Matthew Norman

Press Awards Columnist of the Year 2008, the political commentator Matthew Norman also writes The Independent’s media diary.

Matthew Norman: Brothers at war – it's a Jewish thing

In challenging a natural order of things stretching back to their Hampstead bunk beds, Ed shows the appetite for conflict that is an essential quality in an Opposition leader

Recently by Matthew Norman

Matthew Norman: Poor Clegg. Damned if he did...

Wednesday, 12 May 2010

From the moment that exit poll proved anything but a rogue, the Lib Dem leader was lost because every option was unremittingly horrendous

Matthew Norman: We had our chance, and we blew it

Saturday, 8 May 2010

We have been every bit as smug and apathetic as the politicians

Matthew Norman: Soon, Gordon, the torment will be over

Wednesday, 5 May 2010

The Prime Minister has been as complex and compelling a psychological study as any politician in my lifetime

Matthew Norman: Will Blinky consign Labour to history?

Wednesday, 28 April 2010

If Ed Balls has a political philosophy, it is the domineering, top-down, we-know-best infantilising statism of Gordon himself

Matthew Norman: Come on Dave, don't be chicken

Thursday, 22 April 2010

This wondrously unpredictable election campaign has its first incontestable winner. I refer to the Daily Mirror and its deployment of the young man who puts David Schilling's more outr� Ladies' Day titfers in the shade by following David Cameron while wearing a fluffy chicken head as a hat. Before we go on, some good news. The tripartite Vulcan mind meld conjoining Ed Balls, Charlie Whelan and Mirror political supremo Kevin Maguire into the one mental entity is holding. That resolved, back to the chicken. What most impresses about using poultry to highlight alleged cowardice is the originality. Pedants might point out that the tactic has been tried before, but who remembers the Tories doing it to Mr Tony Blair in 1997? The record book shows how spiffingly that panned out, so small wonder Mr Whelan-Balls-Maguire hunted out such an encouraging precedent. If the chicken provided Mr Cameron with one of his better moments, when on Tuesday he joshed with it in as endearing a fashion as tightly gritted teeth allowed, that's not how the Mirror chose to report it on yesterday's front page. But it is excused the confusion on a news day so frantic that only one tiny paragraph could be spared to gloss over Labour's abysmal showing in every poll published the previous evening. The key thing when facing brutal humiliation, the Mirror reminds us, is retaining professional self-respect. This enables a newspaper to bounce back quickly, live long and prosper.