Michael White's Blog, page 38
September 8, 2014
Roll up, roll up! The Amazing Salmond will show a Scotland you won't believe
Alex Salmond is undoubtedly the most successful politician practising in these islands today. He has led Scots first to an SNP majority at Holyrood, now to the brink of a historic break with the rest of the UK ("rUK"?).
He has done so by telling them they can keep all the bits of Britain they like the BBC and the pound while discarding the nasty Tory or New Labour bits, like austerity and war. As Martin Kettle shouts, it's the only game that matters now. In the face of enfeebled, self-harming opposition on both sides of the border (and a miserable economic recession on both sides too) he has performed brilliantly.
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September 4, 2014
Scottish independence: momentum is with yes but country is divided
Pro-union experts have weightier arguments but Yes Scotland has powerful elixir of hope for a better future it could all end in upset of historic proportions
The battered boozer taking an occasional swig from his bottle of Whyte and Mackay on the late Inverness-to-Glasgow train shares an ambition with the progressive lawyer nursing a glass of red Burgundy in his lovely north Edinburgh home. Both will vote in the 18 September referendum for an independent Scotland.
Ill definitely be voting for a free Scotland, confirms the tipsy traveller as the train reaches Stirling, scene of Robert the Bruces underdog victory over Edward IIs army at Bannockburn in 1314. As for the English-born lawyer, he has come to the conclusion (Im a romantic) that his long-adopted country can only benefit from ending the dependency culture which has evolved over 307 years of union with its bigger neighbour.
Continue reading...August 29, 2014
What next for 'Kamikaze Carswell' after the romance of revolt wears off?
When the evening paper headlines scream that a political defection has "rocked" the prime minister of the day it's always best to sleep on the news to see if everyone has moved on to be rocked by something else by breakfast time. After all it's not even true that the Tory defector, Douglas Carswell, is Ukip's first MP. A previous Essex defector (remember Bob Spink anyone?) briefly enjoyed that distinction.
As things look, rising tensions on the Russo-Ukrainian border are likely to prove more important in the larger scheme of world affairs than the ambush staged against David Cameron by one of his early backers, the MP for Harwich in Essex since 2005 and for Clacton on revised boundaries since 2010. Carswell is the man I once dubbed "Kamikaze Carswell'' and now you can see more clearly why.
Continue reading...August 27, 2014
Nigel Farage stands in Kent but Ukip gains in Rotherham | Michael White
It would be wrong to call this morning's headlines good news for Nigel Farage. The Ukip leader and newly-selected prospective parliamentary candidate to become MP for Thanet South must be as disgusted as most people are by the scale of Rotherham's abuse scandal.
Continue reading...August 25, 2014
Scottish independence second debate: it's smart Salmond v animated Darling
After Alex Salmond got a pasting from Alistair Darling in Scotland's first televised referendum debate, his yes campaign got a boost in some polls. There's romantic nationalism for you. Independence isn't about dull, Darling things like oil, pensions and whether voters pays their grocery bills in pounds or shortcake it's about being the plucky underdog, as the SNP leader was quick to remind supporters. He's been doing it for decades.
What would it be this time? How would Salmond play it: cautious, brazen or bold, Braveheart or Mr McChutzpah? He started cautiously, a dignified "our time, our moment, let's do it" appeal to Scotland to "finish the home rule journey" that Margaret Thatcher's 18-year rule had done so much to stimulate. SNP MPs' votes at wicked Westminster helped turf Labour out in 1979 and 30% of Scotland's voters then helped vote in Mrs T. But never mind.
Continue reading...August 19, 2014
The holiday trap: the tricky business of a leader's leisure time
Barack Obama once advised David Cameron that one habit he should learn to get right as a new prime minister would be allowing himself enough free time to think hard about problems. The president was right, of course. Summer holiday breaks provide an excellent opportunity to get off the treadmill and do just that while playing beach cricket with the kids.
But voters and their crowd-pleasing media don't like it. In today's puritan times, people who pay their way by the sweat of their brow or chained to a computer mouse are suspicious of merely cerebral activity as well as the sight of an elected public official enjoying him or herself in the sunshine. That applies even when August is a quiet month as it so often hasn't been since the guns opened fire 100 summers ago. Whether chilled like Cameron or Blair, or tense like Thatcher or Gordon Brown, politicians just can't win.
Continue reading...Will Isis still be a threat in a year's time? I doubt it | Michael White
In all the head scratching about the challenge posed by Islamic State (Isis) militants to the crumbling stability of hard-pressed Syria and Iraq (and Britain), did you make any connection between a string of incongruent images that appeared in British media last week? In an odd way they demonstrated just how shallow and short-lived the Isis threat is likely to prove.
One widely used set of photos showed a fashionably dressed Muslim British student, Nawal Msaad, leaving the Old Bailey after being acquitted in a terrorist money-smuggling case in which her friend was convicted. The other was a video screengrab of a bearded young man, Abdel-Majed Abdel Bary from west London. Kitted out in Kevin the Teenage Jihadi uniform, he was boasting about his adventures in Syria while holding a severed head ("Chillin' with my homie, or what's left of him") in one hand.
Continue reading...August 7, 2014
Boris Johnson: attention-seeking rascal seeks career change in silly season
As a journalist, Boris Johnson knows as well as anyone that August is Fleet Street's silly season, a time when spaceships are sighted over Grimsby and world wars break out in the Balkans. So it is entirely appropriate that the London mayor should choose an August Wednesday to unveil his latest promise and announce his next career move: he wants to be prime minister. At least, he does at the moment.
Don't misunderstand my levity. I long ago realised I had been wrong to underestimate Boris just because he was clever enough to wing his way through most of life's difficulties, cheerfully lazy enough to let others do the heavy lifting and about as trustworthy as the proverbial scorpion. Personally, I like him, I really do.
Continue reading...August 6, 2014
Sayeeda Warsi's resignation was brave, but was it wise? | Michael White
The highly partisan response to Sayeeda Warsi's damaging resignation from David Cameron's government revives an old political question: when is it right to resign on a point of policy or principle rather than to fight one's corner from inside?
The glib answer is always "not enough politicians resign for such reasons" as distinct from being one of a steady trickle of ministers and MPs forced out by errors or personal misconduct, real or cooked up by Fleet Street. But it's rarely that easy, any more than the resigner's complex motives are to disentangle.
Continue reading...August 5, 2014
No shocks or alien attacks but a good independent debate | Michael White
Well, what did you expect? Putting Alex Salmond, Britain's wiliest political leader, on the telly against Alistair Darling, the country's mildest ex-chancellor, was surely going to be like fielding Boris Johnson against Philip Hammond or asking Russell Brand to discuss life on Earth with David Attenborough. We knew in advance which one was going to hammer the clapometer, but what would watching voters actually think?
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