by David Steven | Feb 6, 2009 | Economics and development, North America
You have to admire his chutzpah, but former Global Dashboard Hack of the Year, Grover Norquist has concluded (okay, okay – is pretending he believes) that the financial crash was caused by the US’s Democrats:
The economy began to collapse when the Democrats captured the House and Senate and we then knew that the lower tax rates on individuals, capital gains, and dividends would end after 2010.
We are in the early stages of the Reid/Obama/Pelosi recession and nothing they are even talking about doing will help.
George Bush? Never heard of him.
by Daniel Korski | Feb 4, 2009 | UK
Something odd is happening. Though the Tories are cruising for electoral success, many sympathisers are worried that the party has neither the policies nor personalities to make a success of government.
In the City, many bankers and businessmen are unimpressed by George Osborne. People in the defence establishment think Liam Fox is a lightweight. And foreign policy-watchers like William Hague, but worries that he is only working part-time.
When David Milliband offered a duff analysis of international terrorism in The Guardian and managed to insult the Indian government, there was hardly a peep from the Tory frontbench, through the strategic and electoral reasons to speak up are obvious.
This may not prevent the Tories from wining an election, but it could make their time in government look a lot like Labour’s 1997-2001 term – full of intentions and spin, but short on delivery.
It will take more than an “Implementation Unit” to change this. However, George W Bush, Barack Obama and Gordon Brown may have shown the way out of this predicament. They have all brought outsiders or retired officials back into government. Bush brought back General Pete Schoomaker as Army chief and, famously, made Roberts Gates Defence Secretary. Obama has appointed retired admiral Denis Blair as the U.S spy chief and made the Nobel Prize winner Steven Chu Energy Secretary. Brown, meanwhile, has packed the Lords with outsiders, Peter Mandelson just being the most famous (and powerful).
Forgetting for a moment the constitutional problems presented by having too many peers in government as well as the problems arising from having apolitical ministers (like Shriti “Green Shoots” Vadera) what would a line-up of Tory GOATS look like? Readers will have their own views, but to kick-start the discussion here is my list:
1. Arcadia’s Phillip Green as Business Secretary
2. Olympian Sebastian Coe as Sports and Culture Secretary
3. Environmentalist Zac Goldsmith to head the Climate & Energy Department
4. The Times Foreign Affairs Editor Bronwen Maddox as National Security Adviser
5. Former General Rupert Smith as Chief of Defence
6. Ex-AVIVA boss Richard Harvey as International Development Secretary
7. Joel I Klein as Education Secretary (why not a Yank?)
8. Para-Olympian Chris Holmes as Veteran Affairs Secretary
It may also be wise to appoint a number of junior ministers from outside Westminster (though I confess to believing each department ought to have only one “Deputy Secretary of State”, not scores of Ministers and Parliamentary Secretaries). In the Ministry of Defence, for example, I’d make someone like NATO’s Jamie Shea a junior minister or Ronnie Flanagan a Deputy Home Secretary.
What do you think?
by Daniel Korski | Feb 2, 2009 | Conflict and security, Europe and Central Asia, UK
Earlier in the week, Charlie talked about the Tories’ weakness on foreign and defense policy. In many ways, he gave voice to a view felt across the British foreign and defence community. That the Tories do not have a serious and detailed set of national security policies that can be turned into government action. The contrast to the Obama administration is stark. The Democratic President has been able to populate his administration with America’s finest foreign policy thinkers, all of whom have thought deeply about what a Democratic foreign policy should look like.
The Tories are not the only ones blame for the dearth of policy thinking. The British system of government militates against party-based subject-mater expertise. Parties are meant to develop the broad strokes of ideas, which will then be developed and implemented by officials if they enter government. It is therefore very difficult for the Opposition to attract experienced foreign policy thinkers. The pay is low and the rewards are not as attractive as in the U.S. The most a future British Prime Minister can offer is junior ministerial portfolio, working to a senior politician whose background may not be well-suited for a security-related job.
But one issue can be parked at the Tories’ door. Having canvassed a wide section of the London-based foreign policy community, the one issue that keeps coming up time and again is the Tories’ euro-scepticism. As one senior (and decidedly euro-sceptic) thinker told me: “The Tories are rowing back on the pragmatic NATO-EU policy that Malcolm Rifkind developed when he was Defence Secretary.” A widely-respected senior military commander told me only two days ago: “It’s as if a veil descends across their faces when Europe comes up. They don’t even want to engage. But this is not about a European army; it’s about being able to work with allies.”
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by David Steven | Feb 2, 2009 | Economics and development, Global system, London Summit
The G20 London Summit in April will be Barack Obama’s first trip to Europe. The Canadians get him first (apparently this is traditional), while the Japanese (who see the G20 as an evil plot to dilute their influence) are hoping for a sneaky bilateral before the big G20 powwow.
But London will be the big one. Gordon Brown – tired of saving the world on his lonesome – will slip into the role of Robin. Obama will play Batman and kick the world back into shape. The role of Joker is yet to be cast.
But will the summit be a success? The British PM has a lot riding on it, and not just because he believes he can use the event to transform his electoral prospects. We’re in the midst of “the first financial crisis of the global age,” he says, and the best solution is try to bind all the key global issues (economy, trade, climate change, energy, development etc) into a new vision for a “global society”.
“This is not like the thirties,” Brown told a Davos audience (slightly plaintively, perhaps). “The world can come together.” But will it? And more to the point, will Obama reserve sufficient bandwidth to global coordination? Or will he be sucked into further America First policies, as the mess at home hoovers up a growing proportion of his time, energy and political capital?
The past does not dictate the present of course, but the historical precedents are not so good. The nearest equivalent to the London Summit in the thirties was World Monetary and Economic Conference, which was held in the summer of 1933.
This meeting, which bought 66 countries together in last ditch attempt to trigger global economic recovery, was derailed by a new US President – Franklin D Roosevelt – who had recently been elected in a landslide. Roosevelt rejected a compromise deal that had been hammered out by his own delegation.
The result was humiliation for a weakened British Prime Minister, and a furious reaction from the other European nations, led predictably enough by the French. The Germans, meanwhile, were left out on a limb. Hitler – just settling in as Chancellor – was forced to disown his Economic Minister mid-summit. It was an early setback for him on the international stage.
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by Richard Gowan | Jan 30, 2009 | Influence and networks, North America
From New York magazine’s blog:
During the election season we heard a lot about “60” — that magic number of Senate seats that would allow the Democrats to block any filibuster, and, Republicans feared, tax the American people into submission. When all the votes were tallied, they came up just one seat short (assuming Al Franken eventually gets his seat). So close! Reasonably, the Democrats should be able to attract at least one measly Republican to their side, but who wants to even deal with that? Luckily, President Obama has come up with a solution: Fill the empty Commerce Secretary post with Republican New Hampshire Senator Judd Gregg. As we know, our wonderful system calls for New Hampshire’s Democratic governor to pick Gregg’s successor in such an event, and one would assume he’d choose another Democrat. And voilà, 60!
It’s a clever but slightly crass move — nobody even knows what the Commerce Secretary does anyway, so who cares who’s in there? And Obama will fundamentally alter the balance of power in the Senate in his favor with what appears to be another bipartisan gesture.
