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Afghan politics stinks; we all know it. But it’s still shocking to read how the former governor of Helmand, Sher Mohammed Akhundzada, encouraged his supporters to join the Taliban after he lost his position, in 2005, under a cloud of drug-running allegations. Here’s what he tells today’s Telegraph: “When I was no longer governor
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Today’s Times carries a cracking account of all the wheeling and dealing that went on during the EU jobs fair this week. Here are some of the most striking points that I’ve culled from it: i) Brown rejected advice from Mandelson and other ministers that he should try and secure one of the EU’s financial
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Ever the contrarian, Michael Portillo makes a case that you don’t hear from many on the right in his interview with Andrew Neil on Straight Talk this weekend. George Osborne has given “a fair amout of detail” about the Tories’ debt-reduction plans, he says, but that could be the wrong approach: “I wouldn’t seek probably
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There’s some very readable stuff in this week’s Economist (including a leader which outlines what Brown’s government should – but almost certainly won’t – do with its “last months in power”). But if you read only one article from it, make sure it’s the Bagehot column and its dissection of Brown’s latest Big Idea: public
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Two Labour figures, two bad news stories. The first is Tony Blair, and the news that he has given up on the role of EU President – leaving the path more or less clear for the Belgian PM, Herman Van Rompuy. The second is Harriet Harman, and the news that she faces prosecution for allegedly
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If you want a measure of how disastrous yesterday’s Queen’s Speech was for Gordon Brown, you need only pay heed to two things. First, today’s news coverage, which is almost universally negative for the PM. Even the FT, which is usually quite forgiving of Brown, launches an acerbic attack on the “shameless politicking” in the
From our UK edition
From our UK edition
Blink and you missed it. After seven minutes, the Queen had rattled through the Government’s legislative agenda for the next few months. It was all pretty much as expected – although it’s worth noting the “council of financial stability,” made up of the Treasury, the Bank of England and FSA, chaired by the Chancellor, and
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So what to make of today’s Queen’s Speech? Myself, I’m finding it hard to drum up much excitement. After all, we already know most of its contents (if you want a primer, then check out this excellent Guardian summary article here), and much of it is either underwhelming, unworkable or – as everyone from David
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The public’s judgement on Gordon Brown will probably come with the general election, but CoffeeHousers may have fun with this webpage in the meantime. It has been created by the clean-up-politics organisation Power 2010, and will let you grade Gordon Brown in the aftermath of tomorrow’s Queen’s speech. Naturally, the grades run from A (“Top
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There’s something futile about Gordon Brown’s and, now, David Miliband’s speeches on Afghanistan. After all, the world is still waiting to hear what Obama’s strategy is for the country. Will he increase troop numbers – and by how much? What does he actually want to achieve with them? Until that’s known, it’s a little premature
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I still think there are too many hurdles standing in the way of Tony Blair, but it’s worth noting this passage from Ben Brogan’s latest blog post about our former PM’s chances of becoming EU President – particularly the bit I’ve highlighted in bold: “When the manoeuvring [by EU leaders] is stripped out, who is
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Things never seem to go smoothly for Gordon. On a day when the Telegraph carries details of his Whitehall savings programme, the FT has news that one of his closest allies, Ed Balls, is calling for relatively hefty spending increases elsewhere. Apparently, Balls has asked the Treasury to grant his department – the Department for
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Over at his blog, Nick Robinson has put together a useful digest of the different attitudes towards Brown’s premiership inside the Labour party. Putting it briefly, he thinks Labour MPs fit into three distinct “camps”: 1) The plotters: “…believe that Mr Brown is taking their party to certain oblivion and are still desperately searching for
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This snippet from Jon Snow’s latest blog-post (with my emphasis) is jaw-dropping: “To add to matters, I have learned that the Labour party is now going through its ranks of peers to determine where their ‘principal residence’ is. This after years of wholesale abuse of the system in which lords and ladies of all persuasions
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Over at his New Statesman blog, James Macintyre reveals that Labour’s next election broadcast will be the sentimental, two-and-half minute history of the Labour party shown before Brown’s speech at the last party conference. We’ve embedded it below, for the – ahem – benefit of CoffeeHousers; so I’ll repeat the question I asked during our
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So Boris is attacking the 50p tax rate again – and rightly so. In his Telegraph column today, the Mayor of London repeats the lines he pushed in April: that the measure will drive business talent away from our shores, that it will damage London’s competitiveness, and that it could actually lose money for the
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Peter Hoskin celebrates 50 years of American independent cinema As so often, our story begins with Mickey Mouse and a child’s pliant mind. The child in this case was Amos Vogel, growing up in 1930s Vienna. His father had bought him a small hand-cranked film projector, and the kid Vogel used to sit there, winding
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Over at his blog, Rod has a simple plea: “let’s start a mass campaign of disobedience”. The target: the type of council bureaucracy which stops parents taking their kids to a playground unless they’ve been CRB checked. The method: well, that’s where you come in. There’s a bottle of champagne for the best suggestion. Just
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After his superb work with the Centre for Social Justice, it’s encouraging that Iain Duncan Smith is being tasked by the Tory leadership to come up with “affordable policy solutions” to spring the traps which keep people stuck in worklessness. It’s thought that David Cameron rated the proposals of the CSJ’s recent report on this