Best of the Politics Blogs
What's been happening in the political blogosphere
The anti-Israel party?
- 0 comments
- Posted by Paul Evans
- 09 January 2009
newstatesman.com' s weekly tour of the political blogosphere with your guide Paul Evans
Eyes on Gaza
With Parliament has yet to return from recess, our MP's attention turned this week to the desperate situation in the Middle East – prompting bloggers to deliver forthright advice to their elected representatives. Nick Clegg's demand for an arms embargo on Israel, and for EU-Israel co-operation to be suspended attracted particular attention. Jonathan Fryer was proud of his party leader and believed that he had "...seized [...]
Bloggers on 2009
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- Posted by Paul Evans
- 05 January 2009
The best of the predictions for the new year - Paul Evans trawls the blogosphere on your behalf
The guessing game
As the inebriated revellers and pools of vodka mudshake were swept from the gutters, bloggers were pre-occupied by their crystal balls. Welcoming in 2009, online commentators bravely reeled off predictions for the coming political year.
Dizzy’s list is particularly worth a read. He foresees that the Conservatives will adopt a more radical tax-cutting agenda and that there will be minor upturn in UKIP’s fortunes. Perhaps [...]
Banning Christmas
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- Posted by Paul Evans
- 19 December 2008
The blogosphere tries to cope with Christmas, the curious news that William Hague is still Tory leader (perhaps that's why they're plunging in the polls), and more
Deck the Halls
Christmas in Westminster and a gentle white dusting covers the shoulders of Members as they shuffle towards recess. Alas, it's dandruff – as this year snow has once again refused to bestow its frosty majesty on Parliament.
At PMQs this week, Hattie Harman was standing in for Brown – and faced William Hague across the dispatch box. During their exchange she amused the online fraternity by [...]
Brown: hero or humourless steamroller?
- 2 comments
- Posted by Paul Evans
- 12 December 2008
The best of the politics blogs with, this week, no small amount of amusement about Gordon Brown's 'saving the world' gaffe...
Germans not ready to be saved
“Germany attacks Gordon Brown,” the rags screamed, as Angela Merkel’s finance minister laid into the prime minister’s economic rescue plan, lambasting it as "crude Keynesianism". While Balls was on hand to repel the assault, those bloggers weren’t convinced.
The libertarians over at Samizdata had sympathy with Herr Steinbrück this week – refreshing our economic history in the process. Johnathan Pearce [...]
Moral outrage in the blogosphere
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- Posted by Paul Evans
- 05 December 2008
The arrest of Tory Damien Green and who was to blame for allowing his offices to be searched has preoccupied many political bloggers this week. That and the indiscretions of Nick Clegg...
Taking the Mick
Last week, the news was just emerging of the Damian Green arrest. A tidal wave of online conjecture has since followed, much of it highly critical of the Speaker and Serjeant at Arms, Jill Pay, on whose shoulders responsibility lies for allowing the Police search of the Tory immigration spokesman's Westminster office.
Steve Green blogged for many, when he demanded that: “The Serjeant at [...]
So is New Labour dead or not?
- 2 comments
- Posted by Paul Evans
- 28 November 2008
When is a party dead? Paul Evans brings us the best of the politics blogs from domestic politics through to the outrage this week in Mumbai
Nusferatu: A Party Undead
This week Lord Mandelson declared Cameron’s claims of New Labour’s demise to be premature.
Andy Newman on Socialist Unity considered what defined the New labour project, and concluded that it: “…was built on two foundations: one was a commitment to neo-liberalism; the other was the belief that electoral success could come through winning over swing voters in marginal seats by triangulating around the Daily Mail [...]
Frothing extremists
- 6 comments
- Posted by Paul Evans
- 21 November 2008
The leaked BNP membership list has preoccupied the blogosphere this week. Paul Evans gives us his regular round-up
Leaky
What has 410 misses, 2 captains and a professor? Sound like a bad joke? Well no, actually, it’s the BNP membership list. Not for the first time, a story that started on the blogs soon found its way on the front pages, as the far-right party’s entire membership was published online. It was ever-vigilant Lancaster UAF that alerted the blogosphere, dryly noting:
“Curiously, there are [...]
Ginger beer for George?
- 2 comments
- Posted by Paul Evans
- 14 November 2008
Paul Evans runs through his pick of the best of the politics blogs...
Taxing times
Red meat and political debate in rude health. That’s what we want. And we want it now! Westminster often fails to deliver, and so the bloggers stepped in. Anti-blog whingers in parliament, some of them apparently intelligent people, complain that blogs are the vulgar solipsistic tools of partisans, bent on subverting true debate.
They are profoundly wrong – as this week’s online tax debate between Nick Clegg [...]
America and the Falklands
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- Posted by Paul Evans
- 07 November 2008
Paul Evans' round-up of the top stories covered by the world's political bloggers
Good morning America
Entering Google Trends Top 10 this week: “inauguration day 2009 tickets”. Barack Obama’s victory in the election to decide the 44th president of the United States of America represents a victory fought even more fiercely online than on the ground. His own ”Fight the Smears” website (weirdly, a lapsed domain just a day after the election) gave supporters the tools to tackle some of more [...]
Er, there's an election on...
- 2 comments
- Posted by Paul Evans
- 31 October 2008
Yes, yes we've heard all about the US presidential election but what about the pitched battle that's underway on the streets of Glenrothes - Paul Evans on the politics blogs
Glenrothes Calling
It almost escaped our collective attention, what with the world economy collapsing around us, but there’s a mighty by-election battle going on in the Kingdom of Fife. And while Labour and the SNP tussle in Glenrothes, Politics Home was roughing it out with Mike Smithson’s Political Betting. Who can best indicate the result of the coming by-election: PH’s panel of experts or PB’s wisdom of the [...]
Sailing close to the wind
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- Posted by Paul Evans
- 24 October 2008
Osborne splits the bloggers while Byron gets the recognition he deserves, this week in the politics blogs
The Osborne Identity
Shadow Chancellor and marionette impersonator George Osborne is at the centre of an almighty stink, amid suggestions, which he denies, that he sought to illicit filthy great wads of cash from Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska in order to pad out the Tory coffers. Bright's Blog carries more detail on the questions that will plague the Conservatives.
When a man is under fire, he needs his [...]
Mandy in the cold
- 2 comments
- Posted by Paul Evans
- 20 October 2008
Chatter about migration, giant hedgehogs and how Mandelson felt the chill in Russia, this week in the blogosphere
Thinking cap?
As Home Office minister Phil Woolas declared new caps on the number of migrants allowed to enter the UK, keyboards began furiously tapping. Iain Dale was quick to jibe at what he saw as an appropriation of recent Tory thinking, in a post sardonically entitled ‘It’s not racist to talk about Phil Woolas’.
Liberal Democrat blog Moments of Clarity was angered by the implications behind Woolas’ [...]
Shouldn't have gone to Iceland
- 6 comments
- Posted by Paul Evans
- 10 October 2008
David Cameron's lack of lustre in the Commons provoked a curious consensus in the blog plus the financial wisdom of (some) local authorities
Gordon’s Alive!
Consensus is now the order of the day in Westminster, and bloggers have been following suit – declaring Brown victor at the dispatch box, as PMQs returned this week. Labour councillor Bob Piper had a few nerves on Tuesday, and was hoping for a commanding performance from the dear leader to maintain his post-conference momentum:
"A good solid performance at PMQs will also stiffen the backbone and [...]
Lying with passion
- 3 comments
- Posted by Paul Evans
- 03 October 2008
The US vice-presidential debate, the ups and downs of Michael Gove plus all the rest of the news and views from the political blogosphere
Ready to Gove-ern
“It’s not the same as the old days,” a moustachioed conference attendee adjudged. “The atmosphere in ’81, when Heath launched into Thatcher from the platform – that was electric. It’s not like that now.” Indeed it is not. Unity and suppressed smirks (grinning excessively when the markets are in freefall is indecent) were the order of the day at the Conservative party conference in Birmingham.
At [...]
Go fourth the stickers proclaimed
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- Posted by Paul Evans
- 26 September 2008
Just what have the bloggers been saying in the week Gordon Brown pulled back from the brink...
Half Madchester
Labour had to call on previously untapped depths of optimism to get through conference – stretching the nation’s credulity in the process. “Go fourth” the stickers adorning the crowd proclaimed, as Brown appeared on stage to the strains of Jackie Wilson’s ‘Higher and Higher’ for his keynote speech. At a time when the party’s poll rating has plummeted to historic lows, it verged on the surreal. But [...]
