Peter Hoskin

A dangerous escalation of the Middle Eastern conflict this morning, as rockets are fired into northern Israel from Lebanon.  As far as I can tell, no group has yet claimed responsibility for the attacks - although suspicion has to fall on Hezbollah.  The fear now is that this represents the opening of another sustained front in the current conflict.  And the key question is of how Israel will respond. Any response will partly be a function of scope and ambition.  Does the Israeli administration feel it's already dealt enough damage to Hamas in Gaza?  Does it want to spend more time to effectively wipe out Hamas?  Or does it want to tackle other terrorist groups, such as Hezbollah, as well?

Gordon Brown's interview with Sky earlier today is significant insofar as it represents the latest front in his war of words with the Tories.  Our PM's central claim was that the key dividing line between him and the Cameroons is over unemployment; with - suprise, suprise - Labour wanting to "help people get back into work," and the Tories happy to "do nothing". It's highly disingenuous, of course, but it does highlight one of those areas where Brown's at a particular advantage by being in power.  By "bringing forward" this or that spending project he can misleadingly claim to have created 1,000s of new jobs with a flick of his world-saving wand.

Team Cameron will be delighted with the news that Caroline Spelman is to be cleared of any wrongdoing over the 'Nannygate' affair – the Tories can well do without any "sleaze" accusataions being fired in their direction –  and the expectation now is that she'll be kept in the shadow cabinet, although not necessarily as party chairman.  To my mind, Cameron would be best-advised to move her to an alternative brief.  Although it may have been partially down to the allegations hanging over her, Spelman has been a near-invisible figure over the past year-and-a-half.

I wrote yesterday that the race is on between Brown and Cameron to appear the best to lead us through the post-recessionary landscape.  That race became even more competitive today, with both Brown and Cameron serving up their "optimistic" visions for the future.  Our Dear Leader's came in a speech to the Regional Economic Council, which was packed with nods to a "prosperous future" and to "investment in the future".  Whilst Cameron's came in the press conference that Fraser blogged about earlier, during which there was much ado about "increased productivity," "more efficiency," and "greener technology".

Optimism, optimism, optimism.  That's the line that Gordon Brown pushes in his interview with the Observer today.  He quotes Barack Obama; says he's going to create jobs the Roosevelt way; claims that British goods are "the products the world will want to buy"; and seems dismissive of any black clouds on the horizon, as in this (quite worrying) passage: "[Brown] mocks the Observer for being too pessimistic in our questions: 'Can we afford this, can we afford that'! I'm more optimistic about our ability to be a successful economy creating large amounts of wealth in the future.'" The politics of all this optimism is fairly clear.

What's this?  Yet another delay to the publication of ministers' private interests?  Yep, and this time it's because some of the "new minsters" introduced during the last reshuffle have - according to the Times's source - "required quite a bit of investigation".  The Times adds 2 + 2 together and comes up with Peter Mandelson; who's "declared the bare minimum in a voluntary entry to the Lords Register of Interests." Sure, it's easy to speculate over this kind of thing; especially with the prompt that Mandelson hasn't yet clarified his "links to Oleg Deripaska".  But even if the situation's completely innocent, it's still rather disspiriting.

Among the things to look out for in 2009 is whether - and when - our economy starts to recover.  Thanks to Alistair Darling's optimistic prognoses in the Pre-Budget Report, there's already plenty of room for embarrassment for the Government over this.  Their growth forecast for 2009 (of between -0.75 and -1.25 percent of GDP) is out of whack with the forecasts of almost every other major analyst (which averaged -1.7 percent in December).  And the idea that the economy will start recovering by the third-quarter of 2009 has also been widely scoffed at. Accordingly, then, Brown is already making noises that the Treasury forecasts will have to be readjusted.  But, even so, the open goals will remain for the Tories to exploit.

There's very little to add on the situation in Gaza that hasn't already been said by James and Daniel, both today and yesterday. Although I would like to remind CoffeeHousers of the post I wrote earlier this year from the Israeli town of Sderot - you can read it here.  For those who haven't heard the name before, Sderot sits near the Israel-Gaza border and is under frequent rocket attack by Hamas.  Its citizens live under a constant pall of fear and helplessness; something that was brought into sharp focus for me when I witnessed the immediate aftermath of one of Hamas's random barrages. Of course, the situation's horrible inside Gaza too, and its residents are most likely just as fearful.