Politics Archives

Tuesday

4 Dec 2012

Autumn Statement: Downgrades R Us

How much trouble is George Osborne in? We don’t need to wait until his mini-Budget tomorrow, we already know most of it. And we’ll enter that peculiar Budget game, where the already-known is restated and treated like news. CoffeeHousers might like to get ahead of the curve. Growth evaporating The Office for Budget Responsibility will have to follow the other economic forecasters and downgrade its growth forecasts for 2012 and 2013 (again). The Treasury collects independent forecasts monthly, and here’s how the picture has deteriorated since March: Although the OBR significantly downgraded its forecasts for 2012 and 2013 last year, it hasn’t ever done so for its longer-term forecasts for

Isabel Hardman

Exclusive: Senior Lib Dems push for changes to secret courts bill

Senior Lib Dem MPs are deeply concerned about the government’s plans for secret courts, and will urge the government to accept changes made to the legislation in the House of Lords, I understand. The Justice and Security Bill will have its second reading in the House of Commons in the next few weeks, fresh from a series of embarrassing defeats on the secret courts measures in the House of Lords. Ken Clarke has said that some of the amendments brought in the upper chamber will need modifying at the very least. But the Liberal Democrat grassroots have been lobbying their parliamentarians to drop the Bill entirely ever since their conference

Douglas Murray

Why are Conservative MPs so intent on wrecking our countryside?

Last week we had Nick Boles extolling the virtues of concreting over what green space we still have in order to tackle an alleged housing shortage. And now, in today’s FT, we have Conservative ‘Climate Change Minister’ Greg Barker claiming that wind farms are not merely ‘wonderful’ and ‘majestic’ but so much so that those near his Sussex constituency have become a ‘tourist attraction.’ What an extraordinary vision of the Conservative future he summons up. Has Mr Barker ever considered, among other things, the law of diminishing returns? I suppose it is possible that someone might get in their car once in order to gawk at the despoliation of our

Isabel Hardman

Autumn Statement: Michael Gove becomes the poster boy for Whitehall cuts

George Osborne briefed the Cabinet this morning on tomorrow’s Autumn Statement, giving ministers some good news and some bad news. The good news is that he is launching £5 billion of extra capital spending spread over three years as part of the fiscally neutral package tomorrow. That package will fund new schools, science and transport schemes, the Prime Minister’s official spokesman said this morning. He told journalists: ‘The Chancellor and the Chief Secretary have told Cabinet that they will announce at Autumn Statement over £5bn of capital investment to invest in the economy and equip Britain for the global race.’ But the bad news is that this money has to

Alex Massie

Nicola Sturgeon is ready for her close-up – Spectator Blogs

In the rabid hamster-eating-hamster world of Scottish politics Nicola Sturgeon is a rarity: a politician of obvious competence who’s respected by her peers regardless of their own political allegiances. There are not so many folk at Holyrood of whom that could be said. The Deputy First Minister is not a flashy politician but she’s quietly become almost as important to the SNP as Alex Salmond. This, according to one sagacious owl, makes her one of the ten most interesting politicians in Britain. Hard though it is to imagine this, there are voters immune to the First Minister’s charms. Part of Nicola’s remit is to reach those parts of Scotland that

Isabel Hardman

Osborne to back fracking and 30 new gas power stations

Coalition tensions over energy won’t relax with George Osborne’s gas strategy, which he will launch alongside the Autumn Statement tomorrow. The Financial Times reports that the Chancellor’s strategy will approve as many as 30 gas-fired power stations and – in a move that will delight those in his own party – a regulatory regime for shale gas exploitation. Fraser extolled the virtues of shale gas in his Telegraph column in September, describing it as ‘the greatest single opportunity’ facing the government, with the potential to transform energy supply. But Energy Secretary Ed Davey is less enthusiastic, arguing in May that Tory support for shale gas exploitation – known as fracking

Monday

3 Dec 2012

Fraser Nelson

Jim Dowd MP vs The Spectator (“The type of people we’re dealing with”)

Our honourable members have been busy denouncing the press in the House of Commons. The debate is still going on, but The Spectator has just had an honourable mention from Jim Dowd who read out our latest leading article (PDF here) to MPs. “The idea that you can trust the press is a strange one,” he starts. Here’s his little outburst:- listen to ‘Jim Dowd denounces The Spectator’ on Audioboo

Isabel Hardman

Theresa May upsets the Lib Dems and David Davis in one fell swoop

Theresa May has upset quite a few people from across the political spectrum with her comments in the Sun today about the Communications Data Bill. The Home Secretary told the newspaper: ‘The people who say they’re against this bill need to look victims of serious crime, terrorism and child sex offences in the eye and tell them why they’re not prepared to give police the powers they need to protect the public. Anybody who is against this bill is putting politics before people’s lives.’ This irritated David Davis sufficiently for the Tory backbencher to raise May’s comments as a point of order in the House of Commons this afternoon. Davis,

James Forsyth

Does the South East need its own party?

Kelvin MacKenzie wants a British version of the Italy’s Northern League. His aim is to have a Southern Party that would push for home rule for London and the South East and oppose fiscal transfers from the South East to the rest of the country. The piece is classic MacKenzie polemic. But it does speak to the growing regionalisation of British politics, a subject that Neil O’Brien addressed for us in his final piece before becoming an adviser to George Osborne. Outside of London, Labour only have four MPs in the South East and in the European elections, Labour came fifth in the region — behind even the Greens. For

Alex Massie

Ed Miliband’s Leveson response shows his weakness: he’s a follower, not a leader. – Spectator Blogs

The biggest risk in punditry is the determination to see what you want to see. Confirmation bias is an ever-present clear and present danger to solid thinking. Nevertheless, though keeping this in mind, I wonder if Ed Miliband’s reaction to the Leveson Report has been wise, far less a response that will help him win the next election. By “wise” I mean wise in a purely political sense, not “wise” as in appropriate, sensible or well-judged. The Labour leader’s demand that Leveson’s recommendations be implemented is, in its way, remarkable. This, after all, is a 2,000 page report published in four volumes. And yet within this mountain of ponderous, muddle-headed

Isabel Hardman

Aide to Europe minister calls for Parliament to beef up its engagement with EU

Another day, another paper by a Tory MP about Britain’s relationship with Europe. Except the latest paper, by Tobias Ellwood for think tank Open Europe, is actually not so much about what’s wrong with Europe, but about what’s wrong with how our Parliament in Westminster deals with the whole issue. Ellwood, who is PPS to Europe Minister David Lidington, doesn’t believe Westminster politicians are actually very good at engaging with European Union policymaking, preferring instead a ‘complain-but-don’t-change’ approach. He paints a discomfiting picture of the way MPs relate to Brussels, describing an alienation which leads to ‘little appetite amongst MPs to understand fully how the EU actually works – and

Steerpike

The end is neigh: even Jilly Cooper has dumped Dave

It has been a rough few days for David Cameron. First he was drubbed at the polls in last week’s by-elections. Then little Alan Titchmarsh said that the Tory party had lost its roots in the countryside (and we know what happens to trees which lose their roots). And now I must be the bearer of even more bad news for young Dave, bad news from a once ardent Tory supporter: Jilly Cooper. As the cognac flowed at the 56th Hennessy Gold Cup on Saturday afternoon, Cooper told me that she is very disappointed with this government and declared that the Conservative Party is ‘full of terrible people now.’ The same event

Isabel Hardman

Pressure on the editors as Labour threatens own Leveson bill

One of the foundations on which David Cameron based his decision to reject statutory underpinning of press regulation was that editors would set up a new system based on Lord Justice Leveson’s recommendations which would prove far tougher than the Press Complaints Commission. The failure of the industry to reach consensus on a new body – and this is a real risk given the refusal of some publications to join the PCC – would pull the rug from under the Prime Minister’s feet as he fights critics pushing for statute. Cameron is also facing claims that he is bowing to bullies in the press, and it is for these two

Sunday

2 Dec 2012

James Forsyth

The prisoner voting farce makes the case for Britain leaving the jurisdiction of the Strasbourg Court

It is hard to watch Chris Grayling’s interview with Andrew Neil on BBC1’s Sunday Politics and not conclude that Britain’s relationship with the European Court of Human Rights needs changing. The Justice Secretary effectively concedes that he can’t, as Lord Chancellor, vote to maintain the ban on prisoners voting. But ‘Parliament has the right to overrule the European Court of Human Rights.’ So we’re not stuck, Britain can do what it likes. Or, more accurately, what Parliament votes for. It looks likely that we’ll end up with Parliament resolving to uphold the ban on prisoner voting, but with the Secretary of State – as Lord Chancellor – obliged to sit

Fraser Nelson

What shall we do with the drunken British?

Being in government has forced the Liberal Democrats to decide whether they are liberal in the British sense of the word, or in the American, statist sense. Nick Clegg leans towards the latter, which is why he wants the state to regulate of the press. But Jeremy Browne, the Home Office minister, is emerging as a genuine Manchester-style liberal. In the Mail on Sunday today, he has come out against the illiberal strategy for the minimum pricing of alcohol. He can’t speak himself, but ‘friends of Mr Browne’ have this to say: ‘Jeremy’s view is that the thug who has downed nine cans of lager is hardly going to think,

Saturday

1 Dec 2012

Isabel Hardman

Nick Clegg is changing the way the government works

Say what you will about Nick Clegg’s decision to take a different stance from the Prime Minister on Leveson, but the Deputy Prime Minister has this week effected another big change to the way Westminster government works. He has sent party members an email today explaining why he felt it was necessary to make a separate statement to David Cameron in the Commons on Thursday. The Lib Dem leader writes: As you may have picked up, the Prime Minister and I disagreed; there is not yet an agreed ‘government line’. That’s in part why we had to make separate statements – a major departure from Parliamentary protocol, apparently. I’m often

James Forsyth

What would Thatcher do if she was in power now?

It is testament to Margaret Thatcher’s remarkable influence on British politics that 33 years after she won her first general election victory she still has such a hold on our political discourse. One of the things that the Tory party needs to do is understand both why Thatcher was so successful and how she changed Britain. In an interview with The Spectator this week, Elizabeth Truss, the new education minister who proudly describes herself as a ‘bit of a Thatcherite’, offers an interesting take on the question. Truss argues that ‘what Mrs Thatcher did in the 80s was unleash a lot of forces by things like freeing up credit; getting

Friday

30 Nov 2012

Isabel Hardman

Tory MP attacks Cameron for allowing party to become ’emaciated’

Brian Binley is fond of giving journalists new ideas for illustrations featuring David Cameron’s head superimposed onto a new and unusual get-up: his ‘chambermaid‘ allusion caused quite a stir back in August. Today he’s written another one of his angry blog posts, which takes his criticism of the Prime Minister on a little further. Today the Prime Minister is a caretaker, apparently, and one who isn’t taking great care of his party. Binley describes the Conservative party as being ‘in a very sorry state’, and launches an attack on Cameron for setting his face against his own party. He writes: Having been our leader for the last seven years, David

Douglas Murray

Is voting Lib Dem just a state of mind?

‘UKIP is not a party but a state of mind’ wrote the usually excellent Matthew d’Ancona in a remarkably sniffy column a couple of days back. Now, given that UKIP became the second party in the Middlesborough and Rotherham by-elections, perhaps some people will have to consider that the UKIP state of mind is rather closer to that of many British people than that of certain mainstream political parties? After all, yesterday the Liberal Democrats managed to record what is now being anointed the worst ever by-election result by a major political party. The Liberal Democrats managed to poll behind the Respect party, the British National Party and the English

The Spectator

Inside the mind of George Osborne’s newest adviser

Neil O’Brien’s appointment as a new special adviser for George Osborne has gone down very well in the Westminster bubble, partly because of the Policy Exchange director’s ability to look beyond that bubble. He has written a number of times for the Spectator, and as an insight into the man who will be advising the Chancellor, here are some of his key pieces: In this week’s magazine, O’Brien points to the North’s growing detachment from Westminster, with ‘an almighty 83 per cent of northern voters’ believing that politicians do not understand the real world. He writes: ‘Westminster politicians have repeatedly promised to close the North-South gap, but failed because they