James Forsyth is former political editor of The Spectator.
One of the most frequent complaints that you hear from those who have served in Afghanistan is that DFID is simply not fit for purpose. In an interview with The Sunday Times, Stuart Tootal, the commander of 3 Para who recently quit the army, gives a depressing example of how the DFID bureaucracy puts obstacles
There’s a depressing piece in The Observer today detailing the horrendous delays that anyone trying to go on holiday in August using various train lines is going to be subjected to. (Full disclosure: I’m planning to go up to the Lake District in August so am going to get caught up in all this). What
Looking at the numbers from that Independent poll, one thing stands out to me: today, more people agree with Blair’s decision on Iraq than support Labour under Gordon Brown. Labour has support from 24 percent of the electorate while 26 percent disagree with the assertion that “Britain should never have become involved in Iraq”. It
There is a lot of debate in Westminster about whether the summer break will be good for Gordon Brown’s standing or not. Labour optimists argue that over the summer, people will drift back to the party. But Iain Martin in The Sunday Telegraph points out one of the flaws in this theory: Here’s a prediction.
John Rentoul breaks the news of the latest ComRes poll for The Independent over at Open House, the Tories are on 45 and Labour on 24—the lowest the pollster has ever had Labour, and the Lib Dems 16. 68 percent of voters agreed with the statement that Labour will lose next time round regardless of
Peter Oborne in his Mail column conducts a telling thought experiment: “Yesterday morning witnessed a summit in Whitehall between Cabinet ministers and the country’s biggest union barons. Top of the agenda was a series of arrogant demands from the unions for control over government policy in return for funding a bankrupt Labour Party through the
Alistair Darling’s interview with The Times this morning marks the start of a new chapter in British politics. Darling makes no attempt to sugar-coat the economic situation. He is frank that “the economic news is going to be difficult for quite some time.” He also does not try and pretend that the economy will have
Benny Morris’s op-ed in The New York Times is essential reading. He sets out how any Israeli, as opposed to American, strike on Iran could easily escalate into a nuclear war. I’d urge you to read the whole thing, but here are the key paragraphs: “But should Israel’s conventional assault fail to significantly harm or
Ken Livingstone has confirmed to The Guardian that he will run for Mayor of London in 2012. It is hard to see how anyone could stop Livingstone from winning the Labour nomination so we will likely have a reprise of this year’s Ken v. Boris race. Livingstone is presumably betting that it will be harder
The Unions have 130 demands that they intend to lay before Labour’s National Policy Forum, Patrick Wintour reports this morning. These range from extending the minimum wage to those under 21 to making union subscriptions tax deductible. This strikes me as exactly the right approach for the Unions to take. Labour is in no financial
I said earlier on Coffee House that who Demos appointed as their new director would give us a sense of where the intellectual energy is on the left and the news that they have appointed Richard Reeves shows that the liberal-left is not yet ready to cede the intellectual battlefield. It also illustrates that even
The current SATS marks scandal is going to have huge knock-on effects. Schools are getting back results with pupils marked as absent who were present, other scripts are being returned unmarked and there is growing evidence that the grading has been—to put it mildly—inconsistent. This means that this year’s school league tables are going to
On Tuesday, Coffee Housers mused about the possibility of Alan Milburn replacing Alistair Darling. Today, Andrew Porter reports on the Westminster Village chatter about this: “So could he make an improbable comeback as part of a major reshuffle? The answer, I’m told, is yes, he could. And in a seemingly far-fetched scenario that would shake
Stephen has already flagged this, but Catherine Fieschi has resigned as Director of Demos. She sets out her reasons for leaving in The New Statesman as well as defending Demos’s decision to attending Islam Expo. (There is no reason to think that her departure has anything to do with Demos’s participation in Expo). Demos played
Seamus Milne’s column in The Guardian today is most revealing. Milne is completely frank that he believes that the government should engage with Islamism. As Milne writes: “The issue is the government’s growing hostility to dealing with anyone connected with the highly diverse movement that is Islamism. This is a political trend that has violent
There have been few harsher—or more prescient—critics of Gordon Brown than John Rentoul. Today, Rentoul again predicts that Brown will be forced out by the Cabinet before the next election but what is new is who Rentoul thinks is coming up fast, James Purnell. Rentoul writes: “That the opinion polls are so tilted against the
At the beginning of his premiership, The Daily Mail used to heap praise on Gordon Brown at David Cameron’s expense. But today, The Mail devotes its leader column to congratulating Cameron on his recent performance. Here’s how it starts and finishes: “From the very beginning, this paper has supported David Cameron. We are the first
The vast majority of Tory MPs have, at David Cameron’s request, published further details of their expenses. The right to know forms they have had to produce are not hugely revelatory but do bring more information into the public domain which is to be welcomed. On my very quick flick through the most interesting things I
It feels rather unseemly to be discussing Margaret Thatcher’s funeral arrangements while she is still very much alive but I doubt that giving her a state funeral will divide the country in the way that Kevin Maguire and Sunny Hundal are predicting. Take the example of Ronald Reagan, who in many ways was as controversial
Nick Cohen has a fantastic post at Harry’s Place, questioning why Demos was happy to participate in an event at Islam Expo organised by the British Muslim Initiatives. Here’s the key section of his argument: “Demos says it is slyly using one brand of Islamism to fight another. Will Demos employ the same cunning plan