Peter Oborne

Andy Coulson leaves number 10 Downing Street (Photo: EPA)

Post-war politicians can be broadly divided into two categories: those who have been dedicated to real, substantial achievement, and those who have concentrated on style and presentation. Within the first category fall Clem Attlee, Aneurin Bevan and Margaret Thatcher. Whether or not we admire what they did, there is no question that all three left an imprint on history.

Politicians from the second category are more elusive, because they tend to treat politics at least in part as a branch of the public-relations industry. Tony Blair represented the apotheosis of this particular tradition, though David Cameron most unfortunately chose to be his disciple.

Blair perfected a new kind of government. Distrustful of democracy and fearful of its most obvious manifestations, such as robust… Read More

Angela Merkel greets Nicolas Sarkozy in Berlin, July 20 (Photo: AFP)

Many of the biggest losers from the Wall Street Crash were not those greedy speculators who bought at the very top of the market. There was also a category of investor who recognised that stocks had become badly overvalued, sold their shares in the summer or autumn of 1928, then waited patiently as the market surged onwards to ever more improbable highs.

When the crash came in October 1929, they felt thoroughly vindicated, and waited for the dust to settle. The following spring, when share prices had consolidated at around a third lower than the all-time high reached the previous year, they reinvested the family savings, probably feeling a bit smug. Then, on April 17, 1930, the market embarked on… Read More

With friends like these... David Cameron’s judgment is under question (Photo: Dafydd Jones)

In the careers of all prime ministers there comes a turning point. He or she makes a fatal mistake from which there is no ultimate recovery. With Tony Blair it was the Iraq war and the failure to find weapons of mass destruction. With John Major it was Black Wednesday and sterling’s eviction from the Exchange Rate Mechanism. With Harold Wilson, the pound’s devaluation in 1967 wrecked his reputation.

Each time the pattern is strikingly similar. Before, there is a new leader with dynamism, integrity and carrying the faith of the nation. Afterwards, the prime minister can stagger on for years, but as increasingly damaged goods: never is it glad, confident morning again.

David Cameron, who ha… Read More

David Cameron greeting his late father, Ian Cameron, last year (Photo: PA)

The welfare state, as conceived by the great social reformer Sir William Beveridge and implemented by the Attlee government after the Second World War, was a sublime idea. It rescued millions of British citizens from the degradation of poverty and lifted the fear of illness. It guaranteed employment or, if jobs were not available, universal benefits. It offered security in old age.

There was, however, one central problem to this humane new arrangement, as Beveridge himself foresaw. His welfare state rested on the assumption that this new security would not change behaviour, and that people would still work every bit as hard as before, make provision for old age, and care for their dependants.

It can take time for… Read More

US soldiers take up positions after landing by Chinook (Photo: AFP)

The withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan, formalised by Barack Obama early yesterday, cannot be precisely compared to America’s humiliation in Vietnam nearly 40 years ago. There have been no photographs – not yet, anyway – of US embassy staff being airlifted out of the Kabul embassy.

The approximately 6,000 American deaths from the two failed wars in Iraq and Afghanistan do not compare to the nearly 60,000 who lost their lives in Vietnam, in part because of the miracles wrought by modern trauma surgeons. The exit, so President Obama and David Cameron insist, will be carefully managed.

But President Nixon made the same claim when he announced his policy of “Vietnamisation” after his victory in 1968. Nixon and hi… Read More

Nick Clegg, David Cameron and Andrew Lansley address NHS staff (Photo: AFP)

Every so often, British politics suffers some kind of seismic convulsion, in the course of which familiar landmarks change or vanish, and everything is thrown into confusion. In due course, a new landscape can be dimly discerned.

May’s local elections caused one of these convulsions, setting in motion a period of ever greater instability inside the Liberal Democrats and culminating in last week’s partial breakdown within Labour.

Taking a step back from the clamour of day-to-day events, it is at last possible to make a tentative assessment of the structural changes that have taken place. The first observation to be made is that – very much as one might expect in a time of coalition government – the… Read More

Secret documents have revealed the animosity between Blair and Brown (Photo: PA)

Why was it that William Hague’s Conservatives found it so difficult to recover after their landslide election defeat in 1997? The dazzling personality of Tony Blair, the slavish media coverage he received, and the benign economy he inherited were all partly responsible. But Hague faced one other intractable problem: his party was horribly split between Eurosceptics and a pro‑European rump led by Michael Heseltine and Kenneth Clarke.

This was debilitating in a number of ways. First of all, a surprisingly large number of senior figures would not serve as part of Hague’s front-bench team. A few defected. Others went off into private business. It became impossible for him, and later for Iain Duncan Smith, to… Read More

The Queen and Duke of Edinburgh after the Queen's Coronation (Photo: PA)

Any serious analysis of why Britain has been relatively poorly governed since the end of the Second World War must concern itself with the cult of the short-term. There are structural reasons for this modern phenomenon: the ambition of politicians to leave an instant mark; the demands of the electoral cycle; the financial markets and their extraordinary ability to anticipate and then discount the future.

Meanwhile the news media, so expert at generating artificial “crises”, with the accompanying demand for their urgent resolution, has grown stealthily in importance. It takes very wise statesmanship to discriminate between these largely bogus constructions and things that matter. Too often this has been lacking. Tony Blair, for example, created an entire methodology… Read More

Carlton House ridden by work rider John Nolan (Photo: Getty)

This has been a wonderful year for the Queen, with the unexpected success of her state visit to the Republic of Ireland, and the happiness of the marriage of Prince William and Kate Middleton. Just one more achievement is perhaps required to turn 2011 into an annus mirabilis: victory for the Queen’s horse, Carlton House, in Saturday’s Derby on Epsom Downs.

Throughout her 59-year reign, the Queen has had one keen ambition – to emulate the achievement of so many of her ancestors and to win the Derby. On nine occasions she has had a horse considered good enough to run in the greatest race in the calendar of the Turf, but the nearest she has come was with the brilliant… Read More

Barack Obama and David Cameron serve the No 10 BBQ (Photo: AFP/Getty)

One of the first big strategic decisions made by David Cameron after his election as Conservative leader more than five years ago concerned the United States of America. Cameron claimed to have been taken aback by Tony Blair’s uncritical subservience to George W Bush, so he promised that any government he led would take a more independent stance. Britain, or so he stated, would no longer be “America’s unconditional associate in every endeavour”.

It is tempting to say that these remarks were brave, but actually, they weren’t. Cameron was simply reflecting the national mood of disgust at the busted alliance between Blair and Bush. And like so many of his pronouncements while in Opposition, the pledge to… Read More