UK News

Best of Britain: Reflections

This week’s Best of Britain photos involve reflections of the literal as well as the metaphorical.  From an artist’s work consisting of giant upside down mirrors, mourners lining Wootton Bassett, a portrait of pensioners hit by the recent “death bonds” scandal, to Gordon Brown speaking at the Labour Party’s annual conference.

Also included is an image of Lehman Brothers artwork being auctioned, a costumed Ryder Cup spectator, as well as a man tending to the greens of Celtic Manor.

from Africa News blog:

Gordon Brown resurfaces. In Africa

It’s odd to see a once powerful man walk slowly. And odder still to see him sit in the corner of a restaurant nursing a glass of water for more than an hour. But that’s exactly what delegates to an African Union summit in Ugandan capital Kampala saw former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown do on Saturday.

Brown has been treated as something of a fugitive by the British media since his May election defeat with a slew of “Have you seen this man? type articles published in the country’s newspapers. Speculation on what he was up to ranged from bashing out a book on economics to Alastair Darling’s “he’s reflecting”.

But nobody guessed that when he reappeared it would be in Uganda with a speech about Africa being the potential engine for global economic growth.

The decision will fuel rumours that Brown has his eye on a top job at the International Monetary Fund or the United Nations or a role as a special envoy, but it’s also true that Africa's development and its economic progress are subjects that fascinate him.

And his track record is rightly respected by African leaders.

He perhaps alluded to the inevitable “Why are you here?” questions with a joke.

How long can the negotiations go on?

It should have been all over now. But no, we’re on day five and no one really seems to know which way things are going to go.

All over Westminster, people are looking tired. Journalists, politicians, aides and most of all the 24-hour news anchors.

You only had to watch Sky News’ Adam Boulton going at it with former Blair spin doctor Alistair Campbell live on air on Monday night too see that tempers are clearly getting frayed.

So how much longer? Nick Clegg says soon but nothing seems imminent. The LibDems are still talking with Labour. They may talk more with the Conservatives too.

“It’s too early,” said one Conservative source. “It”s finely balanced,” said a Labour one.

In the meantime, huge numbers of reporters are staking out Portcullis House, the new adjunct to the Palace of Westminster.

But it’s slim pickings. David Cameron walks through. So does George Osborne. But for now they’re just waiting too.

The big rescue package has bought the politicians some time

They promised us market meltdown if there was a hung parliament. That was the Conservative pitch before the election.

That isn’t quite what happened. The pound did fall a bit, so did gilts and stocks but most losses were made up by the end of the first day after the result became known, which had been widely expected.

Attention, anyway, had moved elsewhere. There was already mayhem in global markets when British voters were going to the polls on Thursday. One hedge fund manager described it as seven or eight out of 10 when compared with the peak of the crisis.

Things were getting even more hairy on Friday and over the weekend it became clear that the European authorities would have to act to prevent the problem in Greece and they duly did, leading to stocks and the euro rallying as risk appetite  returned.

The $1 trillion global emergency rescue package has calmed things for now and the UK story may have moved to Page 4 from  the front page for global markets.

Talks are still going on between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats over possible power-sharing but so far no end remains in sight.

Both sides keep saying they are making progress but at the moment there is precious little detail and in reality all options remain wide open.

Gordon Brown will seek deal with LibDems

Gordon Brown is clearly looking to form a coalition government with the LibDems. It seems to be a matter of when as everyone waits for the results to come in.

Shortly before he was about to speak in Kirkcaldy, an aide briefed just that. Economic uncertainty meant that a strong coalition government was better than a minority one and signalled Labour could do a deal.

But even as that went shooting out to the world, another aide came out to say nothing had been settled. The official line — and it’s probably right — is that it is too early to say. They have to wait for all the results. There is no settled position on coalition talks. What is clear is that there will be talks at some point.

Gordon Brown is going to be thinking long and hard on his flight back to London. Somewhere Nick Clegg must be doing the same.

Twitter users still agree with Nick

One the eve of the general election, our exclusive Twitter analysis of political sentiment shows that while the latest opinion polls point to a late rally by Gordon Brown’s Labour Party, users of the micro-blogging site still favour Nick Clegg’s Liberal Democrats over the other two main parties.

US market research firm Crimson Hexagon (on behalf of Reuters.co.uk) has been archiving all tweets on British politics since March 22 and analysing them for positive and negative sentiment. All parties have had their ups and downs, most notably in the aftermath of the first leaders’ debate (which led to a spike in support for the LibDems and the hashtag #iagreewithnick trending on Twitter) and Gordon Brown’s “bigot” gaffe in Rochdale,which gave us the highest percentage of negative tweets for any party during the campaign.

Just hours before the nation goes to the polls and with so many voters apparently still undecided, it’s worth taking a look at the latest numbers.

The graphic below shows positive tweets for each party up to May 4. The LibDems come out top on 20 percent, with pro-Labour sentiment on 12 percent and pro-Tory lagging behind on five percent.

The next graphic shows negative tweets for each party. Again the numbers favour the LibDems; negative sentiment for Clegg’s party is on just eight percent. Negative Labour tweets are at 16 percent. Meanwhile, despite a lead in the opinion polls, David Cameron’s Tories are the least popular on 25 percent. The highest percentage of tweets we have seen (a massive 42 percent) occurred when Gordon Brown called pensioner Gillian Duffy a “bigoted woman”.

from Photographers Blog:

A break in choreography on the campaign trail

On tightly-choreographed campaign trails there aren’t many photo moments that haven’t been carefully planned beforehand by spin doctors, so when Gordon Brown made an impromptu visit to a hair salon in Oldham, there was a ripple of excitement.

Such unscripted moments create great opportunities for photographers because they offer a glimpse of reality and inject a human element into often monotonous days of speeches, handshakes and platitudes.

Brown had been pressed into visiting the Academy hair salon by owner Sue Fink, a brassy woman who wouldn’t take no for an answer when she collared Brown at a community centre. Brown, appearing embarrassed, mumbled his consent.

So Brown’s entourage traipsed over the road to the salon, where his minders – clearly wary of straying from pre-arranged programme – tried to stop the press entering. Fink was having none of it, throwing open the salon door and inviting them all in.

The spin doctors needn’t have worried; it was a rare moment in which a chuckling Brown, warmed by Fink’s good humour, offered a genuine flash of the human being that he often struggles to project.

Twitter users turn on Brown after “bigot” gaffe

We’re still waiting to find out if Gordon Brown’s gaffe in Rochdale yesterday (if you missed it, he called a 66-year-old, lifelong Labour voter a “bigoted woman”) does serious damage to his party’s performance in the opinion polls. What is certain is that it was the first serious blunder of the election campaign and the shockwaves were immediately visible on micro-blogging site Twitter.

Throughout the election run-in U.S. research firm Crimson Hexagon has been conducting exlusive research for Reuters.co.uk — archiving all UK political tweets and analysing them for positive and negative sentiment. The three main parties have each experienced ups and downs throughout the campaign. Not surprisingly, we saw a spike in positive Liberal Democrat tweets  following Nick Clegg’s impressive performance during the first leaders’ debate, while positive sentiment towards David Cameron’s Conservatives has dwindled since we started analysing tweets on March 22.

But we have seen nothing as dramatic as the surge in anti-Labour sentiment which followed Brown’s confrontation with pensioner Gillian Duffy yesterday.

The graphic below shows anti-Labour tweets rising to 42 percent, up from 15 percent the previous day. Anti-Tory tweets fell from 23 percent to 14 percent, while negative LibDem tweets fell from 9 percent to 5 percent.

Twitter user @sara_sands posted: “Just when you think Gordon Brown couldn’t sink any lower, he insults an elderly lady. What a disgrace.”

After the PM went back to Duffy’s house to apologise in person, @greensdiary said: “Dear Gordon Brown: why do you not process the ability to apologise properly?” Another user, @Clairabell, simply said: “Gordon Brown – fail.”

“Bigoted woman” brings election to life, but is it nail in Brown’s coffin?

Forget the budget deficit, forget the jobless, forget the recession and forget the spending cuts to come.

The  election is just over a week away. But the biggest issue for the media has become whether or not Gillian Duffy, a pensioner in Rochdale, had accepted an apology from Gordon Brown after he was overheard calling her “bigoted.”

Journalists on the campaign trail have been repeatedly complaining there’s no spontaneity. What they mean is that no one has made any mistakes — gaffes as they call them or anything that can have “gate” attached to its end.

So “Duffygate” was manna from heaven. Unaware a broadcast microphone was still on when he got back into his car, the prime minister described Duffy as “sort of a bigoted woman”.

Reporters immediately relayed the prime minister’s comments to Duffy who said she would no longer vote Labour.

Brown was forced to apologise. And then even more bizarrely, the prime minister’s cavalcade turned up at the pensioner’s Rochdale home and Brown went into her house.

He was in there for nearly 45 minutes as 24-hour news channels kept the door in shot as if they were filming the outcome of a papal election.

Jokes wear thin at ill-tempered Labour event

Labour strategy chief Peter Mandelson berated the media at a press conference this morning for failing to focus on policy. Then he repeatedly side-stepped questions on the most important policy challenge of all: where are the tens of billions of pounds of spending cuts needed to halve the deficit going to come from?

Of course Labour are not alone in dodging that thorniest of questions. David Cameron keeps repeating that his Conservatives have gone “further than any opposition in history” in spelling out proposed spending cuts, starting with 6 billion pounds in unspecified “efficiency savings” this year. But his insistence cannot mask the fact that the Tories’ planned cuts, like Labour’s and indeed the Liberal Democrats’, add up to only a fraction of what is required.

Still, this was Labour’s press conference and it was a chance for them to be more specific. But they didn’t take it. Instead we got multiple promises to protect or even increase certain family-friendly benefits and services .

There was also a new and sinister campaign broadcast depicting heartless bureaucrats in suits and ties marching into happy families’ homes to tell them that the Tory government was taking away their child tax credit, child trust fund and guaranteed speedy appointment with a cancer specialist. So much for positive campaigning and taking Labour’s hopeful message out to the country. (Again, the Tories have their own scare tactics. Their latest campaign broadcast was not on their policies but on the perils of a hung parliament.)

Pressed on that pesky spending cuts question, Ed Balls, the schools secretary, did say that he’d already identified 300 million pounds’ worth of savings that could be found in his department and would ramp that up to half a billion eventually. As for his wife and cabinet colleague Yvette Cooper, the work and pensions secretary, she said a decision to delay some of the implementation of pensions reform would “save billions”. Wehey!

To put things in perspective: the deficit is expected to come in at around 163 billion pounds for the 12 months to end-March.

So, detailed and convincing deficit-busting plans were not on offer at Labour HQ. Instead we got tetchy exchanges between Mandelson and the media, dubious witticisms from both sides and a bizarre digression into whether or not the children’s television character Peppa Pig was a Labour supporter. (This came up because a planned Peppa Pig appearance at a Labour campaign event had been cancelled. Mandelson made some pointed comments about how this was some sort of plot by BBC managers, but no one really knew where he was going with that.)