An aide to the Prime Minister spreads some nasty gossip in a private email to a blogger. The blogger’s emails are hacked, the emails are leaked to another blog, and the aide resigns. It’s a juicy and very modern tale of a spin doctor getting a taste of his own medicine. But is it really [...]
Filed under: Uncategorized, bbc, conservatives, davidcameron, jonathanbirch, journalism, labour, ukpolitics on April 12th, 2009 | No Comments »
Creative Commons licensed photograph courtesy of Flickr user jgraham.
Even after eleven years, there’s still something a bit shocking about tuition fees. If the vice-chancellors get their way, fees will rise to at least £5000 per student per year. It’s a policy that flaunts its pragmatism on its sleeve. I still think fees defy any principled [...]
Filed under: barackobama, education, jonathanbirch, labour, religion, ukpolitics on March 17th, 2009 | No Comments »
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 »
