Interesting to note the political influence and orientation of some of the lefty wonk shops most willing to take money from the taxpayer compared to their counterparts to the soft right. Economist Andrew Whitby has calculated that the supposedly “non-political” IFS is more biased to Labour than almost any right-wing think tank is to the Tories. IPPR, Compass and the Fabian Society are almost off the chart. No surprise there.
Via @EconAndrew and @GoodwinMJ.
Clearly the only two stories of the week are Michael Crick’s alleged plebgate video editing and Michael Fabricant’s alleged hair.
Here they come together gloriously on Twitter:
@Mike_Fabricant Our footage was a thousand times more authentic than your moustache (or hair)
— Michael Crick (@MichaelLCrick) November 27, 2013
Says the man with one of the bravest comb-overs in Westminster…
Spencer Livermore and Douglas Alexander spending the campaign budget on lunch at Cinnamon Club, SW1. Pull the ladder up, comrades!
— Eye Spy MP (@eyespymp) November 27, 2013
Guido imagines that Iain McNicol was on the menu.
Guido has always been a firm believer in Douglas Carswell’s prophecy that the “birth of iDemocracy” is key to rolling back the state:
“The West’s Big Government model is bust, things are going to have to change. It is on the cusp of dramatic changes driven by the failure of her elites, technology and maths. At the precise moment Big Government becomes unaffordable, the internet revolution makes it possible to do without it. Be optimistic. We are going to be able to manage without government – and thrive. The old political and economic order is about to give way to something vastly better.”
Well that prediction is a step closer to coming true today as the Speaker announces a Commission on Digital Democracy, with the aim of “creating a Parliament version 2.0”. It will report in 2015, Parliament’s 750th birthday, looking at how countries such as Estonia have enhanced democracy through internet voting and citizen engagement in parliamentary activity. Given that it was Carswell who knifed the last Speaker, could Bercow be trying to keep him sweet as knives are sharpened?
Nigel Lawson writes this week’s Speccie diary:
“I was at a small private dinner in Chelsea at which the guest of honour was the then leader of the Labour party and leader of the opposition, Hugh Gaitskell. During the course of the dinner, I found myself in an increasingly heated argument with Gaitskell over whether the UK should join what was then the European Economic Community.
He was passionately opposed, and I was in favour of it. He became more and more exercised, his face got redder and redder, and I was afraid he was about to burst a blood vessel. Then, a few days later, and still only in his fifties, he dropped down dead. I was overcome with guilt, fearing that I may have precipitated his untimely end. Perhaps my present stance on the EU is some kind of penance.”
Foreign Office native David Lidington is getting taken apart from all sides of the House for accepting Spain’s two-fingered excuse that their opening of British diplomatic bags was a “mistake”. Labour’s Gerald Kaufman warned “the softly softly approach of this government is not working”, with never knowingly off message Bob Neill accusing the Spanish of “stooping to the level of Franco”. Peter Bone wants a “couple of gunboats” and Col Bob Stewart ominously asked for “any other measures”. But it was Lidington’s exchange with Andrew Rosindell that summed it up:
AR: “Is it time to send the Spanish Ambassador back to Madrid?”
DL: “No, Mr Speaker.”
The first time an EU country has attacked another member in such away and our cowardly Foreign Office beg for more.
