Best of the Politics Blogs

A Heath Row

I travel everywhere by organic dow, but don't necessarily expect others to live up to my absurdly high ethical standards, least not the masses of under-sunned Brits for whom the proposed new runway at Heathrow Airport will provide yet more exciting opportunities to flay themselves on Mediterranean beaches.

Not everyone is delighted by this prospect though, and among the political classes a surprisingly broad consensus has emerged ... read more

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 ... read more

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 ... read 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 ... read more

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 ... read more

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 ... read more

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 ... read more

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 ... read more

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 ... read more

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 ... read more

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 ... read more

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 ... read more