My second piece for the New Statesman is here. It’s also the no. 2 post over the last couple of days appearing in the Most Popular section on the NS site.
Month: October 2011
Competition for the Reagan Defence Award, 2011
For those who followed the wonderful story of Chris Huhne’s extraordinary inability to remember important events about his wife’s driving offence – the “Reagan Defence”, in honour of the ex-President who miraculously forgot all details of the Iran-Contra affair – today’s news is that he’s got competition. Simon Hoggart delightfully recounts the appearance of Les… Continue reading Competition for the Reagan Defence Award, 2011
Polling, polling, polling. Raw hide?
Image: CBS (With profuse apologies to the late Frankie Laine, or the Blues Brothers, depending on your generation. Sorry about that.) Just in case anyone is still feeling a bit too upbeat after Mark Ferguson’s piece yesterday at LabourList, a question: is our polling taking a turn for the better, or giving us a good… Continue reading Polling, polling, polling. Raw hide?
ETA: really the beginning of the end?
In recent days, rather extraordinary news has been breaking about the last remaining home-grown terrorist group in Europe. Yesterday a conference in San Sebastian, involving no lesser figures than Kofi Annan, Bertie Ahern and Gerry Adams, reached out to ETA and it is strongly felt that a positive response is likely. Other notable figures such… Continue reading ETA: really the beginning of the end?
Tell people to eat less? Yes, that’ll sort out obesity
Delighted to announce my first-ever guest piece at the New Statesman: see it here.STOP PRESS 29/10/2011:My fine fellow blogger Emma Burnell, whose piece on personal experiences is linked in the article, has recorded this short film for Andrew Neil’s Daily Politics.
We can’t spend another 50 years like this
As I meander through Hugo Young’s outstanding A Blessed Plot, a highly readable history of Britain’s vexed relationship with Europe, the theme of head-in-the-sand denial of the inevitable is a constant one. One particularly striking thing is that the fundamental arguments have not really changed, and that Britain’s attitude has usually been one of fatal underestimation… Continue reading We can’t spend another 50 years like this
To boldly go… Ed’s relationship with enterprise
It’s been an eventful couple of weeks. So, the ship has now set a course and we’ve done the crew changeover. It may be a course that not everyone’s happy with, but let’s face it: they never are, are they? And at least there is a course. The Tory conference wasn’t a failure, but it… Continue reading To boldly go… Ed’s relationship with enterprise
Where the Tories are weak
While we are still in the throes of reforming our Party (although that debate is pretty much over, it seems) and defining our policies, we are in some ways a little hamstrung. However, there still is one thing that we can do well on an everyday basis: be a good opposition and attack the government.… Continue reading Where the Tories are weak
Vision and denial
“The system has failed”, ran the original headline for the speech write-up chosen by the BBC, though they later changed it. But it has not. Britain has problems, yes. But it is not, in Cameron’s words, broken, however politically convenient it might be for either party to use that as a basis for change. And… Continue reading Vision and denial