The Observer on the GOP primary

In addition to my appearance on Channel 4 news opposite Sascha Burns, on my recent visit to London I also met up with political reporter David Smith of The Observer, who was recently embedded with American soliders in Baghdad.

He and I chatted about the 2008 Primaries, and he is currently in New York covering the overall political scene. Smith quoted some of our various discussions in his piece on the GOP field.

"It's definitely not a healthy party, that much is clear. The root of it is that from 11 September, 2001, until now the Republican party became a George W Bush personality cult where it was follow the leader, throw principles to the wind and support the agenda, whatever it might be at any given moment.

Symptoms of that are a complete lack of leadership, complete lack of cohesion and very weak candidate line-up. If it was stronger, I think there would be more consensus on who should be the presidential nominee at this point.

The Republican party under Bush spent so much of its political capital pursuing the war that a lot of what was traditionally considered a Republican platform about fiscal conservatism - cutting the budget, looking at how to streamline entitlements like social security - just fell off the agenda. A lot of people are upset with the President over immigration as well."

Read the rest of David Smith's article. He is a quick study with whom I am keen to correspond.