Things are getting heavy for Gordon Brown as he heads for his premiership’s first real electoral test in May. Between them, the local government elections, the London Assembly and Mayoral elections, will provide him with a stern test as his first full year draws to a close. Over at Brassneck, I’ve argued that in the uncertainty of a global crisis, he needs to prove he can handle the upcoming chaos, not simply steer the ship through stable waters. Shades of President Herbert Hoover, who despite his best effort ended up taking the rap for the onset of ’30s depression.

Northern Ireland is no longer the compelling reading it once was. With the sublimation of its more fundamentalist elements into a nascent parliamentary democracy, the working out of big politics has left the streets. It is now more conducive to work out difficulties within the smoke filled offices of the First and Deputy First Minsters, and the Executive. Continue Reading »

I’ve just started a companion blog to Slugger at the Daily Telegraph: Brassneck. The idea is to try take a similarly dispassionate view of British and international politics, and try to get a view of what’s going on underneath the headlines. the blog is notionally after Brass Crosby a former Lord Mayor of London, who in the late 1771 was imprisoned in the Tower of London after releasing a printer brought before him for daring to publish the proceedings of Parliament. After considerable public agitation, he was released. His actions led directly to the recording of Hansard and the beginnings of openness and formal accountability. It’s the origin of the saying ‘As bold as Brass’. Often commuted to the cruder ‘Brass neck’.

I was up in London last night co-hosting a session with London based colleague Paul Evans: we’re collaborating on a couple of projects. This pub session was to help us progress with a policy focused site we’re working on by gathering criticism from a small group of experts/enthusiasts for constructive civic engagement with government. Earlier in the session I gave a potted history of Slugger and an outline of what I thought I was doing with it. I quoted James Crabtree’s excellent 2003 “A blog is like…” post when he compared it to a pub. When David Wilcox nabbed me afterwards, it was an idea he grilled me on.

Frazer Nelson is one of the sharpest observers of the New Labour project. All the sharper for being well outside Labour’s domestic melodrama of the last few years. On the occasion of Brown’s ascendency he offers some insight into what faces the Tory’s most popular leader since, well, John Major. They can, he now argues, take nothing for granted: Continue Reading »

Apparently I’ve been tagged twice for this blog meme idea started by Matt Wardman, so you can see my thoughts on Labour’s new leader below the fold. I’ve deliberately avoided foreign policy, and not laboured exclusively on his handling of the economy. I’ve been tagged by Anthony over at OpenDemocracy, so here’s my late offering: Continue Reading »

Interesting to see how things shift in a short time ago. A year ago, Guido was getting attacked for (admittedly amongst other things) his attacks on the lobby system at Westminster. Now the venerable Peter Wilby is taking up Guido’s argument with a will. In parts it chimes heavily with my own CiF piece earlier last week, but is well worth quoting at length: Continue Reading »

However unnerving it is to hear a politician harangue, however gently, however intelligently, the free press in a free society, it is hard to argue against Tony Blair when he says that the British media has become “a feral beast”. Continue Reading »

Whilst we’ve seen a slow (and radical) shift in the way British papers began by dipping their toes tentatively in the blogosphere water. Now, it seems de rigeur for most of the mainstream. Irish papers have still, by and large, to take the plunge. The Bivings Report has some starter tips for nervous editors, particularly those with sceptical boards.

Kevin March employs Onora O’Neill’s Reith Lecture formula to identify a major flaw with lobby journalism: it is a prime piece of non-assessable communication. Why? Marsh writes:

The formula: “the minster said this … but what he really meant was this …” is such a familiar formula in political coverage, we journalists don’t even question it. Nor have we questioned sufficiently often and self-critically what it’s done to the concept of political truth-telling. The sense that national politics is another world conducting its business in an alien tongue with a mendacious vocabulary is one of the (many) reasons why potential voters remain just that. Potential and not actual. Continue Reading »

One interesting aspect in the wash up to the Republic’s election was a minor furore over alleged anti government bias in the Irish media’s coverage. It was sparked by Bertie Ahern’s comments on the Friday count night, that journalists had had a job to do “in return for good pay and expenses”, implying that undue editorial direction had caused them to not simply to consistently underestimate Fianna Fail’s potential in the election, but to question him relentlessly in the early part of the election about what were in the context of the time fairly minor breach of personal probity in the early 1990s. The controversy reached ignition point when Eoghan Harris walked out on a two hander with Fintan O’Toole on Today FM. Continue Reading »

If tragedy appals and evokes empathy, then happier events often give way to pleasant banality. Yesterday was of the latter kind. There seemed little to add to the promise of Northern Ireland’s new political leadership to build a new future, other than to wish them well in realising that promise and let them get on with it. Continue Reading »

This essay appears in this month’s edition of Prospect magazine. In it I’ve tried to chart the lengthy political career of Ian Paisley, Northern Ireland’s single most enduring political figure whose career spans the period before during and after the Troubles. Continue Reading »

Front page of the LA Times yesterday, the Digg website is facing a revolution because it tried to ban its users from recommending an illegal code that helps people pirate copies of online movies. Continue Reading »

In March I was asked to respond informally to a presentation by George Osbourne at the RSA on the need to for government to listen to and respond to those outside the official political and professional cadres in central government. The main thrust of his speech related to the economic and technological good sense of embracing the concept of Open Source software, as well as the open source politics of the blogosphere. Below the fold is my response, some five or six weeks later at Comment is Free. Continue Reading »