So, Frank's sorry for getting "personal" on Gordon. Alistair's sorry on behalf of the former chancellor (though he didn't say as much) for leaving the poorest slice of the population out of pocket. His announcement today finally puts flesh on the bones of his promise that most of the losers from the removal of the 10p tax band would be compensated.
But neither were probably feeling as sorry as the poor old PM. But the sorry state of his premiership was never just down to the own goal over the 10p tax band - that was just indicative of the PM's talent for conjuring blunders out of nowhere.
A while ago on Open House, we picked up on the comparisons that had started to spring up between the governments of Gordon Brown and John Major. They were mischievous back then, and I agreed with Steve Richards that, ultimately, they were probably overblown. But looking back at Major's last days now, the comparisons in rhetoric at least are alarming.
Watch Major's election announcement, and how he attempts to fight Labour's slogan "time for a change". He confidently declares:
"People are looking for change, we are the change. And we'll carry forward what we've been doing for the past 18 years."
That's right, you heard correctly. Change is continuity. Up is down. Black is white. It's the very same tac that Brown wants to attempt, declaring outside No. 10, "Let the work of change begin". But the electorate has been left saying, what change? Brown should beware - the voters didn't buy it when Major tried it. Campbell was right on the election night to say the massive predicted 171 majority would not be correct. In the end, it was 179.
As the state of Israel celebrated it's 60th birthday this week, there was no shortage of media coverage on the issue. The Independent's main writing on the subject is here. But for anyone not familiar with the history of the birth of Israel, the conflict in the subsequent decades can be impossible to penetrate. And with feelings running high on both sides, it can be an intimidating subject to approach.
For anyone in that situation who wants to take the first tentative steps towards understanding the most intractable conflict on earth, I would recommend One Palestine, complete, by the extraordinarily good Tom Segev.
I was surprised that more wasn't made of Rachel Johnson's description of Boris's lavish victory party. Clearly in party mood already, the sister of the new mayor spoke to a late night radio programme, describing the goodies on offer at Boris's bash. It was an anti-Boris campaigner's dream - caviar, champagne and oysters - and not the kind you use to get on the D6 to Hackney.
"God knows who's paying for it all", said Rachel, slamming down the phone abruptly to meet "Dave" and her victorious brother.
According to Andrew Gilligan in today's Media section, the "anti-Boris" press are desperate for any scraps of impropriety that Mayor Boris throws their way. Strange then, that the only place the story was picked up was the Sunday Mirror, famous for caricaturing the Tory front benchers as a bunch of "toffs".
Interviews on the Today programme are often the talk of the office when we all arrive. This week has been particularly interesting, as the programme's interrogator-in-chief John Humphrys was let loose on the three party leaders ahead of the local elections. Humphrys always divides opinion - some see him as needlessly aggressive and verbose, while others think he is the best interviewer out there.
Personally, I think there is a lot to admire about Humphrys, but this week's interviews have not been his best work. And this morning's clash with Gordon Brown was a low point.
We're heading towards local lelections, the capital is the centre of a hotly contested mayoral race, and the prime minister is beset with problems. But there's only one story that people are talking about in offices up and down the country - the horrific tale emerging about Josef Fritzl and the "house of horrors" in Amstetten, Austria.
What is fuelling the debate is the fact that so many unanswered questions remain. There is the obvious one, concering Josef Fritzl's wife. So how could his wife not have known? asked the Mail this morning. But there are plenty of others:
Oh dear, oh dear. Just last week, we were criticising Brown for allowing the Conservatives to shed the tag of "nasty party" by allowing them to champion the cause of the poor, after Brown's 10p tax blunder. Now his inaction over the child poverty target has allowed Cameron to bid for control of that issue, too. Cameron gave a speech on poverty today, in which he said that he was the man to solve child poverty.
If only Brown had read Open House back in January, he would have taken the child poverty target more seriously. Even John McFall, head of the Treasury committee, was trying to warn him that he needed to re-energise his battle against child poverty, when he wrote on this blog.
Brown has a lot to answer for. As I have said before on this blog, he is guilty of hurting the poorest just for the sake of wrong footing David Cameron at the dispatch box. He also made errors over the election that never was. Now, Daniel Finkelstein has criticised Brown for not appearing on Five Live this morning, with Jack Straw stepping in for him. But in this instance, I think there is a pretty good case for the defence.
The recent resurgence of violence in Basra and the rise in prominence of Iraqi militia groups, most notably the Mehdi army led by Muqtada al-Sadr, have again highlighted how poorly the invading powers understood Iraq before they launched the venture. In his book, Muqtada al-Sadr and the Fall of Iraq, Patrick Cockburn has attempted to fill in the gaps with an unapologetically weighty volume on the religious and party loyalties in Iraq that make al-Sadr a figure that cannot be sidelined.
There has been a change of tack at Livingstone HQ. In the Evening Standard's first edition yesterday, they led with a headline in which Ken was musing over what would happen if Boris did actually win. So why is he doing it? To stir the Labour supporters into turning out, yes (the Labour vote is less loyal than Conservative voters). But just as importantly, he is trying to put the image into the minds of Londoners of Boris actually running the city for four years. It's what you call shock therapy. So far, Boris has realised that he need only take a back seat and let a vehemently anti-Livingstone press do its worst. The nearer we get to May 1, the more people seem to be considering whether, really, they want Boris in charge.
First the US presidential candidates headed for the professional wrestling ring. Now the London mayoral candidates seem to have joined the cast of a bygone children's television show. Sometimes it can seem like the candidates are having a childish squabble, but the following Youtube creation (which is rapidly attracting online popularity) takes it to the next level. Very funny stuff.
So, the Democratic Party battle continues, with Hillary Clinton scoring a big victory over Obama. But it's not all good news for Hillary, with the New York Times coming out with a vicious editorial against her. It protests that she is responsible for the negative tone that has arisen during the race for the Democratic nomination. But the Times is wrong on the point when it says:
"It is demeaning the political process; and it does not work. It is past time for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to acknowledge that the negativity, for which she is mostly responsible, does nothing but harm to her, her opponent, her party and the 2008 election."
In fact, Hillary's fortunes picked up when she decided to "go negative".
The presidential hopefuls have taken their fight to the next level and entered the domain of professional wrestling. It's all a bit cringe-worthy isn't it, but McCain's final warning is more than an idle threat.
Whichever Democrat finally manages to make it through to the general election, their bout for the Democratic crown will feel like the play fighting of the WWE compared with the Calzaghe-like onslaught they will receive at the hands of McCain and the Republican electoral machine. Are they prepared?
There have been some wide-ranging views on Berlusconi's re-election this week. It was actually more comfortable than some had thought - there were fears that the two houses may be split, which would have hamstrung Italian politics even further. But while many have now criticised Berlusconi for his various shortcomings, one cannot say he has not been consistent in his disappointment as a leader.
It is, of course, entirely up to the Italian people who they want to see in power. But they cannot say they have not been warned. Electing him once was a gamble. Electing him twice was eccentric. But returning him to office for a third time is madness. And with Italy's economy on the ropes, the lessons of Berlusconi's past should have weighed more heavily on the minds of the Italian electorate than they have.
Reports abound today that Vladimir Putin has divorced his old wife and is set to marry a girl 30 years his junior. And not just any girl - a 24-year-old ex-gymnast called Alina Kabaeva. By the looks of it, poor old Vlad is going to have his hands full.
But it does raise some hopes for those opposing Putin's United Russia party and his quest to be the Russian prime minister. Will he really want to bother running Russia from the back seat when he has found love again?
Lots written already on Gordon Brown's almost anonymous trip to the US over the last couple of days. It has mainly focused on the pope, but another reason for Brown's low profile has been that the Democratic presidential race has ignited again after a period of cooling off. The pair went head to head last night in the final debate before the crucial Pennsylvania primary next week.
Unfortunately, the debate centred on the recent mistakes made by the candidates, rather than any details on policy - something Obama remains short on. You can see the debate here.
Meanwhile, his wife was making an impressive appearance on a late night US comedy show, The Colbert Report:
So according to Gordon Brown, he has been taking some brave, selfless decisions. His handling of the economy has been all about the "long-term decisions".
"Of course sometimes it is unpopular in the short term," he says, but according to this martyr of the greater good, it is worth it. "Sometimes you might get no temporary advantage out of what might be the right long term thing to do." Thank goodness we have such a brave campaigner in charge.
The only problem with his pleading is that Mr Brown is far from innocent of the charge of acting to garner a bit of short term kudos, at the expense of the needs of the country. His stunt of abolishing the 10p tax band in order to fund a 2p tax cut on the basic rate of tax is the prime example. It may have wrong-footed David Cameron at the dispatch box, but the poorest our now paying for his "temporary advantage".
Jon Snow is a man of many talents. We all know and love him as the anchor of Channel 4 News, but he has many more strings to his bow. Recently, he presented a hard-hitting documentary on the continuing violence in Iraq. Last week, he turned compere, by hosting the British Press Awards. Holding the attention of a room full of rowdy hacks was no mean feat.
And when he's not being interviewed about his tie-wearing habits, he also likes to take a turn on the karaoke floor. Rick Astley, eat yer heart out...
A great riposte by Emily Eavis in this morning's paper. Eavis, daughter of Glastonbury festival organiser and now co-organiser of the event, argues that Glastonbury has always been about presenting festival-goers with challenging and different music. With the festival facing greater competition than ever before, it needs to keep moving with the times more than ever.
A little premature I know, but the reports today that a leadership challenge to Brown is on the horizon if he doesn't get his act together soon gives us a chance to indulge in a bit of political king making.
So if Brown is challenged, who might be the one to take him on, and what would their chances of success be? With odds from William Hill, let's take a look at the runners and riders:
Newspapers can be frustrating things. They wax lyrical about pet topics and change their stance at the drop of a hat when reality begins to show their prejudices up for what they are - prejudices.
And in that vein, today's Evening Standard laments that the capital could face a labour shortage as Eastern European workers begin to head home. "The great Polish exodus", as they headline the story, is causing worries among the business community.
Mmm. Not quite in line with the stance they have consistently taken over the last few years, which - believe it or not - was not entirely in favour of Polish immigration. Let's take a look at a few headlines from the last couple of years:
It's been a week in which the immigration debate has reared its ugly head again, this time because a House of Lords committee has been saying that immigrants provide little economic benefit to the UK. It reminded me of economist Philippe Legrain's book on the subject, probably the most accessible recent volume on the issue of the economic benefits of immigration.
Though Legrain makes a persuasive case, arguing for immigration on economic grounds is a dangerous game. First, as soon as the economy takes a nose dive, they are the first to be attacked and, as the FT's Martin Wolf points out, the flaws in the arguments are exposed (Legrain has a go at responding to Wolf here.)
Secondly, it is arguing the case for immigration on the terms of those opposing it - it is only defensible if it benefits US. Once that argument is undermined, the battle is all but lost.
The UK seems to be sticking to its commitment to international development. Open House can exclusively reveal that the Department for International Development (DfID) will announce tomorrow figures confirming that the UK will reach an EU commitment to spend 0.7 per cent of gross national income on aid in 2013, two years ahead of schedule.
Finland doesn't hit the news in this country much. The foreign secretary might well be impressed by the high living standards, great public services and world-topping school system, but all that's a bit boring to report isn't it? Alas, I have bemoaned the lack of attention to the Nordic model shown by our politicians.
But when Finns do make the headlines, it usually involves their addiction to their Nokia...
After yesterday's post about the diffcult history of Gordon Brown and Ken Livingstone's relationship, this clip which cropped up this morning is worth a watch...
So, Cameron has come out in support of Boris. The same can't be said for Gordon Brown and Ken Livingstone. Though Brown has now spoken in support of Livingstone (which took long enough), he is still not giving the London mayoral race the attention it deserves. The fact is, as the Tories suspected, the battle for London mayor has become a proxy battle between the two main parties.
But while Cameron will be standing by Boris this month, Brown has planned a trip to the US. And according to the Times, allies close to Brown say that the PM has "all but written off" Livingstone's chances of winning. Why? It's no secret the pair don't get on. Livingstone even called for Brown to be sacked in 2000, when Brown and other Labour high fliers were blackening Ken's name in the run up to the mayoral race, in which Livingstone was running as an independent.
Hillary Clinton's "mis-speaking" has made the headlines this week, after she said she had arrived in Bosnia under sniperfire. In reality, there was no gunfire, and she eventually admitted as mcuh. She also came up with some interesting quotes by way of explanation. My favourite was her defence, "Occasionally, I am a human being like everybody else".
Now YouTubers have followed her example, and got creative. Here is an interesting reliving of Hillary's Bosnian trip:
Surprised at the news that Barack Obama is a distant relative of the man whose job he's after, George W. Bush? Well you shouldn't be. As every lottery winner knows, relatives soon come out of the woodwork when you've struck it lucky, and his march to the White House has seen him linked with a number of celebrity uncles and great grandfathers. Bush is just the latest.
Earlier on this blog, we reported that he is related to Dick Cheney. The Kenyan politician Raila Odinga claims Obama as his cousin. Obama has even been claimed by Ireland as one of their own.
The papers this morning won't make great reading for the Labour Party's pollsters. They report the doom and gloom of the lowest support for a quarter of a century.
"Support for Labour hits 25-year low," says the Times, which sums up the mood. But any Labour Party hack should not despair, but heed the words of the Independent's regular polling pundit, John Curtice.
So poor old Ed Balls has found himself at the centre of a row over Hansard - the official record of the proceedings of the Commons. During David Cameron's response to the Budget, the leader of the opposition accused Balls of saying "so what?" to Cameron's claim that inflation and spending was rising.
He claims he said "so weak". Guido is in no doubt as to what he thinks he heard. Here it is on YouTube. See what you think:
I was quite surprised by this graphic published in the Economist and highlighted by the Political Enquirer. Not only do Germans pay more tax then the Nordic countries of Denmark and Norway, but Australians and Canadians pay less than those in the US.
It's Budget Time. And that means that everyone becomes deeply serious and spends hours considering how to best deal with tough macro-economic conditions. So to lighten the mood, take a look at this. Some are saying that Alistair Darling could be out of a job in the summer, but if his Budget speech is anything like this one, he could be off a bit sooner.
It's been a tough time for Nick Clegg as his first big test as leader of the Lib Dems wasn't a resounding success. But this press release sent by his office has to be the new low point.
Yesterday I challenged one conventional wisdom on why Obama would be a better candidate for the Democratic Party than Hillary Clinton. The second pearl of wisdom that needs to be challenged is the idea that super delegates at the Democratic primary, a group of 796 people who can vote for whichever candidate they like, should go for Obama because of greater numbers supporting him nationally. Nice idea in theory, but my colleague Mary Dejevsky mentioned that in reality, Obama has won in more states which will actually vote Republican in November. In Democratic and marginal states, Clinton has performed better. It sounded good, so I checked it out. It is indeed the case, if we look at the last election.
This US presidential race has turned into a real nail biter, but even so, some conventional wisdoms seem to have sprung up that need to be addressed. First there’s the one that says people are opting for Obama because he has a greater chance of wining a general election against John McCain than Hillary Clinton. That’s based on the visceral dislike many have to Clinton and her clan – seen as mired in all that is wrong with Washington, and too much of an establishment figure to do anything about it.
I’m not so sure, though. And some interesting stats cast further doubt on that assumption.
Poor old John McCain will have a whole host of people clamouring to give him advice in the run up to the Presidential election, but here's an interesting observation made by Willie Brown, the first African-American mayor of San Francisco (and a Democrat). His advice to McCain? STAY AWAY FROM OBAMA! It doesn't serve him well...
I put this in yesterday's Pick of the Blogs, but in the light of this week's coverage of the EU referendum question, it is worth highlighting again here. Last night, Jon Gaunt might have been shouting that 88 per cent of the British public say they want a referendum when asked, in reality it seems that Europe just isn't an issue for the public.
Look at this Ipsos Mori poll taken last month, and highlighted by Mike Smithson over on Political Betting:
There is an interesting comparison to be made between Nick Clegg and Hillary Clinton. Democrat advisors have criticised Clinton for not engaging with Obama early enough – as the early front runner, she played the dismissive card. Now, she’s struggling to combat his popular message. Clegg made a similar mistake during the Lib Dem leadership race. As the front runner, he was completely unwilling to engage with his contender, Chris Huhne. The result was a (very) narrow victory. Is it now hampering his ability to lead the party?
As John points out below, Hillary performed well on the Tonight show, and now one of her ads has proved a hit online. This ad, featuring clips from the Uber-lord of cool, Jack Nicholson, has been viewed more than 1.2m times since its release. Can you see why? It's strange how he seems to get younger as it goes on.
The financial results of a big city bank a rarely that interesting, but the results published today by HSBC should interest us all. They tell the story of how the City has a free hand to play fast and loose with the international financial system, without having to deal with the consequences of their actions. The bank has said it lost £8.7bn as a result of the credit crunch - it had a lot of bad debts from US sub-prime mortgages on its books. It, like many other major banks, bought and sold new financial products - securities called CLOs - which were based on these risky debts. When the poor people who should never have been given the loans in the first place started defaulting, the sub-prime loan bomb went off. Yet despite the losses, HSBC's annual profits still rose 10 per cent. It raked in over £20bn in profits last year, despite the crunch. So, they have got off rather lightly from their actions. Others will suffer, though. Not the bankers, surprise surprise, but those at the bottom of the economic ladder.
Congratulations to David Newton of Edinburgh. For those of you who don't know David, he's right up there with Paxman and Humphrys when it comes to asking top questions to our leading politicians. On Monday in our regular You Ask the Questions feature, in which readers get the chance to ask a politican a question, David asked Harriet Harman: "Fidel Castro: hero of the left, or dangerous authoritarian dictator?" The deputy Labour leader replied: "Hero of the left – but time for Cuba to move on".
Well, David's question was so good, that it was put to Gordon Brown during today's PMQs.
Over on Conservative Home, Tim Montgomerie has pointed out some lessons we can learn from the US. He points to the policy of zero tolerance in New York as something we should return to. The ever-interesting Daniel Finkelstein agrees. It is hard to believe that this tired old myth about the efficacy of zero tolerance policing still has to combated, but here goes.
There was a report presented to Parliament recently that might have passed you by. It was a report by someone called the Interception of Communications commissioner, Sir Paul Kennedy, whose task it is to check on all those agencies given permission to do a number of things including “phone tapping” (listening in on our calls). He is independent, but runs his tiny office out of the Home Office. In his report, he revealed just how routine phone tapping and the like have become.
As Andy McSmith notes, the Iraq war may not be something the Labour Party wants to remember, but the dissection of how the disastrous invasion came about remains a hot topic of conversation. The latest attempt to explain the debacle comes fro Guardian journalist Jonathan Steele. He inverts George Bush's rhetoric of a quest for "victory" in the country by calling his book, Defeat: Why they lost Iraq.
But among all the clamour of voices offering their diagnoses of the Iraq war, is Steele saying anything new?
In today's Independent, I took a look at the long hunt for the Russian Amber Room, the gold-filled chamber looted by the Nazis in 1941. It was taken to Germany, but its whereabouts became lost in the chaos that ensued in Germany at the end of the war. Some think it was blown up, others that it was burnt. At any rate, it has become the subject of a massive treasure hunt for the last half a century.
Last night, I rewatched private equity guru Jon Moulton's Dispatches programme on the credit crunch. In it, he says that the international financial market was affected by an overcommitment to new-fangled financial products - in particular, Collateralized Loan Obligations (CLOs), which are essentially a way of repackaging debt. The reason that so many people dove in to these complex products is because, amazingly, they are unregulated. As a result, the Bank of England, the Treasury and the Financial Services Authority all seemed to be ignorant of their dangers. When the international economy dipped, the debtors started defaulting, and disaster struck. It is not the first time that this has happened, and if the world's regulatory systems aren't changed soon, it won't be the last.
I know we're not meant to trust opinion polls on the US election any more, but the FT has come up with a particularly interesting one. It seems that if Europeans had anything to do with it, the Democratic race wouldn't be in such a nail-biting position. Obama would be away and gone. Italians, Germans, Spaniards and the French all said they favoured Obama's new dawn. But yet again, those good-old awkward Brits have failed to fit the European norm by preferring Hillary Clinton. Here are a few factors that might help explain why:
As more people add their opinions on Tony Blair’s possible rise to the presidency of Europe, it is worth remembering that rumours linking him to the role have been around since the days he was still sat in the Downing St hot seat. In fact, he was being confronted with them during the UK’s last presidency of the EU back in 2005, by none other than UKIP’s all action leader, Nigel Farage.
In this morning's paper, our political editor Andy Grice reports that Brown is coming under ever greater pressure to launch an inquiry in to the waging of war in Iraq. In particualr, the general secretary of the Labour-affiliated Fabian Society, Sunder Katwala, has sent a letter to Brown asking for an inquiry. Katwala, also an Open House writer, makes a strong case for an inquiry - which he says would be both warranted to learn lessons and politically helpful for Brown. Here is his letter in full:
Last week, I pointed out that Obama was getting his fair share of musical tributes on YouTube. Earlier today, I blogged about the renewed concentration on McCain's views on Iraq and Iran in light of the fact that he will be the Republican's man come the Presidential run off in November. Now, the two posts have collided rather conveniently, with this YouTube effort:
Recent Comments
THE OPEN HOUSE TEAM
Open House recommends
Issues
Archives
Complain about a comment