Blog Posts by Ian Dunt

Wikileaks is dead and Julian Assange killed it.

The Australian activist has betrayed the founding principles of the organisation he helped create. The plea for asylum in London's Ecuadorian embassy is just the latest absurdity in a saga which has overshadowed the emergence of a vital political technology.

Far from disseminating information, Assange now peddles disinformation. The most pernicious example is his claim that Swedish charges against him are part of a conspiracy to have him extradited to the United States. This claim has been bolstered by a considerable amount of nonsense about Sweden's 'feminist extremism' and the idea that the allegations against Assange would not constitute rape or sexual molestation in the UK.

Assange is accused by two women of sexual assault during a short break in Sweden in 2010. The first claims he held her down with his body weight during sex and that she was a victim of 'unlawful coercion'. The second claims that after they had protected sex one

The first thing you feel is anger. It's obvious to even casual observers that Jeremy Hunt's behaviour is completely unacceptable. And yet, as soon as he stepped down from the Leveson inquiry witness box the prime minister confirmed he would not refer his case to the independent adviser on ministerial interest or the Cabinet secretary.

If this thought makes you despair, consider this: Just a few months ago Hunt was whispered about as the man to take over the Department of Health from Andrew Lansley. He was even said to have leadership potential. Those hopes now seem laughable and quaint, like watching an old episode of Upstairs Downstairs.

Today, he had little rabbit eyes. At one point I even thought he was going to cry. He cut a nervous, even pathetic, figure as inquiry counsel Robert Jay confidently built a case against him. The golden future is not going to happen.

Political predictions make fools of us all, but I'll take a punt on Hunt surviving until the big summer reshuffle but

By Ian Dunt

I had a chat with the chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on football the other day and it revealed a simple truth: Westminster and the FA are close to getting in a fight.

He joins a long queue of people who have trouble with the FA, from Fifa to the bloke down the pub. And by that I mean literally every bloke down every pub. The reality of English football governance is this: the FA is the recognised governing bod, but it doesn't hold the purse strings. That particular quality lies with the Premier League. And the reign of the Premier League has not been as good for English football as it has for international TV viewers.  As Clive Betts, the chairman, pointed out, since the Premier League was set up our international performance — both in terms of the national team or Premier League clubs in the Champion's League — has not improved.

Westminster is slowly and grudgingly waking up to a fight with the football world. They don't want it, but it doesn't seem anyone

By Ian Dunt

Tanned, confident and wearing that same old grin, Tony Blair returned to the UK to tell Leveson about his experiences with the media today. It wasn't the most electrifying session of the inquiry, but we did learn a thing or two from the former prime minister's testimony. Here's our pick of the highlights:

Someone is definitely going to get assassinated in London

First Rupert Murdoch was attacked with foam while appearing at a select committee in parliament. Today, a man in a white shirt burst from the back of the court room and started shouting at Blair. Lord Leveson is many things, but he is not Wendi Deng and he does not have her capacity for violence. The man running the inquiry stood rather limply asking the man to leave until officials bundled him away. If this level of security is now standard it really is only a matter time before someone gets killed.

Blair was angry about the treatment of Cherie

And the newspaper he blames the most is the Daily Mail. "I don't think

By Dr Matthew Ashton

One of the great things you can do in your first year in government is endlessly pass the buck. When things go wrong you can point your finger at the previous administration and say "it was all their fault". However these opportunities slowly ebb away as time passes. For instance, after 2001 you rarely heard Tony Blair make reference to 17 years of Tory misrule, which had almost become a mantra in his first term in office.

Likewise whenever you see anyone from the current government being interviewed, it's only a matter of time before they trot out the excuse that, "we're having to clear up the mess that the previous lot left behind". That would be fine, as far as it goes, but this claim fails in two very important respects.

One is that I've yet to hear anyone from the Conservative benches give a coherent explanation of what they'd have done particularly differently that would have averted the current crisis. If you look at their spending plans, as set out in the

There was a subtle but important shift in David Cameron's political message today. For the first time, he set himself up as a war leader. It's the beginning of a new storyline, one which is connected to, but different from, the austerity message we have seen thus far.

Making a major speech on the economy, the prime minister said: "We are living in perilous economic times. Turn on the TV news and you see the return of a crisis that never really went away: Greece on the brink, the survival of the euro in question. Faced with this, I have a clear task: to keep Britain safe. Not to take the easy course - but the right course... That is why we must resist dangerous voices calling on us to retreat... It's not an alternative policy, it's a cop-out."

Cameron's speech was the first moment in a gradual moving of the goalposts. Soon, the function of the government will not be to improve economic performance, but merely to protect Britain from the eurozone crisis.

This change in narrative has five

No-one had much appetite for a fight, but they did their best to pretend.

David Cameron was already red faced when he stood up, his hair so impeccably ordered it seemed on the verge of disciplining someone. Too much gel perhaps. For his part, Miliband has grown more comfortable with the PMQs slot. Everyday, he looks more like a party leader and less like a school prefect.

The Labour leader started with Francois Hollande, the new French president whose relationship with Cameron will have been somewhat damaged by the prime minister's decision to throw his lot in with Sarkozy during the election.

"It's a shame he didn't see the French president months ago," Miliband said, "but I'm sure a text message and LOL will go down very well." The reference to Rebekah Brooks' testimony about the prime minister, and his inability to distinguish between 'lots of love' and 'laughing out loud', had clearly been prepared for in Downing Street.

"I must admit I have been overusing the mobile a bit," he

The most interesting thing about the Queen's Speech was what wasn't in it.

Firstly, gay marriage. Equalities minister Lynne Featherstone said the legislation would be in place by 2015 and the consultation is currently ongoing. But the fact it wasn't in there today suggests the government is trying hard not to upset right-wing Tory MPs and the handful of ministers who are uncomfortable with it.

There was also no movement on social care. This is a good litmus test of a government's mojo. An eager, daring government would be trying to sort out something which everyone recognises as a big problem for the country. Today the coalition just kicked it resolutely into the long grass. Similarly to before the general election - when cross-party talks fell apart and the Tories started campaigning on a Labour 'death tax' - it's not getting sorted.

On a handful of other major, mostly constitutional issues, there was just a holding pattern. We got no new details on Lords reform, just confirmation of