Wednesday, 9 January, 2008
- 9 Jan 08, 06:01 PM
Polls Apart?
If you're a US pollster there's every chance you may be hiding under the blankets today, begging your mother for a sick note. The story predicted almost universally was a convincing win for Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton in the state of New Hampshire. Some commentators even went so far as to discuss Hillary's need for 'damage limitation' if she ever wanted to work in politics again. In the end - and surely this is what News is all about - she won New Hampshire, leaving the Obama team, the pollsters and some media scrabbling for a duvet day. Tonight, we'll discuss how the pollsters and the truth were so wide apart and just what swayed it for Hillary when it had all seemed like a done deal.
Official Secrets:
A Foreign Office civil servant - accused of leaking confidential documents - has been cleared of breaching the Official Secrets Act. Prosecutors at the Old Bailey have decided to drop charges against Derek Pasquill - who was accused of disclosing papers to the media. We'll talk live to Derek Pasquill - a man who's had his life on hold for the past two years - on the programme.
Economy:
Marks and Spencers sales figures are as much a bellwether of the UK economy as interest rates or house prices. As their chief executive revealed today how disappointing the Christmas period had been, we ask if the High Street boom is finally over. Have consumers stopped consuming? And will there be interest rates cuts tomorrow? We ask our Newsnight Shadow MPC.
Galloway v Frum:
George Galloway is not a big fan of American policy in the Middle East. David Frum is not a big fan of Iranian policy towards the West - he coined the Axis of Evil phrase for George Bush. As the President begins his last big tour of the Middle East - and threatens US sanctions on Iran - we put the two together to tell us what's what. This is just a guess, but it may not be all sweetness and light.
Belly dancer
It was already one of the most eccentric stories to come out of the Foreign Office in a long while. Britain鈥檚 Ambassador to Uzbekistan gets fired after criticising the country鈥檚 human rights record and carrying on with a 22-year-old local belly dancer. Now the story of Craig Murray has taken another equally eye-brow raising twist. He and his girlfriend are back in Britain 鈥 and they鈥檝e written a play about how they met. The piece, performed solely by his partner Nadira Berkhanov-Murray, is more harrowing than you might expect. Madeleine Holt has the report.
In Britain, Gordon Brown鈥檚 Cabinet has Hilary Benn, of course, the son, grandson and great-grandson of MPs, (and the father of one, too, in all probability, given that his daughter recently became a Labour candidate at the age of just 18). Then we have Ed Balls and his wife Yvette Cooper; the Miliband brothers; and Douglas Alexander, the brother of Wendy, Labour鈥檚 new leader in Scotland. Indeed, a Cambridge academic has recently argued in the that the Brown administration is a real 鈥渇amily affair鈥 and reminds him of the era of the Pitts (Elder, Younger and various relations) in the late eighteenth century. (Runciman should know something about political genes. He himself comes from one of Britain鈥檚 most distinguished families, and is heir to the Runciman viscountcy - the first viscount sat in the cabinets of Asquith, Lloyd George and Stanley Baldwin).