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Friday 10 February 2012

Friday, 10th February 2012

Lansley's battle should've never been fought

Fraser Nelson 2:54pm

A small war has broken out over Lansley's NHS Bill — ConservativeHome has three Cabinet members attacking it. I find that shocking. At least a dozen want the Bill killed, and why ConHome found just three is beyond me. Politically, it's probably impossible for Cameron to drop it. But if it was torn up, I for one would shed no tears. For what it's worth, here's my take.

It’s depressing to think that Alan Milburn’s NHS Plan of 2000 was both more radical and more sensible than what Andrew...

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Greece needs to quit the eurozone

James Forsyth 2:05pm

The Greek people are being crucified on a cross of euros. Unemployment there is 21 per cent and rising fast and the austerity pact that its politicians have cobbled together to try and receive the next tranche of bailout cash will make things far worse. It is in the interests of the Greek people for the country to default and devalue but this, obviously, isn’t possible with Greece inside the eurozone.

There are elections in Greece in April and it is to be hoped that one of the main parties...

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Cameron should leave this terrible 'tax breaks for cleaners' idea in Sweden

Melanie McDonagh 12:33pm

There are times when you think, really, the Prime Minister should get out less. The good ideas he comes back with when he goes abroad are fine and dandy — of which, more later — but the bad ones are very bad indeed. One notion he is considering just now after attending a Nordic-Baltic summit is the Swedish/Finnish one of giving people who employ domestic help tax relief on half of the cost. On the plus side, you get more women in the workplace, by allowing them to subcontract the domestic drudgery, and you...

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Lansley's health problems are starting to look terminal

Peter Hoskin 9:14am

The discontent with Andrew Lansley's health reforms has been rising since the New Year. But, one or two threatening quotations aside, most of this has come from the government's natural opponents: Labour and the unions. That changes today. Over at ConservativeHome, Tim Montgomerie has written a post calling for the Health Bill to be dropped. It is, Tim says, ‘not just a distraction... but potentially fatal to the Conservative Party's electoral prospects.’ And he finishes: ‘It must be stopped before it's too late.’

This would be striking enough by...

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Thursday, 9th February 2012

Livingstone will get away with it, of course — because he's on the ‘left’

Douglas Murray 7:54pm

When is a homophobic comment not a homophobic comment? When it is spoken by somebody on the ‘left’ of course.

Ken Livingstone has just reminded us of a prevailing rule in British politics. His comment that the Conservative party is ‘riddled’ with homosexuals ‘like everywhere else’ would have earned him a sacking if the parties had been reversed and a Conservative politician had talked of the Labour party in this fashion. In the same way, if a Conservative had made the kind of smearing racial generalisation that Diane Abbott recently twittered, they...

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One for the Tories' manifesto in 2015

James Forsyth 6:30pm

David Cameron’s comments today that he finds a Swedish-scheme that offers tax breaks for employing domestic workers ‘very interesting’ and would ‘want to look at further’ are, predictably, being attacked by Labour. They are claiming that they are proof that he is ‘out of touch’. But it is, actually, a thoroughly sensible idea.

As I wrote back in October, the Cameroons have long been interested in the idea of trying to make childcare tax deductible. The appeal of this policy is that it would make it far more attractive for...

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Ken's gaffe and what it tells us about his campaign

Sebastian Payne 4:44pm

We now have the first major gaffe of the 2012 London Mayor race and to everyone's surprise it wasn't Boris. Ken Livingstone granted an extraordinary interview to the New Statesman, where his comments on the incumbent mayor, Margaret Thatcher and his work ethic have caused a decent stir. However, it is the thoughts on homosexuality in the Conservative Party - 'the Tory party was riddled with it like everywhere else is' - that have prompted outrage. He was claiming hypocrisy, but instead came off bitter and twisted.

The pro-Boris politicos are delighted...

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Cameron's quotas: a policy or a threat?

Peter Hoskin 3:27pm

We've heard enough about David Cameron's woman troubles to regard anything he says about the fairer sex as a naked pitch for votes. But I reckon his comments today, about getting more women into boardrooms, are just as much motivated by concerns about the economy. ‘The drive for more women in business is not simply about equal opportunity, it's about effectiveness,’ is how he put it earlier, ‘It's about quality, not just equality.’

It's a claim that reflects both the thinking of Masters of Nothing — a book...

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Making a call on Qatada

Daniel Korski 1:33pm

The Prime Minister, we are told, has been trying to reach the King of Jordan to see if some kind of arrangement can be made so that Abu Qatada can be deported legally and that no forms of torture-gained evidence will used against him in a Jordanian court. This seems like a sensible thing to do. But it is important that the government balances its counter-terrorism policy with its foreign policy.

Here is what I mean. Jordan is a friend of Britain, but the King is under tremendous pressure to reform....