Monday, July 24, 2006
Was Dr Kelly murdered?
Lib Dem MP Norman Baker - more use than the rest of the party's frontbench put together - thinks so.
Air travel: why Richard Chartres is right
Unlike Iain Dale and the RAC I agree with the Bishop of London when he says that frequent air travel is not really a responsible option for a Christian.
Indeed, I would say that when mainstream politics is ignoring a particular issue of this nature, the Church has even more of a duty to speak out.
Bishop Chartres (who should have got Canterbury in my view) used the word "sin" which is a word always guaranteed to get the media's goat, but "sin" in this context means no more than mankind falling short of God's ideal.
Given that we are supposed to be responsible stewards of His creation, filling the atmosphere with kerasine fumes seems to me to be falling very far short of it.
Indeed, I would say that when mainstream politics is ignoring a particular issue of this nature, the Church has even more of a duty to speak out.
Bishop Chartres (who should have got Canterbury in my view) used the word "sin" which is a word always guaranteed to get the media's goat, but "sin" in this context means no more than mankind falling short of God's ideal.
Given that we are supposed to be responsible stewards of His creation, filling the atmosphere with kerasine fumes seems to me to be falling very far short of it.
Wedding bells....
Unfortunately I wasn't able to get along to St James' Piccadilly on Saturday to join Tony Blair, Peter Mandelson, David Blunkett et al in offering my congratulations to New Labour's latest celebrity couple as I was down in the lovely town of Rye (pictured) celebrating the fifth anniversary of my own marriage to Gill.I am proud to say that when we were married at St Helen's, Bishopsgate in July, 2001, there wasn't a politician in sight.
Thursday, July 20, 2006
Disinformation, or just plain wishful thinking?
Mike Smithson seems taken in by today's Spectator "revelation" that Alastair Campbell thinks Blair will stay on "for a year and a bit," namely until next year's Labour Party Conference.
This is a little surprising, given that it is only a matter of days since Mike's highly-esteemed Political Betting.com site was saying he would go in 2006.
Leaving that aside though, I wonder what it is that makes him think that anything Alastair Campbell says can possibly be taken at face value, given that the man is a proven master of disinformation?
On this occasion, I don't think it even qualifies as that, more a hopeless case of wishful thinking from a man seemingly in denial about the extent of the crisis now facing the Prime Minister.
I am on record many times as saying Blair would step down on or around the 10th anniversary of his coming to power, namely on May 2, 2007, but I now take the view that that is the absolute limit of how long he can realistically hope to remain in power.
As one MP said recently: "The Labour Party will let him do 10 years. If he tries to go a day longer than that, they will kill him." Assuming, of course, that Inspector Knacker doesn't get him first.
This is a little surprising, given that it is only a matter of days since Mike's highly-esteemed Political Betting.com site was saying he would go in 2006.
Leaving that aside though, I wonder what it is that makes him think that anything Alastair Campbell says can possibly be taken at face value, given that the man is a proven master of disinformation?
On this occasion, I don't think it even qualifies as that, more a hopeless case of wishful thinking from a man seemingly in denial about the extent of the crisis now facing the Prime Minister.
I am on record many times as saying Blair would step down on or around the 10th anniversary of his coming to power, namely on May 2, 2007, but I now take the view that that is the absolute limit of how long he can realistically hope to remain in power.
As one MP said recently: "The Labour Party will let him do 10 years. If he tries to go a day longer than that, they will kill him." Assuming, of course, that Inspector Knacker doesn't get him first.
Kennedy "twice as popular as Ming" - poll
This story speaks for itself. It requires no more comment from me really, other than to say to those Lib Dem MPs whose sheer, unparalleled act of political genius it was to replace Charles with Ming last January: We told you so!
Could Margaret Beckett become PM?
I must confessed I missed this on Comment is Free until Conservative Home helpfully highlighted it this morning, but this is an interesting question which deserves a slightly better answer than the one which Peter Franklin supplies.
Franklin says yes, if Gordon Brown were to be dragged down by Labour infighting and Blairite attempts to find an alternative from within their own ranks fail. I say: still extremely unlikely, even in the event of these other conditions being fulfilled.
I know Beckett reasonably well, as it happens, from my days as Political Correspondent of the Derby Evening Telegraph, her local paper. I have never found her to be anything less than extremely courteous, and for the most part, her career has exhibited that much-prized attribute, of being a "safe pair of hands."
Nevertheless, she has made two crucial errors in the course of her time in frontline politics which I think still, to an extent, define her in terms of her political positioning and which the Tories - and their friends in the media - would relentlessly exploit if she ever assumed the top job.
The second of these I have referred to in my post on John Prescott below. Beckett could easily have become Labour leader in 1994, but threw away her chance by failing to give sufficient backing to the modernising cause.
Much earlier than that, in 1981, she launched a bitter attack on soft-left MPs who had abstained in that year's deputy leadership contest, thereby allowing Denis Healey narrowly to hold off the challenge of Tony Benn.
It was this action that originally earned her the nickname "Stalin's Grandma," an epithet which was also applied to Jo Richardson and has since been appropriated and adapted by a well-known journalist blogger.
They say a week is a long time in politics, but even now, a quarter of a century on, the idea of a 63-year-old former Bennite up against someone with the wide electoral appeal of David Cameron is surely not one that the Labour Party would be wise to contemplate.
My position remains that Brown will comfortably win the Labour leadership, unless the economy suddenly goes belly-up or forthcoming attempts to link him with the cash for honours affair succeed.
Failing that, the job will go to Alan Johnson, or possibly to John Reid, who if nothing else in his brief tenure of the Home Office has demonstrated his extreme political toughness.
But if by then the party is too divided to accept either a Brownite or a Blairite as leader, it won't be Beckett who comes through the middle as the compromise candidate associated with neither side, but the man whose old dad she once so enthusiastically championed.
Step forward, the Rt Hon Hilary Benn.
Franklin says yes, if Gordon Brown were to be dragged down by Labour infighting and Blairite attempts to find an alternative from within their own ranks fail. I say: still extremely unlikely, even in the event of these other conditions being fulfilled.
I know Beckett reasonably well, as it happens, from my days as Political Correspondent of the Derby Evening Telegraph, her local paper. I have never found her to be anything less than extremely courteous, and for the most part, her career has exhibited that much-prized attribute, of being a "safe pair of hands."
Nevertheless, she has made two crucial errors in the course of her time in frontline politics which I think still, to an extent, define her in terms of her political positioning and which the Tories - and their friends in the media - would relentlessly exploit if she ever assumed the top job.
The second of these I have referred to in my post on John Prescott below. Beckett could easily have become Labour leader in 1994, but threw away her chance by failing to give sufficient backing to the modernising cause.
Much earlier than that, in 1981, she launched a bitter attack on soft-left MPs who had abstained in that year's deputy leadership contest, thereby allowing Denis Healey narrowly to hold off the challenge of Tony Benn.
It was this action that originally earned her the nickname "Stalin's Grandma," an epithet which was also applied to Jo Richardson and has since been appropriated and adapted by a well-known journalist blogger.
They say a week is a long time in politics, but even now, a quarter of a century on, the idea of a 63-year-old former Bennite up against someone with the wide electoral appeal of David Cameron is surely not one that the Labour Party would be wise to contemplate.
My position remains that Brown will comfortably win the Labour leadership, unless the economy suddenly goes belly-up or forthcoming attempts to link him with the cash for honours affair succeed.
Failing that, the job will go to Alan Johnson, or possibly to John Reid, who if nothing else in his brief tenure of the Home Office has demonstrated his extreme political toughness.
But if by then the party is too divided to accept either a Brownite or a Blairite as leader, it won't be Beckett who comes through the middle as the compromise candidate associated with neither side, but the man whose old dad she once so enthusiastically championed.
Step forward, the Rt Hon Hilary Benn.
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