"Surely what Londoners want is a Mayor who not only gives a lead - and champions the arts and culture of the city in every way - but who also keeps his government simple, doesn't trample needlessly over the councils, and directs his intellectual energy at the core problems: transport, housing, crime." If that’s what you want, head to Boris’s website and sign up to help his campaign.
This exchange between Lindsey Graham, John McCain’s right-hand man, and Jim Webb, Ronald Reagan’s navy secretary who is now an anti-war Democrat, gives you a good idea of how heated the Iraq debate is now getting in the States. Senators, who pride themselves on their Roman reserve, don’t squabble like this in public. The debate is going to become bitterer still before General Petraeus’s delivers his make or break update to Congress on the war in September. In reality, we’ll be faced with the same dilemma then that we are now. Leave—and resign ourselves to the genocidal civil war that will surely follow and the boost that Iran and al Qaeda will receive from the Coalition’s humiliation.
Even as I write, the television screen is alight with the long-awaited words: “Boris to stand.” The great man is, as Coffee Housers know, the Spectator’s official candidate and there is much work to do in the months ahead to get him into the mayoral office and at the helm of the greatest city the world has ever known (apologies to Rome, Boris). For the duration of the campaign, Toby Young will be our roving correspondent, keeping you up to date on the progress of the tousle-haired one. This blog and the magazine will keep you in touch at all times.
Andrew Rawnsley’s column in today’s Observer on quite how much Brown and Cameron dislike each other is essential reading. As one Brown ally tells Rawnsley, 'Gordon could only be more contemptuous of him if Cameron were a lawyer.' How the two sides handle this enmity is going to be key to the next election result. To go back to Gore v. Bush in 2000, which to my mind is the previous campaign which most resembles the Brown-Cameron showdown, there’s little doubt that Gore’s disdain for Bush ending up hurting his election effort. His desire not only to beat Bush but to humiliate him, to expose him led to Gore’s over aggressive debate performances.
Further to James's post on the dreadful Lord Malloch Brown, my column in today's Sunday Telegraph addresses the predicament facing Gordon Brown. I doubt the PM will be remotely sentimental if the foreign minister drops another Malloch (so to speak). Watch Andrew Marr's interview with David Miliband for a clear signal of the stakes: the Foreign Secretary was charmingly indulgent of his in-house Falstaff, smiling about the whole episode with a commanding menace that, if I were Lord Malloch Brown would have filled me with fear. No second chances.
Gordon Brown’s government has gone from blunder to blunder in Anglo-American relations. First it ennobled and hires Mark Malloch Brown, a talentless UN bureaucrat known only for his hostility to America (and vice versa). Then it approves Douglas Alexander’s speech, not realising how the haughty and misjudged line about ‘build, don’t destroy’ would go down. A panicked Brown makes public a memo telling his Cabinet to behave. Then some genius lets Malloch Brown loose on the press – and, quelle surprise, he’s sounding off about how the British government wont be “joined at the hip” to America like it was under Blair, ie - distancing is about to begin.
The Sunday Telegraph's ICM poll is a serious blow to David Cameron, not least because it coincides with the disclosure that Tony Lit, the Tory candidate in Ealing Southall, gave £4800 to Labour. The picture of Mr Lit standing next to a beaming Tony Blair will be very hard to recover from. On the national stage, Gordon's seven point lead over Dave would translate into a majority of 115 seats - a landslide victory ten years after New Labour's first. We are in uncharted waters now, and how Cameron responds will be the best test yet of his mettle. How to broaden his appeal without making the error of Hague and Howard of retreating into the Tory comfort zone and focusing on the core vote? Tricky.
Sir: Charles Moore’s insinuation (Spectator’s Notes, 7 July) that following Alan Johnston’s release the BBC would now report Hamas more sympathetically is baseless. Beeb remains unbiased Sir: Charles Moore’s insinuation (Spectator’s Notes, 7 July) that following Alan Johnston’s release the BBC would now report Hamas more sympathetically is baseless. If he needs evidence he should consider that during the time that Alan was in captivity the BBC continued to report Gaza objectively — despite the incarceration of one of our own. Thankfully Alan is now free and, as ever, the BBC will report the region with courage and integrity.
If Douglas Alexander’s speech yesterday--or, more accurately the spin applied to it--prompted concerned phone calls from Washington and a memo from Gordon to the cabinet to go easy with the Bush bashing, then one wonders what Mark Malloch Brown’s quite extraordinary interview with the Telegraph will prompt. Malloch Brown, Kofi Annan’s former chief of staff, tells Rachel Sylvester and Alice Thomson that while at the UN he felt that: “everything I had worked for and fought for was suddenly under attack from one corner of the American political system and if they wanted to go toe to toe on it, I was going to do it.
A fortnight ago we urged David Cameron to raise his game after Gordon Brown’s impressively bold start as Prime Minister. A fortnight ago we urged David Cameron to raise his game after Gordon Brown’s impressively bold start as Prime Minister. In his response to the report by Iain Duncan Smith’s social justice policy group, the Tory leader has done just that. Mr Cameron has sounded focused, impatient to improve the state of the nation, and visibly determined to take on the new PM and defeat him. Although the proposed £20 per week boost to married couples has inevitably dominated the headlines, it is only one of many sensible recommendations to emerge from Mr Duncan Smith’s 671-page report.
The most comprehensive coverage of the Conrad Black trial can be found at the Canadian magazine Maclean’s. For a firm defence of Black, check out Mark Steyn’s blog on the trial.
David Cameron told Jon Snow last night that in proposing tax breaks for married couples — whether straight or gay — he was ‘not moralising, not preaching’. His social affairs guru, Iain Duncan Smith, who inspired Cameron’s new family-friendly policy, made the same point earlier in the week. 'It is not about finger-wagging or moralising.' he said. Sadly, both men meant what they said. Like all politicians, they look for economic solutions to moral problems, for solutions that won’t cause pain and therefore cost votes. But here’s the deal: marriage is not typically a financial undertaking; it is a moral undertaking, a legally binding (and in some cases sacramental) commitment to a person of the opposite sex.
When I supported the Iraq war, it was certainly for the aims James mentioned. And yes, I’m feasting on humble pie now. And Stuart’s right to say that even the Republicans are deserting Bush – the House has just voted to pull out troops by Spring. So I suspect Wee Dougie’s speech will be at the softer end of what’s to come. Britain’s political class are getting in synch with the would-be 2008 presidential candidates.
Come off it, James. American did not go to war to 'set about a phenomenally ambitious project to build democracies in parts of the world where they had never succeeded before'. America went to war to extract the blood price for 9/11. Saddam was identified with the terrorists. He was said to have weapons of mass destruction and therefore to be a threat to world peace. In attacking Iraq the United States and Great Britain maintained they were acting in self-defence. It was all nonsense, and has ended in disaster. But none of this matters in relation to what Douglas Alexander said yesterday. What matters is that the Gordon Brown is distancing himself from the George W. Bush. So are the American people. So is the Republican party.
Martin Bright has an intriguing interview with Ming Campbell in this week’s New Statesman. In it, Ming confirms that he and Brown discussed the possibility of current Lib Dem frontbench MPs serving in Brown’s cabinet. Yet, interestingly, it seems that the possibility of Campbell himself taking a job was not discussed. Campbell also tells Bright that: “PR is fundamental to our analysis of what is necessary for the United Kingdom. It would be inconceivable for us to be in a full-blown coalition with a party that does not accept that." All of which raises the question, is a coalition without Campbell a full-blown one?
His critics called him vain, snobbish, jumped-up and vicious - all true - but Nigel Dempster was also generous (he felt uncomfortable if anyone else paid for lunch); charming (displaying exaggerated and affected old-world manners which made women redden with appreciation) and exceptionally funny (with a theatrical sense of timing when recounting a juicy anecdote). But The Greatest Living Englishman (as Auberon Waugh only half-jokingly dubbed him) was an incredibly complex character - his Daily Mail colleague and contemporary mischief-maker, Peter McKay, believed he was so beset by his "demons" that it was a wonder Dempster could ever sleep.
The best suggestion by a Coffee Houser for a new author of James Bond stories was Simon Chapman who proposed The Guardian’s in-house funster, Polly Toynbee. A bottle of champagne is on its way to Simon: congratulations! Here is how we think the book might begin: DIAMONDS ARE FOR TAXING by Polly Toynbee Bond walked at a brisk pace, checking the time on his Rolex Oyster Perpetual: he was late for his meeting with M. An engagement at his tailor in Conduit street had delayed him: unavoidable. In life, there were always priorities. He reached for his black gun-metal cigarette case and black oxidised Ronson lighter and then remembered, with irritation, that smoking had been banned throughout the Service. The woman responsible, Miss Moneypolly, stood in the doorway.
If you want to know how Brand Beckham will be marketed in the States take a look at the storyboards for the ad campaign that is being launched to promote his first game for the LA Galaxy. One of the most intriguing things about Beckham’s arrival in the US, as Sports Illustrated points out, is how he’ll fit in with team mates who earn so much less than him. He’ll be sharing a dressing room with people who earn $17,700 a year—in contrast to his six and a half million bucks.
Life is full of little ironies. I am just off to the BBC’s Millbank studios to do some recording for The Week in Westminster. Meanwhile, I have spent much of the afternoon having acrimonious conversations with senior BBC management. The cause? The Corporation has decided to withdraw permission from Emily Maitlis, star Newsnight and News 24 presenter, to be a Contributing Editor at The Spectator.
I rarely allow myself to be “Outraged of Westminster”, but this scandalous post by Jim Shelley, the Mirror’s TV critic, has forced me to make an exception. Ricky Gervais has not “lost it” or become a “tiresome embarrassment”. Indeed, the miracle of the man is that he has managed to escape the role of David Brent – one of the greatest comic characters of all time – to produce another excellent series (Extras), establish himself as a top-rank stand-up, produce the best podcasts I have ever heard, and write a series of splendid children’s books (the Flanimals).