What are we to make of his Megrahi response? One of the headlines on Radio 4’s 1300 news was a denial by trade secretary, Peter Mandelson, that there was any link between the release of the Lockerbie bomber and British trade deals with Libya. His actual words did not actually say that. For he said that any suggestions that the release had been in return for trade deals were “offensive“. Now that is is not a denial. It’s a smart…
Mail online Or should Utley have left it well alone? There’s an interesting attack on David Cameron in the Mail which I’m surprised has not got more attention. For the paper’s sometimes controversial columnist, Tom Utley takes the Tory leader to task over the why he uses his family, including his late son, Ivan, in the NHS argument. Utley’s focus is on those who argue about the NHS by reducing everything to their personal experiences. “..I find it deeply depressing,…
Should he have been making TV condemnations as well? Just looking at what happened yesterday with the release by the Scottish authorities of the Lockerbie bomber I cannot help but be reminded of Gordon Brown’s actions over the signing of the Lisbon Treaty. Then, it will be recalled, Brown was “unavoidably detained” on urgent business in London and so was unable to be part of the big signing ceremony with other EU leaders. So he flew in later and signed…
Will minimising TV appearances boost Labour’s ratings? Another news cycle goes by and another day passes without Gordon Brown appearing on our TV screens – something I commented on here a fortnight agi. I know it’s been the holiday season but as far as I can see he has made only three appearances in the past month – none of them contentious. One was to pay tribute to Harry Patch, the last World War veteran in Britain, who died at…
Can Salmond now stand accused of being “soft on terror”? In the run-up to today’s release of Abdel Baset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, the Libyan spy who jailed in 2001 for blowing up Pan Am flight 103 with the loss of 270 lives, Hillary Clinton made a public plea saying the Scottish authorities should allow him to die in prison rather than being released on compassionate grounds. She said: “I just think it is absolutely wrong to release someone who has…
UKPollingReport Was it political failure and not the economy? One of the regular arguments on the site is whether it’s the economy or politics that drives changes in public opinion and how people will vote. I’ve long been part of the political failure camp and the table of YouGov polls from UKPollingReport, I would argue, backs me up. Just look at what happened in mid-April 2009. Labour had been happily coasting in the 30s since September 2008 and reached a…
Telegraph Could the strategy mean there’s even more exposure for Brown? A big discussion point on some Tory-inclined blogs today has been the Daily Telegraph story, quoting an unnamed shadow cabinet minister, that the party is planning, in that lovely term coined by the Lib Dems in 2005, a “decapitation strategy” to target the constituencies of several leading Labour figure. The paper quotes their source as saying: “..Certain Labour Party big beasts, and they know who they are, are already…
Did they fail to keep up when the Tories were so feeble? I continue to be flabbergasted by Labour’s abject failure to score a hit over the Hannan-Tories-NHS affair. They were presented with everything they needed to impede the Cameron surge and have failed to capitalise. The Health secretary who is also a Cambridge English graduate, Andy Burnham, has simply been unable to find words that work and the result is that the story has lost almost all of its…