James Forsyth

There are certain positions in government in which you can be hidden away, protected by your colleagues. Home Secretary isn’t one of them. Jacqui Smith has to work out how she is going to handle her return to public life. I’m sure there will be those advising her to carry on as if nothing had happened, to make an announcement on a serious subject and dare the press to question her about her husband’s viewing habits. But this would be a mistake. The press are going to ask her about this scandal pretty much regardless and for her to be questioned about porn movies after an announcement on anti-terrorism would just highlight why so many people think her position is untenable.

I doubt that even the Major government at its lowest ebb had a worse day of Sunday headlines than this government has had today. On a substantive level, Brown’s plans for the G20 appear in tatters. The Germans have leaked the draft communiqué and the New York Times has detailed Brown’s tendency to say one thing to a European audience and another to an American audience. There is also another story about Lord Myners’s tax affairs in the papers; Myners is fast becoming the personification of Brown’s foolish worship of the so-called masters of the universe. To round things off, the latest poll puts the Tories 13 points ahead. But I suspect it isn’t these broadsheet stories that will do most harm to the government.

The News of the World reports that Stuart Wheeler, the major Tory donor, has written a £100,000 cheque to UKIP and will vote for the party in the European elections. But this is not a straight forward defection. Wheeler says he will vote Tory in the local elections and at the general election. So, the party leadership must decide whether to expel Wheeler and refuse any future donations from him or to just ignore this provocation. Cameron, unlike previous Tory leaders, is dealing with Wheeler from a position of strength. The party is 13 points ahead in the latest poll and it is far easier for Cameron to brush this off on a day when the President of the United States has gone out of his way to arrange a meeting with him.

It has always been Barack Obama’s foreign policy instincts that have worried me most. I worried that he both did not grasp the security challenges facing the United States and that he was unwilling to expend the necessary political capital on foreign policy. Given these reservations, I was definitely encouraged by Obama’s announcement of Afghan / Pakistan strategy today. Rather than going for a purely counter-terrorism approach which would have failed in the medium-term, Obama has gone for a proper counter-insurgency approach. Bob Kagan, whose foreign policy instincts I respect, is most impressed: “Hats off to President Obama for making a gutsy and correct decision on Afghanistan.

Bob Kagan, one of the smartest foreign policy thinkers around, points out why Obama’s attempts to reach out to Iran are, from a hawkish perspective, sensible: “So one of two things is going to happen: Either the friendly diplomatic approach works, and the Iranians actually cave and accept American and European demands, which would be good. Or the friendly approach doesn’t work, and the Iranians proceed on their present course, thus proving that even diplomacy sincerely pursued by a well-intentioned president has no impact on Tehran’s calculations. I honestly can’t see the harm in the Obama administration’s efforts. I hope they succeed.