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Today's Web Grab

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• Guido Fawkes in Order Order: Whistleblowers Still Welcome Here
• Brendan O'Neill in Spiked: Mumbai: the nihilism that dare not speak its name
• Fraser Nelson in Coffee House: What stature does the House have now?
• Marc Ambinder in A reported blog on politics: Four years from now
• Mary Beard in A Don's Life: Robert Louis Stevenson and a prehistoric Pompei

The name's Obama

At least they'll never be asked how to spell their surname again. The Washington Post takes a look at America's other Obamas. And they're truly a rare breed:

According to databases, there might be fewer than 20 Obama families in the United States, compared with more than 11,000 Clintons and 60,000 Bushes

Your espresso, Mr. Byrne

Five secrets that didn't stay secret

Following yesterday's raid on Damian Green's offices, Comment Central takes a look at five other leak scandals.

1) Hugh Dalton

As Chancellor of the Exchequer, Dalton had further to fall than many leakers. And fall he did. In 1947, he went to deliver the Budget Report. He'd nearly made it into the Chamber when he ran into an Evening Standard journalist. The following comments about the contents of the Budget effectively ended Dalton's career. Dalton was forced to resign and though he made it back into the Cabinet the following year he never regained his political clout.

2) Sarah Tisdall

When Sarah Tisdall sent documents to the Guardian, it probably didn't cross her mind that she'd end up in prison for three months. Tisdall was a junior clerk in the Foreign Office when she leaked information about when US cruise missiles would be arriving in Britain. Following a court order, she was sentenced under the Official Secrets Act in 1983.

3) Clive Ponting

In this case, it wasn't loose lips that sunk ships. The General Belgrano, an Argentinian cruiser, was actually attacked by the British in the Falklands War. The government argued it threatened British lives, but MOD employee Ponting leaked the information that the ship was heading out of the exclusion zone at the time. He claimed that the public had a right to know. Although he fully expected to be imprisoned, the shaving kit he brought to court was not necessary. He was acquited.

4) Jimmy Thomas

Careless talk cost lives. Or in Jimmy Thomas's case, his job. The Labour Cabinet Minister reportedly divulged budget secrets to a Tory rival while on the golf course. And he did it in style - shouting 'Tee up' as a not very subtle hint that tax on tea would go up. He was forced to resign in the 1930s.

5) Peter Wright

If you're going to leak you might as well write a book while you're at it. The publication of Spycatcher in 1987 rolled out a host of MI5 secrets, including their plotting against Harold Wilson. The Thatcher government granted the publisher's every wish by banning the book in Britain. Sales leapt, politicians raged but former MI5 officer Peter Wright was never extradited from his new home in Australia.

Magazine Rack - Issue 356

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• Peter Beinart in Time: Obama Chooses An Unlikely Team of Hawks
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• Rebecca Tuhus- Dubrow in Globe Ideas: Group think
• Jonathan Derbyshire in New Statesman: An American suicide

Comment Central's leak dossier brings down another politician

To assist the Metropolitan Police, whose work I take very seriously, and who can't spare a minute to do anything that is inessential in the war against crime, I have prepared a dossier. It allows them to follow a disturbing pattern of leaks.

They may wish, after informing the appropriate ministers, to send officers round to the home of the offending politician.

The Times January 4th 1988:

Mrs Margaret Thatcher was at the cente of the political storm last night after the leak of a confidential Whitehall memorandum disclosing that tough new rules are to be applied to state support for scientific research and development.

Officials at the department refused to comment on 'information that fails into someone's hands as a result of an unauthorized disclosure'.

Sources did confirm, however, that the memorandum from Mr Anthony Kesten, a senior official in the department's official Research and Technology Policy Unit, was genuine. They also indicated that a high-level internal inquiry is likely to begin today into how the document came to be passed to Mr Gordon Brown, opposition Treasury spokesman.

The Times July 2nd 1991:

The government last night seemed to be retreating from plans to include in its citizens' charter tougher consumer protection measures for users of the privatised utilities.

New draft documents leaked by Labour suggest that ministers and officials inthe trade department have dropped proposals for a reiew of the utilities and the performance of their regulators.

Labour claimed the latest document showed that Mr Major's proposed charter was worthless. Gordon Brown, shadow trade secretary, said the draft document had been prepared for the prime minister and circulated last Thursday to be included in the charter. It was drawn up after ministerial and official discussions of an earlier draft leaked by Labour.

The Times July 18th 1991:

[Defence Secretary Tom King] said that Labour claims, led by Gordon Brown, the shadow industry secretary and local MP, that the Rosyth base was to be closed had caused considerable alarm. People were led to believe that decisions had been taken when they had not.

Against a background of noisy protests from Labour MPs, he said that he hoped that the Leader of the Opposition, who was in his place, would consider the way a leaked document had been used and the fact that Rosyth was a defence ministry site used for the refitting of nuclear submarines.

He added: "The Leader of the Opposition will realise that these are grave matters and I am sure that he will be concerned that people on his front bench used leaked documents from such a source as though this was not a matter of considerable gravity.''

He hoped that those who hoped to be the future government would take seriously the fact that people who might be working for them felt free to leak documents no matter what their nature might be.

The Times December 19th 1991:

If Michael Heseltine wanted to leak a government document, he would have had more sense than to do so through a Labour spokesman.

He can therefore be acquitted of responsibility for the disclosure by Gordon Brown of his memorandum to fellow cabinet ministers arguing for a different treatment of EC funds to support the less well-off regions of the UK. The leak, more to the point, is salutory. The case he makes is now assured the public airing it deserves.

Sunday Times June 6th 1993:

Major blamed the party's opponents for spreading ``scare stories'' when he addressed the Tory women's conference in London on Friday. Yesterday, Michael Portillo, chief secretary to the Treasury, followed suit when asked about an apparent leak of Whitehall information to Gordon Brown, Labour's shadow chancellor.

Brown said that a team at the social security department was exploring ways to cut housing and sickness benefits.

Evening Standard June 11th 1993:

The documents the Government was today hit by fresh leaks of its planned clampdown on social security spending.

As ministers tried to brush over the banana skin of last night's leak on plans to tax invalidity benefit claims and make them harder, the Labour Party received more than 30 other pages of documents.

The documents were given to Shadow Chancellor Gordon Brown and his Social Security colleague Donald Dewar

Daily Mirror June 2nd 1993:

Secret papers showing plans for a Government blitz on the welfare state provoked outrage last night.

Premier John Major was accused of threatening cuts ``deeper and more insidious'' than anything contemplated under Margaret Thatcher.

The Whitehall papers leaked to Shadow Chancellor Gordon Brown reveal that seven task forces of senior civil servants have been ordered to examine the system from top to bottom for benefits to axe.

Daily Mirror March 18th 1994:

Virginia Bottomley's appointment as Minister for the Family was exposed as a sham last night. A leaked official document revealed that her ministry has rejected every option for better childcare.

Despite the Government's party-of-the-family rhetoric, the Department of Health has squashed every idea on one of the key areas of family policy. Shadow Chancellor Gordon Brown, who will unveil Labour's childcare plans next week, said: "This shows that Mrs Bottomley's appointment is just window dressing".

Daily Mirror September 10th 1994:

Shock Tory plans to dismantle the Welfare State have been exposed in a leaked Government document. Whitehall committees have been working on how to slash or means-test benefits paid to every family in the country.

Child benefit, pensions, sick pay, and unemployment benefit have all been targetted for cuts, the document called the "Review of Social Security - Second Stage" shows.

Shadow Chancellor Gordon Brown, who was sent the paper, said six of the seven Treasury-inspired committees had already reported.

Independent on Sunday May 4th 1997:

A front bencher from the last parliament said frankly: "None of us has the first sodding idea about what government means, whether any of us will be any good at it, or even what being good at it means....... Some of my colleagues have made a career out of being a conduit for leaks from the Civil Service to the press. That's hardly going to be much good in government."

Message for Liam Byrne

Liam, it's time for your soup.

Brown's problem: The downturn has become a reality

Unless I have misunderstood it badly, Monday marked an important moment - a change in the media narrative and (as this morning's Populus poll strongly suggests) public opinion away from Gordon Brown after months where he has done a little better.

Why did this happen? Surely if being a serious man for serious times worked for the Prime Minister last week, it would be working now.

Here's my theory - it's all about risk aversion.

The economist Daniel Kahneman conducted experiments to develop the prospect theory for which he later won the Nobel Prize. The results show that when people face the chance of losing gains they are risk averse. When they are in a loss position and hoping to make gains they are willing to take bigger risks.

Translated into politics this suggests that when a downturn is in prospect people will agree that it is no time for a novice.  But when it arrives they will be more receptive to change.

It may be that what happened on Monday is that the downturn which had merely been in prospect, began to become a reality. The figures showed people we were now in a terrible position. The disaster is no longer a prospect, it is a reality.

Friday's comment from the papers in...

Today in Times Comment

• Maria Misra: India cannot pin all the blame on outsiders
• Camilla Cavendish: Shock therapy won't cure the banks' ills
• Anne Ashworth: There goes the high street - there goes the neighbourhood
• Martin Sorrell: We will bounce back sooner than people think
• Jonathan Clayton: Only 27 robbing days to go until Christmas
• Erica Wagner: Don't you have all the stuff you need? I do
• Valerie Grove: Five remain deservedly famous as Blyton is forgiven
• Leading Article: Massacre in Bombay
• Leading Article: Woolworths' End
• Leading Article: Home Truths

And from the rest of the papers...

• Jeff Randall: (The Telegraph) - Everyone except the Government knows we’re spending too much
• Con Coughlin: (The Telegraph) - Barack Obama turns to the old guard in Washington
• Clive Aslet: (The Telegraph) - It started with housing and will end there
• Leading Article: (The Telegraph) - We must stand shoulder to shoulder with India
• Simon Jenkins: (The Guardian) - This show's diplomacy is for real - and it's worth a hundred Milibands
• M J Akbar: (The Guardian) - After Mumbai, an end to complacency?
• Martin Kettle: (The Guardian) - Genius, or an empty gesture by men groping in the dark?
• Leading Article: (The Guardian) - India's 9/11
• Anil Dharker: (The Independent) - In Mumbai's teeming history lies the hope for our recovery
• Steve Richards: (The Independent) - What did you do in the war, Gordon?
• Terence Blacker: (The Independent) - The Army has lost the moral high ground
• Leading Article: (The Independent) - A terrorist atrocity with tangled regional roots
• Comment: (The Daily Mail) - Drawing new battle lines on pensions
• Philip Stephens: (Financial Times) - Broken banks put state back in the driving seat

And from around the world...

• David Brooks: (The New York Times) - Stimulus for Skeptics
• Paul Krugman: (The New York Times) - Lest we forget
• Dileep Padgaonkar: (The Washington Post) - Blood in Mumbai
• Peggy Noonan: (The Wall Street Journal) - Turbulence Ahead
• Andrew Small and Carolina Ferrer Rincon: (International Herald Tribune) - Fidel's choice
• Robin Jeffrey: (The Sydney Morning Herald) - The old ghosts of India show their faces again

Today's Web Grab

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