Michael White's Blog, page 40
June 19, 2014
Ed Miliband must keep his nerve after yet more discouraging polls | Michael White
You don't have to be a founder member of the Ed Miliband Fan Club to know what the Labour leader must do in the face of the latest discouraging polling data and other recent mishaps. He must keep his nerve. Oh yes, and another thing, he must also keep it simple.
Does Miliband's new plan to demonstrate his reformist credentials by trimming benefits for the unskilled young pass that test? Probably, though Rachel Reeves, his capable social security spokesman, got a bit details-bound on her tour of the studios at breakfast time.
Continue reading...
June 18, 2014
Jeremy Paxman represents the best and worst of the media elite
Jeremy Paxman's top 10 Newsnight moments
More than any of his contemporaries in the cut-and-thrust world of heavyweight television interrogation, Jeremy Paxman has come to embody the virtues and vices of the metropolitan media elite at a time when both politics and traditional platforms such as the BBC's Newsnight are facing existential challenges from new forces.
TV's previous "grand inquisitor", Robin Day, could be boldly outspoken, but implicitly conceded higher authority to an elected Margaret Thatcher or Tony Blair. The combative Dimbleby brothers retained some of the old-world courtesy that had made their father, Richard, a near-regal commentator. The Snow cousins, Peter and Jon, were instinctively more democratic, Radio 4's John Humphrys a terrier snapping at ankles and groin which a crafty David Frost would have stroked.
Continue reading...June 17, 2014
Helen Goodman's geography gaffe doesn't warrant the blunderbuss
Go on, admit it. We've all done it. We've all embarrassed ourselves by getting place names muddled up or (far worse) confused an offspring's current partner with the previous one. But it's much more serious for a public figure, especially one dependent on votes where the gaffe was committed. Hi there Labour MP Helen Goodman, yes, it's you we're all talking about today.
In case you're so busy with the day job or Wayne Rooney's fitness regime that you haven't noticed, Goodman is the MP who opened the Ingleton village fair in her Bishop Auckland, County Durham constituency and spoke movingly of its limestone caves and waterfalls, its links with Sherlock Holmes. Unfortunately, she (or perhaps her researcher) seems to have Googled Ingleton's namesake 70 miles away in North Yorkshire.
Continue reading...June 16, 2014
The sphinx without a riddle and other lethal political put-downs
Former Tory special adviser Dominic Cummings this week gave a masterclass in how not to promote the policies and prospects of his old boss and hero, Michael Gove. But his interview with the Times a diatribe against lesser mortals contained one lethal jibe that may stick. He applied Bismarck's description of the hapless French emperor Napoleon III ("a sphinx without a riddle") to David Cameron. The PM is a lightweight surrounded by third-rate toadies; that was the message.
Boris Johnson (who once called Nick Clegg "a lapdog who's been skinned and turned into a shield") could not have put it better, though not even he would have been so rash. Calling Arnold Schwarzenegger "a monosyllabic Austrian cyborg" is one thing, but not the party leader. Even Ted Heath never got worse than "that woman" during his 30-year-sulk about Margaret Thatcher, the "La Passionara of Privilege" as Labour's Denis Healey once called her.
Continue reading...Blair is admirably forthright in refusing to admit he screwed up over Iraq
It is a basic error shared by both sides in the west's self-absorbed row about Iraq and other trouble spots in the Middle East, an error made by Tony Blair and by his critics out in force on Monday after the former PM dared to suggest that the Isis (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) threat to northern Iraq stems from the west's failure to intervene in Syria.
Continue reading...June 6, 2014
Tories can celebrate Newark win but should beware the killer complacency
It's always good to win, and the sighs of Conservative relief after their candidate won the Newark byelection in better shape than party strategists feared were louder than Lib Dem groans or Ukip's expected disappointment. But winning isn't always the best result if it restores a sense of complacency to a government in trouble. It can be a killer. Ask Labour.
Andrew Sparrow's live blog from Newark provides all the details of youthful loyalist Robert Jenrick's 7,403 majority on a 45% share of the vote to Ukip veteran Roger Helmer MEP's 26% on a 52% turnout. Labour came a lacklustre third and the Lib Dems lost their deposit, coming sixth on a 2.5% share of the vote, their worst defeat for decades.
Continue reading...Tories can celebrate Newark win - but should beware the killer complacency
It's always good to win, and the sighs of Conservative relief after their candidate won the Newark byelection in better shape than party strategists feared were louder than Lib Dem groans or Ukip's expected disappointment. But winning isn't always the best result if it restores a sense of complacency to a government in trouble. It can be a killer. Ask Labour.
Continue reading...June 5, 2014
MP recall bill is not 'meaningless' at all | Michael White
Does it matter that the promised power that voters would get to throw out misbehaving MPs between elections has been watered down in the passage of this week's Queen's speech that finally fulfilled the coalition's pledge of 2010? I think not. Even in a thin legislative programme like this one there is quite enough shallow "paper bag" populism already.
Continue reading...June 4, 2014
Theresa May v Michael Gove: who is right?
The newspapers have had fun with a contrived photo opportunity showing Nick Clegg and Vince Cable having a pint together in a pub, demonstrating that the two Lib Dems remain pals despite an attempted leadership coup on St Vince's behalf. Alas, no coalition photocall was arranged where it was most needed: Theresa May and Michael Gove sharing a pina colada with two straws in the saloon bar of The Stab in the Back.
We have endured weeks of "Lib Dems at war" and "Labour's circular firing squad" as Fleet Street's finest gear up to try to win the 2015 general election for David Cameron despite the PM's best efforts. So it's a handy corrective to be reminded that ambitious ministers fight within parties as well as between them and that there is not much harm it unless the prime minister of the day is shown not to be in charge.
Continue reading...June 3, 2014
Scottish independence: are we sleepwalking to the brink? | Michael White
The Conservatives finally abandoned decades of fateful hostility to Scottish devolution yesterday when David Cameron embraced proposals to give the Holyrood parliament power to set its own income tax bands and rates. You missed this historic concession? I'm not surprised, it didn't make much of a splash in the London media.
No prizes for irony-spotting here. Tory Fleet St chose to get much more excited about the latest economic advice that the EU commission in Brussels is giving to Whitehall about the need to raise taxes, curb the housing bubble and cut childcare costs. Tactless and unwise of the Eurocrats in my view, but it's also how many people in over-centralised Britain's own regions Scotland included feel about advice from Whitehall or even Fleet St. What do they know, eh?
Continue reading...Michael White's Blog
- Michael White's profile
- 1 follower
