Obamastan
9:42pm
Here is your starter for ten.
You are an Adviser on Counter-Terrorism in the Obama White House. When a terrorist organisation which has a history of killing the citizens of a country -- and which is backed by a terrorist state which has declared war on the free world -- infiltrates the government of that country and effectively strangles at birth its nascent democratic movement, do you
a) Decry this snuffing out of democracy by the forces of tyranny and terror and vow to support the struggling democrats against their oppressors
b) Hail the terrorist organisation for this proof that it had a ‘moderate’ wing to which you want to reach out?
Three guesses which of these responses was adopted by John Brennan, White House Adviser on Counter-Terrorism -- prompting this outraged and incredulousreaction from a group of...
My new book
8:23pm
National Review Online has run an interview with meabout my new book, The World Turned Upside Down: The Global Battle over God, Truth and Power. The book has been bobbing around Amazon's top 100 non-fiction titles for the past two weeks.
The latest inspiration for the changing Tory party
6:13pm
Suddenly, we appear to have a functioning opposition. Conservative MPs have voted by 168 to 118 to support David Cameron’s proposal to expand the 1922 committee of Tory backbenchers to include the government payroll vote. But as Paul Goodman points out on ConservativeHome, since the payroll vote itself voted in this ballot, it would seem that a majority of backbench Tory MPs voted against Cameron. Goodman estimates the figures at 92 backbench MPs who voted for the leadership-backed plan, while 118 voted against. This figure may not be precise – some ministers may have voted against – but the basic claim seems valid. Which means Cameron has his backbenchers pretty united against him on this attempt to emasculate them as a check on the executive.
Which raises the question of why on earth the payroll vote was included in the ballot on whether the 1922 should be expanded to include the payroll vote. Has Cameron been studying the Kafka playbook in his tireless quest to modernise the Tory party?
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