The Coffee House | Politics and News Discussion Forum

Osborne defends 'rewards for success'

James Forsyth — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 21:02:22 +0000

George Osborne’s speech to the Federation of Small Businesses tonight tries to offer some reassurance that the coalition isn’t caving into the anti-business zeitgeist. Referring to the recent rows over executive pay, he deplores rewards for failure before saying ‘a strong, free market economy must be built on rewards for success. There are those who are trying to create an anti-business culture in Britain – and we have to stop them.’

How reassuring business leaders will find this remains to be seen. As Robert Peston reported yesterday there’s a lot of grumbling from]]>

Stopping Assad

Daniel Korski — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 18:52:21 +0000

The situation in Syria grows worse by the minute. President Assad seems to have taken the UN Security Council’s deadlock as carte blanche to launch an all-out attack on Homs. Russia looks like she wants to mediate, while Turkey is preparing a new initiative with countries who oppose the Syrian government, a sort of anti-Assad group. Meanwhile, the Gulf States have expelled all Syrian ambassadors.

The chances of a ceasefire are low, as are the prospects of a military intervention. Russia has an interest in persuading Assad to abdicate, but can Assad be]]>

Cameron is right to focus on quality apprenticeships

James Plunkett — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 16:22:32 +0000

If there are ‘no votes in skills’, as the old dictum goes, there seem to be some in apprenticeships. Hence David Cameron's call this morning for apprenticeships to become a ‘gold standard’ qualification ranking alongside degrees from the best universities. His goal is to rectify Britain's shockingly poor performance on mid-level skills compared to world leaders such as Germany.

So how hard would it be for us to catch the Germans? The numbers speak for themselves. Of every 1,000 employed people in England 11 are apprentices; compared to 40 in Germany.]]>

Ignore the European Court and deport Abu Qatada tonight

Douglas Murray — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 13:24:29 +0000

The Al-Qaeda preacher Abu Qatada is a Jordanian national who is in the UK illegally (having come here in 1993 on a forged United Arab Emirates passport). The headache he has caused successive UK governments looks like finally reaching a peak. But there is a simple solution to the problem he poses.

Last month, not only for the first time in the decade-long Qatada process, but for the first time ever in an extradition case, the European Court of Human Rights cited Article 6 ‘rights to fair trial’ to ensure that Abu]]>

What's Lembit up to nowadays?

Peter Hoskin — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 12:20:06 +0000

Why, this, of course:

And that's not him singing, in case you were wondering.

Hat-tip: Guido

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No-one emerges from the health reform smash-up with any credit

Richard Marsh — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 11:42:15 +0000

Andrew Lansley should be grateful for small mercies. Rachel Sylvester's column (£) today may quote a Downing Street source to the effect that ‘Lansley should be taken out and shot’, but there is yet no sign that a hundred Conservative MPs will write to the Prime Minister to say that the Health Secretary's reforms have to stop. We've had such a letter for wind farms and for Europe, but on the NHS it's not very likely. Most Tory MPs find the NHS a difficult rallying point at the best of times. And]]>

Where has the pro-EU camp gone?

Daniel Korski — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 09:21:53 +0000

Did you see that amazing article by a group of pro-EU businesspeople? What about that clever ad paid for by ‘Better To Be In’, the new pro-EU lobby group? Nope, me neither.

The reason we haven't seen anything like that is because the pro-European camp in Britain is in total disarray. Like a beaten army, it is withdrawing in a state of confusion, while some diehards stage energetic but un-strategic counterattacks against the advancing Eurosceptic forces.

A letter from pro-EU businessmen was, frankly, unimpressive: the signatories were hardly a who's]]>

Romney's continuing religious troubles

Freddy Gray — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 22:50:29 +0000

Some well-informed people — Rupert Murdoch among them — have suggested that Mitt Romney could exploit Obama’s increasingly fractious relationship with America’s Catholics to win the presidential elections in November. The so-called 'Catholic vote' is often said to be the crucial swing factor in American democracy.

Romney, however, may be facing a bigger socio-religious stumbling block than Obama's: evangelicals. They don’t like him. Mainstream Protestant Republicans in the north have plumped for Mitt, generally speaking, but he has been far less successful in the evangelical south. ‘As a county’s]]>

Cameron's coming battle over the ECHR

James Forsyth — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 19:17:14 +0000

The coming release of Abu Qatada on bail is going to put bellows under the whole debate about the European Court of Human Rights. In his recent speech to the Council of Europe, David Cameron rightly protested about a situation with terror suspects in which ‘you cannot try them, you cannot detain them and you cannot deport them.’ We will now find out how quickly Cameron is prepared to act on this issue.

If Cameron wants to makes changes to the Courts and the Convention, then he is going]]>