Brown's conference speech
In his speech, Gordon Brown will need the occasional light touch without sounding as if he was trying to imitate David Cameron, writes Bruce Anderson. There ought to be the odd moment of self-deprecation, without sounding as if he was pleading. He must appear calm, without suggesting the aura of stoicism around a well-run death-bed. Above all, he must be weighty, without sounding like Leonid Brezhnev praising the tractor-workers of Omsk for triumphantly exceeding the targets he set in his last five-year plan. The real Gordon Brown is a complex, obsessive, sometimes tortured creature who always believes that he is telling the truth, while often twisting the facts to suit his needs. Even yesterday, he claimed that since 1997, the national debt had been reduced as a share of GDP, from 44 per cent to 37 per cent. In reality, it has increased. Bruce Anderson The Independent
Full article: Brown must reach into his soul and show his true values 
New Labour: an elite defined by hate
And his plan to take over the world
Gordon Brown wants to take over the world, writes Janet Daley. We are in a new world, he said, in which there are global economics but only national regulatory systems. Therefore, any new rules that we make inside our own borders - on limiting City bonuses, for example - can be undermined by international competition. So the answer, Mr Brown proposes, must lie in getting all the nations of the world to agree on an identical package of restrictions. He is apparently serious about this. To those who lived through the New Left madness of the 1960s, this argument will sound uncannily familiar. Marxists of a Trotskyist persuasion used to say that the reason communism had failed to produce a workers' paradise in any country in which it had been tried was because "socialism in one country" was doomed to fail. Janet Daley Daily Telegraph
Full article: Financial crisis: Markets must be free - they give us the power to make choices
The Mole: Labour hasn't been this gloomy since Kinnock lost in 1992
The ANC's rebel mindset
Many in the ANC have great difficulty in differentiating between the party and the state, says Sebastien Berger. It insists on calling itself a revolutionary movement rather than a political party, and regards its government ministers and functionaries, with Marxist-Leninist rhetoric, as "deployed cadres", installed in their posts to do its bidding. Its mindset is in some ways still that of an underground opposition - loyalty to the party is all, debates are held in secret before a consensus view is revealed to the outside world, and public dissent is frowned upon. At times it shows symptoms of a collective messiah complex, and there will have been little embarrassment about the fact that in a nation of 46 million people, the removal of the elected president has been decided by the 86 members of the party's National Executive Committee. Sebastien Berger Daily Telegraph
Full article: Has Jacob Zuma promised too much to too many in his bid to become South Africa's next president?
Tzipi Livni knows all about terrorism
From the wispy clouds of this contest, what has emerged? In theory, the winner Tzipi Livni should be in a strong position to understand nationalist "terrorists" who have planted bombs on buses and in cafés – because she was raised by them. Her father was the Military Director of the Irgun, the underground Jewish militia that spent the 1930s and 40s targeting the British occupying forces and Arab civilians who were trying to prevent the creation of the state of Israel. Livni was brought up to revere their tales of blowing up marketplaces, cafés and hotels; she proudly defends them to this day. Johann Hari The Independent
Full article: A last chance for peace in Israel?
The crash gives us a chance
What has happened in the capital markets over the last few weeks is about more than the machinery going haywire and governments and institutions failing to regulate properly, says Henry Porter. We now understand - or soon will - that this particular era of capitalism penalised all but the super-rich and the super-greedy. It is a story about one tiny group of people amassing fortunes at the expense of a very large group of people, who stretch from the American Midwest to the eight million people said to be near starvation in the Ogadan region of Ethiopia. The banking crash offers us a rare opportunity to shape things for the better. And I wouldn't stop at the City. The political system that has overseen this disaster in Britain is as culpable as any bank. Henry Porter The Observer
Full article: The City's greatest lie was to convince us we were all rich
In Brief
Four million out of work
Unless the government forces the Bank of England to cut interest rates fast, it is not recession we should fear but depression. Unemployment looks likely to surpass the high point of the early Thatcher years. Four million out of work could be Gordon Brown's legacy by the time Labour goes to the polls in 2010. Graham Turner The Guardian
Full article: The Bank of England's folly will send us into depression
Finally, Obama and McCain debate
Candidates need not only to master the issues. They need to master performance. Cable television will replay clips; the candidate who wins the battle of the clips will be the 72-hour winner. That means getting off the better one-liners. And crucially, it means being ready with a witty riposte to the other guy's one-liners. Both sides undoubtedly have people anticipating the other fellow's zingers and crafting counter-zingers. Michael Tomasky The Guardian
Full article: The battle of the TV clips
Hope amid the rubble for Barack Obama
Downwardly mobile
My new homeland looked impregnable – a static social environment of musty-looking librarians, other assorted grey heads, amiable Kurds and churchy black OAPs, quietly shoving copies of Watchtower through my letterbox and occasionally inquiring about the state of my soul. But as UK property prices rose ever higher, that teeming, restless and oh-so-busy army of young white professionals began sending out raiding parties. Marcus Tanner The Independent
Full article: Let's hope gentrification's had its day
Police brutality
Before her second interrogation, they left her shivering in a cell. Before her third, a woman officer put on rubber gloves and strip-searched her. After that, 'I just lost my ability to think coherently,' Sally Murrer said. 'My brain went to cotton wool.' Mugabe's Zimbabwe, Putin's Russia or Hu Jintao's China? No, Gordon Brown's Buckinghamshire. Nick Cohen The Observer
Full article: Meet Sally. Her case should scare us all
Ryder Cup wives
What on earth is going on? What are these women doing? Did I fall asleep and wake up in 1952? Is this what the role of the modern spouse has boiled down to – fragrant appendage to talented man, doomed to be paraded, cleavage on show, for the glorification of the male ego? India Knight Sunday Times
Full article: Oh do putt it away, you giggly golfing birdies
The Sports Pages: Europe beaten by USA in Ryder Cup
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