James Forsyth is former political editor of The Spectator.
From our UK edition
Sophy Ridge has a good scoop in The News of the World today: the government is operating on the assumption that the number of unemployed will peak at 3.5 million in October 2010. This would be the largest number of people unemployed in modern British history. Indeed when you add in the people on other
From our UK edition
Tom Ricks has a fantastic essay in The Washington Post about the generals who—in defiance of the military establishment—pushed for the surge and the change of tactics in Iraq that have been key to that country making such progress in the last two years. One of the key points in the piece is how the
From our UK edition
Judging from the interview with Alan Johnson in The Sunday Times, Labour have given up on its attempt to character assassinate David Cameron. Johnson concedes that Cameron is “likeable” and that “He’s articulate. He’s a nice guy.” But Johnson argues that Cameron’s own qualities don’t matter that much as this “is a party system” and
From our UK edition
Tim Shipman has an important story in tomorrow’s Sunday Telegraph. Here’s the start of it: “American spy chiefs have told the President that the CIA has launched a vast spying operation in the UK to prevent a repeat of the 9/11 attacks being launched from Britain. They believe that a British-born Pakistani extremist entering the
From our UK edition
Vice-President Biden’s speech today at the Munich Security Conference was meant to spell out the kind of partnership that Obama wants between the United and Europe. The tone was very different from the Bush administration, with a lot of stress on the new beginning and how America wants to listen and the like, but the
From our UK edition
Considering the debate that the whole Carol Thatcher business has generated, it seems worth noting Adrian Chiles’ account of what happened. Chiles writes in The Sun today: ‘Carol was in full flow, talking about who’d win the Australian Open. “You also have to consider the frogs,” she said. “You know, that froggy golliwog guy.” “Ooh,”
From our UK edition
The Daily Beast has an absolutely fascinating interview with Andrew Mwangura who fixes the release of ships and sailors captured by the pirates off the coast of Somalia. (He’s currently on trial in Kenya) Do read the whole thing but this section sbout the role of London in the whole business particularly jumped out at me:
From our UK edition
To my mind, no commentator has better understood Obama and what he represents than David Brooks which makes Brooks’ column today particularly interesting. Here’s the key question that he poses: “Barack Obama is a potentially transformational figure. In political style and intellectual outlook, he is unlike anything that has come before. On matters of policy
From our UK edition
On the current political trajectory, Labour will go down to a heavy defeat at the next election. For this reason, it would be foolish in the extreme for Brown to carry on with his current approach: the polls show that it clearly isn’t working. Brown should be prepared to try something completely different; it can
From our UK edition
The Washington Post reports: “A small band of masked intruders has broken into the secure White House grounds and has evaded capture by agents of the new Obama administration, officials said today. The National Park Service is in pursuit of one very large raccoon and several medium-sized raccoons, who have been spotted roaming the grounds
From our UK edition
One thing that puzzles me about this whole Carol Thatcher golliwog saga is the importance her defenders place on the fact her remarks were not made on air. This seems to be rather missing the point. Surely, the two important questions are whether referring to someone as a “golliwog” is offensive, which to my mind
From our UK edition
Daniel Finkelstein flags up that the United Nations Relief and Works Agency have now ‘clarified’ that Israeli shells did not hit one of its schools in Gaza. So, one of the supposed ‘facts’ used by those–including the UN Secretary-General (pictured)–who argued that Israel was being careless about the impact its military operation was having on
From our UK edition
China’s rapid economic growth has largely kept a lid on the social tensions bubbling away there, underneath the surface. But with the world economy going into recession—which will hit China, with its export-dependant growth, particularly hard—these tensions could boil over. The Chinese government’s recently released figures, which are almost certainly an underestimate, show that already
From our UK edition
I always feel slightly ambivalent before the start of an England West Indies Test series. I, obviously, support England but I desperately want West Indies cricket to revive itself. The West Indies are the Yorkshire of world cricket: when the West Indies is strong, world cricket is strong. There are also few finer sights in
From our UK edition
Brown central is said to have felt betrayed by Ed Miliband’s declaration of independence over the third runway at Heathrow. The sense of betrayal was heightened by the fact that Brown’s protégé was positioning for the post-Brown era. But one of the few things those in the Brown bunker can still do well is deliver
From our UK edition
Yesterday was the worst day of the Obama presidency so far. His agenda and his moral authority both took big hits. Tom Daschle being forced to withdraw from confirmation to be both Health and Human Services Secretary and the White House’s healthcare czar because of tax irregularities leaves Obama’s major domestic priority after the economy
From our UK edition
One of the more simplistic foreign policy notions of recent times is that Iraq is the bad war and Afghanistan the good war. Barack Obama, many members of the British government and the European establishment are—or at least were—subscribers to this notion. (Disgracefully, British Ministers would use it in semi-public setting even while British troops
From our UK edition
There is a typically thoughtful column in The Independent today by Steve Richards responding to those columnists, principally Matt, who have declared that Labour has already lost the next election and that David Cameron will be the next Prime Minister. Steve presents four reasons, one each about Brown and Cameron’s leadership and two about the
From our UK edition
The Today Programme was as snow obsessed today as it was on Monday. Once more it dominated both the 7 and 8 am news bulletins, one would think there was nothing else going on in the world. But the height of absurdity was reached soon after 8.10 am when a reporter asked if we should
From our UK edition
One of the key political questions about the stimulus was whether it would increase or decrease Obama momentum, whether the President would find it easier or harder to get controversial legislation through Congress afterwards. The initial package Obama proposed was politically savvy, 40 percent of the stimulus would come from tax cuts—an idea that Republicans
