James Forsyth is former political editor of The Spectator.
Des Moines, Iowa Barack Obama’s closing video is radically different from Hillary’s talk to camera. Obama’s ad-men have gone for essentially a collection of his greatest hits starting with that speech to the 2004 Democratic convention which started it all. The message is light on policy and heavy on personality and Obama’s claims to be
Every Iowan watching the 6PM news tonight will see this extended ad from Hillary Clinton. The message hits Hillary’s theme that she is ready to be president from day one, in an unspoken contrast to Obama.
Jonathan Freedland has a typically smart piece on what Gordon Brown needs to do in 2008 in this morning’s Guardian. Freedland writes, “We will not vote on him this year, but after only six months in office – three that saw him soar, three that saw him plunge – we will form a settled view
Today’s Des Moines Register poll suggests that Barack Obama is on course for his dream result in Iowa. It has Obama at 32, Hillary Clinton at 25 and John Edwards at 24. A clear win in Iowa, with Edwards coming third, would set Obama up for victories in the subsequent contests in New Hampshire and South
It is now only 4 days until Iowa Caucuses get the 2008 presidential contest under way. The most precious commodity that Iowa can bestow upon a candidate is momentum; the result in Iowa can set the tone for the rest of the campaign. So, here is Coffee House’s guide to what the leading candidates want
Few columnists can claim to understand Team Brown better than Jackie Ashley, so her Guardian column this morning on this weekend’s Blairite overtures is particularly interesting. Ashley writes that Brown “is probably tempted to pick up this olive branch and use it to give the Blairites a thrashing.” But she warns the Prime Minister that
The Democratic presidential contest is getting the lion’s share of the media coverage because the two main competitors in it are political superstars whose candidacies would be historic and because whoever is the Democratic nominee will start out as the favourite in 2008. But the Republic race is, perhaps, even more fascinating with the very
Ahmed Rashid’s Washington Post column on what happens next in Pakistan is an absolute must read. As Rashid puts it, “The assassination of Benazir Bhutto has left a huge political vacuum at the heart of this nuclear-armed state, which appears to be slipping into an abyss of violence and Islamic extremism. The question of what
The political fall-out in Pakistan is likely to centre around a letter that Benazir Bhutto wrote to Pervez Musharraf on her return home, demanding that in the event of her death three senior figures in the security services be investigated. The government has always dismissed the letter as merely Bhutto settling scores with her opponents,
Benazir Bhutto’s tragic death is dominating the news in the United States and could change the mood of the presidential primaries. The improvements on the ground in Iraq and the conclusion of the recent National Intelligence Estimate that Iran has suspended its nuclear weapon programme had made the world seem a much less dangerous place,
The Pakistani government is currently meeting to decide what to do about the Parliamentary elections scheduled for January. It seems almost certain that they will be postponed. The next question is whether Musharraf returns Pakistan to a state of emergency. Nawaz Sharif, the mild Islamist who is now the leading opposition figure in Pakistan and
Benazir Bhutto’s murder vastly reduces the West’s options in Pakistan. Bhutto, while flawed in many ways, at least offered a secular and relatively liberal alternative to Musharraf. Musharraf now knows that the West has no palatable alternative to him—Nawaz Sharif is too Islamist for Washington and London’s comfort—and so will be less concerned about Western
David Brooks, perhaps the most perceptive commentator in America, picked out the year’s best American magazine pieces in The New York Times the other day. They are all well worth taking a look at.
Coffee House will be quiet over Christmas itself. We’d like to wish you a very merry Christmas and thank you for reading and contributing. If you want a political giggle over the next few days, click here.
Andrew Rawnsley’s column in The Observer on how Gordon Brown undid all the good work of the early months of his premiership with the election that never was is essential reading. As Rawnsley puts it, “the election debacle was shattering to his credibility and authority. It was like one of those sci-fi movies where a
With the news that Tony Blair joined the Roman Catholic church last night in a ceremony led by Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, I’d thoroughly recommend reading—or re-reading—Fraser Nelson’s piece on the attitude of some Catholics in this country to Blair’s conversion. You might also be interested in Stuart Reid’s thoughts on the matter which he aired
The Coffee House team are scattering to the four winds for Christmas so posting will be less regular than usual. You can keep up to date with all the latest news at The Telegraph. Have a very happy Christmas and thank you for helping to make Coffee House what it is.
Nick Clegg’s reshuffle illustrates the problems that he is going to have as Lib Dem leader. Three of the most talented and well know Lib Dems won’t be on the front bench. It is hard to imagine that a party as small as the Lib Dems can afford to have big beasts like Charlie Kennedy,
David Cameron and George Osborne are both singing from the same hymn sheet about the fact that there was no Granita style deal between the two of them in their joint interviews with the Mail and the Telegraph. The big difference between Cameron and Osborne and Blair and Brown is that Osborne was never the senior partner
If you want to get an idea of how great General Petraeus’s achievement have been in Iraq, consider this revelation from Time’s profile of him: “At a Pentagon meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff in December 2006, President Bush asked the Chiefs how many supported the idea of a surge — the deployment of
