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
Andrew Adonis has been interviewed by The Times today (pay wall). Full of good stuff, as ever, including:
You deal with UKIP not by abusing its leaders but by tackling the causes of its protest vote: too few good jobs, a crisis of youth inactivity and a weak, remote government with no plans, which can’t get [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Saturday, 4 May 2013 at 6:03 pm
Mark Pack, the excellent Lib Dem blogger, pointed this out yesterday, but it took a while for me to make sense of the figures. He compared the BBC’s Projected National Share of the vote for this week’s local elections with last year’s local elections.*
_________ 2012 2013 Change
Conservative 31% 25% -6
Labour [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Saturday, 4 May 2013 at 4:23 pm
It has slowly dawned on Americans that their system of government has a blocking minority in the Senate, in that a three-fifths majority is needed to overcome a filibuster (talking until time runs out and a bill falls). This has produced a lot of displacement commentary, in the form of criticisms of Barack Obama for [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Friday, 3 May 2013 at 10:44 pm
What we do not know about yesterday’s local elections is how many UKIP voters will go, or go back, to the Conservatives when they are warned that a vote for Nigel Farage will let Ed Miliband into Downing Street.
But we can say this much. The early BBC estimates for the change in vote share in [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Friday, 3 May 2013 at 2:14 pm
Ben Broadbent, member of the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England and former Goldman Sachs economist, gave a fine talk on “forecast errors” at the Mile End Group at Queen Mary, University of London, last night. The text has lots of great graphs in it, including this one of difference between the MPC’s [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Thursday, 2 May 2013 at 2:28 pm
Number 938 in my series of Questions To Which The Answer Is No (only £6.14 to download the e-book) was asked yesterday by Douglas Murray at Spectator blogs. I particularly enjoyed Murray’s decorative touch: “Important to stress that it is not conspiracy theory.”
The question was originally asked by Norman Tebbit in 2001, in the form, [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Wednesday, 1 May 2013 at 4:17 pm
I fear that, in my article for The Independent on Sunday, I broke a rule that I expect my students to observe: first, define your terms. I said that most MPs were Blairites, but my definition of Blairism was inadequate:
The Blairite party’s policies, as well as choice-driven public service reform, include being on the side [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Tuesday, 30 April 2013 at 6:01 pm
I scored an unexpected Blairite victory on Voice of Russia radio today. We were discussing the Abu Qatada case with David Coburn, chairman of UKIP London, who wants the UK to decide who it keeps and who it chucks out, with Abu Q in the second category. Obviously, he want to repudiate the European Convention [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Monday, 29 April 2013 at 4:36 pm
Catching up on my reading. This from the Washington Post last month is interesting on the movement among Democratic mayors in America for schools reform, often striving to overcome opposition from teachers’ unions.
There are two big battles. One over tenure: the guarantee of a job for life for most teachers, which makes it hard to [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Monday, 29 April 2013 at 2:23 pm
Social cohesion. A drippy phrase; an important idea. And it turns out that it has improved over the past decade. A huge New Labour achievement, repairing the damage done by the bad side of Thatcherism.
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Monday, 29 April 2013 at 9:35 am
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