There’s an interesting post over at Marginal Revolution (which is probably the most consistently interesting blog on the planet, so if you don’t read it, start now) about why so many US politicians are lawyers. The phenomenon is not quite as great in the UK though Tony Blair, Michael Howard and Ming Campbell were all [...]
Filed under: education, ideas, ukpolitics on January 24th, 2008 | 1 Comment »
John McCain ought to have a big problem - namely that Republicans don’t actually like him very much and it’s Republicans that he has to convince to make him the party’s nominee. As I’ve argued recently, McCain’s popularity comes from a relatively small section of the Republican broad church.
So far, his saving grace is that [...]
Filed under: election2008, fredthompson, johnmccain, mattclifford, rudyriuliani, uspolitics on January 23rd, 2008 | No Comments »
More interesting exit polls over the weekend. I’m a little rushed today, so a detailed look will have to wait until later but three potentially very important points:
1. Obama won 83% of the black vote in Nevada. That’s really huge: African-Americans used to be some of the Clinton’s most loyal supports. Indeed, Bill has been [...]
Filed under: barackobama, election2008, hillaryclinton, mattclifford, uspolitics on January 21st, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Following on from yesterday’s post, the Michigan Republican exit polls also make interesting reading. However, income, class and education are no longer the important variables (though, crudely, it would seem that as you get richer you’re slightly more likely to vote Romney and slightly less likely to vote Huckabee; but that’s not exactly shocking). What’s [...]
Filed under: election2008, johnmccain, mattclifford, mittromney, uspolitics on January 16th, 2008 | 2 Comments »
For five days, commentary on American politics was little more than a “Who loves Barack the most” contest (You have to love the Independent’s leader the day after New Hampshire: “Our front page yesterday may, regrettably, have given the impression that Barack Obama had beaten Hillary Clinton in Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary and was well [...]
Filed under: barackobama, election2008, hillaryclinton, mattclifford, uspolitics on January 15th, 2008 | 7 Comments »
Although the candidates have been campaigning for months, the Iowa caucuses today represent the first real step towards the election of the next President of the United States (Absolutely tonnes of coverage here and here. And while - of course - those of us who are not US citizens don’t get a vote, the next [...]
Filed under: election2008, mattclifford, mikehuckabee, uspolitics on January 3rd, 2008 | 3 Comments »
Compare:
“So, making education for skilled work our first priority, we need to provide new incentives and new obligations to train; we need to transfer resources from welfare to education and move claimants from passive recipients of welfare benefit to active job and skill seekers; far-reaching reforms of our welfare state and education system to put [...]
Filed under: conservatives, gordonbrown, ideas, labour, mattclifford, tonyblair on November 28th, 2007 | 2 Comments »
I really hate to harp on about Al Gore, but following my previous post, I thought the former VP’s latest move was especially interesting:
The former vice president, documentary film maker, Nobel laureate and Apple board member has taken a position as a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, the venture capital firm that invested [...]
Filed under: algore, mattclifford on November 13th, 2007 | 1 Comment »
These days, Al Gore jokes that he “used to be the next President of the United States”. But it seems that he now not only isn’t, but doesn’t want to be. This seems strange on the face of it. As I pointed out back in February he’s clearly flirted with the idea. He still has [...]
Filed under: algore, election2008, tonyblair, uspolitics on November 3rd, 2007 | 9 Comments »
Downing street now has a YouTube channel. Here is the highlight so far:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6Cu9187tCY]
Could this have been conceived of even three years ago? The Downing Street channel was the 7th most viewed on YouTube yesterday. The often plaintive claim that we are all victims of a big-media determined agenda looks increasingly hollow.
Filed under: democracy, internet, tonyblair, ukpolitics on May 8th, 2007 | 1 Comment »
