James Forsyth

This Today Programme special on social mobility is well worth listening to. Also, do read this piece on how to break down the social barriers in education by the head of the Sutton Trust Sir Peter Lampl.

Mark Mardell has a useful post on the progress of the European Treaty negotiations. His blog will be essential reading over the next few days.

I must admit that I disagree with Matt about Bernard Manning. The man was a deeply unpleasant bully and while others who ‘say the unsayable’—Borat, for instance—are actually ridiculing racism, Manning was endorsing it. Consider his performance at an event in Manchester back in the 1990s that was secretly taped by World in Action. Manning turned to one of the very few black guests and asked, "Having a night out with nice white people? Isn't this better than swinging from the trees? Do you think it makes any difference what colour you are? You bet your bollocks it does" The same night, he also came out with this comment about non-white people who are born here: “They think they're English because they're born here.

This essay by the US political commentator Michael Barone does a cracking job of explaining why 2008 presidential politics is so dynamic compared to the predictable politics of polarization that have dominated the last few elections. Also worth reading on the US front is this entertaining piece from the New York Times magazine about the candidates to be the next first family and what they tell us about modern American family life.

With Tony Blair’s departure from Downing Street there’ll be much talk of restoring ‘good government,’ an end to the centralisation of power, politicisation of the civil service and ‘spin’. Rachel Sylvester has a great scoop in today’s Telegraph about how the establishment is pushing for this through something called the “Better Government Initiative.” It is hard to dismiss a commission made up of five former permanent secretaries, two chiefs of the defence staff (ret.), Oxford academics and the like but this belief that the civil service is the answer to the government’s delivery problems seems wrong-headed.

The conventional wisdom on the grammar school row is that it came at precisely the wrong time for the Cameroons. With Brown about to take over at No.10, they needlessly shot themselves in the foot so this narrative has it. This is undoubtedly true but the very nature of the operation the Cameroons are engaged in means that they are going to make mistakes as they try and ‘challenge’ their party. There’s a case to be made that it is better they received this shot across the bows now rather than after the policy groups reported. It would have been much harder to walk back from a radical—but half-baked—new policy that they had proudly adopted as an early pledge.

This piece in the Telegraph about Brown’s upbringing is well worth reading. It gives you an idea of how precocious Brown was and how early he developed his sense of social mission. But there’s also an early foretaste of his puritanism: “In April 1962, aged 11, he wrote an article about a church campaign in favour of television commercials against the twin demons of alcohol and tobacco. Gordon concluded his piece with a typically opinionated flourish: "Let us hope that this plan will be a success and that the sale of drink and cigarettes to the younger and older generation will fall when these [commercials] against drink and cigarettes are shown.

Not very. As Matt pointed out the other day, anything like this that doesn’t mandate binding cuts is just hot air. The big winner from the failure to agree a deal: Al Gore. He gets to denounce world leaders for their passivity at his concerts and this inaction preserves one of the essential rationales for him jumping into the presidential race.

“But, you know, if anybody wants to believe that they are the descendants of a primate, they are certainly welcome to do it.” Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee at the Republican presidential debate last night.

So, we’re going to get another, much-needed Bank Holiday to celebrate Britishness. Personally, I’d nominate the anniversary of the battle of Trafalgar on the 21st of October. It would break up that long stretch from the last August Bank Holiday to Christmas and celebrates the victory that ensured Britain retained dominance of the seas and thus her independence. What do you think?