The Spectator

Thursday

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The Iranians in Iraq

From our UK edition

Do watch the opening segment from yesterday’s edition of Newsnight on what the Iranians are up to in southern Iraq. It gives you a very good idea of what the Iranian game plan is and how they plan to benefit from a British withdrawal. Even if Newsnight did rather spoil it by then having John Bolton debate Denis Kucinich to give us the US point of view, which is a little bit like having Bill Cash and John McDonnell square off on British politics--entertaining but not particulalry enlightening.

Wednesday

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Obama hits Hillary over Iraq

From our UK edition

The contest between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama is entering a decisive phase. The first primary is now only five months away and Hillary retains a commanding national lead, even if things are closer in the early states. So Obama needs to start taking chunks out of Hillary’s numbers soon if he is not going to fade away. This exchange between the two front runners and Chris Dodd, another Senator running for president, at last night's debate shows how the battle lines are being drawn. Note how hard Obama hits Hillary over her Iraq vote and the reaction of the crowd, albeit one from Obama's home state of Illinois, when Hillary tries to scold him for his inexperience.

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The 2008 version of the Olympic Spirit

From our UK edition

A small, but telling, example of the nature of the regime that will be hosting the 2008 Olympics comes in James Fallows’s latest missive from China. “CNN International began its report talking about what is obviously the main deal-breaking threat to the Olympics: the air. The correspondent had gotten far enough into the story to say, "Some foreign athletes fear..." and then the screen went blank for the next two minutes or so."Do also take a look at these fantastic photos that show just how bad the pollution in Beijing really is. It will be a wonder if they get through the games without the poor air quality disrupting proceedings.

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When discrimination is good

From our UK edition

Thank God for the Act of Settlement (1701). It keeps us focused. In the past week newspapers have been focusing on poor Peter Phillips, tenth in line to the throne, who is engaged to Autumn Kelly, a Canadian Catholic. If she does not abandon her religion, he will have to renounce his right to succeed — or call the wedding off.  That’s the deal with the Act of Settlement -- the Supreme Governor of the Church of England may not be married to a Roman Catholic -- and RCs are said to be very cross. In the words of the Times’s excitable Ruth Gledhill, the Act ‘has for centuries been a cause of anguish to Catholics’.

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How emotional should politicians get?

From our UK edition

Drew Westen, the super smart American political scientist who wrote for The Spectator a few weeks back, has extracts of his new book on why leaders need to connect on an emotional as well as intellectual level in G2 today. Westen makes a good case; there’s no doubt that much of the Republicans’ electoral success since 1968 can be chalked up to their superior ability to connect with voters on a gut level. But Westen goes too far when he suggests that Gore would have stood a better chance of being elected president if he had hit back during the 2000 debates when Bush questioned his honesty and called Bush a coward, a drunk, a crook, and a disgrace to his family, his state and his country.

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A period of silence on Malloch Brown’s part

From our UK edition

This morning’s Today Programme had an item on the Foreign Office Minister Mark Malloch Brown that’s well worth listening to. Malloch Brown has quickly become the most controversial of Gordon’s appointments. His desire for a “more impartial” foreign policy, for Bush and Brown not to be joined at the hip and his endorsement—albeit while still at the UN—of a unified EU seat on the Security Council has made him a ripe target for the press. Presumably, that’s why Malloch Brown turned down Today’s invitation to go on to talk about the new UN resolution on Darfur But if Malloch Brown is having to be shielded from the press just months after being appointed, what chance is there of him making it all the way through to the election?

Tuesday

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A Golden Opportunity for the GOP

From our UK edition

A ballot initiative in California could have more impact on the 2008 presidential race than any of the back and forth that is going on between the candidates at present. Currently California gives all its presidential votes—and it has more of them than any other state, 55 of the 270 you needs to be elected president—to which ever candidate gets the most votes. This is good news for the Democrats as California is a solidly blue state. However, this ballot initiative would dish out California’s voters by Congressional district—giving the Republicans around 20 or so of its electoral votes, that’s equivalent to winning a state like Pennsylvania, Illinois or Ohio.

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You don’t want to say that

From our UK edition

Here’s the Guardian’s website reporting William Hague’s defence of David Cameron today: “Speaking at a press conference in central London, Mr Hague also dismissed claims that Mr Cameron was failing to bolster Tory support in the north. He said the party had raised more money from northern donors in the first seven months of this year than it had over the whole of last year.” This strikes me as entirely the wrong metric for Hague to use as it means that when another Tory donor takes pot shots at the leadership in public, as they surely will, the media will have a justification for treating it as a major story.

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Why England industrialised first

From our UK edition

Was the industrial revolution a product of downward social mobility? That’s the argument of a forthcoming book by the American historian Gregory Clark. His thesis is that as the rich had more children that survived than the poor, the population of England was by 1800 overwhelmingly made up of the descendants of the economic upper classes of the Middle Ages and that as the children of the rich spread throughout society so did the attitudes and values that make people wealthy. As he puts it, “Thrift, prudence, negotiation and hard work were becoming values for communities that previously had been spendthrift, impulsive, violent and leisure loving”.

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The state of Basra

From our UK edition

The Washington Post this morning has a sobering account of the situation on the ground in Basra. The paper reveals that the US government has expressed concerns about the impact of the British pull back on the rest of Iraq at the highest levels to the British. While a senior US intelligence official tells the Post, "The British have basically been defeated in the south".  All of which makes the government’s desicion to refuse to facilitate asylum applications from 91 Iraqi interpreaters who have worked with British forces in Basra all the more shocking. The Times is surely right that these brave folk should be welcomed to this country with open arms.

Monday

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Things you shouldn’t reveal on Facebook

From our UK edition

If you’re the daughter of a presidential candidate who already has political problems because of his complicated family life it doesn’t help if you reveals on your Facebook page that your supporting another candidate. The only silver lining for Rudy Giuliani is that his Harvard undergrad daughter Caroline (pictured with her mother and Rudy's second wife) is backing Barack Obama and not another Republican.

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What Labour MPs should read instead of The God Delusion

From our UK edition

The most popular book among Labour MPs this summer is, according to a new survey, The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. I have rather mixed views on Dawkins who is as dogmatic as those he so joyously bashes for their dogmatism. Rod Liddle brilliantly skewered this aspect of Dawkins in a Spectator interview with him back in December which is well worth reading if you want to save yourself the trouble of wading through The God Delusion.

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Another Rumsfeld blunder

From our UK edition

Abu Ghraib was a shameful episode and Don Rumsfeld, true to obstinate form, never seemed to grasp quite how much damage it had done America. But what is equally revealing is the careless way that Rumsfeld disclosed the name of the whistle blower, Joe Darby. Dabry recounted the story in the Sunday Times: "Five weeks later I was sitting in the dining facility in Camp Anaconda in Iraq when a press conference came on that was the live feed from the congregational hearings about Abu Ghraib. There was an announcement that secretary Rumsfeld was thanking me for turning in the photos and allowing the investigation to go forward – thanking me by name. I was eating with four soldiers and I just stopped mid-bite.

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Is Ashcroft’s money a reason for Brown to go early?

From our UK edition

John Kampfner has a piece in The Guardian today urging caution on Labour and its supporters about the party’s electoral prospects because of the amount of resources Lord Ashcroft is pumping into the Tory’s target seats. Kampfner’s argument is that that the Tory money advantage combined with the fickle nature of the press means that come September Cameron’s fortunes will start to revive which suggests that an early poll is not the risk free exercise that some seem to think that it is. Yet there is a case to be made that Ashcroft’s efforts are a reason for Labour to go early rather than spending the next 18 months trying to build up a war chest to match the Tories pound for pound.

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Malloch Brown wanted a joint EU seat on the UNSC

From our UK edition

The Tories have dug up a rather good story. When Mark Malloch Brown was still at the UN he was a strong advocate of the EU having one collective seat on the Security Council, saying that it should happen “as quickly as possible. I’m a huge fan of it.” Now admittedly, Malloch Brown wasn’t in the government at the time. But it does seem rather odd that Gordon Brown has put a man who aspires to this as the minister in charge of UN reform. It also puts the proposal for the EU High Representative to automatically speak for the EU as a whole, whenever the Union is agreed, at the Security Council into a rather more sinister light.

Sunday

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America looks for a first spouse

From our UK edition

One of the most notable features of the 2008 presidential race is the amount of attention being lavished on the spouses of the candidates. Just today we have a New York Times interview in which Judith Giuliani responds to a scathing Vanity Fair profile of her and pieces in the Washington Post and Newsweek looking at the role of Fred Thompson’s wife Jeri (pictured) in his campaign. You can come up with lots of reasons for all this interest in the other halves of the candidates. Obviously, there’s the Bill factor with the fascination with him and the Clinton marriage spilling over onto the other candidates and their wives. There’s the fact that the spouses this time out are a pretty interesting bunch who are taking on high-profile campaign roles.

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What are Britain’s best blogs?

From our UK edition

Iain Dale is compiling a list of the best political blogs in the UK and wants to know what  y'all think. If you want to take part just send iain AT iaindale DOT com an email, type Top 20 in the subejct line and then list your top twenty, or at least top ten, political blogs. The results should make for interesting reading.

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Gordon’s retirement plan

From our UK edition

With Brown celebrating what Matt rightly calls a triumph of a first month, it is a strange time to consider his retirment as I do in my column in today's News of the World (not online). My information is that Brown believes he has only one election in him: he'll fight it, then hand over. This makes sense: Brown may be all for working past retirement age but I doubt the electorate would let him lead by example. He has already started succession planning, by putting a new generation of ministers in key posts but being careful not to over promote (and therefore risk ruining) them. But as Blair showed, openly planning for retirement is a dangeous game in No 10. After you win the election, the fighting begins.

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Miraj row rumbles on

From our UK edition

The Ali Miraj saga takes another twist with a piece by him in The Sunday Times alleging that a current member of the shadow cabinet offered him a peerage soon after 7/7. Miraj writes that: “What is not commonly known is that I was, in fact, asked whether I would consider accepting a seat in the Lords in 2005 following the 7/7 London bombings tragedy, when the party was seeking to appoint a “Muslim” parliamentarian to that House. The approach was made by a present member of the shadow cabinet and I declined it. I am choosing not to disclose names at this time, but should the party elect to have selective amnesia on this issue, naming the individual concerned will be the only logical response.

Saturday

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Letters to the Editor | 4 August 2007

From our UK edition

Sir: Graham Lord (‘Is it a tough ask to speak proper English?’, 28 July) gives a clue to the increase in use of bad English when he points out that recent immigrants from eastern Europe speak our language much better than many of our own young people do. English lessons Sir: Graham Lord (‘Is it a tough ask to speak proper English?’, 28 July) gives a clue to the increase in use of bad English when he points out that recent immigrants from eastern Europe speak our language much better than many of our own young people do. The reason is that the incomers have been taught by people who think it important to use correct English. That does not apply to some teaching in our state school system today.