Bright's Blog

The horror comes home

As the the dust and white phosphorus settle over Gaza, two questions present themselves immediately. What happens if the rockets fired on southern Israel stop? And what if they continue?

If they stop, Israel will feel fully justified in its strategy of a combined air and ground assault on Gaza, which left an estimated 1,300 dead, many of them women and children. If they continue, as appears to be ... read more

David Cameron owes it all to Ken Clarke. Although it's pretty certain he doesn't see it that way, there is no doubt that Cameron won the Tory party leadership because the support of Tory centrists seeped to away from Clarke about half way through the contest.

The reasons for Clarke's failure were clear enough at the time. He was complacent and underestimated the hunger of the Cameron camp; his ... read more

A New Deal of the mind

Just before the Second World War, the Works Progress Administration, one of Franklin D Roosevelt’s New Deal programmes, published a series of statistics about what it had done to get America back to work. In the previous three years the WPA had built 17,562 public buildings, 279,804 miles of roads, 29,084 bridges, 357 airports, more than 30,000 dams and 15,000 parks.

Although nothing on this scale has been considered for Britain ... read more

It's a New New Deal

Everyone seems to be talking about the New Deal. The Prime Minister's Christmas book recommendation in the Guardian was FDR: the First Hundred Days, written by the Cambridge professor of American history Anthony J Badger. Gordon Brown let it be known, through an interview with the Observer, published on 4 January, that he was planning a job creation programme based on FDR's New Deal. Where Franklin Delano Roosevelt built roads ... read more

The New Statesman doesn't do political awards. I've always thought it a shame to leave the field clear for Channel 4 and the Spectator, but I also recognise that parliamentarians are the last people on earth who need another boost to their egos. It is particularly difficult to pass judgement this year, as the political class (with a handful of exceptions) was miserably implicated in the failure to foresee the ... read more

I usually have a rule not to make political predictions but I made an exception for last year's Christmas issue:

The New Statesman does not employ an astrologer and the usual rule of thumb is that political predictions are as useful as a handful of homoeopathic sugar-pills. But this year we have been persuaded to indulge in journalistic crystal-ball gazing, because it looks set to be one heck ... read more

The two-man show

As the recession nights of winter 2008 grow longer, thoughts in Westminster turn to parlour games to bring festive cheer in these dark times. The parts are already being cast, for example, in this year's political pantomime. Who'd have thought Speaker Martin would end up as the stage villain, booed and hissed from all sides of the stalls, or that Peter Mandelson would play Prince Charming, breathing life into the ... read more

An abuse of power

So why didn't the police go for David Davis? This is one of the questions hanging in the air after the arrests of the Tory immigration spokesman, Damian Green, and Christopher Galley, his Home Office source. After all, Davis was Green's boss when Galley first made contact in 2006. The former shadow home secretary and Tory leadership candidate has written: "Damian is among the most straightforward and honourable of people. ... read more

I had the pleasure of speaking at the final plenary session of the Progress conference yesterday. The subject of the discussion was “The End of Ideology: What’s the Left For?” and it was a lively debate. The other panellists were Charles Clarke, Hazel Blears, TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber and writer and broadcaster Tristram Hunt, who were all very engaged and passionate about the future.

Here is my ... read more

Darling holds his nerve

So the government has ripped up the new Labour rule-book with a return to redistributive taxation, nationalisation and work-creation schemes. The same spinners who once laid burnt offerings at the feet of the gods of the free market now sing the praises of state intervention.

In this world turned upside down, one government figure has been consistent in his reading of the situation. From the early summer, Alistair Darling has ... read more

Some interesting speculation from the Spectator's boy wonder, James Forsyth, about the Brownites pushing for a 2009 election.

Forsyth quotes from Anne McElvoy's front page story from Friday's Evening Standard. McElvoy reports a source from the Brown camp telling her: "He would be mad not to think about it."

Forsyth's theory is that the source is Geoffrey Robinson, the co-owner of this magazine, who is interviewed by ... read more

Prime Minister's Questions has been increasing in volume recently, making me think that parliament is already in election mode.

But even the most hostile recent Brown-Cameron exchanges were as nothing compared to the atmosphere surrounding this afternoon's pre-Budget report.

Alistair Darling began very low-key, almost sotto voce to early chortles about his claims that the government was "living within our means".

But the jeers began in earnest ... read more