1

Did Cameron tell Green to let the ball in deliberately?

Top conspiracy theory of the week spotted by Paul Waugh on Clive Soley’s blog. The Labour peer asks:
I’m no football expert and I’m not paranoid but does anyone else think that Cameron told Robert Green to let the ball in deliberately so that the US didn’t feel totally trashed and oiled up by the Brits?
That’s [...]

By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye - Breaking views from commentators - | Tuesday, 15 June 2010 at 10:06 pm

3

How bad is the Government debt problem?

Chris Dillow has produced a highly informative graph of the cost of public debt interest as a proportion of national income since 1956.

It makes the important point that the level of interest rates is as important as the level of debt in determining the affordability of servicing debt. An obvious point, but often overlooked in [...]

By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye - Breaking views from commentators - | Tuesday, 15 June 2010 at 4:05 pm

1

Charles Windsor, Prince of Piffle

I thought my admiration for Christopher Hitchens – one tempered by knowledge of his occasionally appalling personal character, his support for the Iraq war, and just a few of his political persuasions – had reached a high point years ago. I’d just read ‘Letter to a Young Contrarian’. Then I read ‘Love, Poverty and War’, which [...]

By Amol Rajan | Eagle Eye - Breaking views from commentators - | Tuesday, 15 June 2010 at 3:56 pm

5

“Would you keep the OBR?”

The estimable Hopi Sen asks a good question of Labour’s leadership candidates: “Would you keep the Office for Budget Responsibility?” His answer is yes, and he gives a sensible explanation:
It’s a fundamentally sound idea, being used for ideological ends by a government with an agenda.
I agree with the first part, but not really with the [...]

By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye - Breaking views from commentators - | Tuesday, 15 June 2010 at 2:53 pm

3

Thanks a lot Budd

Sir Alan Budd has created rather a problem for George Osborne. His first report yesterday, as Paul Mason of Newsnight has cleverly winkled out, confirms that Labour’s March tax and spending plans would indeed have eliminated the bulk of the structural deficit by 2015.

The OBR puts cyclically-adjusted net borrowing in 2015 at 2.8 per cent of [...]

By Ben Chu | Eagle Eye - Breaking views from commentators - | Tuesday, 15 June 2010 at 1:27 pm

1

“Ed Miliband List”?

Labour List, a Labour supporting website, reports a self-selecting voodoo poll of 652 of the site’s readers, which is notably favourable towards Ed Miliband.
David Miliband 35%
Ed Miliband 31%
Diane Abbott 20%
Andy Burnham 9%
Ed Balls 5%
Labour List has not reported a genuine opinion poll of Labour supporters carried out by YouGov, a member of [...]

By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye - Breaking views from commentators - | Monday, 14 June 2010 at 10:08 pm

2

Not enough about badges

The overwhelming consensus of three responses is that the “Don’t Blame Me I Voted Labour” badge is indeed 1979 vintage. One correspondent writes:
Of course it’s 1979 – by 1983 even ultra-leftists had a sneaking feeling they might share some of the blame.  Well, some of us.
The “Don’t blame me …” badge was a pretty homemade/cottage [...]

By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye - Breaking views from commentators - | Monday, 14 June 2010 at 9:46 pm

2

Special relationship bust!

The right’s anguish over the dreaded end of the “special relationship” is getting ever more weird.
Matthew D’Ancona in the Evening Standard cites Barack Obama’s “banishing of the Churchill bust from the Oval Office” as one of those “small lapses of grace” which “maybe mean a lot”.
So has it come to this? The special relationship can [...]

By Ben Chu | Eagle Eye - Breaking views from commentators - | Monday, 14 June 2010 at 5:44 pm

0

Britain isn’t nearly bankrupt Nick

Sad to hear Nick Clegg sounding like David Cameron:
“This is the legacy that we as a new government and we the British people were left. Left by a government bankrupt of ideas and very nearly bankrupt. It is the only way we can get our public finances on a sound footing.”
Britain is not “bankrupt” or [...]

By Ben Chu | Eagle Eye - Breaking views from commentators - | Monday, 14 June 2010 at 4:56 pm

2

The return of the Little Englander

Is this all that’s left?

There’s another interesting feature about the near-universal frothing reaction of the British right to Obama’s hard line on BP. Several newspapers have carried pieces pronouncing the “special relationship” dead or nearly expired  (see here and here and here).
As far as I know the right hasn’t moderated its hostility to Europe. The Scots and [...]

By Ben Chu | Eagle Eye - Breaking views from commentators - | Monday, 14 June 2010 at 1:20 pm