Martin Ivens

Profile: Full name: Martin Ivens Area of interest: Politics Journals/Organisation: The Sunday Times Email: martin.ivens@sunday-times.co.uk Personal website: Website: http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/comment/columns/martinivens Blog: Representation: Networks:

Biography: About: Education: Career: The Daily Telegraph; The Sunday Times: deputy editor Current position/role: political columnist (from Sept. 2007) also writes/written for: Other roles/Main role: Other activities: Disclosures: Viewpoints/Insight: Broadcast media: Video: Controversy/Criticism: Awards/Honours: Scoops: Other: Married to Anne McElvoy, of the Evening Standard

Books & Debate: Latest work: Speaking/Appearances: Debate:

The Sunday Times: Column name: Remit/Info: Politics Section: Role: Pen-name: Email: martin.ivens@sunday-times.co.uk Website: http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/comment/columns/martinivens Commissioning editor: Day published: Sunday Regularity: weekly Column format: Average length:

Articles: 2011 Seconds out: It’s George v Boris - In the absence of real rifts in the Conservative party, speculation about a contest between Osborne and Johnson is the court gossip - 9th October Promise sunshine, Prime Minister – but not yet - Cameron may not be able to make the bold pledges of Blair’s ‘new era’ but he must assure us he can lead us through economic turmoil - 2nd October Keeping quiet is Ed’s best chance - In a perfect world, Miliband and Balls would just disappear for another year. As they can’t, they have got to wait until the wind changes - 25th September Clegg’s biggest threat is himself - The Lib Dems have more to lose than the Tories from any fracture. Only after the next general election can they dare consider swapping partners - 18th September A lurid how-not-to book for Dithering Dave - Cameron has already learnt the relationship lessons in Alistair Darling’s memoirs, but he still needs to find a clear direction of travel - 4th September Libya was easy, let’s sort Europe - Realists fear Libya will set a precedent for interventions. Yet don’t expect military action against other Middle East tyrants any time soon - 28th August Politicians fiddle as euroland burns - European monetary union requires political union — and strong leadership which is lacking. But even the Germans' commitment is wavering - 7th August Voters aren’t swayed by the media squall - Despite his recent good performance, Ed Miliband still has no guarantee that the voters will give him a hearing - 17th July Miliband gambles that News is a paper tiger - Ed Miliband has been increasingly restive about the ways of new Labour and decided to throw the kitchen sink at Cameron, Murdoch and Brooks - 10th July Show Brussels some Reagan swagger, PM - The PM won’t be bringing back lost powers from Europe anytime soon. Seen from No 10’s perspective, he is winning victory after victory - 3rd July You’ve done tender; now try tough, Dave - Government U-turns may tempt some hardmen in the unions to undertake a trial of strength, which the prime minister must resist - 26th June It’s Ed Miliband who needs to U-turn now - Ed Miliband cannot hurt the coalition from the left. A Labour party appealing to the centre ground would be a more dangerous foe - 26th June You’re ahead, Dave - be yourself for once - In benign conditions Cameron has taken a year to get a grip on his political operation. He must now show a sense of purpose for the years to come - 12th June Lost an empire? At last we’ve got a role - Washington appreciates that London is more helpful to its global ambitions than other European nations — and the Brits are useful in a scrap - 29th May Speak up on crime, PM, or be punished - Law and order is traditionally the Conservatives' strongest card. Yet many voters think the prime minister has thrown it away - 22nd May The NHS needs a doctor, not a priest - Despite his religious convictions, the rational part of the prime minister’s brain also tells him the NHS could be improved - 15th May A sniff of fear and Huhne will strike - A leader with the right stuff avoids self-pity and gets straight back into the fray. This must be Nick Clegg's reaction to an electoral setback - 8th May No alternative — there will be blood - Prime minister David Cameron's decisive No to AV campaign has united his party but it comes at the cost of government unity - 1st May Magna Carta? Yes, she did die in vain - It would be ridiculous to completely overhaul our voting system simply because of a risible turnout and an absence of mind - 17th April Cry-baby Clegg will have the last laugh - Even if the Lib Dems lose their AV referendum and go belly-up in 2015, the effort will still have been worth it for their leader - 10th April Sledger Balls — on a mission to annoy - 'Annoying' Ed Balls may be an effective partner for Ed Miliband, but Labour is still missing the consensual politics of the Blairites - 3rd April The coalition sneaks to the left of Labour - The Cameroons started out as Thatcher’s children, but in practice the coalition operates to the left of Tony Blair - 27th March George’s steamroller starts its second lap - The chancellor's star is in the ascendancy, with respect on both sides of the aisle for his hawkish deficit stance and political skill - 20th March Sell everything but your soul, PM - It’s getting cold out there in a Darwinian, single-market world, but the PM should stay aloof from hawking weapons round the Middle East - 13th March It’s a no-fluff zone we need, Mr Cameron - Nobody called events in the Middle East and David Cameron’s inexperience is excusable, but now he must avoid falling into gesture politics - 6th March Cameron must fight harder to kill off AV - If the Lib Dem leader wins the referendum, you’ll never get rid of him — Clegg will be the power broker in perpetual hung parliaments - 20th February Who’s worse — dusty beak or trendy judge? - The best modern judges are an entirely different breed — at last Britain and Europe have caught up with the United States in judicial activism - 12th February Lost in the forest, Dave needs a guide - The Tories stood on a platform of fixing 'the broken society' and 'broken politics' — yet voters aren't sure these promises are being kept - 6th February - 6th February Don’t cheer yet for revolution in Egypt - We may support those who long for democracy in Egypt, but it must not be forgotton that violent revolution ends in tragedy as often as not - 30th January Look out, Miliband, that pitbull bites - The new duo must mount a prolonged charm offensive to woo the voters. Miliband can be charming; the danger is that Balls can only be offensive - 23rd January The Chinese tiger is toying with us now - That Oriental power is on the rise cannot be disputed. The question that remains is will the West watch impassively as the sun sets on its imperium? - 16th January

Articles: 2010 True liberals should learn to love Rupert - Has the public interest been damaged by the likes of Steve Jobs, Rupert Murdoch and Mark Zuckerberg? All have contributed to our quality of life - 26th December In the wrong hands human rights hurt - Three recent visitors, including Julian Assange, show what a curious place this country is — both admirable and awful - 19th December Revolt makes a real party of the Lib Dems - It's not this week's tuition fee crisis that will be the ultimate test for the Lib Dems, it will be the next one and the one after that - 12th December Can’t pull the wool over our eyes, Ed - With Ed preaching like a highminded liberal and Nick delivering a blast for social mobility, we are clearly entering an era of political cross-dressing - 28th November Time for Miliband to show us the beef - New Labour, Ed told us, is dead. He must therefore decide what of the old new Labour legacy he wishes to ditch and what to retain - 21st November Fear the nurses, not rent-a-mob thugs - If government-imposed pain seems pointless or unfair it enrages more than just a rabble of anarchists: the voters become disaffected too - 14th November Bring us sunshine, Dave, and ditch GMT - The prime minister can help lead the country into the sunny uplands by abolishing the daylight saving time which makes our lives so much darker - 31st October Street Fighting Man isn’t wanted here - Osborne’s cuts may provoke the unions into resistance but there’s no place for street fighting man here — he belongs in Paris or far away Athens - 24th October The BBC has fallen in with a rough crowd - Mark Thompson, the BBC director-general, has some bright young men around him, but no wise old bird to warn him where the dangers lie - 17th October Lean not mean must be the Tory mantra - The government has to deliver the message that the party is over, just as it was in 1979 when Margaret Thatcher came to power - 10th October Time to put gloating Tories back to work - Tory high command must stop gloating about Ed Miliband and start getting its message across, starting at this week's party conference - 3rd October Will Labour be dead with Red Ed? - Ed Miliband used an effective strategy of appeasing his party to defeat his brother and win the Labour leadership - 26th September What have the Romans ever done for us, Nick? - If you were Clegg, which would you choose: the deputy prime ministership or a few more years of virtuous impotence? - 19th September Building Britain in his father’s image - David Cameron's belief in the big society emanates from his father’s fundamental faith in human nature coming good in adversity - 11th September Does university education matter? - In most countries it is an article of faith that growth is promoted by an ever-expanding university sector. Where's the evidence? - 22nd August Mandy’s lessons for Labour’s fantasists - The value of Mandelson's memoirs lie in their exposure of the fact that the Labour party is still held in thrall by Gordon Brown's fictions - 18th July Yes, minister – we’re still not fit for purpose - Unless Gove quickly gets rid of the officials responsible for his discomfiture, it will be his head on the block next time - 11th July Dave and Nick bet the house — again - David Cameron and Nick Clegg are testing the very foundations of their nascent coalition by calling an early referendum on alternative voting - 4th July Labour’s lads fight to be twice as nice - Niceness is a weapon of war in politics. Niceness kills. Boris Johnson and Michael Gove also wield it ruthlessly - 6th June The Lib-Con linchpin felled by human folly One of the chief arguments against coalition deals is that they put fixes made behind closed doors ahead of public opinion - 30th May Liberal or Tory, Dave’s on the winning side - A Liberal Conservative accepts that all classes must make sacrifices. A wise Conservative leader also looks to his backbenchers - 23rd May It’s a dirty deal, so it might just work - If Cameron and Clegg present themselves as Paul Newman and Robert Redford, then Vince and George are Matthau and Lemmon - 16th May Nick can dance – but to whose tune? - The Lib Dems face an unenviable choice: Their hearts tell them to deal with Labour, but their heads say Conservative - 9th May Seatbelts on – it’s going to be bumpy - An answer to the election prophecy: whoever wins this election loses. The fate of our leaders is in the balance, but so is ours - 2nd May Clegg, the thorn in everybody’s side - Polls suggest the anti-Establishment, anti-Westminster tide has not run its course. Clegg is the telegenic beneficiary - 25th April Who’s more honest: voters or politicians? - David Cameron has converted from fiscal Scrooge to Santa. Why the change back to sunny Dave? - 11th April Keep it simple and you’ll win, George - Osborne has to bang home a message that Labour governments leave economic messes that Tory ones have to clear up - 28th March The unions ride to Cameron’s rescue - Labour's paymasters, the trade unions, are back to fomenting strikes as if this were the Britain of 40 years ago - 21st March Welcome to life under Nick Clegg - Tory failure to capitalise on Brown’s economic Dunkirk means the claims of Nick Clegg, leader of the Lib Dems, can no longer be laughed at - 14th March Ashcroft: worse than a crime, a mistake - If the state really feels the need to bestow honours, only people who pay British taxes in full should get them - 7th March We can be safe without torturing - Unlike many liberals, I won’t pretend that torture can’t sometimes work. However, it is morally wrong at all times - 14th February U-turn if you want to – they do - Peter Mandelson's recent boast on economic growth strategy was the equivalent of the Pope converting to atheism - 7th February More guile needed in the Afghan game - We must support the Afghan army. Yet a military solution without a political solution is not feasible in the long term either - 24th January No slip-ups now for Banana Man - David Miliband’s mistake was his earlier tentative threat to challenge Brown that haunts him. Since then he has been recovering ground - 10th January

Articles: 2009 A word in defence of phoney Tony - We may remember Mr Blair as the man who invented a modernised socialism with a human face - 20th December Dave’s talked tough, now let’s have hope - All that work Tony Blair put in to convince the aspiring middle classes that Labour was their friend appears to have been abandoned - 13th December A hung parliament won’t stop the cuts - Most people are betting on Labour losing, but that doesn’t automatically mean the Tories will win convincingly - 6th December Cameron’s tactical Blond moment - The Conservative leader is genuinely anxious to counter Labour’s charge that he leads a gang of hard-faced Thatcherites - 29th November Mandelson bets on two sure-fire losers - Labour and Europe look united on one thing: neither is prepared to take itself seriously - 22nd November Nothing scares Gordon Brown more than laughter - A Roman emperor once said: "I don’t mind if they hate me as long as they fear me." No 10 fears ridicule most of all - 15th November Memo to Cameron: no more promises - If he takes office Cameron will find he’s never had it so bad. He would be wise to keep his commitments to a minimum accordingly - 8th November The BNP won’t go away if we ignore it - Exposure to the full glare of publicity shows the shallowness of the party’s talent and its bizarre policies - 18th October The biggest gamble is to back Gordon - The prime minister's conference speech avoided all talk of debt, deficit and cuts and he forsees green economic shoots - 11th October Cameron’s no chump – victory isn’t certain - David Cameron and shadow chancellor George Osborne need to convey a one-word message to the electorate — 'ready' - 4th October Will Mandy push Brown off the cliff? - The stigma of finishing off his old friend and enemy would be too great. Yet customs change - 27th September Unloved BBC must swallow its pride - You know things are really bad when they have to wheel out dear David Attenborough to remind us how much we once loved the BBC - 20th September No second act for bumbling Brown - Faced with the Lockerbie affair and the Afghanistan campaign, Brown has ducked and dived - 13th September Get that iron fist out now, Cameron - Every polling group says Gordon Brown's government is as unpopular as John Major’s was the year before his defeat in 1997 - 2nd August Sweeten the bitter pills, Dr Cameron - If you take the long view, Cameron’s performance is really quite impressive for a Conservative opposition leader - 26th July The undying flame of Labour's love triangle - Mandelson is clearly relishing his recall to power. He is the last prop holding up this government - 19th July A free press needs no new guardians - For many Labour MPs, The Guardian’s allegations against Andy Coulson, the Tory communications chief, came as welcome relief - 12th July Labour relaunch is already sinking - Why should the rich alone have choice in schools, health treatment and the provision of public services? - 5th July Britannia shrivels under Brown - The recession is intensifying the squeeze on already hard-stretched armed services, particularly the army - 28th June Don’t be fooled by Gordon’s Newspeak - Every independent authority tells PM he’s living in cloud-cuckoo-land: debts must be repaid or taxes will have to rise - 21st June I invest, you freeze, he or she cuts jobs - Whitehall is still luxuriating in the equivalent of a five-star hotel in Saint-Tropez - 14th June With friends like Gordon Brown... - This government is neither dead nor alive: like Count Dracula it is undead. It exists for no other purpose than Brown’s survival - 7th June Carry on chopping but don’t lose your head - Local parties should clear out tainted incumbents rather than wait for the loony tunes to unseat them - 24th May This is no time for a nervous Nellie - It is Gordon Brown’s duty to get a grip before the moral authority of this parliament and his government withers and dies - 17th May New Labour is dead. Hail no-clue Labour - Neither party admits shrinking the state is the new politics - 26th April Big spender Brown vs Scrooge nation - How much difference will the PM's performance at the G20 summit make to how we vote next year? - 5th April Obama tries to halt a ticking time-bomb - The Middle East will have more bearing on whether his presidency is accounted a success than this talking shop - 29th March Tories could take a tip from Tarzan - Cameron could do a lot worse than seek some advice from the original Tory action man - 22nd March Our schools need a tough reformer - Can Ed Balls make a difference, or is his department just a staging post on the way to the top or the knacker's yard? - 15th March Mistake to yearn for even darker days - Forgive me for thinking that globalisation has dragged hundreds of millions out of poverty - 8th March Admit it, guys, you both got it wrong - Alan Greenspan has re-examined his beliefs in the light of experience, but have our own parties? - 1st March Make the masters of the universe grovel - As the recession threatens to turn into a worldwide great depression, heroes are hard to find - 8th February 2009 Dirty deals bring an end to the peer show - Life really does begin at 60 if you are a member of the House of Lords - 1st February 2009 Was this the week Gordon Brown lost the election? - Blue Monday more than lived up to its billing last week - 25th January 2009 Ken Clarke returns to the Tory soap opera - When a successful American sitcom runs for a third or fourth series, inspiration often flags - 18th January 2009

News & updates: Ivens to be Sunday Times political columnist - The Guardian, 13th September 2007

Links: http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/Martin_Ivens