Doesn’t anyone spot what Gordon Brown is really up to? The great Peter Riddell isn’t convinced that he has altered the Blair reform agenda, and thinks that “changes are at the margins”. Well, you could say that. If you snap the brake cable of a car, change is at the margins – but the consequences
There are few things that can be more boring that floating around in a tin can looking down at the earth. So I’m glad to hear that the astronauts have found a way, albeit a rather unoriginal one, to make the time fly by. (Insert your own joke about one small sip for man, one giant
Today’s Telegraph poll is disastrous for Cameron. That the Tories are 9 points behind Labour is not even the worst news in it for him; what should worry him most is how his personal ratings have plummeted. In February, 43% of the electorate thought he was proving a good leader and 27% that he wasn’t
If you’re wondering what to make of the Chinese decision to invest in Barclays and the Qatari effort to buy Sainsburys do read this column that Martin Vander Weyer has done for us explaining why there is nothing sinister about such developments.
It’s the electability, stupid should be one of the major themes of the Obama campaign if they want to play harball with Hillary. The Democrats are desperate to take back the White House and the polls suggest that he is far better placed to do that than her. Just look at the numbers when you pit
At the YouTube debate Barack Obama and Hillary got into a row about whether or not the US president should meet with some of the world’s least attractive leaders—Castro, Chavez, Ahmadinejad etc. Clinton went after Obama hard for promising to meet with all these guys during his first year in office. After the debate, she
What do neo-con action hero John Rambo and not-neo-con newspaper The Independent have in common? A bottle of champagne to the first Coffee Houser to get the right answer.
The new issue of the always excellent Prospect has a great debate between Andrew Marr and Joan Smith about whether the mass emotionalism that followed Diana’s death, and is now a regular part of our national life, is a good thing or not. Andrew Marr argues that thanks to it: “We are a more relaxed
Fraser’s piece is already making waves. The reason for this is that it poses the question that all Tories are thinking about but dare not voice – not least because they do not know the answer to the question: “If not Dave, then who?” To lose a fourth successive general election, as the polls suggest
If you’re thinking about the sacred bullock that is about to be slaughtered on the orders of the Welsh Assembly, do read the incomparable Jeremy Clarke’s piece on Shambo.
Fraser has a cracking piece in tomorrow’s magazine on who’d take over if something happened to Dave. As Fraser reports, there’s no clear alternative—something that Cameron has reason to be thankful for considering the feeding frenzy currently going on in the Westminster village. I called William Hills earlier and asked them for the odds on who
Gordon Brown’s announcement that there will now be a unified border police force removes one of the Conservatives’ favourite talking points on security. It also puts them in a tricky position as it was an essential balance to their opposition to other anti-terror measures such as 90 day detention: we’re not soft, they could say,
I have been interested in Ward Churchill for years. So interested, in fact, that his writings inspired me to write a novel about what might happen if the “global justice movement” developed a taste for revolutionary violence. Churchill, who claims Native American ancestry, has finally been sacked by the University of Colorado for calling the
There’s been a lot of hype – justifiably – around P J O’Rourke’s book on Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations Indeed, we posted on it weeks ago. But Coffee Housers should not miss out on Eamonn Butler’s splendid new guide, Adam Smith – A Primer (IEA, £7.50), which is a thorough and well-written introduction to
If like me you’re a complete sucker for all things Banksy, do check out the graffiti artist’s new website. Hat tip: Andrew
Oh, Vino. How could you be so stupid? You fought all the way up from the bottom, making it from Petropavlovsk, Kazakhstan to Paris, France on the strength of your legs and an indomitably aggressive spirit. When your team collapsed days before last year’s Tour de France when German Jan Ullrich was barred on doping
Today’s papers carry a rather exasperated quote from the publicist of Daniel Radcliffe, the young actor who plays Harry Potter. Responding to questions about whether Radcliffe had, shock horror, been drinking at his 18th birthday party: “The question as to whether Daniel was or wasn’t drinking alcohol at his birthday party last night, I am
Today’s Guardian ICM poll continues the run of bad figures for Dave. Now, all of this can be (and is being) dismissed by Tory optimists as part and parcel of the predictable “Brown bounce”: Gordon has not yet been PM for a month, after all. And I agree that Cameron would be daft to mould
Anyone who doubts George W Bush’s commitment to Iraq should read this speech delivered by the President at Charleston Air Force Base in South Carolina. Quoting verbatim from intelligence reports, Bush argues that al Qaeda is firmly established in Iraq, but that its operations there predated the invasion of 2003. He takes Bin Laden at
Gordon Brown’s new book, Britain’s Everyday Heroes (Mainstream, £10.99), is yet another important clue to the Prime Minister’s political trajectory. In inspiration, it is part Cobbett’s Rural Rides, part Eliot’s homage to “unhistoric acts”. In his portraits of 33 individuals engaged in various forms of service and community work, Gordon identifies those he regards as
