His final PMQs before the 2007 recess and the election U-turn If you’ve got a few minutes just click on the picture above to watch Brown take the last PMQs of July 2007 when everything was going so right for him. Watching his body language, listening to a very different intonation in his voice, looking at how he dealt with Cameron and it is as though you are in a different era. He’s relaxed, confident, and delivered very effectively the…
How can they select someone who could make matters worse? The only point for Labour to go through the pain of changing the leader again is to improve the party’s chances at the next election. In June 2007, as I keep on reminding people, Labour MPs ignored the overwhelming polling evidence, that has since been proved correct, that Gordon would be an electoral disaster. So how are we to assess the reports that a union-backed joint Johnson-Cruddas ticket is being…
Is McCain’s plan for a ‘League of Democracies’ the answer? On May Day of last year, John McCain addressed the Hoover Institution at Stanford University in California. As the Republican primary candidate with the most foreign policy experience, his remarks received a significant amount of attention. The key idea in the speech was that, if elected President, McCain would call a summit of the Democratically-elected world leaders, and discuss with them how global problems might be solved. He described the…
Has he really got what it takes to undermine Cameron? Now there’s a headline, I know, designed to provoke a largish slice of the PB audience but it could be correct. For every Labour person I’ve spoken to over the past forty-eight hours, and for various reasons that has been quite a few, has told how under Gordon they are heading for oblivion but that David Miliband is “the one” who can turn the party’s fortunes round. They believe passionately…
The conflict in Georgia dominates the front pages The Sunday Newspapers are focussing heavily on the conflict that has erupted between Russia and Georgia over South Ossetia. The US and UK are affirming Georgia’s territorial rights and calling for a cessation of hostilities. Around 1,000 Georgian troops have been withdrawn from Iraq, as Russia demands that Georgia withdraws to its undisputed territory. The region of Abkhazia has now joined the conflict, according to the Observer. In other news, the Sunday…
Revised But more ammunition for those who want Gord out The News of the World has a poll from YouGov, giving David Cameron’s Conservatives yet another healthy over Gordon Brown’s Labour government – 20 percentage points although it is down a couple of notches from the last survey from the firm nine days ago. Amongst the non-voting intention questions nearly half of those who took part said Brown should quit and and 49% say they would prefer Tony Blair as…
What are the significant implications for US and UK foreign policy? You could be forgiven for not being immediately familiar with the small mountain region of South Ossetia, and its capital Tskhinvali. Few people last week could have correctly identified it as (legally, at least) a province of Georgia, and fewer still would have known that its comparitively-peaceable sister region North Ossetia remained a part of the Russian Federation. The two provinces consider themselves to be a single ethnolinguistic entity,…
Which VP will keep Southern Baptists on-side? Mike has alerted me to a fascinating CBS News interview with Richard Land, who chairs the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, the ‘public-policy wing’ of the Southern Baptist Convention. The SBC is the largest Protestant denomination in the US, and they weild significant political influence over the Republican Party. “CBSNews.com: A number of evangelicals and leaders of what used to be called the religious right have said that what they’re really looking for–to…