James Forsyth is former political editor of The Spectator.
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The New York Times’ big splash today on the hunt for Osama bin Laden is well worth reading in full as it deals with the more important question of what Al Qaeda is capable of now. Here are the two key paragraphs on this point: Just as it had on the day before 9/11, Al Qaeda
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You won’t find many hacks better connected than Trevor Kavanagh so his column today is particularly noteworthy as it assumes that Gordon Brown being told to step down by some of those closest to him is inevitable: The party won’t have him humiliated by a Cabinet coup, a stalking horse challenge or a showdown with
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If you want to get a feeling for the pain that Labour is currently going through read Jackie Ashley’s column in The Guardian which sums up the situation brilliantly. “Talking to ministers over the past few weeks, I have been struck by how fatalistic they have become. They do not seem, in the main, to
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Like Stephen, I couldn’t quite believe it when I read that children now receive marks in English GCSE for writing ‘F*** off’. The explanation from Peter Buckroyd, chief examiner of English for the Assessment and Qualifications Alliance, that writing down this expletive ‘does show some very basic skills we are looking for’ does make one think
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Walking down Whitehall the other day on a beautiful summer’s evening, it struck me what Gordon Brown’s positive legacy will be: the flags flying on top of public buildings. When Brown first suggested the idea last July I was rather sceptical, but looking up Whitehall and seeing the various Union Jacks fluttering in the breeze
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With the polls suggesting that there’s very little chance of a Brown comeback—according to ICM only 24 percent of people think that Labour can win the next election if Brown’s in charge—people in Westminster are beginning to think seriously about what the governing priorities of the Tories will be. As Pete outlined earlier, Fraser’s cover
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What is most remarkable about the descent of Gordon Brown is that the voters have never even hinted at giving him a second chance. Ever since the debacle of the election that never was Brown and Labour’s ratings have moved downwards at a pretty rapid clip. We are now at a point where 74 percent of voters
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Danny Finkelstein has responded to my post suggesting that he is fighting the last war by saying, rather ingenuously, that this is generally a smart strategy. Now, at the risk of stretching this metaphor to breaking point, I’d counter that the last wars the Conservative party has fought have been all about minimising its loses
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I headed off to Milbank Tower last night for the launch of Total Politics, the brainchild of Iain Dale. The magazine looks great and has interviews with Gordon Brown and Lynton Crosby as well as articles by the great Mike Smithson, Paul Linford and The Spectator’s very own Clemency Burton-Hill. It is going to be
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Last night I was having drinks with a China expert and he made a rather startling prediction: Beijing will be the first summer Olympics where no records are broken in track and field. His thinking was that the air quality in China is so poor that the athletes in every outdoor event are going to be
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Clive flags up Maureen Dowd’s entertaining column on how the Americans would react to having Carla Bruni as First Lady. But on top of the comedy value there’s a serious issue to be grappled with. From now on, it is going to more common than not that a president or a prime minister’s spouse works. This
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This Friday marks the first anniversary of Gordon Brown becoming PM. To put it mildly, it hasn’t been a successful start. This week on Coffee House we’ll be putting forward our views on why and where it has all gone so wrong. The obvious answer is the whole debacle of the election that never was.
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One would have thought that getting a bunch of passport photos done in London would be no great hassle—but you’d be wrong. For a while I’ve needed to get some taken for the Tory conference accreditation form so on Thursday I popped into Hampstead Post Office to use the photo machine there. It was out
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The letter from Sir Simon Milton, head of the Local Government Association, to local councils telling them not to use the powers granted to them under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act to deal with “trivial offences” is a triumph for David Davis. (These powers were designed to assist in anti-terrorism investigations but are now
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Paul Collier, the noted Oxford economist who used to be at the World Bank, has a thought-provoking piece in The Washington Post today arguing that the best, realistic solution to problems like Zimbabwe is a coup. Here’s the nub of his argument: So how can the grossly excessive powers of the Mugabes and Shwes of
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Today’s Observer has an update on the state of the Labour party’s finances, as Peter Oborne reported back at the end of May there is a real chance that the Labour party might actually go bankrupt. Gaby Hinsliff reports that this worst case scenario appears to have been avoided thanks to a substantial donation from Sir Ronnie
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The BBC is reporting that Morgan Tsvangirai will announce this afternoon that he is pulling out of the presidential run-off on Friday. His decision is in response to the mounting violence against his supporters and systematic efforts to prevent him from campaigning. However, it will allow Mugabe to claim victory. The next few days will
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The BPIX poll in The Mail on Sunday is unremittingly bad for Brown. Not only do the Tories lead 49 to 26 but the public return a brutal verdict on Brown personally. 44 percent, a plurality, say he should quit now. 47 percent, again a plurality, believe Labour would have a better chance at the
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I’d thoroughly recommend these articles from The New York Times and The Washington Post about Iraq. The Times piece looks at the progress made in Iraq since the surge started and the remaining obstacles to success. The Post examines the turnaround in Basra and what it says about the effectiveness of the Iraqi forces. From
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Open Europe has caught the European Commission out in some outrageous spinning. Before the recent summit, the Commission circulated a briefing note to journalists that stated that 40 percent of No voters in Ireland voted no because they didn’t understand or were not familiar with the Lisbon Treaty. However, the Commission’s Eurobarometer poll published yesterday