The Spectator

Tuesday

The Spectator

How do you solve a problem like Ming?

Last night’s Newsnight interview with Ming summed up the problems the Lib Dems face. First of all, Ming only got 15 minutes at the end of the show compared to the full length, star attraction treatment that Brown and Cameron got. Second, the interview revolved around the Lib Dem’s leadership troubles—a trend Campbell exacerbated by choosing to quibble over every piece of polling data his inquisitors challenged him with. Third, Ming’s performance was poor. (Although, to be fair, he was much better on the Today Programme this morning.) The conventional wisdom is that the Lib Dems can’t afford to get rid of two leaders inside a parliament; especially as an election still might just be called before the turn of the year.

The Spectator

Is Bush senior sending a message on behalf of his son?

An intriguing development in the US presidential race, Bush senior just came very close to endorsing John McCain. McCain is currently on a ‘No Surrender’ tour designed to reenergise his candidacy based on his staunch support and advocacy for a strategy that might actually succeed in Iraq. At a stop in South Carolina, the McCain team unveiled an effusive video message from Bush 41. Now, they were quick to clarify that this was not a formal endorsement.

The Spectator

The Namier de nos jours

Last night, The Spectator hosted its first book launch at our new home in Old Queen Street. And how apt that it should be in honour of The Triumph of The Political Class (Simon and Schuster, £18.99), by our very own Contributing Editor, Peter Oborne. You can read some of the arguments advanced in this splendid book in this week's Spectator - a cover piece which has already ruffled many a ministerial feather. Peter is emerging as the Namier de nos jours: a meticulous and fearless analyst of the social and political structures of our time, as well as a fearless truth-teller.

The Spectator

Darling’s rocky guarantee

The government’s unprecedented decision to guarantee every bank deposit in the country should be enough to stop the queues outside Northern Rock branches and any further meltdown in the financial system. However, no one has covered themselves in glory during this episode. Adam Applegarth, the chief executive of Northern Rock, has delivered a master class in how not to handle a crisis, The Bank of England and the Financial Services Authority have between them dropped the ball and the government has looked far from sure of itself. Indeed it is noticeable how despite Alistair Darling’s shaky performances, Gordon Brown has still kept away.

Monday

The Spectator

Free advice to Ming: Don’t declare yourself a failure

Mike Smithson has an interesting piece up at Political Betting arguing that if the Lib Dems are to be taken seriously by the media they need their very own Campbell or Coulson. Certainly, when you read about Ming Campbell declaring in a conference QandA “Well of course I'm a failure” the case for some proper media handling seems inarguable. (Yes, I know it was a joke—but when you’re in Ming’s position you don’t make such statements even in jest). So what I was wondering was, if you were Lib Dem press chief what would you tell the party to go big on? Personally, I think they should be hitting Brown hard on Northern Rock. As Tim Montgomerie points out, Cameron is constrained in what he can say without being labelled an opportunist and a scare monger.

Sunday

The Spectator

Ming on the back foot

The YouGov poll in the Sunday Times has got the Lib Dem conference off on the wrong foot for Ming Campbell. The poll finds that only four percent of voters think that he is the most impressive of the three party leaders. Even among Lib Dem supporters, Gordon Brown outscores Campbell and 65 percent of Lib Dem voters think that they would be better off with a younger leader. While the party’s overall rating of 15 percent shows that it has lost a third of its support since the last election. As Fraser writes in this week’s magazine, the conference has effectively turned into a venue for the two young pretenders, Chris Huhne and Nick Clegg, to showcase their talents: Huhne is doing 13 fringe events and Clegg eight.

The Spectator

Darling stumbles

Darling is losing his grip. He got his figures wrong twice on the World This Weekend and his exasperated stuttering hardly inspired confidence at a time when it is so badly needed. His job is to exude calm and savoir faire, for the benefit of anxious savers listening at home. Instead, he went on about how David Cameron was once a special adviser to Norman Lamont. Yes, the credit crunch started in America but why is the UK so exposed? This is the question ministers must answer. For years, the Tories have taken a defeatist attitude thinking Brown’s reputation with the economy was untouchable. Now is their chance. PS Cameron is now making a speech on all this at 12.30pm tomorrow. Let's see if he lands some punches.

The Spectator

How the Tories could get the public to go green

The YouGov poll in Sunday Times which shows that Labour is five points ahead also contains some instructive data on the public's reactions to the policies suggested by the Tory Quality of Life policy review group. Whenever there is a genuine combination of carrots and sticks proposed there is popular support for the ideas. So, 80 percent of people favour raising taxes on gas guzzling cars while reducing those on low emission vehicles. Equally, 83 percent support lowering stamp duty on energy efficient homes. By contrast, 70 percent oppose charging people to park in supermarket car parks and 54 percent disagree with the idea of putting VAT on short haul flights.

Saturday

The Spectator

Letters | 15 September 2007

Lift sanctions on Iran Sir: The resolution of the Iranian nuclear crisis is breathtakingly simple, were sanity to prevail (‘Iran will be next’, 8 September). Iran does not need an atom bomb to attain the status of a regional superpower: the size of her population and territory, her vast natural resources, her access to the Caspian Sea and dominance of the Persian Gulf confer that status upon her. If the sanctions imposed by the Americans and the Security Council were to be lifted and, simultaneously, Iran agreed to an international inspection of her nuclear installations, Iran’s moribund economy would be revived at the same time that fears about her nuclear military ambitions would be assuaged. The alternatives are too terrifying to contemplate. Parviz C.

The Spectator

Why John Reid is stepping down

Earlier today, like many people around Westminster, I received a text message from John Reid letting me know that he will be standing down as an MP at the next election. As sorry as I am - John was an invigorating presence on the parliamentary and Whitehall scene, and one of the few ministers who fully grasped how the world changed on 9/11 - the news does not come as an enormous surprise. For a start, he is blissfully happy in his marriage and had always talked wistfully of a time when he would be able to devote himself fully to his wife ('I'm a happy bastard, me'). But he is also a politician with a pitiless capacity to judge when the game is up.

The Spectator

How government and the Bank of England exacerbated the credit crunch

The credit crunch is global. So why has there only been a run on the banks in Britain? Alistair Darling suggests Northern Rock is a mere domino in a chain which started in America. But John Redwood’s blog points out that the first domino was knocked over by the clumsy fingers of the Labour government. Only in Britain did the central bank refuse to boost liquidity by lending at a non-penalty rate (unlike the ECB, the Fed, the Norwegians, Swiss, Russians etc).   The next bit sounds nerdy, so was the ERM crisis so stay with me. Exacerbated by the BoE’s intransigence, the de facto cost of bank borrowing, three-month LIBOR, has risen from 6% to 6.85%. These costs will be passed on to customers.

The Spectator

Might Brown’s tea-time stunt backfire?

On Thursday I thought that Gordon Brown had pulled off a masterstroke by inviting Margaret Thatcher to tea at Downing Street, but now I’m not so sure. Marina Hyde’s column is a good guide to the shifting reactions to it and is well worth reading. As Hyde writes, “This piece of gesture politics - even that description flatters - reveals nothing more nor less than a total contempt for the voter. What is the slackjawed electorate supposed to divine from this cynical dumb show? Perhaps that Gordon is above anything so unseemly as ideological difference, or that some sort of tea-based transubstantiation has given him new prime ministerial gravitas, or that it's OK to vote for him if Maggie will allow him into her exclusion zone....

The Spectator

Only a Lib Dem could get it this wrong

Sir Menzies Campbell's call for a referendum on Britain's membership of the EU is a desperate bid to preserve party unity on the eve of what may be his last conference as Lib Dem leader. No less than Harold Wilson in 1974-5, he seeks to avert a party split by backing a plebiscite. The trouble is that the question Ming wants to pose - In or Out - is a complete irrelevance (except for Ukip voters). The controversy over the re-heated EU Constitution, now stripped of grandiose language but substantially the same as it was in 2004, has nothing whatsoever to do with membership of Europe. It is about trust and Labour's unambiguous pledge in its 2005 manifesto to hold a referendum on the Constitutional Treaty (or Reform Treaty as it is now relabelled after the deal struck this year).

The Spectator

Vote for honesty

The long quest to find a purpose for the Lib Dems is the modern equivalent to the probably apocryphal story about the child asking his mother about Lord Randolph Churchill: ‘What is that man for?’ The long quest to find a purpose for the Lib Dems is the modern equivalent to the probably apocryphal story about the child asking his mother about Lord Randolph Churchill: ‘What is that man for?’ As the third party meets in Brighton for its annual conference, the heart sinks at the prospect of more debates on tedious political marginalia. But Sir Menzies Campbell should abandon his present reservations and heed those of his colleagues now encouraging him to push for a referendum on the EU reform treaty by joining in the parliamentary ambush of the ratification process.

Friday

The Spectator

The pick of the weekend’s films

If you’re planning a visit to the cinema this weekend, I recommend you bypass the  cold, albeit visually impressive, ‘Atonement’, in favour of  Julie Delpy’s first effort as an actor, writer and director, ‘2 Days in Paris’.  The premise is simple: a couple round off a tour Europe by spending two days with the girl’s parents in the ‘city of love’, hoping to inject fresh life into their flagging relationship.  Not everything goes according to plan as the boyfriend, played by the relatively unknown Adam Goldberg grows increasingly troubled by his girlfriend’s past and swelling number of ex-lovers.

The Spectator

Old is the new new

The old Latin rite of Mass is officially reinstated today. It’s not easy to explain the significance of this to non-Catholics (or even to Catholics under the age of 50), but it’s as though Rome had closed all the great cathedrals of Europe and stripped them bare and had now decided to re-open them and reinstall the art treasures. The junking of the old Mass almost 40 years ago was quite simply an act of vandalism. That is not to say (as my extreme extremist friends do) that the new Mass is invalid. Many of the abuses of the 1970s have been abandoned, and gimmicky celebrations are now largely confined to churches presided over by ageing trendies in unfashionable suburbs.

The Spectator

Bush on Iraq

President Bush’s speech on Iraq last night showed how reliant he now is on others for credibility on Iraq. Take the two key paragraphs that set out the shift in policy: “Because of this success, General Petraeus believes we have now reached the point where we can maintain our security gains with fewer American forces. He has recommended that we not replace about 2,200 Marines scheduled to leave Anbar province later this month. In addition, he says it will soon be possible to bring home an Army combat brigade, for a total force reduction of 5,700 troops by Christmas. And he expects that by July, we will be able to reduce our troop levels in Iraq from 20 combat brigades to 15.

Thursday

The Spectator

Gordon’s new ad message: I’m not Tony

Back in May, the American pollster (and Spectator contributor) Frank Luntz advised Gordon Brown to make a virtue out of his reputation for being boring. The Prime Minister has today taken this advice. The new Labour logo is to be “Not flash, just Gordon”: precisely the right message. But this message will work best in the immediate aftermath of Blair’s departure while people still think “thank God that grinning charlatan has gone”. In the long run, I suspect they will miss the charisma. So if this has indeed been chosen an election logo, it suggests it will be needed sooner rather than later while the “just Gordon” mantra remains a novelty.

The Spectator

Brown invites Thatcher into his ever expanding tent

Margaret Thatcher is taking tea with Gordon Brown, Ben Brogan has the scoop. This is just about the last thing that David Cameron needs today as he tries to defuse the Gummer Goldsmith report. He’s now bound to get questions about whether he feels snubbed and if he’ll be inviting her round for a cuppa at CCHQ and if not why not. (Regulars at Lady Thatcher’s parties have long noted Cameron’s conspicuous absence and those close to her are amazed at his failure to court her.) The invitation shows how far Brown is prepared to go to establish himself as a national, not party, figure.