending. Darling looks particularly
The most important story in today’s papers is Deborah Haynes’ report on Sir Richard Dannatt’s speech to the Royal United Services Institute. In the speech, Dannatt makes clear that the reason the British operation failed in the south was that there were not an adequate number of troops on the groundL “Our failure to deliver
The big question of the next 11 months is whether Labour will benefit from any economic upturn. On this front, Anthony Wells’ post on the relationship, if any, between economic optimism and Labour’s poll standing is particularly interesting. Anthony concludes that: “The relationship seems to break down entirely though from the start of this year:
Trevor Kavanagh‘s Sun column yesterday contained this classic quote from Tony Blair about the prospect of becoming President of Europe: “I would rather nail my testicles to a speeding train than be President of the European Union.” Given the other likely candidates, I have little problem with Blair as President of Europe. He’s for free
Ed Balls tells The Times today that: “The moment you stop wanting to do the job you are doing and start thinking about the future or next stage is the point when you start to lose a grip with reality.” Now, Balls is saying this as part of his attempt to deny that he wanted
Companies that do business with non-democratic regimes have a moral responsibility not to sell these regimes tools that can be used to aid repression. A story in the Wall Street Journal raises some disturbing questions about the behaviour of Nokia and Siemens and whether they have sold the Iranian government the technology that is being
Update: The candidates in third, fourth and fifth have withdrawn. So, it is now a straight Bercow Young contest. Bercow probably benefits more from it becoming a one on one fight now rather than after another round or two. Courtesy of Andrew Sparrow, the result of the second round of voting: Bercow: 221 Young: 174
Andrew Sparrow points out that of the 12 MPs nominating John Bercow, only one is a Tory. (I, like Andrew, can also only think of one other Tory who is backing him). It is hard to see how someone can do the job of Speaker with any success with so little support from the principal
David Maclean has received a lot of criticism because of his efforts to exempt Parliament from the Freedom of Information act but we should all be applauding him and wishing him well today. I don’t agree with Maclean on the FOI issue but he does deserve a huge amount of credit for turning up to vote
Andrew Sparrow, who is running a typically excellent live blog, reports that the forst round results are as follows: John Bercow 179 George Young 112 Margaret Beckett 74 My gut reaction is that Bercow won’t pcik up enough votes in the later rounds to win. But Young beating Beckett for second changes things a bit.
Intriguingly, the Iranian authorities are now conceding that the number of votes cast in 50 cities exceeded the number of people on the electoral roll in those places. However, the Guardian Council is still trying to claim that this is a “normal phenomenon” on the grounds that Iranians are allowed to vote in areas other
The situation in Iran is continuing to develop, though with the crackdown on reporting from there—the BBC’s correspondent has just been told to leave—it is hard to know quite what is going on. The New York Times’ story, written by journalists outside the country but based on information from inside Iran, gives a good senses
