Iain Dale identifies the top ten qualities a ‘good’ Prime Minister needs: 1. Decisiveness2. Conviction3. Understanding the motivations of Middle England4. Being a good negotiator5. Being a good conciliator6. Having a good TV presence7. Being a good parliamentary performer8. Having a thick skin9. Being able to cut through civil service bullshit10. […]
There is to be a Special Prize for Blogs this year for the first time, under the rubric of the excellent Orwell Prize 2009. Here is what one needs to offer to be in with a chance of winning: The Orwell Prize rewards those who achieve George Orwell’s ambition ‘to make political […]
In Brussels this week my hotel gave me a free copy of New Europe, a weekly European newspaper with a lively web presence. See eg my former colleague Sir Stephen Wall on whether Britain (sic) is a European nation. No surprise at his answer (Stephen was HM Ambassador to the […]
Polly Toynbee’s volume rises in direct proportion to the slide in share prices. Her latest rather freewheeling thoughts open thusly: A remarkable 10,000 people marched on Trafalgar Square at the weekend to hold the government to its promise to end child poverty. This somehow reminded me of my visit back […]
The folk at EU Referendum are churning out searching piece after piece on the deep and complicated EU rules which (they say) look to be making the financial crisis graver than it might be. This post argues that the ranks of UK journalistic experts are failing to see the issues as a […]
The Telegraph website continues to froth up the story of the leaked letter from Sir Nigel Sheinwald assessing Barack Obama. As best it can, scouring some meagre titbits from the deeper reaches of the Internet: On the conservative Free Republic website, comments included "It suggests to me that Obama will […]
Denis MacShane reviews Chris Patten’s book about future trends. In it he swipes at Conservative policy on Europe: In Berlin recently, David Cameron promised a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty were he to become prime minister and the Treaty were not to be ratified. That would mean that the first […]
Greetings Britblog Rounduppers. Number 187 hosted by Liberal England is here. It links to my post on European Parliament instincts to ‘validate’ bloggers: Charles Crawford offers a voice of sanity here: Above all there is a way to ‘validate’ the best bloggers. It’s called the marketplace, millions of judgements by […]
Russia’s PM Putin and President Medvedev have been hosting groups of Western journalists, to quite good effect from the Russian point of view. Even if some of the language used by Putin might have been a bit … overvivid. A tendency also visible these days in the robust style of Russian […]
Sometimes being an Ambassador is excruciatingly painful. Back in 2006 the marvellous Croatian Ambassador in Warsaw Nebojsa Koharovic hosted a group of us to watch Croatia play England. I was given a front-row seat as Ambassadorial Guest of Honour. It was not going well, with Croatia a goal up. Then […]
