James Forsyth

James Forsyth

James Forsyth is former political editor of The Spectator.

Monday

James Forsyth

Labour fall through the 30 percent floor

From our UK edition

A new ComRes poll has Labour at 27%, Conservative Home is reporting tonight. This is the lowest number Labour has recorded in this poll since April 2007 while the Conservative lead of 13 points is the largest one they have had with ComRes since it started regularly doing voting intention polls in October 2006.  The Tories, however, have not made progress in terms of their own vote and are actually down one point to 40. This is the one thing that will give the Brownites cheer on what is a pretty ghastly night for them.

James Forsyth

Fundraising scandal leads to key Labour figure’s resignation

From our UK edition

Labour’s General Secretary Peter Watt has tonight resigned over the fundraising scandal that broke this weekend. Watt resigned because he knew that property developer David Abrahams was donating money to the party via friends, an arrangement that legally should have been disclosed. It remains to be seen if this swift departure marks an end to the affair. It is certainly another bad news story that Gordon Brown could have done without on the day that he tried to regain some momentum.

James Forsyth

Game on

From our UK edition

In a TV interview tonight, Barack Obama takes one of his harshest shots yet at Hillary Clinton. "I think the fact of the matter is that Senator Clinton is claiming basically the entire eight years of the Clinton presidency as her own, except for the stuff that didn't work out, in which case she says she has nothing to do with it," Obama said, and added, referring to his relationship with his wife, Michelle, "There is no doubt that Bill Clinton had faith in her and consulted with her on issues, in the same way that I would consult with Michelle, if there were issues," Obama told "Nightline" co-anchor Terry Moran.

James Forsyth

Why the Oxford Union has it wrong

From our UK edition

The Oxford Union’s decision to invite David Irving and Nick Griffin to speak confuses the right to free speech with a duty to offer people a platform. Nick Griffin is, within the bounds of the law, free to sound off in his usual obnoxious way. But that freedom doesn’t oblige anyone to ask Griffin to come and speak to them. Equally, artists were free to draw the Muhammad cartoons but newspapers weren’t obliged to reprint them.  When it comes to Irving the question ,as Deborah Lipstadt points out--via Clive, is not about intelligence but knowledge. Those listening to him won't be able to hold him to account for his views, as they won't know where the holes in his argument are and when he is dissembling about what a document says.

James Forsyth

The tide continues to turn

From our UK edition

Hot on the heels of Adam Boulton speculating about whether Gordon Brown is cut out for the job of being Prime Minister, we have Trevor Kavanagh predicting in his Sun column that, “Gordon will never govern in his own right as an elected Prime Minister.” Kavanagh is no natural Brownite but he’s one of the most astute and influential political commentators in the land. For him to declare that Gordon will lose the next election will hardly improve the mood in the Brown camp and will likely drive them further into the bunker.

James Forsyth

How bad is it for Brown?

From our UK edition

Jackie Ashley is one of the columnists who is normally most sympathetic to Gordon Brown. So her take on the issue of how much trouble the Prime Minister is in is essential reading. Here’s how she starts, “After days of talking to a wide range of ministers, Labour backbenchers and veteran party figures, my first conclusion is that, yes, this is very bad indeed. It is not just a few rabidly anti-Gordon Brown columnists getting in a lather. It's more than a passing, soon-to-be-forgotten lurch in the opinion polls. Though there has been no great national disaster of the Black Wednesday kind, the past fortnight has been a big enough government crisis to sink Brown and Labour at the next election, even in 18 months' time.

Sunday

James Forsyth

What price red tape?

From our UK edition

The Observer has a very readable piece on the opaque nature of the European Parliament this week. One fact in it is truly shocking, even to someone fairly sceptical about the whole affair. This year, the European Union spent £14,400,400  investigating how to reduce the parliament’s administrative costs. As they say, you couldn’t make it up.

James Forsyth

Look who’s coming to dinner | 25 November 2007

From our UK edition

Barack Obama got the question about who he would invite to his ideal dinner party from a newspaper in New Hampshire. The guest list of Jesus, Gandhi and Abraham Lincoln was revealing about how he sees himself. First, it is noticeable that Obama doesn’t pick a Democrat. Second, no figure from the civil rights movement is included. Finally, the mention of Jesus is typical of Obama’s comfort with talking about faith.  Who would be on Coffee Housers’ list?

James Forsyth

Key Clinton adviser wants more US troops sent to the Balkans

From our UK edition

Richard Holbrooke, America’s UN Ambassador under Bill Clinton who is expected to become Secretary of State if Hillary Clinton wins the White House, has an op-ed in the Washington Post today arguing for more US troops to be sent to the Balkans to deal with the fallout from a Kosovan declaration of independence which is expected before the end of the year. As Holbrooke notes, if Kosovo declares independence then the Serb portion of Bosnia will likely follow suit. On top of this, the Russians will try and link the issue to that of breakaway republics in the former Soviet Union. Holbrooke pins the blame for the current situation on Vladimir Putin and the Bush administration’s failure to realise how serious his threats were.

Saturday

James Forsyth

Can Gordon recover?

From our UK edition

With Labour down to 31% in the polls, talk has already started about whether the Brown premiership is salvageable or not. It is premature, if tempting, to declare that it is game over for Brown. This morning’s poll shows the Tories have yet to take advantage of the government’s plight and Labour are still a fairly united party unlike the post Black Wednesday Tories. As Martin Kettle writes, “Labour is united, albeit united at the moment in its misery. There is no equivalent of the self-destructive mood of the past.” There is, though, a feeling that Brown isn’t quite good enough.

James Forsyth

This Middle East summit is a distraction that will achieve little

From our UK edition

The Annapolis Middle East summit won’t produce anything more than a commitment to hold another meeting. But the real worry is that Condoleezza Rice’s intense focus on the Israel Palestine question could distract her from more pressing matters in Iraq, Pakistan and North Korea. It must all have been so different in their dreams. Scroll back to January 2005, the aftermath of the Iraqi elections and the beginning of President George W. Bush’s second term: if, back then, Tony Blair and Condoleezza Rice had contemplated a Middle East peace summit to be held in late November 2007, they would surely have dared to imagine a Thanksgiving Peace to match the Good Friday Agreement.

Friday

James Forsyth

The shape of the race

From our UK edition

As America tucks into turkey sandwiches now seems as good a time as any to assess the state of the presidential race. The first contests are now only a little over a month away with the Iowa caucuses on January 3rd and then the New Hampshire primary five days later. Iowa will determine the shape of the nominating contest for both parties. On the Democratic side, if Hillary wins Iowa then she’ll cruise to the nomination: the combination of momentum and a national poll lead will make her unstoppable. If she fails to win, she’ll be in a real contest—albeit one in which she’s still the favourite—as the sense of inevitability around her candidacy will have been punctured.

James Forsyth

Grammar school numbers up by more than 20% under Labour

From our UK edition

Labour talks about grammar schools as if they are something out of the dark ages. They’re also currently trying to make it easier for them to be abolished by ballot. Yet, all this disguises the fact that the number of grammars schools pupils in England has been rising steadily under Labour. In 1997 there were 127,780 children enrolled in grammar schools, by 2007 that number had risen to 156,800 (see Table 16). Now, with this government we can’t know if this is another failure of an intended policy or proof that Labour just cynically bash grammars for partisan advantage.

James Forsyth

One offer of support that Clinton will find easy to refuse

From our UK edition

Hillary Clinton received another endorsement for the presidency today and it came with an offer to stump for her, "And if I can be of any use to her somewhere in the campaign, I'm available. I'd like to go with her and I'm going to suggest it to her." Somehow I can’t see Hillary inviting Bernadette Chirac, wife of Jacques Chirac, out on the trail with her. France might be less toxic politically than it once was in the States thanks to Nicolas Sarkozy, but a Chirac on the campaign trail wouldn’t go down too well. (Although, in the lead off primary state of New Hampshire one in four of the population is of French descent) The Democrats have long been paranoid about being accused of being too French.

James Forsyth

Bush’s gravest misjudgement

From our UK edition

One of the great myths about the Bush administration is that is has adopted a cookie-cutter approach to foreign policy. As Tim Montgomerie pointed out in The Times yesterday, there is actually very little ideological consistency to it as proven by the very different approaches taken to Iraq, Iran, North  Korea and Pakistan. Of all these approaches, the ‘realist’ one taken to Pakistan may turn out to have been the most mistaken. The short-term convenience of a military strong-man prepared to back the United States, albeit only under duress, has—predictably—actually worsened the situation in the medium term.  Bob Kagan, one of the smartest American strategists, explains why the idea of backing dictators is so flawed in the Washington Post.

James Forsyth

The nightmare scenario for the Lib Dems

From our UK edition

There is an increasing sense here in Westminster that the Lib Dem leadership race will be a far closer run thing than anyone was expecting. Indeed,judging by this poll, albeit an unscientific one, at a hustings in Cambridge, Chris Huhne might even pull off a shock victory. But he would be a leader imposed on the parliamentary party against its will, 39 of 63 Lib Dem MPs are backing Clegg. In these circumstances, it wouldn’t take long for murmurings against the leader to begin if the polls didn’t show an instant and sustained uptick. The Lib Dems might even manage to depose three leaders in a parliament, which would surely be some kind of record.

James Forsyth

Retired top brass speak out against Brown and part-time Browne

From our UK edition

The attack on Gordon Brown’s attitude to the armed forces launched last night in the House of Lords by five former chiefs of the defence staff was absolutely devastating. Lord Guthrie called him “the most unsympathetic Chancellor of the Exchequer, as far as defence was concerned,” Lord Boyce cut through the spin to point out that “the core defence programme has had no effective budget rise at all” and Lord Craig asked the key question:  “Is it not immoral to commit forces that are under-prepared and ill-equipped for their task?” There was also understandable outrage about the fact that the Secretary of State for Defence is also the Secretary of State for Scotland.

Thursday

James Forsyth

Identity crisis takes Brown and Darling to Rock bottom

From our UK edition

A new poll has devastating numbers in it for the Prime Minister and the Chancellor. Public confidence in their ability to handle economic problems has collapsed faster than Northern Rock stock and is down 33% since September. Only 28% of the public now have faith in their handling of the issue, The Times finds. Considering emails are now coming out showing that senior managers did indeed sign off on the way that the now missing data was transferred from HMRC to the National Audit Office things can only get worse for Brown and Darling, at least in the short term. The news that the NAO had expressed concern over the mode of delivery before the disks were sent just exacerbates the crisis from a Treasury perspective. The question is: can the Tories capitalise?

James Forsyth

This failure won’t obscure the government’s failure for long

From our UK edition

The failure of Steve McClaren’s England team last night has knocked the HMRC debacle off some off the front pages but it is certain that this story will be back. First, blaming some idiot junior member of staff—as Brown and Darling have been doing—just won’t cut it as a senior manager appears to have known that the full set of data was to be sent to the National Audit Office. Second, there has been a pattern of carelessness with people’s personal information at HMRC that the press are now turning their attention to. The Times reports this morning, The HMRC has a history of losing sensitive information on unencrypted CDs.

Wednesday

James Forsyth

Too much information | 21 November 2007

From our UK edition

“It’s nonsense to think of Brown as a principled man who wants a new constitutional settlement,” snorted one Whitehall knight. Over a light Italian lunch he revealed that there are even murmurings against the popular Sir Gus O’Donnell, cabinet secretary and head of the home civil service. “There’s a lot of anti-Gus feeling about,” he said, tucking into his veal chop. “People are saying he is too close to Brown, that he’s been seduced by the fact that he is inside the big tent. He’s not looking after other cabinet ministers and their departments. He should be telling Brown that he needs more people in the tent and that he should let them make some of the announcements.