John Rentoul is chief political commentator for The Independent on Sunday, and visiting professor at Queen Mary, University of London, where he teaches contemporary history. Previously he was chief leader writer for The Independent. He has written a biography of Tony Blair, whom he admired more at the end of his time in office than he did at the beginning. Click here and 'like' to receive updates on Facebook
A friend draws my attention to an evening on 8 November to celebrate Michael Foot’s “rich, long and varied life with stories, music and readings”.
Special guests include
Jo Brand, Prunella Scales, Francis Wheen, Helena Kennedy, Geoffrey Goodman, Rodney Bickerstaffe, David Steel, Roy Hattersley, Neil Kinnock, Gordon Brown and Leader of the Labour Party Ed Miliband.
Michael Foot [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Sunday, 10 October 2010 at 8:07 pm
Matthew d’Ancona on fabulous form in The Sunday Telegraph today, doing what he does best, namely saying what I think, and on this occasion said, but 10 times better than I ever could. Top paragraph, on the reaction to the child benefit cut for higher-rate taxpayers:
The backlash in Birmingham was quite something to behold. It [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Sunday, 10 October 2010 at 4:31 pm
I remember a chemistry lesson where we had to add salt or sugar to water to see how much could be added before the solution became saturated. It was more than we expected. So it is with the market in Blair Government memoirs. Jonathan Powell’s The New Machiavelli: How to Wield Power in the Modern [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Sunday, 10 October 2010 at 4:16 pm
A number of comments on my earlier posts on Ed Miliband’s revisionism about Iraq demanded to know my response to various assertions commonly made about the case for military action in 2003.
As I said last time, I am eager to answer questions that I and others have not answered many times before. I haven’t seen [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Saturday, 9 October 2010 at 4:24 pm
The other item in The Times today (pay wall) is an article by Peter Hyman. Anyone who saw Tony Blair’s former speech writer on Newsnight this week will know that he is even more, er, emphatic than I am about the wrong choice foisted on the Labour Party by the Forces of Whelan. Here is [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Saturday, 9 October 2010 at 1:09 pm
Two interesting political items behind the pay wall at The Times today. One is an interview with Charlie Whelan, who has just retired as political director of Unite, having played a central role in giving Neil Kinnock his party back. The photograph by Tom Main alone is worth the subscription (a small version, right).
The article starts [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Saturday, 9 October 2010 at 12:54 pm
By the way, did you notice that line in David Cameron’s speech yesterday?
When we are done with these cuts, spending on public services will actually still be at the same level that it was in 2006.
Is that all? What, you might ask, have the last four years all been about? Well, I’ll tell you. Tony [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Thursday, 7 October 2010 at 9:58 pm
As a service to digital archiving, I seek to preserve the gems of the occasional paragraph called “Notes” in The Independent’s Viewspaper. Possibly because they are printed in an odd typeface, they are not on the website. But two of the recent “Notes”, from 20 and 21 September, were particularly good, so I reproduce them [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Thursday, 7 October 2010 at 4:00 pm
This was not the headline the Law Society Gazette chose for its report of the report of the Solicitors International Human Rights Group and the Law Society’s international action team, which has been submitted to the Iraq Inquiry, just as you or I could submit our opinions. It opted for:
‘No legal case’ for Iraq invasion
The [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Thursday, 7 October 2010 at 3:04 pm
My commentary on David Cameron’s speech for The Independent is here. Three bits for which there wasn’t space are here:
Remember what they said about us? They called us a dead parrot. They said we had ceased to be. That we were an ex-party. Turns out we really were only resting.
This was the first joke, an [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Thursday, 7 October 2010 at 1:25 pm
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