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Today's in The Sunday Times comment

India Knight argues against a takeaway abortion pill … Rod Liddle says children are no longer allowed to be children, that’s why they are stressed … Simon Jenkins believes the biggest threat to the West is itself, not Islam … Our hospitals need a good dose of fear to get them to clean up their act, argues Minnette Marrin … The BBC is preparing to unveil sweeping changes. Mark Thompson explains what they will mean for audiences … Brown is paying the price for his indecision and silence on crucial issues, says Martin Ivens

Blink and I missed it

Did you know this? I have to admit that I didn't until a New York journalist tipped me off about it yesterday.

Malcolm Gladwell's book Blink is being turned into a movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio.

I'll repeat that.

Malcolm Gladwell's book Blink is being turned into a movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio.

I can't begin to imagine how that works although Adaptation was based on a similarly unlikely slug of New Yorker output - a book on orchids.

I have to say that I didn't find the underlying theory behind Blink all that convincing, but there are lots of great bits in it. And Gladwell is beyond brilliant. So I really hope it works out, but I have to say....

Anyway, given my preference for numbers over intuition, I hope the journalist and his collaborators have been consulting the friend made by the New Yorker writer in his excellent piece on the formula behind a hit movie.

However, I realise that if they really trust the theory behind Blink, of course, they will just go for it.

And now for the White House?

Will Al Gore run for President? That's the question being asked on Slate, even though advisers to the Nobel Laureate have made it clear he isn't going to.

Who trusts that, right?

Actually I think I do.

If I were advising Gore I would suggest that at the moment he looks like a great winner. He has great moral authority bestowed by the Prize, even if some believe he shouldn't have won it. And he has great celebrity cachet because of his Oscar. He can campaign for his causes and will wield great influence whoever is in the White House.

He could blow all that by running for the Presidency. The Clintons would have to steamroller him. What choice would they have?

So despite this witty Slate observation:

Gore will have to face the toughest test of political instinct. His father used to joke that politicians usually listen to the one person in the room who wants them to run for higher office—ignoring the other 99 who are all saying, "Don't do it."

my money says he's not running.

Then again, I was advising you to sell Al Gore contracts the other day, so what do I know?

Today's Web Grab

You might enjoy:

• Nathalie Rothschild in Spiked: Measuring the mobile footprint
• Matt Seaton in Comment is free: Don't panic! We shouldn't lose too much sleep over a report that our kids are 'stressed.'
• Dizzy Thinks: How many innocent people are there on the DNA database?
• James Forsyth in Coffee House: How long can Ming hang on?

Magazine Rack - Issue 83

You might enjoy:

• The Economist: China, beware. The country's rulers care too much about their own welfare, and too little about the rural peasants
• Freddie Sayers in The Spectator: Monaco's man with a plan takes his place centre stage
• Norman Mailer & Michael Lennon in New York Magazine: God, by Norman Mailer
• Eric Pooley in Time: Gore wins the Nobel. But will he run?

Tories and the debate Labour wants to have

Tim Montgomerie is worried that the Tories intend to match Labour's spending plans over the period of the comprehensive spending review. And he is certainly right to raise the issue, given the new debate now taking place on the size of the state and taxes.

But I think it's worth going through the argument carefully.

First, the position on matching the CSR was taken for this spending period. Now that the election has been delayed, and may not take place until 2010, only part of the settlement will cover an incoming Tory government. The next election will almost certainly be fought on different figures.

Second, the political argument for matching their spending commitments is the one I made in an earlier Times and referred to yesterday - anchoring. The debate starts with Labour figures and the Tory figures are then seen as risky. In power the dynamic is reversed. Alastair Darling surrendered some of this advantage over inheritance tax. But Conservatives should be very cautious over just how much the situation has changed.

Third, accepting that anchoring exists does not mean failing to make the argument for lower taxes, and it does not mean failing to reduce taxes in power. The whole point is that the last two Tory campaigns engaged in the argument on tax and spend and lost. The approach of setting out randomly selected cuts in spending (or slowdowns in certain areas) didn't succeed. The next campaign needs to be different. The inheritance tax shows that shifting from unpopular to more popular taxes can succeed spectacularly where the old approach failed.

Fourth, the old approach of announcing a lower spending settlement was not just bad politics, it was bad policy, too. Tories do not, out of office, really know where to make precise savings and reform so the areas selected were sometimes eccentric and the amounts claimed questionable. The timescale was also questionable. An incoming Conservative Government might take at least a year to save money, and two or three years to achieve significant change. It is silly to get into a political tangle about Labour's CSR when that isn't even going to be the figure a Tory government would be changing.

Finally, there is a critical difference between the smaller state and lower taxes. Some moves to a smaller state - educational choice - will, certainly in the short to medium term, cost money even if they reduce spending in the long term. The whole freedom and small government agenda should not be boiled down to a debate on reductions in spending during the period of a single Labour spending round.

Are there still Conservatives who don't realise that this is the debate Gordon Brown is dying to have?

Friday's comment from the papers in...

Today in Times Comment

• Gerard Baker: Republican rats scrabble to take over the sinking ship
• Ben Macintyre: Those utterly maddening Mitford girls
• James Campbell: Immigration problem? You’re in the wrong queue
• Mick Hume: Stand up, posties, and deliver your message
• Jane Shilling: Women and food: a grotesque relationship
• Peter Riddell: Why this man in the street will avoid referendum
• Melanie McDonagh: Leda, the swan, baby and me
• Ann Treneman: Monotone man has a mortgage - and a cat

And from the rest of the papers…

• Alice Thomson: (The Daily Telegraph) - It's not posties' fault Royal Mail can't compete
• Iain Dale: (The Daily Telegraph) - Tories need to take a reality check
• Damian Thompson: (The Daily Telegraph) - What has Al Gore done for world peace?
• Polly Toynbee: (The Guardian) - This was the week that Labour's leaders left social democracy for dead
• Alexander Chancellor: (The Guardian) - The postal service is more nuisance than it's worth. At least the strike delivers us from junk mail
• Jonathan Steele: (The Guardian) - The Sino-Russian embrace leaves the US out in the cold
• Steve Connor: (The Independent) - The unbridgeable gap between law and science
• Dominic Lawson: (The Independent) - Dirty hospitals and a crippled Royal Mail add up to a deep malaise in public services
• Matthew Norman: (The Independent) - Brown is on the ropes. He needs to gamble
• Stephen Glover: (The Daily Mail) - Bare-faced lies - and why we let politicians get away with them

And from around the world…

• David Brooks: (The New York Times) - The Hamiltonian ground. The Republican Party has lost intimate contact with the working-class dreamer who longs to make good
• Frank Shorter: (The New York Times) - Running into trouble. How can marathon participants — runners and organizers both — prepare for unique and dangerous weather conditions?
• Editorial: (The Wall Street Journal) - McCain's medicine. The Arizona Senator gets back in the reform business.
• Peggy Noonan: (The Wall Street Journal) - The GOP's 20% problem. How do candidates distance themselves from Bush without alienating his die-hards?
• Slavoj Zizek: (International Herald Tribune) - How China got religion
• Kishore Mahbubani: (The Japan Times) - Disparate tale of two Asian dictatorships

Could it be Huckabee?

The Republican race remains wide open, and there will be a lot to write about in the coming months. The conventional wisdom is that Guliani, Romney and Thompson are the front-runners. But I've argued that McCain could still come back into the race.

For very much the same reason - because momentum is all, and the Republican base is unsure what to do - I think another name should not be left out of the frame. Mike Huckabee.

Huckabee has shown in debates the ability to appeal to social conservatives and more liberal Republicans at the same time. He has got quiet charm. He is the name the insider pundits now tout, tapping their noses as they do so.

There are two things against Huckabee. The first is his organisation. The second, a pretty serious drawback in a race against Hillary (or indeed in a race against common sense) is that he once raised his hand when candidates were asked who didn't believe in evolution.

But keep him in mind, just in case.

Look behind you....

Does Harriet Harman believe in Gordon Brown? Watch this brilliant clip courtesy of Adam Boulton and find out.

Alice Fishburn

Today's Web Grab

You might enjoy:

• Those jokers at NewsBiscuit: Cameron apes Radiohead with 'pay as much tax as you want'
• Timothy Garton Ash in Spiegel Online: 'A Clear European Voice is Missing in the World'
• Michael Agger in Slate: Googlephobia. Be afraid. Be moderately afraid.
• Claire Armitstead in Comment is free: The news that Doris Lessing has been awarded the Nobel prize for literature is a tribute to this writer's outsider status