There’s a remarkable self-certainty about what we’ve seen of Tony Blair’s book so far. Sure, there are the fleeting moments of doubt and insecurity: the drinking that was becoming less a pleasure and more a habit, for instance. But, apart from that, the dominant motif is how His Way was the Right Way. And so,
Even the literary critics have to wait until tomorrow for the Blair memoirs – but the book’s contents are slowing spilling out onto the Internet this evening. A series of extracts has just been published on the official website, and the Guardian has extensive coverage, including an interview with the man himself. So far, there’s
And Westminster’s Idle Question of the Day is: will Ed Balls be made shadow chancellor under a Miliband leadership? There are good arguments both for and against the proposition – and most of them are made in this blog post by the Guardian’s Nicholas Watt. Even Blairites, he says, are warming to the idea of
A day before the ballot papers get sent out, and the grey corpse that was the Labour leadership contest has suddenly leapt into a crazy jig. Ed Balls is slamming the “soap opera” of the Mili-rivalry, while calling for more social housing. Andy Burnham is insisting that he’s still in with a chance of winning.
Insightful work by the FT’s George Parker, who traces the choreography of the spending review in an article for the paper today. What’s striking is how much the coalition expects to achieve by what Parker calls “peer pressure”. Ministers who get through their spending settlement quickly and successfully will be held up as examples to
As austerity measures go, the plan to share aircraft carriers with France is totemic stuff. Not only could it save the Exchequer a heap of cash – by reducing the need for two replacement carriers – but it also says a lot about how our government wants to operate in the world: multilaterally, flexibly and,
Amid all the feverish commotion about cuts, it’s easy to forget that it took the Tories until November 2008 to ditch Labour’s spending plans – and, indeed, that it was barely a year ago when George Osborne first mentioned the c-word in public. Even David Cameron admits that this delay was his biggest mistake. It
Whatever happened to Peter Mandelson’s regard for Ed Miliband? A year-and-a-half ago, the Ennobled One was thought to have marked out MiliE as a future Labour leader. But, today, he pulls out the verbal chainsaw and sets about tearing him down. The younger Miliband, Mandelson implies in an interview with the Times (£), would lead
I know, I know – there’s only so much information about the Labour leadership contest that a sane person can take. But as an addendum to Ed Balls’ pugnacious speech earlier, it’s worth noting that Ed Miliband has since deployed exactly the same argument about deficits and the Attlee era: “We do need to reduce
As Paul Goodman notes, being Prime Minister means taking risks. So perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised to read in the Times (£) that, during his recent trip to Afghanistan, the security threat to David Cameron was more urgent than previously thought: “At the time Downing Street played down the incident, saying that it should not
If there’s one observation to make about Ed Balls’s speech this morning it’s that it’s punchy stuff. His main point is that the coalition are “growth deniers” – not only do their “austerity and cuts” risk a slide back into recession, but they’re also unnecessary. He explains: Attlee didn’t make his “first priority … to
Here’s one aspect of the Labour leadership contest that has passed without much comment: how many of the contenders want to extend the 50p tax rate from those earning over £150,000 to those earning over £100,000. Ed Miliband’s one of them; so is Diane Abbott; and so too – as he reminds us in interview
On Monday, I wrote that the question of whether the Budget is fair or not will “pursue the coalition more doggedly than any other”. Yesterday, we saw just how dogged that pursuit will be. But there’s no need for the coalition to panic as Mark Hoban did on the Today Programme yesterday. Instead, with policies
Coffee House congratulations to Samantha and David Cameron on the birth of their baby daughter. Here’s the Downing Street statement: “The Prime Minister and Mrs Cameron are delighted to announce the birth of their fourth child, a baby girl. Both the baby – who was born weighing 6lbs 1oz – and Mrs Cameron are doing
Hark, there seems to be a lot of noise about a double dip recession at the moment – added to, yesterday, by Dr Martin Weale of the Bank of England. So I thought I’d collect some of the more recent, more prominent warnings and predictions for posterity’s sake. Do let me know (either in the
The coverage in today’s FT is a reminder that one question will pursue the coalition more doggedly than any other: are the cuts fair and “progressive”? This isn’t an issue that Osborne & Co should duck, and not just because they’ve set it as a measure of their own success. There is, to my mind,
Some eyecatching numbers in today’s FT about how many free schools we can expect, and when. According to Department of Education officials, there will be about 12 of the new schools in 2011, another 50 in 2012, and around 100 in 2013. The paper dwells on how this falls short of the Tories’ pre-election rhetoric.
A week ago, I wrote that Nick Clegg had an important couple of weeks ahead of him. Now, the next couple of months are looking even more significant for the Lib Dem leader. An article in today’s Independent captures the tone of what faces him: in the aftermath of the Charles Kennedy defection talk, Lib
The quotes emerging, in advance, from Nick Clegg’s Westminster Hour interview are a mix of the unsurprising and the intriguing. To the first category belongs his claim that “parties in government tend to get a dip in their popularity” – I mean, he’s hardly going to say that the Lib Dems’ decline in the polls
Today is the 70th anniversary of Winston Churchill’s ‘Few’ speech. Here’s how the Spectator reviewed it at the time: Mr Churchill looks ahead, The Spectator, 23 August 1940 Mr Churchill surpassed even his own masterpieces of lucid and spirited exposition in his speech on Tuesday, in which he surveyed the first year of the war