No, not more revelations from the memoirs of New Labour’s svengali, Lord (Peter) Mandelson – rather a diary piece by Hugh Muir in the Guardian. LDV readers may recall Nick Clegg’s conflicted loyalties in deciding whether to support Holland or Spain in Sunday’s World Cup final. It appears he found out a way to resolve

The Voice enjoyed this snippet from Hugh Muir’s diary in today’s Guardian: Alistair Carmichael, the Liberal Democrat MP for the distant seat of Orkney and Shetland, received a parliamentary travel expenses form, which asked: “What is your nearest mainline railway station?” He contacted the Fees Office to explain that his constituency is in the middle of

Tim Ireland’s take-down of the Sun’s front-page story through lots of investigation and persistence, forcing it to retract and apologise twice was a shining example of how bloggers can also have a big impact. Forget McBride and Draper – this is the real meat. But the saga hasn’t ended yet. The Guardian’s Hugh Muir wrote yesterday: …Last

This week in the Guardian’s diary column Esther Addley is standing in for Hugh Muir, and she’s chosen a book of the week, True Blue: Strange Tales from a Tory Nation, by Chris Horrie and David Matthews. Very unpleasant trends are emerging in two vignettes that paint Tory activists as racist and anti-Semitic. Who

Hugh Muir's Guardian Diary pieces on Erith and Thamesmead had my head in a bit of a whirl yesterday. Some of the points of view seemed to conflict with the information I've been accumulating, whether from the non-comrade at the formal dinner, or the naughty comrade speaking from the Clapham Omnibus: Saturday's the big day for those following the star-studded bid of Georgia Gould to ...

I enjoyed Hugh Muir's piece in the Guardian today noting Denmark's fondness for electing people called Rasmussen, and the potential savings it might make."Tonight, the world leaders' cavalcade rolls on to Germany, and Baden Baden, for celebrations of the 60th anniversary of Nato. On Saturday, following ceremonies in Kiel and Strasbourg, either side of the Rhine, the 28 heads of state of Nato

Because the future is nuclear, it is only right that Gordon should take a personal interest in the way our installations operate. And thus he went to Sellafield last week. So far, so good. There was, we now learn, a little local difficulty on the day the PM came to call: a radioactive leak that meant a walkway had to be cordoned off and a building closed. The whole thing is now the subject of a bo...

Three cheers for The Wire, that gritty look at the never-ending drugs war in Baltimore. Everyone is gripped by it, belatedly perhaps. It is a subject we can relate to. So how goes the drugs war here? Well, some would say we are no slouches when it comes to Wire-style bureaucracy and doubletalk. And for evidence of this, how about the Home Office pronouncement this week about the decision to upgrad...

There will be many pressing issues for the new poster boy of British policing, but none bigger perhaps than quelling discontent among the ranks at Scotland Yard. Sir Ian Blair palpably failed. Let's see if the new man will do better. And he'll have an early opportunity, for we learn of another simmering revolt among black and ethnic minority officers who say the promise of promotion is, ...

On this day, Obama day, a great day for western democracy, might it be worth considering how things operate this side of the Atlantic? How does the will of the people translate itself into government. Let's start with the Department for Business and Regulatory Reform, or BERR. Here we find Lord Mandelson, its undoubted talisman, Baroness Green Shoots Vadera, Lord Carter, and the newly ermined...