The Spectator

Wednesday

The Spectator

How important is the defection of Quentin Davies?

Two contrasting views in the papers this morning. Here’s the key passage from The Guardian’s leader on it: “There has been no more brutal assault on a Tory leader since Sir Geoffrey Howe plunged the knife between Mrs Thatcher's shoulders in 1990. Mr Davies's withering comments will be endlessly repeated. They represent a huge new threat to Mr Cameron's recently more shaky standing. And they give Mr Brown the priceless reputation of being a party leader who, like Mr Blair a decade ago, can reshape British politics to place Labour in command of the centre ground once more.” And now, Daniel Finkelstein in The Times: “people with knowledge have a tendency to regard the things they know as more important than they actually are.

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Who we are

Where better to spend the last night of the Blair era than in the company of ageing rockers? These days, The Who smash their tambourines rather than their guitars. But, other than that, they are still as sharp as the sharpest Carnaby Street winkle pickers and as taut as the tires on a brand new Vespa. At the Wembley Arena last night the band that hoped that they would die before they got old showed that you're only as old as the venue you fill. My Generation? Yes, and their children, and, in some cases, God help us, grandchildren. Pop long ago broke its promise to define generation gaps and became something completely different: part of our island folklore, our national glue.

Tuesday

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Should Gordon worry about Tony’s new job?

There are two reasons for Brown to be concerned about Blair becoming the quartet’s envoy to the Palestinians. First, it is going to exacerbate the problem of Brown establishing himself on the world stage. Back in 2005 one of Brown’s closest allies told Newsweek’s Stryker McGuire how when he was in the States during the Major year “Everybody there thought Thatcher was still prime minister.” The Brownite aim of avoiding a repeat of that embarrassing situation just got a bit more difficult. The second potential problem is Gaza itself. What happens if attacks on Israel from Gaza reach such a level that the Israelis decide a prolonged military response is needed? Blair as an envoy to the region would likely have something to say about it.

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Dangerous poppycock from Blair

Today’s news that Afghanistan’s opium production is soaring takes me back to perhaps the biggest lie Tony Blair has uttered during the war on terror. He told the 2001 Labour conference that “90% of the heroin on British streets originates in Afghanistan. The arms the Taliban are buying today are paid for with the lives of young British people buying their drugs on British streets.” In fact, he knew that the Taliban psychos had virtually extinguished the poppy trade declaring it “un-Islamic”. Fearing limb amputation, farmers obeyed. The UN said crops dropped by 91% - info that was available well before his speech. So our intervention in Afghanistan was only ever going to increase world opium supply, as well he knew.

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Why can’t London be more like Munich

Just back from a weekend in Munich, escaping from the grey, the rain and the Blair/Brown folderol to help a friend, about to take up the reins as president of the European patent office, move into her new apartment. Oh, the joys of a well organized German city. Standard issue recycling bins for every sort of waste and regular collections of same; cellar space for each apartment with room for all manner of cumbersome objects not needed on a daily basis; a shared drying room for wet clothes or snowy boots. And the bike lanes! I have bicycled around London for years but still feel that every time I do it may well be my last, what with the bendy buses, ferocious pedestrians and, worst of all, insanely belligerent fellow cyclists.

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Good Friday for the Middle East

So Tony Blair is off to the Middle East as peace envoy - not for the US, but for the "Quartet" of UN, EU, America and Russia. His decision to accept this role, and so soon, is more eloquent than any of the (many) farewell speeches he has made. First, it shows that he regards the Good Friday Agreement as his greatest achievement, and his sleepless capacity to make people talk to one another as his greatest talent. Whether the smoke-filled rooms of Stormont will prove to be the same as the conference chambers of Tel Aviv, Damascus and Ramallah is another matter. Second, Mr Blair's new job reveals a desire if not quite to atone for what has happened in the region on his watch then at least to pursue unfinished business. Well, he wasn't going to leave all that be, now was he?

Monday

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Why Charles Clarke might make a comeback

Iain Dale has an interesting post up on the gossip amongst Westminster lobby correspondents that Charles Clarke might return to government this week. He writes that, “None of us could come up with a reason why Gordon Brown would reward a man who has spent the last few months dissing him.” But it is precisely because Clarke has been such a critic of Brown that he might return. What better way would there be for Gordon to show that he really is serious about this whole new ‘inclusive’ thing than by appointing a man who has been so critical of him to the cabinet? If anyone is wondering whether Clarke would take a job from a man he’s called a “control freak” and accused of being “absolutely stupid”, the answer is yes.

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A good weekend to bury Europe

I use to think that Blair’s desire to go to the European summit himself was a little bit vain and born of nothing more than a desire to give Jacques Chirac an Agincourt salute by outlasting him. But now, the cleverness of the move has dawned on me. By making the EU summit his final act, Blair has guaranteed that the EU Constitution has been buried beneath—or, at least folded into—the bigger story about Brown finally taking over. Combine that with the bad weather, always a news favourite, and Wills and Kate supposedly getting back together and you’re already seeing Europe being pushed down the news bulletins.

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Germans say nein to Cruise

The news that the German government has banned Tom Cruise from filming at the defence ministry on the grounds that he is a Scientologist will reopen the whole debate about whether or not Scientology is a religion. The Germans take a very dim view of it; 4 of its biggest political parties even bar Scientologists from joining. I must admit to finding it a tad weird but after reading Tessa Mayes’s undercover investigation of it in this week’s magazine I can’t see it as anything worse than a bit odd.

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Heavy stupidity

If you think Glastonbury is silly, click on the BBC News website and watch the clip of 2,000 heavy metal fans playing Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the Water” in Stuttgart. This, as any fule kno, is one of the most over-rated songs in the history of pop music, plodding and portentous, opening with a mindless riff that has inspired generation after generation of Wayne’s World clones to pick up a guitar when it would have been much better if they had been forced into national service. Sour of me to say so, but sometimes the truth is ugly.

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Anyone for venison sushi?

The price of tuna is now so high that Japanese sushi chefs are considering making their dish with raw horse meat and cuts of smoked deer instead of the traditional tuna. The Japanese, who eat three quarters of the tuna caught each year, are victims of sushi’s global success; it is the new found demand for it from Muswell Hill to Moscow that has sent tuna prices sky rocketing. However, I don’t think even the most adventurous eater is going to be too keen on raw horse meat sushi.

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What Cameron should have said

Here’s what I wish David Cameron had said when discussing social mobility with John Humphrys this morning. The reason I’m in politics, John, is to address the problem you’ve just highlighted. Belief in social mobility is stamped in the DNA of the Conservatives – and perhaps the most scandalous failure of Labour these last ten years is the way it’s failed to covert prosperity into social cohesion. The truth is that 5.3 million people are on out-of-work benefits. Now don’t interrupt me, John, you may not think it’s relevant but this figure is never aired in public and it cuts to the core of the social mobility problem. One in seven of our working-age population are on welfare, John, and they are not breaking out of it.

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Don’t put your shirt on Tiger Tim

Wimbledon fortnight starts today with appropriately awful weather and with Ten Henman left to fly the flag for Britain after Andrew Murray dropped out with injury. But before all the folk on Henman Hiil get too excited, it’s worth pointing out that Henman is 200-1 with the bookies to win Wimbledon. To put that in perspective, the Lib Dems are at 80-1 to have the most seats after the next election and William Hague is 100-1 to be foreign secretary in Gordon Brown’s cabinet.

Sunday

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The momentum is with Brown

Brown has, what the Americans call, the big mo right now. He looks like the man in command and that is dictating how events are seen. Take the job offer to Ashdown and the Lib Dems, if Brown was perceived as weak this could have been seen as desperate, a recognition that Labour is unlikely to have an overall majority after the next general election. But in the current mood, it comes across as bold and decisive.   The speech Brown delivered today was an attempt to take advantage of this momentum to shape the political debate; to use it to present himself as the change, at times you expected him to announce “we are the changemakers,” and to grab hold of chunks of political territory—eg housing—from Cameron.

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How Gordon will fight Dave

"As good as it gets," said Tony Blair of Gordon Brown. What he meant was: "As good as it got", which is not quite the same thing. It is no secret that Mr Blair wanted someone to run against the Chancellor. But it did not happen, and here we all are. And so today, with much backslapping and many tributes, the decree absolute was at last declared on the most turbulent political marriage of modern times. It is almost 13 years since Mr Blair became leader on 21 July 1994, and now Mr Brown has at last succeeded him. The couple are divorced at last. In his expression of absolute liberation, Gordon reminded me of Nicole Kidman when she leapt for joy after freeing herself from Tom Cruise. The marital paperwork out of the way, the new leader got stuck into David Cameron.

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The Brown Era Begins

 I love how Gordon Brown walked on stage, as if he’d just won a vote of some kind. “I will endeavour to justify every day the trust you have placed in me,” – err no, Gordon, you successfully scared off all your rivals, there was no vote and folk were just landed with you. Anyway, it seems Harman will be party chair rather than Deputy Prime Minister – ergo no executive power, ergo whatever she thinks about government doesn’t matter a jot. Wee Dougie Alexander is back as election co-ordinator (he was rudely ousted in 2004). And Brown’s making references to cross-party co-operation. “we reaching out to all people who can be persuaded to share our values”  It’s striking how many rhetorical devices Brown borrows from America.

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It is Harman

So a minister who was dumped from the cabinet for not being up to the job in 1998 is now the deputy leader of the Labour party. Listening to her speech, it became clear how Labour under Brown will attack Cameron. She accused the Tory leader of “opportunism, weakness, no sense of direction”. She also tried to make a joke about Cameron, his “yellow rubber gloves” and the need to “warm women about the sort of man David Cameron is” which didn’t quite come off. Anyway, one wonders what Frank Field makes of a Brown-Harman leadership!