Hillary’s hold on Obama
From our UK edition
Over on Americano, an explanation of why Hillary Clinton holds the key to what Barack Obama will say on Tuesday night when the primary process finally finishes.
James Forsyth
James Forsyth is former political editor of The Spectator.
Monday
Blunkett: Things can only get better
From our UK edition
David Blunkett’s attempt to be helpful on 42 days is a classic: We've hit a rock bottom in my view and we can only get...
The aftermath of the Tube riot
From our UK edition
Clive has footage of the Tube riot on the Circle Line which is well worth watching to get a feel for what went . Harry’s Place (link via Stephen) calls on the Met to prosecute the organiser. This seems wrong-headed to me. The only people to blame for what happened were those who turned the event—which was perfectly legal—violent. As Stephen says, the police should be scrutinising the footage on YouTube and other sites and tracking down those who committed violent acts and did criminal damage. They should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
The Union wish list
From our UK edition
Over at Red Box, Sam Coates runs down what the brothers appear to want for bailing Labour out of its present financial difficulties: 1. Windfall tax for energy companies (floated by both Dubbins and Simpson) 2. Legislation to require companies to carry out equal pay audits, to close the gap between male and female pay 3. Higher business taxes, following research cited by unions showing "the UK’s top companies are already saving £20 billion a year on tax through allowances and concessions". 4. New rules are introduced to ensure employees in companies subject to private equity takeovers have their rights protected. 5. Forcing companies to allow more flexible time off for new families 6.
Is Clegg about to do a left turn?
From our UK edition
Nick Clegg is the subject of The Independent’ s ‘You ask the question..’ feature today. His answer to this question is particularly interesting: Who was a worse PM, Blair or Brown? Saurav C, by email Clegg: Blair was more wrong, Brown's more incompetent. Now, I may be reading way too much into a pithy response but it rather suggests to me that Clegg is shifting his political positioning leftwards. It might be that this is in response to the stories about him becoming Home Secretary in a Tory government or he might have decided that given the current political environment, the Lib Dem's best chance of gains at the next election are in Labour seats.
In case you missed them
From our UK edition
A selection of some of the posts made over the weekend: James Forsyth argues that the blame for the violence on the Tube on Saturday nights rests not with Mayor but with the perpetrators and highlights Peter Oborne’s analysis of the sorry state of Labour’s finances. Clive Davis notes how The New York Times’ reviewer was neither shaken nor stirred by the new Bond novel. The Skimmer reports on the Indian media’s new nickname for The Guardian. Americano reports on Barack Obama’s cheeky but rather brilliant plan to kick his general election campaign off in the very place that John McCain will accept the Republican nomination.
Brown makes the case for 42 days
From our UK edition
Tonight, Jacqui Smith will address the Parliamentary Labour Party. Brown will not attend the meeting but he has outlined the compromises he is prepared to make in an article for The Times this morning. Brown stresses both the complexity of modern terrorist plots and how rarely this power would be used. As someone who is agnostic on 42 days, the least persuasive part of the piece is when Brown says that if the Home Secretary decided to use the 42 day power, Parliament would then have to ratify this decision. This seems to confuse the role of the legislature and the judiciary. The level of public debate it would entail would also surely prejudice any future trial.
Sunday
It should be clear where the blame for last night’s violence lies
From our UK edition
The behaviour of those protesting the booze ban on the Tube last night was disgraceful. Those who assaulted Tube staff and police officers should be punished to the fullest extent of the law. The reaction of the RMT, though, is bizarre. Rather than pinning the blame on the perpetrators, it has decided that it was the Mayor’s fault for banning alcohol on public transport in the first place. This mindset which always blames the supposed provocation rather than those actually responsible for the actions is one of the great ills of our time. The moral responsibility for last night’s disgraceful scenes lies squarely with its perpetrators.
A month of real progress in Iraq
From our UK edition
This May saw fewer US military casualties in Iraq, 18, than any previous month in the war. It also saw the Iraqi government take significant steps to becoming a truly national government; successfully taking on the Shi’ite militias in Basra and Sadr City. As The Washington Post writes in its lead editorial this morning: “Iraq passed a turning point last fall when the U.S. counterinsurgency campaign launched in early 2007 produced a dramatic drop in violence and quelled the incipient sectarian war between Sunnis and Shiites.
Saturday
Score one to Obama
From our UK edition
On Tuesday night after the last vote in the Democratic primaries has been cast, Obama will speak in the very hall in which John McCain will accept the Republican nomination in September. It is a smart move by his campaign as it pushes the general election story-line front and centre, relegating Hillary Clinton to the third paragraph of the article. It also sets up an inevitable comparison between Obama’s speech and McCain’s convention address—a comparison that is unlikely to be favourable to McCain who is not in the same league as Obama as a set-piece orator. The other thing which Obama’s choice of venue suggests is that he might have enough super-delegates lined up to gain an overall majority of delegates on Tuesday night.
Brown has been phoning round since 1997
From our UK edition
The story that Gordon Brown personally calls members of the public who write him critical letters gets more bizarre with the news in today’s Guardian that he has apparently being doing this since 1997. This suggests that he can’t be calling that many people as otherwise this would have surely leaked out before now. Someone who has received one of these calls told The BBC: ‘the prime minister apologised on behalf of the government "for what had happened to the people of Iraq".’ This flags up another potential problem with the scheme: people who have been phoned could start coming forward and announcing that government policy on x,y or z has now changed.
Labour’s money woes
From our UK edition
Peter Oborne’s column in The Daily Mail reveals just how bad Labour’s financial position is. As Peter notes, there are doubts as to whether the party can be deemed a ‘viable going concern.’ Incredibly, there is a real chance that the Labour party might actually go bankrupt and that members of the NEC could find themselves personally liable for Labour’s debts: "This threat of personal liability is now being taken very seriously indeed, so much so that the GMB trade union has already taken the extraordinary step of discussing at its last executive council meeting whether its two representatives on Labour's ruling National Executive Committee (NEC) should be indemnified against financial loss in the event Labour goes bankrupt.
Friday
Was the Chinese army responsible for the 2003 New York blackout?
From our UK edition
National Journal has an eye-opening cover story this week on the extent of China’s e-espionage. The piece reveals that US intelligence officials believe that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army was probably responsible for the 2003 power cut that blacked out much of the east coast of the US. The whole piece is well worth reading to get an idea of the scale of the problem. Apparently, President Bush has spent more time on this cyber threat in the last year than he did in the first six years of his presidency combined.
The question Brown must answer if Labour is to recover
From our UK edition
Stephen McCabe, the Labour whip who was in the charge of the Crewe and Nantwich campaign, has written an article for Tribune on his experience. The headlines will be grabbed by McCabe’s claim that there was no ‘toff strategy’ but more interesting is how he explains Labour’s defeat. “Nor could we stem the drift from Labour of the aspirational 25- and 35-plus age groups "Their message was simple. They were fed up with paying too much tax, too much for fuel and food, and feared for their economic future. Labour couldn't claim to be on their side. That remains the big challenge. What will we do to win back those 'switchers' who feel that Labour has let them down?
Pakistan’s failure to police its border is a threat to us all
From our UK edition
The warning from the departing American commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan General Dan K. McNeill that Pakistan is once more pursuing the failed strategy of trying to strike a deal with militants needs to be heeded. The consequences of the Pakistani approach can be seen in the fact that attacks in eastern Afghanistan were up 50 percent year on year in April. It also threatens to once more create a safe haven for al Qaeda, undoing much of the progress that has been made against the group in the last year or so.
Labour’s targets for fighting crime are about as much use as a chocolate fireguard
From our UK edition
Tim Montgomerie flags up how the targets culture is distorting policing priorities with arresting a child for stealing a chocolate bar treated by the police as being as important as arresting a murderer. There’s little doubt that the police are going for the low hanging fruit when it comes to meeting targets. Indeed, the only way to really measure how the police are serving the public is to make them fully accountable. If police chiefs had to stand for election and re-election it would force them to concentrate on the crimes that most bother the public.
Brown leads Labour to a historic low–new poll has Lab 23, Con 47, Lib Dems 18
From our UK edition
The headlines figures in today’s YouGov poll are disastrous for Brown, the historical comparisons are humiliating—even under Michael Foot the Labour party never sank this low in the polls, but what should really worry Brown about this poll is that he and Labour now trail Cameron and the Tories on every question. Downing Street has been spinning the line that the recent election results have been so bad for Labour as they have been referendums on the government. The thinking goes that things will improve for Labour at the general election as it will be a choice between Labour and the Tories. This new poll, though, offers no evidence for this theory.
Thursday
Drags on the ticket
From our UK edition
The last couple of days have flagged up problems that are going to bedevil McCain and Obama respectively in the general election campaign. McCain is going to have to run in the shadow of an extremely unpopular president from his own party. At every opportunity, the Democrats are going to try and tell people that a vote for McCain is a vote for a Bush third term. But McCain can’t jettison the President entirely as he needs Bush’s help to raise money and rally sections of the base of the Republican party that McCain can’t reach. McCain’s dilemma was highlighted when he and Bush raised money last night. His campaign only allowed him and the president to be seen together for about 90 seconds.
Hello, it’s Gordon here. I just wanted to explain…
From our UK edition
When I saw this story I had to check the date but it is not an April Fool, Gordon Brown really is cold calling members of the public who write him critical letters. PR Week, where else, reports that this is Stephen Carter’s latest ‘brainwave’: 'Carter thought it was a good idea to have Brown call people personally,' said one insider. 'Carter will choose a letter or email at random, have one of his team at Number 10 prepare a res¬ponse, then get Brown to call.' The potential for this to go horribly wrong is huge. Brown has already rung someone at 6am by mistake and it is not hard to imagine him getting into a shouting match with one of the people he calls. If the PM rings you do let us know.
Will New Labour survive a general election defeat?
From our UK edition
Let’s assume that, as currently seems likely, the Labour party loses the next election by a fairly substantial margin. The question then is does Labour conclude that the best route back to power is trying to knock the Tories off the centre ground or tacking to the left. As Matt notes, the temptation for a party after a heavy defeat is always to return to its ideological comfort zone—to imagine that a dose of the old religion will win back the public rather than just re-energising the faithful. Indeed, already the vast majority of prescriptions for how Brown can get back on track involve a significant shift leftward, a let Labour be Labour strategy.