James Forsyth is former political editor of The Spectator.
From our UK edition
Tony Blair has just got out of his car and is walking down the street, hugging and embracing Labour supporters. It is a recreation of that famous walk down Downing Street on May 1st, 1997. The first of many pulls on the heart strings that we’re going to see today. You can say what you
From our UK edition
Melissa Kite’s story in the Sunday Telegraph about a coming Tory reshuffle has ruffled feathers. This morning, via the indispensable Conservative Home, comes a highly personal attack on Kite from Alan Duncan who accuses her of “shoddy journalism”, “poor judgement” and tops things off with the line that, “If she really thinks this is authoritative
From our UK edition
Tonight isn’t the first time that the Queen and George W. Bush have broken bread together at the White House. But the odds are that the conversation tonight will be more stilted than it was the last time they did. Rewind to 1991 and the preidency of George Bush senior: “The Queen of England got
From our UK edition
Nicolas Sarkozy is going to cause problems for both Gordon Brown and David Cameron. The headache for Cameron, as Matt pointed out the other day, is that Sarkozy sounds far more right-wing than he actually is. His victory speech was full of the kind of red-meat rhetoric that much of the Tory grassroots and press
From our UK edition
Belgium TV are reporting that Nicolas Sarkozy has got 53-54% of the vote in the French presidential election according to early exit polls. These are only exit polls but they got the first round result pretty much spot on. France’s purely proportional system makes these polls far less prone to error than they are in this
From our UK edition
Last night I said that it looked like being a mediocre result for David Cameron, well it looks like it was substantially better than that. The Tories have quietly rattled up 875 gains, far more than the 600 or so that they were expected to get. So the Tories must be considered, alongside the SNP,
From our UK edition
So, finally we know the news from Scotland and it’s not good for Gordon Brown. The SNP have 47 seats to Labour’s 46. During the campaign, the Lib Dems made clear that they would enter coalition talks with the largest party first. But even if the SNP and Lib Dems make a deal they still
From our UK edition
Conservative Home asks why there isn’t more speculation about Ming Campbell’s future. It does seem odd how easy a ride he’s been given considering that the Lib Dems must be sorely disappointed by the results. But no one talking about why Ming must go is actually the worst possible news for him as it demonstrates
From our UK edition
And Labour pretty much as they were the BBC are projecting. That has got to count as a good night for Labour, in the circumstances, and a mediocre one for Cameron and one they’d rather forget for the Lib Dems.
From our UK edition
Former Reagan and Bush 1 staffer Bruce Bartlett thinks that conservatives might, out of necessity, end up embracing their favourite hate-figure. Crazy as it sounds his argument has something going for it. The Republicans are in dire straits and Hillary’s the most conservative Democrat running for president by some distance. But people don’t make political
From our UK edition
The reports this morning that Tony Blair might step down as an MP as soon as he quits as PM raise the question of what will Blair do next. (The denial from Downing Street, which is about timing not substance, doesn’t suggest that Blair is planning to become a Ted Heath-style fixture in the Commons.)
From our UK edition
Nicolas Sarkozy survived last night’s French presidential debate. Opinion seems divided on who actually won but Sarko didn’t throw it away, as many feared he would, by flying off the handle. Ségolène Royal kept trying to rile him, to get him to display the side of his personality that scares so many voters yet Sarkozy stayed
From our UK edition
Iain Dale has an interesting post on which shadow cabinet members get the most press. What strikes you straight away is how David Davis, who gets the most with the exception of David Cameron himself, only gets 17% of the coverage that Cameron does. Indeed, the leader gets considerably more mentions than all of his shadow cabinet put together.
From our UK edition
James Forsyth says that the mighty race between the two Senators — the first serious black contender against the first serious female contender — will be the main event, as the Republicans’ fate is decided in Baghdad Clinton’s in, Obama’s in, everybody’s in. Last week the 2008 presidential contest got serious, as the Democratic heavyweights
From our UK edition
From the moment that the snatched camera-phone footage of Saddam Hussein’s execution emerged, it was hideously clear that the sentence had been carried out in a deplorable manner. The Americans immediately briefed that their calls for a delay had been ignored by the Iraqis. On 4 January George W. Bush felt obliged to admit that
From our UK edition
‘Innocent people can’t do any good in the world. First of all, there are no innocent people, and, second of all, exercising power is not an innocent activity.’ This is not the kind of straight talk you expect to hear in Brussels, but Bob Kagan is a man with little time for polite fictions. Three
From our UK edition
Tony Blair’s speech at the Guildhall adroitly placed him ahead of the news. By reiterating his support for dialogue with Iran and Syria on the same day that George W. Bush met James Baker’s Iraq Study Group, he has guaranteed himself some of the plaudits if and when Washington finally — and formally — talks
From our UK edition
Washington All you need to know about the effectiveness of Labour’s official attacks on David Cameron is that Siôn Simon’s toe-curling spoof video doesn’t look so bad in comparison. Labour has so far failed to land a killer blow on Cameron, suggesting that the next election will be a genuine contest. There is, though, one