PMQs live blog

Harman v. Hague with Fraser Nelson from noon:

12:00 I’m still cross with William Hague for pitching up at that Lake Como villa at the Barclays Wealth shindig that was in the papers before he left. Utter idiocy. Sure, he arrived on its last day to accompany his wife who works there. But his political instincts should have told him to stay a million miles away, when the event got in the tabloids as a fat cat extravaganza. So his stand-up comedy at PMQs had best be good today.

12:05 Hague back again on Chapter 11, this time with FSB...

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Will there be a manifesto commitment to privatise the banks?

Events have moved so fast this week that there are a whole string of questions that we have not really thought about. For instance, when will the government sell off its stakes in Royal Bank of Scotland and the bank to be created by the TSB-Lloyds HBOS merger?

Obviously, the government would be foolish to announce the schedule that it is working towards as the answer will depend on market conditions. But it doesn’t seem unreasonable to ask whether the parties’ manifestos at the next election will contain a commitment to place...

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Will Brown be busted?

Daniel Finkelstein lays out the most eloquent case I have seen yet for why the current financial crisis will ultimately do for Brown:

“Our view of the Brown decade is like the turkey's view of mankind, utterly destroyed by what has now happened. The stability was a trick of the light, the lengthy period of growth was fuelled by house prices and debt, the low interest rates (of which Brown is still, amazingly, boasting) were an error. The length of the good years is being paid for by the severity of

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How Labour should behave

Sunder Katwala at Next Left, the Fabian Society’s excellent blog, has laid down some rules for how Labour supporters should act  during the current crisis:

“1. Behave sensibly. At all costs, avoid triumphalism about an economic crisis, however well the Prime Minister handles it.

2. In particular, could anybody banging on about the Falklands please stop it. It is in very poor taste all round.

3. And, particularly particularly, if any MP wants to say 'when the crisis is over, perhaps there might be an early election', perhaps arrangements could be made for them to be quickly taken

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McCain has put country first by not raising Rev. Wright

The civility cops have been giving John McCain a hard time for the tone of his campaign. But they are ignoring the fact that McCain has held back from using a political line of attack that could be highly effective because of what it could do to the country.

Obama’s connection to Rev. Wright are, potentially, hugely damaging to his candidacy. It dredges up a whole set of emotive issues surrounding race and brings into question much of his political persona. The attack ad on the issue Tucker Carlson sketches out...

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