Gordon Brown has given a speech this afternoon defending Britain’s military mission in Afghanistan. Although the speech was scheduled before Eric Joyce, a junior defence minister, resigned over the war, there is no doubt that Brown is responding to a growing mood of disquiet about mounting violence and casualties and an unconvincing election.

The trouble is that that Brown doesn’t have much new to say. He makes the link to terrorism and claims that - “A safer Afghanistan means a safer Britain.” He talks about training up the Afghan army and he stresses that the war must be “won on the ground and not in the air”. (This, on a day, when it seems as if Nato may have killed a great many Afghan civilians in a bombing raid.)

All of this echoes the counter-insurgency plans laid out by the new Nato commander in Afghanistan - Stanley McChrystal, an American general. McChrystal’s “new” strategy emphasises not just clearing but “holding” ground and concentrating on providing security for local Afghans. There will be less bombing and more boots on the ground.

All of this is being presented as some sort of intellectual and strategic breakthrough. But it doesn’t feel that way to me. Last March, I sat in the Kabul office of McChrystal’s predecessor, David McKiernan and heard him explain his strategy. It was the same stuff: train up the Afghan army, concentrate on the protection of civilians, less bombing. Like McChrystal, McKiernan wanted more troops. (A western diplomat in Kabul groaned to me, “the military always want more troops.”)

The sense of deja vu is compounded, in a childish sort of way, by the fact that all commanders of Nato in Afghanistan seem to be called Mac something. The first time I visited Kabul in 2008, the head of ISAF was an American general called Dan McNeill. He wanted more troops as well. McNeill, McKiernan, McChrystal. Plus ca change…

Over the past few months there has been lots of speculation about whether Tony Blair wants to be “President of Europe” - or, more accurately, president of the European Council. But I think it is increasingly clear what job he would most enjoy - Pope.

Now that he is both retired from politics, a Catholic and head of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation, the former PM is giving full expression to his spiritual side. I was struck by this recent article in The Guardian, headlined - “‘Materialism a threat to planet and human identity’, says Tony Blair“. To be fair Blair’s speech to a Catholic conference in Italy (full text, here), covered a lot of ground - from Chinese attitudes to climate change, to globalisation. But there was also a fair chunk about the evils of materialism. Blair insisted: “We only need to contemplate the financial crisis to understand that the pursuit of maximum short-term profit, without proper regard to the communal good, is a mistake and leads to neither profit nor good. Yet, at a deeper level, the case against a purely individualistic or materialistic philosophy has to be made.”

Splendid stuff, but I would take it all a bit more seriously if Blair hadn’t spent part of the summer as a guest on “Rising Sun”, a vast yacht, owned by Larry Ellison, the Californian billionaire.

I’ve just finished watching Obama’s speech in Cairo. It was a brilliant performance. I think it may come to rank with Kennedy’s “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech - and for a similar reason. It was based an appeal to common humanity and the brotherhood of man. In the context of the Middle East, it was an effort to call an end to the “clash of civilisations”.

Who knows how far it will go to achieving its ends. As Obama himself acknowledged, there is a limit to how much any single speech can achieve. Still, it was brilliantly constructed and delivered. Somehow Obama managed to speak frankly about all the difficult issues: terrorism, democracy, women’s rights, Israel - without skirting around them, and without giving offence or hostages to fortune.

The main rhetorical device he used is, by now, familiar. First - frankly acknowledge past errors and offences and flatter the audience; then follow up with something tougher and by making a demand. So he began by acknowledging the sins of colonialism and the cold war and by stating frankly that America overthrew a democratic government in Iran in the 1950s. But he followed up with a challenge to his audience to condemn terrorism. He gave a firm and principled defence of the right of Israel to exist in peace, rooted in an understanding of history. But he followed up by saying that “the situation of the Palestinian people is intolerable.” Continue reading "Obama’s Cairo speech"

There was a moment, a few months ago, when sensible people in rich countries were considering pulling all their money out of the bank, buying gold ingots and hiding them under the bed. But now that the panic has passed, something less frightening and rather bleaker is beckoning. Welcome to the politics of austerity.

Across the developed world, unemployment, public debt and taxes are rising. When the global economic crisis first hit, it was natural to assume that the poorer and more recent democracies would be most vulnerable to a political backlash. Without the accumulated wealth or the welfare systems to cushion the blow, their populations looked vulnerable. Most countries in central Europe or Latin America only made the transition to democracy in the 1980s, so authoritarian nasties might still be lurking in the shadows.

But perhaps we are looking for trouble in the wrong places. It could be that it will be the richer democracies, such as Britain and the US, that find it most difficult to adapt to the politics of austerity.

The remainder of the article can be read here. Please post comments below.

I was brought up to believe that Speakers Corner in Hyde Park encapsulate all that is best about Britain. Here is a country where liberty is so ingrained that anybody can turn up, mount a soapbox and give a speech. Of course, in reality, Speakers Corner is a bit of a disappointment. Many of the speakers are lunatics or religious fundamentalists. Still, it’s the thought that counts.

The British government, however, seems increasingly at odds with the notion of freedom of speech. It has taken to banning all manner of foreigners from entering the country, on the grounds that they are promoting offensive or dangerous views. I blogged earlier this year about the decision to exclude Geert Wilders, a Dutch politician who wants to ban the Koran. Now a ban has been issued against Michael Savage, a right-wing American talk-show host - who also has a record of baiting Muslims. Mr Savage has also said offensive things about autistic children - which, amazingly enough, Labour MPs have cited as partial justification for his exclusion. But as Catherine Bennett shows in an excellent column in today’s Observer, it is very hard to argue that Mr Savage is a genuine danger to public order. Continue reading "Restricting free speech in Britain"

“The British people had given up on socialism. The 30-year experiment had plainly failed – and they were ready to try something else.”

So mused Margaret Thatcher on the eve of her first general election victory on May 3 1979. But as we approach the 30th anniversary this weekend of the Iron Lady’s arrival in Downing Street, many British people have concluded that once again “a 30-year experiment” has “plainly failed”. This time, however, it is the experiment with Thatcherism.

The closing of the Thatcher era is an event of global significance. Many of the policies pioneered by her government in Britain were copied in the rest of the world: privatisation, deregulation, tax cutting, the abolition of exchange controls, an assault on the power of the trade unions, the celebration of wealth creation rather than wealth redistribution.

The remainder of the article can be read here. Please post comments below.

The Darul Aman palace is a huge neo-classical pile with hundreds of rooms, set against the backdrop of the snowy mountains that surround Kabul. From a distance, it is an imposing sight. Unfortunately, as I discovered when I visited a few weeks ago, it is also a ruin. The palace was all but destroyed in the Afghan civil war of the 1990s.

Darul Aman was built in the 1920s by Amanullah Khan, a reformist king who also promoted women’s rights and discouraged the wearing of the burqa. Ninety years later, the king is long dead, his palace is a wreck and the burqa is ubiquitous in Kabul.

I thought of King Amanullah’s reforms this week, as debate flared over a law recently passed by the Afghan parliament. The statute, which applies to the country’s Shia minority, would require women to get their husband’s permission to leave the home and make it illegal for them to refuse to have sex with their husbands.

The remainder of the article can be read here. please post comments below.

Maybe I am hyper-sensitive, but I always find these set-piece speeches by British prime ministers in Washington a real cringe. Unlike many regular commenters of this blog, I feel very warmly towards the US. But the sycophancy of the Blair and Thatcher speeches was just too much for me.

Gordon Brown also laid it out on with a trowel yesterday. There was one genuinely moving passage in his address to Congress, I thought, which was actually not about America but about the Rwandan genocide - (unfortunately it’s not in the text that Downing Street released, which suggests Brown added it at the last minute.) But for the rest, it was mostly gush - with a bit of G20 policy-wonkery thrown in for good measure.

I did a quick snap reaction to the speech for the paper last night - and my comments are here. There is a longer, snazzier, interactive, internet-only version of the textual analysis on the FT site -except I am too stupid to get it to work from my home computer. I hope others are luckier or more patient.