James Forsyth

Bobby Jindal’s response to Barack Obama’s speech last night flopped. In terms of content it fell back far too often on simplistic anti-government platitudes and did not offer anywhere near enough of an alternative vision for how to chart a course out of this crisis. But the content was not its biggest problem, the delivery was. It was far too infomercial-esque. Some commenters on my earlier post on Jindal, in which I tipped him to be the next Republican president, are rushing to say that this proves that Jindal is overrated, that he’ll never make it on the national stage etc. But it is worth remembering that Bill Clinton’s debut on the national stage at the 1988 Democratic Convention was even more of a disaster.

Today’s splash in The Independent about British citizens attacking the British military in Afghanistan is yet another reminder of the challenges we as a county face from Islamic extremism. The fact that these people choose to fight with the Taliban, proponents of the most repressive form of Islam, against the military of their liberal democratic homeland sums up the problem we face. The Independent reports that the number of British voices being picked up by ground and air surveillance in Afghanistan has increased in recent months. As one Army officer tells the paper, "We are now involved in a kind of surreal mini-British civil war a few thousand miles away".

 Tonight President Obama addresses a join session of Congress in a televised, prime-time address. It will be in style, if not title, just like a State of the Union speech. So expect special guests—notably Captain Sullenberger who landed that plane in the Hudson, lots of glad-handing as Obama walks to the Speaker’s chair and wave after wave of standing ovations. One thing to watch for is how much the Republicans applaud the President. The unified Republican opposition to the stimulus in the House and the fact that only three Republicans crossed over to vote for it in the Senate has come to define the Republicans.

I must admit to being rather fascinated by the details about the lives of the fraudsters who are being caught out now that the financial tide has gone out. New York Magazine has a set of pieces on Bernie Madoff this week that not only suggest he was slightly relieved to be caught—when the FBI told him they were there to see if there was an innocent explanation for everything he immediately said ‘There’s no innocent explanation’—but also highlight his odd side. Consider his loathing of curves: “Bernie—whose office is in the famously ovoid Lipstick Building—couldn’t bear curves. “He was paranoid about them,” says one employee.

Today’s Guardian poll suggesting Labour would do better with someone other than Gordon at the helm is another blow to Brown. Realistically I can’t see Brown being replaced as Labour leader before the next election, there’s no stomach for the bloody struggle that it would take to prise Brown out of Downing Street and it is not obvious that anyone would actually improve Labour’s fortunes once installed in the job. But the idea that Brown is dragging down Labour’s numbers being splashed across the front page of The Guardian reduces Brown’s authority. It is harder for him to tell the Cabinet and the party that they have to listen to him on issues like the Post Office when he is seen as being part of the problem not the solution for Labour.

Ever since Gordon Brown became Prime Minister and Ed Balls Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, there has been a steady attempt to undermine the academies programme. Brown and Balls have set about rolling back the freedoms that the academies had been given and quietly bringing them back under the dead hand of the local education authorities. This letter (reprinted in full below) to Jim Knight, the Schools Minister, from the Independent Academies Association details just what the Brown government is trying to do and how pernicious it is.

There’s much I disagree with in Ken Macdonald’s piece in The Times today but he is right that the authorities’ attitude to corporate crime is disgracefully lax. As Macdonald writes: “In Britain, no one has any confidence that fraud in the banks will be prosecuted as crime. But it is absolutely critical to public confidence that it should be. If there was fraud in RBS or in any of the other failed banking institutions, if there was fraudulent misselling or corruption or any other criminal activity, it needs to be uncovered and dealt with. The alternative is the worst possible lesson for our national life. Do people believe this will happen?

As Martin says, the divide in the government right now is whether the right legislative response to the recession is to--in political shorthand-- ‘ease the burdens on business’ or ‘protect workers more’. Today’s splash in The Times about Peter Mandelson’s plan to postpone the plans for more generous maternity leave and tougher equalities legislation which Harriet Harman has been pushing for, and were announced in the Queen’s Speech in December, shows that this debate is live not theoretical. Stoking the tension is that everyone knows that, in the Labour leadership contest that would follow a defeat at the next election, those who are ‘on the side of workers’ will benefit.