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For any politician to allow someone full access to them so that they can write an ‘on the campaign trail with’ book is always a risk. It says something about Nicolas Sarkozy’s confidence then, that when the French playwright Yasmina Reza suggested doing this Sarkozy accepted without hesitation. Reza’s account is sympathetic to Sarkozy but
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I spent part of this morning on a delightful walk down Brick Lane in east London with the artist and historian Rachel Lichtenstein, recording a piece for the Today programme next week. Rachel, who is a match for anyone in the field of psycho-geography, has a new book out entitled On Brick Lane, which is
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When trying to understand the impact of events like the shooting of Rhys Jones, turn to the tabloids. Their readers are the ones who suffer from the “broken society” and are most at risk from the violent crime epidemic and think “it could be my son next”. The Sun is at its best today. It declares
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Osama Hamdan is the supposeldy moderate face of Hamas. The organisation’s representative in Beirut, he has met with Michael Ancram and is viewed as the kind of man we can—and should—do business with. Alastair Crooke, formerly the EU’s fixer in the Middle East who now runs an influential think tank advocating engagement with groups like Hamas,
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This morning, Coffee House heard that the government’s policy of freezing out the Muslim Council of Britain was over and that Hazel Blears had met with representatives of the Muslim Council of Britain at a roundtable on the 8th of August. In response to an inquiry from Coffee House, the Department of Communities and Local
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At first glance it seems bizarre that Bush invoked Vietnam in defence of his Iraq policy. After all, for years the Bush administration has argued that any parallel to Vietnam is nonsense. But there’s logic to what Bush is doing. By mentioning Vietnam and Iraq in the same breath, Bush has guaranteed that his speech is
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This brief Time magazine article is as good a summation as any of the current situation in Iraq and how the US feels about it. Essentially, the surge has made military progress—something that an increasing number of Democrats are prepared to recognise—but the Maliki government has yet to take advantage of this window of opportunity, much
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In his speech on youth crime today, David Cameron suggested that those who commit minor offences should have their driving licences delayed. This is a more sensible idea than marching yobs to cash-points and in theory one can see it being quite an effective deterrent against the kind of bad behaviour that can make life
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David Davis’s op-ed in the Telegraph today on immigration makes an absolutely crucial point about the Learco Chindamo case. As Davis writes, “On the Today programme yesterday, Jack Straw blamed EU law. But the relevant 2004 EU directive was negotiated on his watch as foreign secretary.” Politicians have a habit of doing this. They sign
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The Pandora column in today’s Independent report on just how much the Department of Health spent on transport last year, and the sums are quite staggering: £310,754 on taxis £463,723 on business-class plane fares £3.1 million on first-class train tickets As Pandora notes that’s, “£1,195 a working day on taxis and almost £12,000 a day
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Perhaps, the most damning thing about the CIA Inspector General’s report into the Agency’s performance into the run up to 9/11 is that even after George Tent concluded that the United States was at war with terrorist organisations petty turf wars between the intelligence agencies continued. Take this dispute between the CIA and the National
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Have we entered a post-American age in Europe? That’s the argument of this Adam Gopnik piece in the New Yorker. It argues that what Gordon Brown, Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy all have in common is a desire not to be defined by their relationship with the United States. So, Brown is cooling things so
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“Boris Johnson is by far the most right wing candidate ever to be presented by a major party for Mayor of London.” This is how the Compass dossier on Boris starts. But the sentence is actually fairly meaningless as there have only been two elections for Mayor of London and the Tories fielded the same
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John Lloyd has a typically thoughtful op-ed in the FT today about how we should teach history in schools and how we can create a sense of nationhood that fits this post-devolution, multi-ethnic country. Lloyd argues that the problem with Gordon Brown’s belief that an emphasis on liberty, equity and democracy can unite the country is that
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Mark Penn is the pollster of choice for those politicians who still believe in the third way. He advised Tony Blair on how to win a third term in 2005, advice that cost Labour £530,372, and is now a key part of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. So his new tome, Microtrends: The Small Forces Behind
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The Guardian reports today that Compass, the leftwing pressure group, has compiled a dossier accusing Boris of being “Norman Tebbit in a clown’s uniform”. Well, now: I admire Norman and hate clowns with equal vigour, and so find this an intrinsically distasteful notion. But the strategy adopted by Compass – namely that Our Candidate is
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The FT’s look at how the British deployment in Basra got to where it is today is well worth reading. As the FT notes, the reason the British force in Iraq was reduced so quickly after the invasion from 45,000 to 26,000 is that the military is simply not big enough to support such a
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If you’re planning to listen to a Royal Recovery on Radio 4 this morning at nine, repeated this evening at half nine, about how the Royal family came back from the death of Diana do read Matthew d’Ancona’s account of making the programme in this week’s Spectator. Matt concludes that the monarchy has surived because”the
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Australian Labor Party leader Kevin Rudd is hardly the first decent Christian family man visiting from out-of-town to find himself in a New York strip club. These things happen when a man is away from his wife and family in a sinful place like New York. Rudd, a devout Anglican who cites Deitrich Bonhoffer as