Randall says that Mandelson was a devious and divisive backroom spinner. Well, he ain't the Prince of Darkness for nothing. But Mandelson’s career and political persona were fashioned in a bygone era. Today, ambitious homosexuals climb the greasy pole out in the open – both in terms of their careers and their sexuality, (David Laws was an exception in the latter case). Mandelson’s modus operandi... Here are some of the posts made at Spectator.co.uk over the past week. Fraser Nelson castigates Vince Cable’s graduate tax, and welcomes Andrew Lansley’s health reforms. James Forsyth explains how Ed Miliband would retake middle England, and considers the Balls deterrent. Peter Hoskin watches Michael Gove open an offensive, and argues that theOBR’s growth forecasts are not overly optimistic. David Blackburn witnesses the government struggle before the Treasury select committee, and says the government could learn from John Bird. ... But now Cameron has brought up the 2015 date again,... The main purpose of the speech is, I suspect, political. It says, to any of Clegg's sceptical colleagues, that the government's agenda... CoffeeHouse isn't usually used for job adverts, but we don't usually have vacancies here at The Spectator. We have a rather important vacancy now, so I'd like to put word out. It's for a Head of Production, basically an outstanding sub-editor who can oversee our magazine's publication. The Spectator is about words, and we're looking for someone who loves them and has been working with them, as a subeditor, at a similar level. Thinking up coverlines, headlines and standfirsts is the fun part of the job. The tougher part is co-ordinating production, and doing everything needed to... "If you really force me, I think probably it would make a 20 to 30 seat difference to the result. They would have gone to 280 and This is a godsend for the opposition, obviously. Insulating the NHS budget from cuts may have been a political masterstroke in 2007, and ‘I will cut the deficit, not the NHS’ may have been a sharp election slogan. But... Having done the job myself in my younger days (I come from a part of the world where the October break is called the 'tattie holidays' so kids can dig potatoes), I can attest that it's bloody hard...Friday, 16th July 2010
Who still believes in Peter the Great?
DAVID BLACKBURN 6:12pm
Asks Jeff Randall in a pugnacious column for the Telegraph. The memoirs, Randall argues, have finally exposed the conceit that Mandelson was a tactical genius.The week that was
5:44pmPrevent, a well intentioned but divisive scheme, is scrapped
JOHN O'CONNELL 5:05pm
Earlier this week, the government announced that they are to abolish the Prevent Violent Extremism (PVE) grants. Prevent is part of the broader 'Contest' programme which was established after the London bombings of 2005. The idea behind Prevent is to address the root causes of extremism by encouraging community cohesion, thereby stopping people from being influenced by violent extremists. But in September last year we publishedresearch that showed exactly how local authorities spent the money given to them by central government. It was a ground breaking study: Paul Goodman - in...Cameron: 2015 is a "long term cut-off point" for troops in Afghanistan
PETER HOSKIN 4:27pm
Remember when David Cameron said that Britain "cannot be [in Afghanistan] for another five years"? Since then, the coalition has expended a good deal of energy trying to clarify this statement. The latest formulation was something like that given by William Hague to theTelegraph a couple of weeks ago:"By the time of the next election, [Cameron] hopes we won't still be fighting on the ground ... but there is 'no strict or artificial timetable'."
Clegg and the coming of liberal conservatism
PETER HOSKIN 2:54pm
Nick Clegg is a liberal, and just in case you'd forgotten that fact he gave a speech today in which the word features some 64 times. As it was made at the think-tank Demos, it's a touch more wonkish than his recent efforts on cutting back the state - but still worth a read for those who want a general sense of how the coalition sees itself.Wanted: Spectator Head of Production
FRASER NELSON 2:26pmThe Balls deterrent
JAMES FORSYTH 12:09pm
There have been many interviews with Peter Mandelson this week, but I don’t think any of them have got as much out of him as Patrick Wintour has in today’s Guardian:‘For he is quite clear in the interview that Labour would be probably be in power now if it had been possible for Brown to be replaced by a consensual alternative.
...Governments' wasteful ways
DAVID BLACKBURN 10:48am
It was inevitable that the government’s re-organisation of NHS management would incur a large upfront cost, but I didn't expect quite such a large figure. £1.7bn has been siphoned off to pay for the re-structuring of NHS commissioning, seven times more than the planned target for management cuts according to the BBC.Making work pay
FRASER NELSON 9:14am
What is the purpose of the welfare state? To protect British people from unemployment, or to protect them from jobs like fruit-picking and working in Pret A Manger? I listened to Farming Today* earlier, in which they interviewed the Eastern Europeans that we import en masse to do jobs that Brits used to do.
Saturday, 17 July 2010
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