Politics Archives

Sunday

11 Nov 2012

Harman: I cannot vouch for the strength of Tom Watson’s evidence

Tom Watson’s Twitter feed has gone a bit quiet recently. Strange, as he is normally quite vocal about media ethics and their failings. But his silence is well-judged: when he stood up in PMQs and referred to a ‘a powerful pedophile network linked to Parliament and Number 10’ and referred to ‘senior aide of a former Prime Minister’ he started a massive and tawdry guessing game, just as the Newsnight investigation did. And was his evidence any stronger? Harriet Harman has just been asked on BBC Sunday Politics, and she didn’t know. For those who missed it, here’s Watson’s PMQs intervention: listen to ‘Tom Watson’s allegations in PMQs’ on Audioboo

George Eustice

True Tories want a press that is free but accountable

Is the idea of any form of statute relating to the press inimical to liberty and therefore incompatible with Conservative belief? Fraser Nelson argues that it is but it is time for Conservatives to think again and for journalists to reassess who is really on their side in this debate. People elect Conservative Prime Ministers to sort things out. They expect us to take difficult decisions and to confront unaccountable power along the way. The unavoidable truth is that there is unaccountable power vested in the hands of newspaper editors and proprietors which has contributed to the current crisis in journalism. Why do wealthy individuals want to own newspapers? They

Saturday

10 Nov 2012

James Forsyth

BBC in turmoil as George Entwistle quits as director-general

After his Today Programme interview this morning, it seemed almost inevitable that George Entwistle would have to resign as director general of the BBC and this evening, in a dignified statement, he has. I suspect that Entwistle’s won’t be the last resignation before this saga ends. Chris Patten, the chairman of the BBC Trust, appears on the Andrew Marr show this morning and he will have to show grip. The time is fast approaching when Patten will have to pick between his BBC job and his various other roles, including being Chancellor of Oxford.

Fraser Nelson

Now that George Entwistle has quit, the BBC needs an outsider

After just 54 days in the job, George Entwistle has quit as BBC director general. In a career-ending interview with John Humphrys this morning, Entwistle admitted that he didn’t know in advance about, or even watch, the Newsnight investigation which which led to Lord McAlpine being falsely named as a child abuser. Nor did he read Friday’s newspapers which revealed the Newsnight claims were false. (“Do you not read papers?’ asked Humphrys. “Do you not listen to the output?”). Here’s the full car-crash interview:- listen to ‘ Entwistle: I am doing everything I can’ on Audioboo And the resignation text:- “In the light of the fact that the Director-General is

James Forsyth

Waiting for Leveson

One issue that is in the background of nearly every political conversation at the moment is the Leveson Inquiry and how David Cameron will respond to its recommendations when it reports in the next few weeks. What Cameron does will do a lot to shape the political and media mood between now and the next election. Cameron is keen not to be seen to pre-judge the matter, hence his warning to Tory Cabinet Ministers recently to watch what they say about it, and is playing his cards close to his chest. But those close to him are well aware that there’s a danger that Miliband and Clegg—who have The Independent

Rod Liddle

The end of the road for Newsnight?

Oddly enough, re the latest Newsnight/BBC debacle, Esther Rantzen got it right. She was talking on Newsnight. She made the point that her old programme That’s Life regularly did investigative stuff, but that there was always a lawyer involved, all the way along, right from the off. Absolutely. I did the same thing at the Today programme – when both Andrew Gilligan and Angus Stickler were on my books and we did an investigative piece at least once a week. No question: the reporter would be told what he needed to get to stand the story up at the commissioning point. There would usually be a lawyer in then. Then

Friday

9 Nov 2012

Douglas Murray

The complexity of the war on free speech

Free speech in Britain is being pulled in two completely opposite directions. On the one hand, thanks to the increasingly tortuous mission-creep that is the Leveson Inquiry, there are a range of demands for greater regulation of the print press. Today’s rather surprising letter to the Guardian by various Conservative MPs is an example of some thinking on this. What is odd is that this should happen at exactly the same moment when the internet is pulling us in an opposite direction. It is all very well to come up with ever more labyrinthine ways in which to keep the print-media in line, but this increasingly looks like advocating temperance

Isabel Hardman

‘Cameron will not turn back’: EU budget summit under threat

Will David Cameron be denied his veto moment after all? Brussels sources appear to think the European Union budget summit on 22 and 23 November could still be cancelled. A report from Italian wire service ANSA quotes one source saying ‘everything indicates that it will be impossible to overcome the British veto’ and that cancelling the summit remains an option. This follows reports recently that Angela Merkel was threatening to cancel the summit as it was pointless if Britain was going to veto any increase above one in line with inflation. The German Chancellor had a lengthy dinner with Cameron to discuss the summit on Wednesday night, but their talks

Isabel Hardman

Rob Wilson attacks Tom Watson on child abuse claims

After Lord McAlpine’s statement this morning about the allegations and rumours of child abuse surrounding the Tory peer and other figures, Tory MP Rob Wilson has gone on the warpath and written a stern letter to Tom Watson, who first raised the possibility of a paedophile ring linked to Number 10. Wilson doesn’t hold back in the letter, which you can read in full here: ‘MPs can and do play a vital role in bringing such matters to public attention. However, as a result of your repeated and sensationalist public claims of the involvement in abuse of a ‘senior aide of a former Prime Minister’, ‘a former cabinet minister’, and

Fraser Nelson

George ‘Masterchef’ Osborne spices up the accounts

Fresh from his success nationalising the Post Office pension, which artificially knocked £23 billion off the national debt, the Chancellor has come up with another manoeuvre which effectively adds £35bn to the total of QE – and analysts think this just save him from having to tear up his fiscal rule in next month’s mini-Budget. CoffeeHousers may remember that two years ago, Osborne said that the debt-to-GDP ratio would be falling by 2015/16. But the outlook between his first budget and his last one has deteriorated rapidly. But help may be at hand. There is a lot of spare cash from debt interest hanging about in the Asset Purchase Facility: the

Jonathan Jones

Briefing: The US fiscal cliff

With the elections over and Barack Obama returned to the White House for four more years, the attention of US politicians has turned to the so-called ‘fiscal cliff’ — a collection of tax hikes and spending cuts that threaten to send the country back into recession. But what exactly is going on, and why? The Bush tax cuts George W Bush passed two major tax cut packages during the first term of his Presidency: the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 and the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003. Together, they lowered federal tax rates on income (for example, the top rate fell from

Isabel Hardman

How will Tory whips respond to Ed Balls’ audacious petrol vote?

Ed Balls has secured a debate for next week calling for the government to postpone for a second time the 3p rise in fuel duty that is due this January. It’s a pretty shameless move by the Shadow Chancellor, given these rises are ones that Labour instituted in 2009 and 2010. But he clearly believes that it is worth a little bit of political positioning similar to his chutzpah on the EU budget. In an article for PoliticsHome, Balls tries to address the rather awkward point about his own party’s policy on fuel duty rises, writing: ‘Of course difficult decisions are needed to get the deficit down. That’s why Labour

Isabel Hardman

Lord McAlpine: Abuse allegations ‘wholly false and seriously defamatory’

Lord McAlpine has broken cover this morning after the Guardian named him in its story claiming the peer is a victim of mistaken identity in the swirling allegations about a Tory paedophile. He has released a lengthy statement, which you can read here, denying the ‘wholly false and seriously defamatory’ claims, and adding that he never visited the children’s home where the abuse is alleged to have taken place: ‘The facts are, however, that I have been to Wrexham only once. I visited the local Constituency Conservative Association in my capacity as Deputy Chairman. I was accompanied on this trip, at all times, by Stuart Newman, a Central Office Agent.

Fraser Nelson

Tory MPs vs free press

How strong is the Conservative commitment to liberty? Today’s Guardian front page holds the answer. A long line of Tory MPs have written to the newspaper, calling for the Prime Minister to seize a ‘once-in-a-generation’ opportunity to regulate the press. It is surprising as it contains several of the names I would had put down as friends of liberty. Jesse Norman, Andrea Leadsom and Nadhim Zahawi are the last people you’d expect to be writing to the Guardian demanding state action against the newspapers. The Guardian says that the signatories hope to make a ‘cross-party consensus’ is possible. I bet they do. Politicians have always wanted to get some kind

Thursday

8 Nov 2012

Peter Jones

Hesiod on work and welfare

Job, jobs, jobs: no political party can talk of much else. But the concept of the ‘job’ and the ‘wage’ emerges out of the Industrial Revolution. What of worlds where ‘jobs’ did not exist? The Greek didactic poet Hesiod (c. 680 BC) has a most instructive take on the matter. Hesiod was a peasant farmer, i.e. he farmed land primarily for survival, as a way of life, not as a business to make a profit. In his rather rambling Works and Days, Hesiod describes how his wretched brother Perses bribed his way into getting a larger share of a disputed inheritance than he did, but (presumably) wasted it and now lives in

Sebastian Payne

Spectator debate: No ifs. No buts. Heathrow must have a third run way

David Cameron knows that a third runway at Heathrow would be one of the most controversial and significant outcomes of his premiership, which is why he has kicked the decision into the long grass with the Davies Review. Thanks to ever spiralling passenger numbers and the bulging state of our existing airports, both London and the South East desperately need a plan to provide more air capacity. We’ve examined the numerous options on Coffee House but most immediate solution — to expand Heathrow — continues to find itself at top of the pile. The Spectator has therefore decided to instigate the debate the government continues to avoid: is expanding Heathrow the answer? I’m delighted to announce that

Jonathan Jones

The Democrats won more than just the Presidency on Tuesday night

The focus, of course, is on President Barack Obama’s resounding re-election — but there are plenty of other reasons why Democrats are celebrating Tuesday night’s results. In the summer, it looked like Obama’s party would struggle to maintain their Senate majority. Instead, they have extended it. Embattled incumbents held on in tight races in Missouri, Montana and Ohio. The Democrats also retained vulnerable seats in New Mexico, North Dakota, Virginia and Wisconsin despite the incumbents having retired. And they took seats off the Republicans in Indiana and Massachusetts, to take their total up to 54 Senators — and it could rise to 55 if newly-elected independent Angus King decides to

James Forsyth

Nick Boles: Where the Tories were wrong on modernisation

Few people have been more important to Tory modernisation than Nick Boles. He co-founded Policy Exchange, the think tank that has developed most of its policy ideas, and has been a tireless—and tieless—advocate of it. But one of the things that has always marked Boles out is his willingness to think and reflect. In an interview with The Spectator this week, Boles — who was promoted to the government in the last reshuffle — assesses what he and his fellow modernisers got right and wrong. He concedes that the modernisers lacked ‘a strong, economic message’ and that they became too carried away with ‘media zeitgeist’ issues like ‘chocolate oranges in

James Forsyth

The danger of the This Morning ‘paedophile list’

The Prime Minister goes on a mid-morning talk show and is forced to respond to a list of alleged paedophiles that the presenter has taken off the internet. If you put this in a political satire, it would be dismissed as far-fetched. But that is what happened when David Cameron went on This Morning. No-one is disputing the seriousness of the allegations involved. But does anyone really believe that the best way to uncover the truth is for the Prime Minister to be handed a list of names that a TV presenter has taken off the internet? Another concern about the coverage of this scandal is the terms that are

Isabel Hardman

Andrew Mitchell: ‘Rogue minister’ claims on Rwanda aid ‘offensive’

Andrew Mitchell emerged from his post-resignation exile on the backbenches this morning to defend his decision to sign off on a £16 million aid cheque to Rwanda on his last day in the International Development department. The former chief whip was summoned before the International Development select committee, where he described as ‘offensive’ the suggestion that he acted as a ‘rogue minister’ in funding development in the country. Mitchell told the committee that Britain’s aid programme to Rwanda had been suspended because of concerns that its president Paul Kagame was funding rebel group M23 in the country’s neighbour, the Democratic Republic of Congo. He said the Prime Minister had asked