Photograph courtesy of World Economic Forum
Last year I made a fairly failsafe prediction that David Cameron would have a good 2008. Gordon Brown’s contempt for PR was only ever going to boost his public image in the short term: foresaking spin is fine until you have a policy to present or defend (say: a tax [...]
Filed under: jonathanbirch, labour, ukpolitics on September 23rd, 2008 | No Comments »
They always have to go one better, don’t they? The week Europe tries to recreate the Big Bang, America decides to kick off the Big Crunch. In the eye of the storm stands US Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson: perhaps the world’s most powerful man, at least for this week. The kind of financial titan we’d [...]
Filed under: gambling, jonathanbirch, labour, ukpolitics, uspolitics on September 16th, 2008 | No Comments »
Photograph courtesy of Flickr user lmg
The messy aftermath of Peter Hain’s resignation will not clear for sometime. Hain has fallen on his sorry sword for not declaring 17 donations in his deputy leadership campaign in time, a feat Gordon Brown disparagingly referred to as “incompetence”. But expect more swords to be self-sharpened in the coming [...]
Filed under: corruption, jackprevezer, labour, ukpolitics on January 25th, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Photograph courtesy of Flickr user *Hiro
Does the West cause Islamic extremism? Is it the war in Iraq what done it, or decades of support for Israel, or centuries of imperialism? In a trivial sense, yes. If we’d done things differently, the consequences would have played out differently. It’s easy to construct stories of how this [...]
Filed under: foreignpolicy, iraq, jonathanbirch, middleeast, ukpolitics on January 24th, 2008 | 3 Comments »
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 »
CC licensed photograph courtesy of Flickr user night86mare
Tuesday 12th February – 8.45pm
Sir Philip Mawer is currently the Prime Minister’s Independent Adviser on Ministers’ Interests and was from 2002 - 2007 the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards. Dubbed by the press the ‘Commons sleaze buster’ Sir Philip was entrusted with arguably one of the toughest jobs [...]
Filed under: clarepoliticsnews, corruption, sirphilipmawer, sleaze, ukpolitics on January 21st, 2008 | 2 Comments »
Photograph courtesy of Flickr user the hanner
British Airways flight 038 has absorbed the attention of newscasters this week. It crashed or, in pilot parlance, it required an emergency landing. At any rate, they’re all heroes now: the pilot, the cabin crew, all of them. A microphone has been directed at some passengers, allowing them to [...]
Filed under: conservatives, robertstagg, socialjustice on January 20th, 2008 | 5 Comments »
Remember September, when Northern Rock nearly collapsed? Savers withdrew around £2bn in savings, prompting the government to guarantee customers’ money up to a total of £100 000 per person. Estimates at the time suggested the taxpayer was crediting Northern Rock to the tune of about £20bn. But Northern Rock (naturally) lends out far more than [...]
Filed under: gambling, gordonbrown, jonathanbirch, labour, ukpolitics on December 24th, 2007 | 1 Comment »
It is commonly said that all politicians are the same. And, sadly, in and amongst all the outrageous generalisations, the oversimplifications, and the downright crude arguments, there is some truth to it. While I often find myself exploding in impassioned fits of political idealism whenever anyone dares to confront me with such cynicism, examples do [...]
Filed under: andrewnoakes, ukpolitics, uspolitics on December 13th, 2007 | 4 Comments »
What do Nick Clegg and I have in common? Yes, that’s right, we’ve both used the bottom left-hand corner of the Varsity Comment page to offload a few political bugbears. Look in the online Friday 23rd November issue on page 10 and you’ll see it. Someone ought to, if only to make poor Mr Calamity [...]
Filed under: jonathanbirch, libdems, ukpolitics on December 11th, 2007 | 1 Comment »
