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Matthew Norman: A written constitution is the answer

Thu, 04 Dec 2008 00:00:01 GMT

Someone's going to have their collar felt over this one. For leaking its content in advance of the Queen's Speech, someone will be bidding farewell to their Apple Mac and having their shoelaces confiscated preparatorily to helping police with their enquiries into this latest monumental threat to national security.

Matthew Norman: Funny how liberalism's enemies embrace it when they need it

Thu, 27 Nov 2008 00:00:01 GMT

Every now and then comes news of a relationship so joyously unexpected that, once the initial shock abates and if only for a moment, the metaphorical sun creeps out from behind the rain clouds, melodious birdsong fills the ears, and life seems almost worth living once again.

Matthew Norman: Cameron can't afford mistakes. But nor can he play it safe

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 00:00:01 GMT

As general election slogans go, this is the one that dare not speak its name. We will neither hear it from the oddly sensuous lips of the Prime Minister, nor watch it alternate with adverts for any car manufacturer still in business on one of those perpetually rotating giant posters. Even so, the message Gordon Brown will tacitly but relentlessly feed us between now and the next election is "You've Never Had It So Bad".

Matthew Norman: When you want your child to share America's moment

Thu, 06 Nov 2008 00:00:01 GMT

Forced at the point of a gun to give up every visual snapshot but one from the early hours of yesterday, the keeper, I think, would be Jesse Jackson. The Reverend stood there in a Chicago park, oddly anonymous among that biblical host, struck dumb by the wonderment, his eyes blankly unfocused as the tears streamed forth. The angry black man, whose struggles helped pave the path to the White House for the serene black man he waited to greet as his President-elect, was angry no more.

Matthew Norman: Memo to the BBC: stay calm at moments of national crisis

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 00:00:01 GMT

The Prime Minister has lobbed in his two pennorth. One of the fools at the furore's heart has resigned. The other has been suspended, and in a cunning bid to dispel any suspicion that this is the liberal media elite opening a new front in its revolutionary quest to obliterate Middle English values, the director-general has flown back from his hols in Sicily. But is it enough? Does even all this do justice to the gravity of the crisis? For, ladies and gentlemen, it would appear we are at war.

Matthew Norman: What possessed Osborne to pick a fight with Mandelson?

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 23:00:01 GMT

For anyone who takes pleasure from observing developments on and beneath the surface of the steaming, bubbling swamp that is political life in Britain, this is Westminster's answer to Stendhal Syndrome.

Matthew Norman: Welcome home Lord Mandy

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 23:00:01 GMT

The photograph is so inherently, immutably surreal that, gazing upon it now, a part of me suspects one of those cunning paste-up jobs art directors contrive on Apple Macs. That or someone is wearing a latex mask, the impersonating device Tom Cruise used no more than a dozen times in Mission Impossible II. Or did some Downing Street wag sequester the dummy from the Madame Tussaud's storage depot for a jape?

Matthew Norman: The peculiar tragedy of this flawed hero, John McCain

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 23:00:01 GMT

For one whose single rhetorical flourish is the gratingly incessant appellation "My friends", John McCain has very few left. The roll call shrinks by the day as his bamboozled campaign grows nastier, and if the decline maintains its trajectory this year's Friends of McCain Thanksgiving Dinner in Arizona will be held, in homage to his naval career, in a solo canoe. By then, even the Clintons will have baled out because, barring a malevolent miracle, Barack Obama will be President-Elect, and Senator McCain's value to them as Oval Office seat-warmer until 2012 will have gone the way of Lehman Brothers. Even his wife, Cindy, can barely tolerate his presence, judging by the body language at the end of Tuesday's debate in St Louis. As they gingerly embraced, you sensed her wondering whether seven houses will provide a sufficient cordon sanitaire from each other's company come 5 November.

Matthew Norman: Once you're a joke, you're doomed

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 23:00:01 GMT

Attempting to predict the next twist in this uniquely serpentine US election is a game for imbeciles, as some of us have learned to our shame, but one thing seems safe to predict. Assuming she managed to stand upright without drooling, ceding control of bodily functions or flashing a Janet Jacksonesque nipple at the cameras, Sarah Palin did better in last night's vice presidential debate in St Louis than Admiral Stockdale.

Matthew Norman: If you want politics with real drama, look to America

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 23:00:01 GMT

At last it begins. After all the months of sparring, feinting, showboating and shadow-boxing, after all the conflated controversies about lipstick on pigs, God'n' guns for hicks and sex education for kids, we are on the verge of what every self-respecting big fight MC knows as the main event.

Matthew Norman: Get back to the Treasury, Gordon

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 23:00:01 GMT

Two Jewish fellas in front of a firing squad. "Schweinhunde!" screams the Gestapo officer. "Have you any last request before you are shot?" "Yes," says Abe, "Can we stand behind the wall?" "No, you cannot stand behind ze vall. Stand still." "In that case, you filthy Nazi bastard," says Abe, "fuck you and Adolf Hitler." Hymie glances nervously at his friend. "Don't cause trouble," he says.

A law unto themselves?

Wed, 10 Sep 2008 23:00:01 GMT

At this stage of his political career, the only advice worth offering the Prime Minister is to ensure that he has the hemlock with him when he locks the study door in case the trusty Luger jams. But for those of a less fatalistic mindset, a more constructive suggestion would be this. Afore ye go, Gordon, and in pursuance of Tuesday's opaque promise to jettison the ways of New Labour, for God's sake do something about the police.

Matthew Norman: Why are the police allowed to be a law unto themselves?

Wed, 10 Sep 2008 23:00:01 GMT

Matthew Norman: Anyone would be better than Brown – even Kerry Katona

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 23:00:01 GMT

One of my favourite things about life on this sceptred isle is the limitless British capacity to embrace what once repelled us. It's an extension of Alan Bennett's nostrum that the one requirement to be deemed worthy of the Nobel Prize is reaching 90 years old and being able to eat a boiled egg intact, and I call it Bob Monkhouse Syndrome By Proxy. However derided, distrusted, disregarded and disliked a public figure might be, all they need do is doughtily carry on doing what made them loathed in the first place, and the British veneration for staying power will act as catalyst to convert all those negative feelings into affection.

Matthew Norman: Passion, drama and democracy

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 23:00:01 GMT

You have the advantage of me. Obama gave his convention speech a few hours ago, framed by those curious Attic columns in a Denver grid iron stadium, and writing yesterday afternoon I haven't the foggiest what he said or, perhaps more significantly, how he said it... with the soaring, lyrical cadences of the preacher man; the cerebral guise of the law professor who spoke so brilliantly about race; as a hybrid of the two; or as someone else entirely.

Matthew Norman: His life is destroyed. So why hound Gary Glitter?

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 23:00:01 GMT

Given that what preceded it may have been the greatest run in Olympic history, one can excuse the BBC commentators for failing to notice. Then again, maybe they did notice, but preferred to allow distaste to hold their tongues. Anyway, whatever explains this reticence, no one said a word about it when, a few minutes after Usain Bolt had broken a legendarily brilliant 200 metres world record on Wednesday, and while the Jamaican was languidly milking his lap of honour, there emerged from the "Bird's Nest" stadium speakers the twangy opening guitar chords of a song released long ago by a man released that day from prison in Vietnam.

Matthew Norman: Cameron tackles the great unmentionable

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 23:00:01 GMT

In the coming days, our leader and our leader-in-waiting will be packing the buckets and spades, so unremittingly malevolent souls like me will rejoice that according to the weather forecasts they will have a perfectly appalling time.

Matthew Norman: Obama a belief-free zone? I don't believe so

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 23:00:01 GMT

The humble gonad made another foray into the effete world of US political debate this week, and for once the word wasn't cojones. Eschewing the inoffensive Hispanic, that remarkable man of God, Jesse Jackson, went on Fox And Friends – not a Basil Brush revival, sadly, but an offering from Rupert Murdoch's neo-con bully pulpit – to share his ambition for the presumptive Democratic nominee.

Matthew Norman: Welcome back, Keith! We've missed you!!

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 23:00:01 GMT

What a glorious week it has been for our sceptred isle's favourite sport! The first days of July are always a high point for professional nostalgism, in truth, but this year footage of Borg and McEnroe swinging their quaint wooden rackets through that monster tie-breaker of 1980 has for once been obliged to take a back seat.

Matthew Norman: An act of dispossession that shames Britain

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 23:00:01 GMT

With Gordon Brown so inexplicably loath to celebrate his triumphant first year in No 10, what a relief to find the Foreign Secretary eschewing such dismal reticence in yesterday's paper. He is a bright and engaging chap, David Miliband, as he underlined in a first anniversary interview with Steve Richards. If a failing did emerge, perhaps it is an alarming lack of personal ambition (a fault that afflicts so many Cabinet ministers these days; what is wrong with them?). On the other hand, David aims his sights far higher in more altruistic areas, and never more so, naturally enough, than foreign policy.

Matthew Norman: Prepare for the second wave of Obamania

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 23:00:01 GMT

Barack Obama took another stride towards Pennsylvania Avenue this week, or so it seemed to this ignorant observer at a remove of several thousand miles, and for once he didn't even have to open his honeyed mouth. The Senator has been on cracking form lately, giving a wonderful Father's Day speech about the evil of absentee fatherhood, but that may have rather less electoral impact than a television appearance by his wife Michelle.

Matthew Norman: We are the world leaders in ineptitude

Thu, 12 Jun 2008 23:00:01 GMT

Comedy is all about timing, as everyone knows, but even by the immaculate standards we expect from our rulers it seldom comes better than on Wednesday evening. Barely had David Cameron sipped the Moët to toast Gordon Brown's survival (not a celebration he shared, one imagines, with David Davis) than news broke of those intelligence reports left on a Surrey-bound train from Waterloo by a senior security officer.

Matthew Norman: Has McClellan handed victory to Obama?

Thu, 29 May 2008 23:00:01 GMT

Shock and awe envelop Washington upon the publication of a political memoir. The shock has nothing to do with the contents of What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception, which do little more than confirm the obvious about the demi-truths, distortions and lies of omission that prefaced the invasion of Iraq. What inspires the awe is that Scott McClellan, the author, was the ultra-loyal press secretary to George Bush.

Matthew Norman: Courage is knowing when to stand down

Thu, 22 May 2008 23:00:01 GMT

A small but poignant anniversary dribbled by unnoticed a fortnight ago. It was on 6 May 2007 that the world of letters greeted the official publication of Courage by Gordon Brown (Invertebrate Press, £0.49 from all good bargain basement bins; signed copies available at £0.07).

Matthew Norman: These petty buffoons who ruled over us

Thu, 15 May 2008 23:00:01 GMT

In the wee small hours of 2 May 1997, just as millions of us were doing laps of honour around our living rooms and gardens to mark Michael Portillo's demise, a captivating vignette was playing itself out at Glasgow airport. Indeed, this may have have been the most poignant tarmac scene the world has known since Casablanca.