The Spectator

Saturday

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Will Prezza spill the beans?

John Prescott is getting £300,000 for his memoirs which will be called Prezza: Pulling No Punches and ghosted by Hunter Davies. Davies, having worked on the Wayne Rooney and Paul Gascoigne autobiographies, will probably find Prescott a refreshingly intelligent subject. Interestingly, Davies says that Prescott “realises that he's got to tell the truth. He knows what really happened between Blair and Brown; he was the marriage broker." Admittedly, this could just be pre-publication boosterism but there’s no doubt that Prescott has been franker than many of his colleagues in his reflections on the Blair era. Also, seeing as Prescott’s role was as the marriage counselor the more he tells about how bad things got, the more history will appreciate his role.

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W. F. Deedes, 1 June 1913 – 17 August 2007. RIP.

Dear Bill. It is impossible to think of any other journalist -- let alone a former editor of the Daily Telegraph -- whose death would have made the lead on BBC news bulletins. Most journalists are not much liked. Bill -- W. F. Deedes, Lord Deedes -- was loved. The public trusted him. He wrote with compassion, common sense and a keen sense of the absurd, and was equipped with a vast knowledge of the world and its affairs. He knew or had met just about everyone who mattered in the 20th century. He drew on his own experiences but he did not bang on about himself.

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Brown’s magic is a trick

As he contemplates the surf on his Breton holiday beach this weekend, David Cameron has an opportunity to reflect on how swiftly the tides of politics can change. Just three months ago the Conservative leader enjoyed record gains in the local elections, winning more than 800 seats in a nationwide test of public opinion and recording general-election-winning levels of support. That result was the culmination of an 18-month period during which Mr Cameron had changed his party, modernised its policies and maintained a solid opinion-poll lead over Labour, an achievement which had eluded the Tories for more than 13 years. Since then, however, voters have cooled towards Mr Cameron, and warmed towards Gordon Brown. As a new Labour leader, Mr Brown has made an impressive start.

Friday

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McCain: “Life is not 24”

This John McCain interview with John Stewart demonstrates why it would be foolish to dismiss his presidential chances just yet. Watch from about two thirds of the way in and note how clearly—and effectively—McCain separates himself from others in his party on torture.

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Cutting to the chase

A few things that bug me about this whole tax-cutting debate… 1)      Even Lord Forsyth’s suggestion of £21 billion worth of cuts is a tiny sum when you remember Brown will this year spend £553bn of our money – rising to £682 billion in 2011/12. Any Tory cut must be put in this context, or the sums just don’t mean anything. 2)      And let’s not forget that from now until April 2012, Brown intends to raise tax by an average £32 billion a year, according to Treasury figures. Would it be so bad if the Tories put a stop to that? Or slowed it down a little?

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At last, some good news for Bush

The news that Jenna Bush, the president’s daughter, is engaged and likely to get married long before the family leaves the White House raises some delicious questions of both protocol and politics. The guest-list is sure to be pored over for its meaning and given the Bush family’s tendency to mix the political and the personal—at the last Bush family wedding the Bush twins toasted their cousin George P. Bush and his bride as the 47th president and his first lady—we can be sure that it will make for interesting reading. Look out for which world leaders make the cut, whether Tony gets an invite or not, which members of the Bush cabinet are invited, whether the Clintons attend and if any of the current crop of Republican candidates gets an invite.

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Why there’s little difference between Hillary and Rudy

It’s not possible to be neutral about Rudy Giuliani, former mayor of New York and now a Republican presidential candidate. You either love him or hate him. The novelist Kevin Baker does not love him. In the August issue of Harper’s Baker gives Giuliani a pretty thorough hiding, in a cover piece (subscription required) headed A FATE WORSE THAN BUSH. The opening sentence sets the tone: “Rudolph Giuliani has, by far, the most dubious known personal history of any major presidential candidate in US history, what with his three marriages, and his open affairs and his almost total estrangement from his grown children, not to mention the startling frequency with which he finds excuses to dress in women’s clothing.

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Are the Tories really lurching to the right?

Ever since John Redwood’s proposals first began to be floated, the Tories have been accused of lurching to the right. On the Today Programme this morning, Alistair Darling predictably accused the Tories of planning 21 billion pounds worth of spending cuts. While in The Independent today, Colin Brown writes that:  “The more Shadow Chancellor George Osborne protested yesterday that the Redwood working party's conclusions did not represent a "lurch to the right", the more it sounded like that is just what is about to happen. Mr Cameron's appointment of Mr Redwood to chair the commission on economic competitiveness was revealing. He must have known Mr Redwood, a committed Thatcherite, would propose a radical tax cutting package.

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Name that book

Today’s papers report that Tony Blair is hoping to pocket £8 million for writing his memoirs. Sadly for the Tories, the book is years away from publication and so won’t see the light of day before the next election. Indeed, if it going to be a genuine account of what happened I doubt that it will come out while Gordon Brown is still in office. (There is, though, the fun possibility of a race to publish between Blair and Alastair Campbell as soon as Brown walks out of Downing Street.) But anyway, what should Blair call his memoirs? If you have any suggestions for a snappy title leave them in the comments.

Thursday

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Use your vote because they’ll use theirs

Predictably, people are trying to derail the Tory nominating process for London Mayor. It’s an open primary, so the process is open to abuse—with the £1.50 charge unlikely to deter the committed. These attempts at sabotage make it essential that those who actually want the best candidate selected do vote. London deserves a proper contest and it would be a disaster if this vote was hijacked; any candidate selected under such circumstances would be a laughing stock from day one and would have no hope against Ken Livingstone. Of course, we’d urge you to back The Spectator’s official candidate.

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Tories hit Brown on his record

George Osborne, who unfairly has been taking much of the flak for the Conservatives’ current woes, has an interview in The Guardian today in which he attacks Brown for failing to spread prosperity out across the country from London. Osborne is, rightly, trying to tie Brown to the failures of the Blair years such as the fact there are 600,000 more people stuck in poverty now than there were when Labour came to power. The problem with this line of attack, though, is that it is inherently backward-looking and so makes it difficult for the Tories to appear as if they are, to borrow a phrase, the future not the past. PS This Fraser Nelson piece on the north-south divide is well worth a read.

Wednesday

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Are Beckham and Bush related?

David Beckham’s attempt to crack America continues apace. Last week, The New York Daily News reports, Beckham was given a private tour of the White House. His presence sparked confusion amongst those staff members not familiar with Brand Beckham, with the president’s private secretary asking him if he was a relative of Bush’s or a staffer; he’d certainly be an interesting replacement for Karl Rove. Meanwhile back on the West Coast, Posh Spice is continuing with her attempt to single-handedly restore US consumer spending. The gossip magazines are claiming that she has been offered a $5 million credit line at Neiman Marcus while apparently on a trip to the LA branch of Barneys she spent over $14,000.

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Summer reading | 15 August 2007

Any Coffehousers still hunting for a holiday read should pick up a copy of Alex James's Bit of a Blur, which is keeping me company in Andalucía. For those who care, this is the second indispensable account of Nineties culture to appear (the first being John Harris's The Last Party). For everyone else, this is simply a riveting, witty and beautifully written account of a remarkable life, lived to the full and beyond. From his beginnings on the school bus in Bournemouth, via his student days at Goldsmiths (where he met a promising young artist called Damien Hirst), to the heights of global stardom as the bass player in Blur, James recalls every minute with relish, while pulling off the rare trick of laughing at its absurdity, too.

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India sixty years on

 Do read this excellent essay in the IHT about why India and Pakistan’s fortunes have diverged so much since partition. While the 60th anniversary of Indian independence, is as good an excuse as any to re-read Nehru’s wonderful “tryst with destiny” speech.

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Did the BBC play fair with the Redwood report?

The BBC’s coverage of the Redwood report has come in for much criticism, notably from The Sun and Iain Dale. Helen Boaden, the director of BBC  News, has now responded, conceding that the BBC's use of footage of Redwood failing to sing the Welsh national anthem was inappropriate but defending the substance of the reporting. Boaden lists the intros to each of the BBC’s news bulletins in the Corporation’s defence. Some of them do give the audience a good sense of the story but others do seem to put the cart before the horse, especially this one from Five Live at 11 am: "Labour has condemned the latest review of policy carried out by the Conservatives as a lurch back to the right wing of politics.

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The next step in the US-Iran showdown

Tensions between Tehran and Washington will reach new levels with the news that the US intends to designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organisation. This allows the US to disrupt the organisation’s funding and take steps against those companies that do business with it. The Revolutionary Guard is the first governmental entity that the US has attempted to confront using these tactics. Considering the Guard’s role in key sectors of the Iranian economy, the moves challenges foreign firms who do business with Iran to decide between continuing to work there or falling foul of the US government.

Tuesday

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Vlad on holiday

Why do photos of world leaders on holiday hold such fascination for us? The shots of Vladimir Putin fishing seem to be everywhere today, I’ve spared you the one of him topless, while the New York Times has an entire collection of vacationing politicians snaps up on its site. Anne Applebaum has an entertaining column in today’s Washington Post attempting to explain why we care so much about where these folk go for the summer. Her theory is that as we now all have so many more vacation choices than before, we take far more notice of where leaders go than we would have previously. Indeed, I think an element of our interest comes from the fact that we tend to see people’s holiday choices as somehow revealing of their character.

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The shortest of breaks

The Sun reports this morning that Gordon Brown’s holidays are over. He’ll be working for the rest of the summer from his constituency in Scotland. So, Brown took a total of four hours and five minutes off before heading back to London to deal with the foot and mouth crisis. Is this the shortest holiday on record? And, what’s the best holiday one can have in four hours? Do leave your suggestions in the comments.