By John Rentoul

Gordon Brown has just spent £2.7bn of taxpayer's money that he doesn't have and has to borrow, and this is how the candidate in Crewe and Nantwich repays him. Thanks to More4 News:

Q: You've been meeting people constantly. Is Gordon Brown a liability or an asset at the moment?

Tamsin Dunwoody - Gordon Brown is our Prime Minister. I'm here meeting people out on the streets and dealing with the issues that affect them.

Q: Asset or liability?

Tamsin Dunwoody - The issues that affect them are where Crewe is going in the future. It's what's happening now, what we need action on and what I'm here to deliver on.

By John Rentoul

David Cameron voted against the majority of Conservative MPs who took part in the division yesterday on the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill. He was one of 37 Tories voting in favour; 49 voted against. The rest found something better to do. According to the incomparable Professor Philip Cowley of Revolts.co.uk, this is the fourth time he has been in a minority in his own party in Commons votes recently.

The others were votes cast in favour an 80-per-cent-elected House of Lords (where the Conservatives split 80/103 against); gay adoption (where the Conservatives split 29/85 against); and the abolition of blasphemy (where the Conservatives split 37/51 against). In each case, the party leader found himself in a minority of his party.

He really is beginning to resemble Tony Blair. (On whose absence from politics Robert Harris is well worth reading today.)

By John Rentoul

Alternative front-page headline for this morning's Independent. According to an ICM poll for the BBC, 28 per cent of people want house prices to fall, 22 per cent want them to rise and 46 per cent, bless them, want them to "stay the same".

Now, for the weather forecast: "Better weather expected on Thursday with thunderstorms bringing the rain that made this country great."

By John Rentoul

When I said, a month ago,

Brown's premiership will implode amazingly quickly. These things do.

I did not mean this quickly. A sudden collapse this autumn seemed possible. Then the Crewe by-election was called. From Labour's point of view, as I also said, it was "a write-off". But even before we get there, Frank Field's 2 minutes and 48 seconds in conversation with Mary Ann Sieghart on the BBC World Service on Sunday night has just taken the Brown roller-coaster on another momentarily disorienting plunge. Funny kind of roller-coaster, this. After an early up-hill section to a plateau with unexpectedly good views, it has been down-hill all the way, with short pauses between each lurch earthwards.
Field is, as Alan Johnson and Ed Balls have pointed out, no friend of Gordon's - although they did embrace at Lambeth Palace the other day.

By John Rentoul

You would think, wouldn't you, that if you were going to take a widely-reported phrase as the title of your polemic against Tony Blair you might just check that the phrase had actually been uttered as reported? You might even listen to the recording. Top marks to Simon Hoggart (via Neil D at Harry's Place and MM at Labourhome) for drawing our attention to the fact that George Bush never said "Yo, Blair!" Listen to the start of his programme and you'll hear the President very clearly saying: "Yeah, Blair, what are you doing?"

By John Rentoul

I don't think it was very clever of David Cameron to criticise the Prime Minister for wearing more make-up than Barbara Cartland. (The transcript of Prime Minister's Questions should be here shortly.) Just as Mr Punch's description of his opponent as a "shallow salesman" last week was ill-judged, Judy's response was simply childish abuse. Perhaps Cameron was following Fraser Nelson's advice, and throwing Gordon Brown a lifeline because he wants to keep him in his job.

By John Rentoul

At the time, I thought last week's Commons confrontation between Gordon Brown and David Cameron was finely balanced. Cameron was against raising the limit on detention without charge to 42 days, but sounded as if he didn't really believe his own argument; while Brown defended 42 days - and sounded as if he didn't really believe in his own argument. Cameron won on style, Brown on substance.
But towards the end Brown suddenly declared:

This is the man who is a shallow salesman and never addresses the substance of the issue.

I thought it struck a wrong note, but couldn't put my finger on why. Now I can.

By John Rentoul

I share Hopi Sen's high opinion of Daniel Finkelstein, and The Fink's post this morning is an example of why. The conventionally wise are busy comparing Gordon Brown with the late-period (that is, doomed) John Major. If I can translate, Finkelstein, who worked for Major 1995-97, says: "Prime Minister, I served with John Major; I knew John Major; John Major was a friend of mine. Prime Minister, you 're no John Major." This is how Finkelstein puts it:

Major had a great deal more public appeal and ability to communicate with voters. He won a mandate of his own, after all, with a massive Tory vote.

On the basis of his experience of that miserable period, he lists 10 things that Brown can expect:

By John Rentoul

Labour should have had me as their spin doctor. On the basis of my extrapolation from the national opinion polls, the party would have won a 20 per cent share of the vote in yesterday's local elections. So the 24 per cent projected by the BBC shows how resilient the party's support is.
And, on the strength of their national opinion-poll rating, the Conservatives should have won 45-46 per cent. Instead, it looks as if they have fallen short of their record 45 per cent level set in 1992 (when Labour voters, disgusted by the result of the general election a few weeks earlier, stayed at home in droves). Or something.

By John Rentoul

Remarkable piece of footage from Al-Jazeera on 14 April that has only just been noticed on the blogs. Clare Short, talking about the International Criminal Court, said:

In the short term it will be impossible to try George Bush in this court. But on the other hand if you remember Pinochet [for whom she thinks a French judge issued a warrant] … Let’s be realistic, I don’t believe that Blair and Bush will be arrested straight away but this issue may haunt them, because after all they are not old … There are brave lawyers who are waiting for this opportunity, which may come one day.

It is depressing, if not surprising, that Short should be critical of Tony Blair's policy on Iraq. What is extraordinary is that she appears to be suggesting that the former Prime Minister should be arrested for a decision taken by the Cabinet (and House of Commons) of which she was a member.
No doubt she will be presenting herself at Charing Cross police station and asking the desk sergeant to put the handcuffs on.

By John Rentoul*

Enjoyable front-page lead in The Daily Mail this morning: "Milking the Motorist." On a normal planet, this might read: "Law-breakers Pay Fines." The news point is that the latest official figures show that one in three drivers is caught breaking the law every year.
This is indeed a high proportion, and suggests one of two possibilities. One is that the law is too strict and that speed limits should be raised. This is the editorial line of The Independent, which has argued in the past for higher speed limits on main roads, rigorously enforced. Or it means that we are a nation of habitual criminals, in which case the Mail ought to be calling for a heavier police crackdown.
So I turned eagerly to the Mail's Comment. How does it suggest that the Government should proceed?

It's all about raising money from the softest of targets,** those for whom cars are absolute necessities. How much longer must motorists be treated as cash-cows before somebody halts this outrageous abuse of power?

I think that means: "Take down the cameras; park where you like; keep a library of laws on the statute book but don't enforce them."

*Declaration of interest: I do not have a car.
**A scientist writes: a pedestrian is a softer target when hit at any speed above 5mph.

By John Rentoul

Terrific profile of Christopher Hitchens in the May issue of Prospect, which is generously available free on its website - although it alone would justify the subscription. Alexander Linklater asks him what he thinks about being called a neoconservative.

His reply is that he doesn't consider himself to be "any kind of conservative." He would rather just be called a human rights hawk. "There should be a word for people who believe US power can and should be used to oppose totalitarianism," he says.

I didn't know his mother had killed herself in a suicide pact with her lover. Hitch resists psychologising about the effect it had on him.

He considers this to be intense but discrete emotional territory, of no larger significance to the way he has developed his beliefs and attitudes.

I expect he's right, but you need to read the whole gripping story.

By John Rentoul

Contain your excitement: Jimmy Carter has a new book out. It's called A Remarkable Mother. (Despite the publication date, it really is.) Publishing industry sources confirm that George Bush Sr is about to bring out a book called My Apple Pie.

By John Rentoul

I may not be the best person to ask how Gordon Brown can turn things round, because I don’t think that he can. Before he became Prime Minister, I agreed with what Tony Blair didn’t say to Lord Levy: “Gordon? He can’t defeat Cameron.”

So I canvassed the alternatives. John Reid. Alan Johnson. David Miliband. At one point I wrote that there were many other Labour MPs who would also make a better prime minister than Brown.

I hoped I was wrong, because I respect Brown, which is more than can be said for some of his fair-weather cheerleaders on The Guardian, who seemed to think he was Che Guevara, Mahatma Gandhi and Clement Attlee rolled into one and then turned vicious when they realised that he wasn’t.

By John Rentoul

Today's ComRes poll for The Independent is worse for the Government than my fair-minded colleague Andy Grice can bring himself to report. It completes the full set from the five main polling companies before Thursday's elections. The average of all five is:

Con         41%
Lab         28%
Lib Dem  19%

To understand how bad this is for Gordon Brown, take the line, commonly heard before this week, that the local elections may not seem so bad for Labour because the council seats were last up for election in 2004, when the party hit its post-Iraq-war low.

Except that the average national opinion poll figures before those elections were as follows (source: Polling Report's Archive):

Con         32.5%
Lab         34%
Lib Dem  20.5%

By John Rentoul

Hillary Clinton's chances of beating Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination are now vanishingly small, and depend mainly on his being caught in a worse trouser-ankles situation than her husband. So why is she still fighting so hard? I suspect that the answer is that it is psychologically difficult to quit; politicians tend to hope that something will turn up.

But Dick Morris, Bill Clinton's secret adviser who went by the codename of Charlie to conceal his role from the rest of the President's team, has another theory. He says she is hoping to drive up Obama's negatives in order to ensure that he loses to John McCain in November, which would give her a good shot at the presidency in 2012.

Obviously, if Obama beats McCain, Hillary is out of the picture until 2016, by which time, at 69 years old, she might be too old to run. But if McCain wins, she would have to be considered the presumptive front runner for the nomination, a status which she might parlay into a nomination more successfully than she has been able to do this year.

By John Rentoul

I got it wrong. Horribly wrong. I never thought Gordon Brown would do so badly as prime minister. I did not believe that he could change his basic personality, but I thought that his political judgement was pretty good and that people would be reassured by his doggedness. When I wrote this, in August last year, it was meant to explain why no sensible leader could allow speculation about an election - at that time Ed Balls's Plan A was to hold it around now - to get out of hand:

Any time now, a spring election could be promoted to that category of future events, the Settled Assumption. And then it would be tricky to get out of it without feeding a self-fulfilling cycle of bad news. "Brown postpones election as opinion polls slump." The headlines almost write themselves.

Then came Brown's juddering downward ride on the nightmare express. Each slowing of the train with a hint of an upward gradient has been followed by another sickening downward lurch.

By John Rentoul

Here is a neat way from the New York Times of presenting the demographics of the struggle between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Mind you, this all seems of historical interest, as there is no remotely plausible way in which Clinton can overtake Obama now. She is still 131 delegates behind, having made a net gain of only 12 in Pennsylvania. Clinton's supporters have had to become increasingly ingenious in highlighting electoral statistics that favour her, in a so far vain attempt to persuade uncommitted superdelegates.

By John Rentoul

This has nothing to do with anything current, except the state of the world. But it is such a stunning use of data that I bring it to your attention in case you haven't already seen it. It's a way of presenting statistics about every country in the world. The one I've linked to compares size of families with life expectancy. We all know that in the rich North, we have few children and long lives, while in the poor South people have lots of children and short lives. Oh, no, they don't. Not any more. Press "Play" and watch how all the countries of the world - except in sub-Saharan Africa - migrate from the bottom right corner to the top left. The two big blobs are China and India.

By John Rentoul

Finally read Gordon Brown's 5,500-word Kennedy Memorial lecture that he delivered in Boston yesterday. I can see why he is irritated with the British media for giving so much more prominence to his difficulties over the 10p income tax rate. It is a good speech, if too long and characteristic of him (47 sentences beginning with "And", 12 more beginning with "So"), and he plainly worked hard on it.

Strong green words:

‘It is this challenge that starkly defines the most basic truth of our human condition: that, if as far ahead as we can foresee, there is no other planet for us and our children – we must cooperate to make our stewardship of this earth work.’

By John Rentoul

Who is Lord Desai, author of some of the most stinging and quotable comments about the Supreme Leader? Well, he is a character, that's for sure. Check out this autobiographical profile of him in The Times of India from 2004.

By John Rentoul

Ed Balls, in his forceful defence of Gordon Brown in yesterday's Times, gives three reasons why Labour should rally round the Prime Minister:

Anybody who has the strength and conviction to take the tough decisions he did on public spending in his first two years, resist pressure to go into the euro and deal with fears of recession in 1998 and 2001 shows that he knows how to handle difficult times.

I'll give him the first, and the third is just a strange way of saying that independence for the Bank of England was a good idea.

By John Rentoul

I've already commented on Gordon Brown's interview with Katie Couric for CBS on Monday, but have just come across another interesting line. (It has taken me a while to read the transcript, partly because I have been standing in for Steve Richards this week.) Couric asked him about being "in the unenviable position of following in Tony Blair's footsteps", and he said:

After ten years of one party in government, you've obviously got to be able to respond to people saying, "Why is it not time for a change?" ... What I have got to show is that the challenges that this country has to meet in the future, not too dissimilar from the challenges that America has to meet - how you have energy security, how you can build a stronger economy in competition to China and India, how people can secure higher standards of living, better healthcare and education, a better and cleaner and greener future - you have to show people that you own the future.

By John Rentoul

A nugget in Gordon Brown's long interview with Katie Couric of CBS Evening News before setting off for the States. In among the 280-word answers (several crisp 90-second sound bites), there was this exchange:

COURIC: As the equivalent of our Secretary of the Treasury, you presided over a ten-year period of unprecedented economic prosperity. Now that you're Prime Minister, do you ever feel as if you're a victim of lousy timing, created by circumstances that are beyond your control?

BROWN: I don't think you can ever predict the circumstances in which you're going to do a particular job and get them aligned to what you want them to be.

That's a yes, then.

By John Rentoul

Sad to report a predictable response to my post 10 days ago about the death toll in Iraq, in which I questioned The Independent's decision to publish a figure of 1,033,000 dead without examining its credibility.

Only one respondent offered information that shed any light on the methodology of the Opinion Research Business survey, which produced that estimate that one million people had died in violence since the 2003 invasion. He drew my attention to a study (pdf) by Debarati Guha-Sapir and Olivier Degomme of the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters at the University of Louvain. This was published in June last year, before the Opinion Research Business poll, but its criticisms of the two Lancet studies (which suggested violent deaths of 98,000 by 2004 and 601,000 by 2006 respectively) suggest some reasons why these kinds of surveys might get it wrong. 

By John Rentoul

Hold on. I see that Michael White is being accused of "trying to defend the indefensible". Stay out of it, Mike. That's my job. The High Court ruling that the Serious Fraud Office acted unlawfully in dropping its inquiry into alleged corruption in the Saudi arms deal has been greeted with the equivalent of universal rejoicing. The counter case is hard to make, but that is why it all the more worth while to try. I'm not a great fan of the Saudi Arabian government, but I don't think the case is as open and shut as the conventional wisdom has it.

By John Rentoul

Boris - oops, £5 in Tessa Jowell's swearbox - takes us for fools in his London mayoral election broadcast today. Look out for this particularly nonsensical non-sequitur. A caption says that London has the lowest recycling rate in the UK. Then up pops Johnson to say that "over the last few years" the city has lost gardens "22 times the size of Hyde Park". What has that to do with recycling? But more importantly, it is the sort of bogus factoid that won't stand a moment's scrutiny. It comes from a 2005 London Assembly environment committee report (rtf, opens in Microsoft Word) about people paving over their front gardens.

By John Rentoul

Two bittersweet opinion polls for our former Prime Minister today. One, by Harris Interactive (pdf) in France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy and Spain sees Tony Blair running second to Angela Merkel in preferences for President of Europe. She is on 11 per cent, he is on 9 per cent (averaging the five countries and excluding the US, where Harris also polled). Both of them, however, are soundly beaten by None of the Above, whose natural anti-politics supporters in this case find themselves augmented by those declaring, "There should not be a 'President of Europe'." This is the most popular option, on 26 per cent, beating even the Don't Knows on 25 per cent.

By John Rentoul
Now this is brilliant. (For Londoners only, but the idea will surely be coming soon to an election near you.) It's a site called Vote Match that allows you to click through a quiz about issues in the London mayoral and assembly elections. You say whether you agree or disagree (or neither) with 25 statements, which you can then give extra weight, and then it tells you which candidate is closest to your views.
I have been wrestling for some time with the choice between Ken Livingstone and Boris Johnson, and this has resolved it for me (no, I'm not saying which way: try it for yourself).
Many ways in which this idea can be improved. The main defect is that there is no way of factoring in your opinion of the integrity and effectiveness of the candidates. The selection of issues is also contentious: I thought it was skewed towards the environmental. And the weighting could obviously be made more sophisticated. But it is a digital-democracy breakthrough. If you live in London, and even if you don't, do try it.

By John Rentoul

Will these people ever give up? He's not Prime Minister any more, Kirsty Wark. Blair-bashing is sort of beside the point now. Ten months after he stepped down, Newsnight's interpretation of its Charter obligation of impartiality ("all politicians are liars") became more twisted and pointless than ever last night. The crowning moment came when, in relation to Alastair Campbell's comment, "We don't do God," Wark asked: "Were we being duped?" To which Professor AC Grayling, who happened to be the only other person in the studio, was presumably supposed to slap his forehead and exclaim: "You mean, Tony Blair was a Christian?"

By John Rentoul

I didn't think much of David Cameron's article in The Sun yesterday about the House of Lords report on the economics of immigration. It's always a mistake for politicians (or anyone else) to use the l-word, and Cameron describes as "the biggest lie of all" the idea that "uncontrolled immigration will make us all better off".

Then he goes on to say: "It’s time for a new approach. One which recognises the massive contribution immigrants who come here, work hard and get involved make to society." Then of course he gets to the "But", which is all about the pressures on public services.

By John Rentoul

Over Easter, The Independent carried a startling news story. On 19 March, the fifth anniversary of the Iraq invasion, it said that 1,033,000 people had died, by implication as a result. That, surely, would be important if true. Yet all it said, in a graphic across the top of pages 2 and 3, which is not on the internet version of the newspaper, was that this was the number of “civilians thought to have died, according to January survey by polling company Opinion Research Business”.

If a million people have died in violence in Iraq since the invasion, you might have thought this shocking enough for The Independent, or any other national newspaper, to report it when the survey was published in January. But there was nothing in the British press at all.

By John Rentoul

It has been an interesting week for Gordon Brown. It was trivial, but I suspect the Queen's overheard comment on Thursday will go down in history: "The Prime Minister got lost. He disappeared the wrong way at the crucial moment."
Then yesterday Brown delivered a speech to the Scottish Labour Party in Aviemore without notes. He described how Nelson Mandela had been released from prison in "our lunchtime".

As party members giggled, he paused before correcting himself to say that, of course, he had been freed during our "lifetime".

Before all that, on Wednesday, there was this picture, taken to accompany the launch of Labour's local elections campaign.
Perhaps next week will be better.

By John Rentoul

There is no achievement so great that someone will not try to belittle it. In relation to the settlement of the conflict in Northern Ireland that eluded all prime ministers since Gladstone, it is said that John Major did all the groundwork or that it was only a matter of time. Jonathan Powell's account of the peace process, Great Hatred, Little Room, is hardly impartial but utterly convincing in rebutting both those cynical cliches.

Powell pays generous tribute to other authors of the settlement, but has no doubt that it could have unravelled at any point between 1997 and the Paisley-McGuinness finale last year, and that it was only the persistence and "messianic belief" of Tony Blair that eventually guaranteed success. "He was constantly ordering me to make impossible things happen ... He was right."

By John Rentoul

You may have seen a clip of it on the news last night. You may have read about it in the newspapers today. But it is well worth watching the whole of Barack Obama's speech about the racial politics of America. Yes, I know 37 minutes is a long time to sit still and pay attention to a political argument in the YouTube age. There are very few politicians, and very few occasions, when such an investment is repaid. This is one of them.

By John Rentoul

Thanks to Hopi Sen, the best Labour blogger, for this.

“People want to know who you are, what you are like, what makes you tick. That’s modern politics. You have to do what you feel comfortable with. People want to know about your life.”

David Cameron talking about parts of his life he wants to share with you because he thinks it will make you like him.

“I haven’t answered the question about drugs because I think that’s all in the past and I don’t think you have to answer it.”

David Cameron talking about parts of his life he won’t share with you because he thinks it will make you not like him.

By John Rentoul

In all the fuss over what Ed Balls - the "minister for children" as David Cameron so cuttingly called him - shouted out during the Opposition leader's Budget reply last week, no one seems to have stopped to ask what they were both on about.

Cameron was saying, "We have the highest tax burden in our history", when Balls interrupted, "So weak!", which Cameron heard as, "So what?" Cameron won the moment, but he was talking nonsense. The highest tax burden in our history was when net taxes and National Insurance contributions reached 38.7 per cent of GDP in 1984-85.

By John Rentoul

Best anecdote in a fabulous interview with Jonathan Powell, Tony Blair's former chief of staff, with Ian Katz today is about Gerry Adams, Sinn Fein president. Early on, Powell refused to shake his hand "on principle", but as the Northern Ireland peace process went on, they developed a friendly relationship. So much so that Adams called him at the height of the cash-for-honours investigation

to express his solidarity and ask if Tony and I would seek political status if we went to prison. He recommended that we not recognise the court.

By John Rentoul

Actually, In Sickness and in Power is the book of next month, as it isn't published until 10 April, after serialisation in a Sunday newspaper. It will be a talking point, for all the wrong reasons, as it will provide an excuse for the Blair-hating tendency, whose anonymous cyber-clones will shortly appear in the Comments below, to say that our former Prime Minister was and is mad. So allow me to get the retaliation in first.

By John Rentoul

Now that they have failed in the House of Commons, it is a tribute to wishful thinking over hard facts that many Eurosceptics believe that the campaign for a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty is more likely to succeed in the House of Lords. The Bill to ratify the Treaty cleared the Commons on Tuesday night - with a touch of bathos provided by (who else?) Bill Cash, the Anti-EU MP for Stone.

By John Rentoul

The short answer is: John Major.

The slightly longer answer is that all this stuff about our "broken politics" and how the Great Unmentionable Prime Minister Before Gordon Brown destroyed trust in politics (by taking us to war on a false yada yada) is simply wrong. Ipsos MORI have polled on trustworthiness since 1983 and Sir Robert Worcester's analysis is a must-read for the consumers of the conventional wisdom.

By John Rentoul

Here's a thought experiment. What would you make of Tony Blair now if you arrived from Mars knowing nothing about him? Oh. It's not a thought experiment. It has been tried out in real life, on the campus of DePauw university in Greencastle, Indiana, last week. Here is what Brian Fisher, who I assume is business student, made of him.

By John Rentoul

The gripping soap opera that is the fall of Eliot Spitzer, Governor of New York state, meets the 3am call, otherwise known as "Children", already one of the most famous commercials in US politics (you must watch it, and Barack Obama's reply, "Ringing", which aired within hours). This is Robert George's take:

By John Rentoul

Last word on Labour's weakness for Fidel Castro, the "hero of the left" acclaimed by Harriet Harman, deputy leader of the party. Eighty-two MPs have signed Colin Burgon's early day motion commending the achievements of Castro, the repressive autocrat and persecutor of homosexuals who stood down as Supreme Leader of Cuba last month.

By John Rentoul

Hats off to Jonathan Alter. This is commentary to admire. Newsweek's political analyst wrote this before last night's big votes in Texas and Ohio, and he is still right. He predicted what Hillary Clinton's people would be saying this morning:

Clinton aides say this will be the beginning of her comeback against Barack Obama. There's only one problem with this analysis: they can't count.

Erring on Clinton's side, he assumed she would win Texas by 6 percentage points (it was 4), and Ohio by 10 (which she did). He then goes through the most Clinton-favourable outcomes in all the remaining primaries and comes to the stark conclusion:

No matter how you cut it, Obama will almost certainly end the primaries with a pledged-delegate lead, courtesy of all those landslides in February.

By John Rentoul

Oh, the joy of told-you-so. But I told you so. In an article exactly a year ago, I wrote: "One thing Gordon will do, then, is drop road pricing." And so it happened, exactly one year later. Ruth Kelly, the Transport Secretary, has killed the idea "for the time being", that is, until the long grass grows over every motorway in the land.

And what a hypocritical howl of outrage she has provoked! Teresa Villiers, the Conservative transport spokesthing, says the Government's policy "lies in tatters". Whereas, of course, the Tory policy is exquisitely tailored, coherent and good to go. Not.

By John Rentoul

If Hillary Clinton wins Ohio or Texas or both today, maybe this will have had something to do with it. Wit is the hardest thing in politics as in life, and to be interviewed by the extremely funny and unpredictable Jon Stewart must be the most difficult engagement for a serious politician.

By John Rentoul

We-Think is a remarkable book about how the internet is likely to shape not just the economy but people's sense of self-worth. It takes off from Charles Leadbeater's previous book, Living on Thin Air, about the "weightless" economy, that is, the one that makes money out of knowledge rather than widgets.

His new book goes beyond applying traditional economics to the new technology, and looks at how that technology is changing economics. It starts from the idea that "you are what you share", which turns some of the economics of private property on its head.

By John Rentoul

More trouble for Hillary Clinton's campaign. Her consultant, Mark Penn, boasts that he worked for Labour in the 2005 election. Well, that was a win. But of what single contribution is he most proud?

I have won about 70 major elections around the world, including many presidents, and I devised the simple message for Tony Blair in his last successful campaign: "Forward, Not Back".

And there was I thinking it was the work of supreme post-ironist such as Peter Mandelson. Not only is it one of the worst slogans ever devised, though, it is not even original.

By John Rentoul

How can Tony Blair fail to become president of the EU Council? An online magazine of which I am afraid I had not heard begins its report thus:

Tony Blair is the “wrong man” to become president of the EU, says one of Europe's heavyweight political figures.

It is not until paragraph four that we learn the identity of this "heavyweight": Viscount Etienne Davignon. Ah yes, him.

By John Rentoul

Welcome signs that the Iraq rage is ebbing in the reaction to yesterday's decision by Richard Thomas, the Information Commissioner. He said the minutes of the two March 2003 Cabinet meetings that considered the legal basis for military action in Iraq should be published. I assumed that the B-liar-mania that infected so much of the media class would prompt its members to raise Thomas to their metaphorical shoulders and carry him up and down Whitehall proclaiming a historic victory for open government. Fortunately not.

By John Rentoul

I've just heard a marvellous preview of Michael Portillo's TV programme about Margaret Thatcher, which is on tonight. BBC Radio 5 Live has jus