Author: |Posted: 10:03 am on 30/10/09
Category: Snowblog
It’s been the back room project of the coterie of Blair loyalists – Peter Mandelson, Jonathan Powell, and others.
So troubled has Mr Blair’s ‘non-candidacy’ for the Presidency of the EU become that both Gordon Brown and David Miliband were forced to break cover yesterday and, risking further domestic controversy, make a very public case for Mr Blair taking over the new lead role in Europe.
But the socialist group in Europe rejected their pleas, and without so prominent a bloc, Blair’s hopes are all but dead.
You read it here first – it was Snowblog that learned first of Mr Sarkozy’s rapid cooling on the matter.
The personal relationship between Nicolas and Tony remains strong, but Sarkozy is too wily a politician to have failed to spot the tide running against Blair, and with Germany’s Angela Merkel less than lukewarm on the idea, he gave up on his plan to anoint Mr Blair.
Barring ‘a walking on water’ moment, the ‘Blair project’ in Brussels is sunk.
As I blogged last week, the French are now much more excited by the idea of ‘young David (Miliband) taking over the potential more powerful EU Foreign ‘High Representative’ role.
Author: |Posted: 4:49 pm on 29/10/09
Category: Gary Gibbon on Politics
There’s another candidate for the EU presidency, just announced.
The former Irish prime minister John Bruton, currently Irish ambassador to Washington, has just written a letter to the EU ambassadors in Washington asking them to tell their governments that he’s the man for the job.
Not promising when you have to write your own letters maybe. Much better as a launch to get another PM calling for you to get the top job.
Gordon Brown, side by side with David Miliband, did just that this afternoon, a joint launch of the Blair candidacy at a press conference in Brussels.
Gordon Brown said he talks to the man he repeatedly tried to get out of No.10 “most weeks”. It was a relationship that few close to the two men could ever fathom and today marked another fascinating chapter.
It may be a brief chapter. There were plenty of sceptical voices heard around Brussels today.
But Gordon Brown is giving it some welly. He told socialist prime ministers at a meeting: “Get real – this is a unique opportunity to get a strong progressive politician to be president.”
Wonder how that went down?
Author: |Posted: 3:27 pm on 29/10/09
Category: Gary Gibbon on Politics
At first glance the Lords reforms unveiled this morning by Lord Eames, former Anglican Primate of All Ireland, looks like a bit of late catch-up with the Commons (they got an independent watchdog in 1995) and nothing like the orgy of retrospective self-flagellation which MPs have moved onto this autumn.
But there is a bit of retrospection in the Lords plans that could make life uncomfortable for peers who think they are out of the woods on their expenses. read more
Author: |Posted: 2:59 pm on 29/10/09
Category: Faisal Islam on Economics
So the US is out of recession. Unlike last Friday’s spectacular misprediction, the economists got this one right. In fact the markets shot up because the US’s 3rd quarter GDP figure showed 3.5 per cent growth (annualised).
So on an internationally comparable definition of recession (multiple consecutive quarters of contraction) the US has exited recession. It’s worth noting that within the US itself the NBER defines recessions in a different way, and is yet to pass judgement on this matter. What we can definitively say is that growth has returned to America, in a way that it hasn’t returned, for example, to Britain. read more
Author: |Posted: 12:38 pm on 29/10/09
Category: Snowblog
We sat on our haunches drinking tea with extraordinarily red-bearded old men on the dusty pavements of Kandahar. That was in 1970. I was driving a bus overland from Liverpool to Varanasi in India. From time to time, especially in Afghanistan and Pakistan, we would stop and absorb the atmosphere and life as our journey moved us ever further east.
No more. It is unimaginable, 40 years on, to think of innocent young white men and scarved young European women even making such a journey. The satanic scenes out of Peshawar last night were a searing reminder that the world has turned in a devastating way. read more
Author: |Posted: 12:23 pm on 29/10/09
Category: Snowblog
Tis the season of mellow fruitfulness. My balcony has produced more tomatoes than I can possibly eat.
And there are only two plants. And so far I have had over 100 fruit. Do you call them fruit? All right: 100 veg. No, veg doesn’t feel right for a tomato – and yet neither does fruit.
What curious and delicious things they are. Have one on me!
Author: |Posted: 10:25 pm on 28/10/09
Category: Gary Gibbon on Politics
MPs who have hated the introduction of much tighter rules on the declaration of outside interests – hours worked and pay – will hate one other feature of the much-leaked Kelly report.
Sir Christopher Kelly isn’t satisfied with the transparency plans already laid down and suggests going further.
He wants potential MPs to make a declaration to their constituents before an election saying just how much they intend to work on the side.
Author: |Posted: 4:18 pm on 28/10/09
Category: World News Blog
The problem with Afghanistan is that every prescription has a noxious side-effect; every answer raises more questions.
The Taliban is trying to disrupt the second round of the Afghan elections, hence today’s attack on UN staff in Kabul. Having risked death to vote in the first round, and seeing how the government tried to cheat to stay in power, it seems likely that many Afghans won’t bother to vote on 7 November. Who can blame them? read more
Author: |Posted: 2:18 pm on 28/10/09
Category: Faisal Islam on Economics
There’s £8bn more loans from the government to Northern Rock to let them lend it to all of you. On top of that there’s another £4bn of liquidity arrangements.
This takes the loan that had gone down to £15bn back up to £27bn, which will take “around a decade to pay off”, says the Rock’s chief executive.
Author: |Posted: 11:59 am on 28/10/09
Category: Snowblog
The figures are dry – the information, to the layman, even boring. “Lending to the private sector in the Eurozone shrank last month year on year for the first time ever” – even as the zone’s economy was returning to growth.
In other words, in common with Britain’s banks, Europe’s bankers have scaled back on making credit available at an unprecedented pace.
