Politics Archives

Saturday

19 May 2012

Politics: Don’t bet on Ed Miliband to win it for the Tories

In the past few difficult months, the Cameroons have taken comfort from their belief that Ed Miliband will never be prime minister. After the local elections earlier this month, when Labour took far more Tory seats than expected, the silver lining for the government was the thought that Ed Miliband would now stay on as Labour leader until 2015. When asked to justify their conviction that Miliband will never make it to Downing Street, the Cameroons offer three reasons. First, they reckon that the public just can’t see him as PM material. Second, they expect that the next election will be fought on the economy, the area where Labour is

John Simpson

Bias, Boris and the Beeb

The Today programme ended, and John Humphrys walked out of the studio yawning and stretching. The phone was ringing in the empty programme office, and he picked it up. A spin-doctor’s foul-mouthed rant about how rotten and biased and stupid the programme had been came pouring out of it. Humphrys asked after a couple of minutes, ‘Can I just make a point?’ ‘Yes?’ said the spin-doctor warily. ‘Fuck off,’ said Humphrys, and slammed the phone down. Lord Reith wouldn’t have liked the language, but he would have approved of the instinct. And when Boris Johnson told the Daily Telegraph on Monday that the next BBC director-general ought to be a Conservative, and

Con Coughlin

The defeatists

Nato’s leadership is now united in readiness to surrender Afghanistan The leaders of the 50 or so countries attending Nato’s spectacular jamboree in Chicago this weekend will arrive knowing that they can at least agree on one issue: ending Nato’s ill-fated mission to Afghanistan at the earliest possible opportunity. Normally Nato summits have a habit of degenerating into unseemly squabbles between the 28 member states over important areas of policy. Only last year, there was an open rift among the big Nato powers over Libya, with pro-regime-change countries such as Britain and France falling foul of the more pragmatic Germans, who questioned the wisdom of removing the Gaddafi clan when

Friday

18 May 2012

James Forsyth

Merkel heads to the G8

I doubt that Angela Merkel is looking forward to the G8 summit very much. It will mostly consist of the other world leaders telling her to give ground on austerity. But I suspect that Merkel won’t budge much, if at all. She clearly believes that the Greeks can be whipped into line by telling them that the election is really a referendum on euro membership. Hence both her suggestion of a simultaneous referendum on election-day and her backing for the European Central Bank cutting off support to Greek banks which shows that while there’s no formal mechanism for ejecting a country from the single currency there are ways of doing

Jonathan Jones

Another Mayor Johnson?

The 2012 London mayoral election may barely have finished, but already there’s speculation as to who might run — and win — in 2016. The current favourite is Boris — despite suggestions that he’ll be back in Parliament with his sights set on the Tory leadership by then. And the second favourite? It was David Lammy, the Labour MP for Tottenham who was tipped as a potential 2012 candidate and has hinted that he might be interested next time. But today he’s been overtaken — in the eyes of bookies Paddy Power at least — by another Johnson who’s hosted Have I Got News for You: Labour’s Alan Johnson. This

Jonathan Jones

Cameron offers parenting advice

The Prime Minister will be jetting off to Camp David today for the G8 summit — and his first meeting with new French President Francois Hollande. But before going, he’s been popping up on the morning show sofas to promote the government’s new initiatives to help parents. A new digital service will allow parents to sign up to receive tips on looking after their baby via emails and text messages. The government will also offer vouchers for £100-worth of parenting classes to all parents of under-fives, although at first this will just be in trial form. Announcing the schemes in Manchester yesterday, David Cameron pre-empted the attack that these are

Thursday

17 May 2012

Clarissa Tan

Eurozone v Facebook — which is the economic model of our time?

Even as our attention is gripped by a crumbling eurozone, another huge economic entity is emerging in the marketplace — Facebook, which has just upsized its number of IPO shares by a quarter before its $100 billion flotation tomorrow. Providing the crisis in Europe does not blow out into a huge political standoff (and just stays the gigantic economic mess it currently is), which entity would future historians regard as the defining business model of our age? Both the eurozone and Facebook, in a way, try to deal with the problems of geography — how to connect people from different places and cultures. But they do it in radically different

James Forsyth

Cameron can no longer laugh off Ed

The Cameroons have long taken comfort in their belief that Ed Miliband will never be Prime Minister. They have seen him as a firebreak between them and electoral defeat. Three things have driven their conviction that the Labour leader will never make it to Number 10. First, their belief that he fails the blink test: can you see him standing outside Number 10? Second, the next election will almost certainly be fought on the economy, Labour’s weakest area. Their final reason was a sense that he would never get the full support of those on the Labour side who know how to win elections. But recent events suggest that this

Jonathan Jones

Regional pay: a new coalition divide

As if Lords reform, communications surveillance powers and same-sex marriage weren’t enough, it looks like there’s another issue that’ll cause a good deal of friction between Liberal Democrat and Conservative MPs: plans for regional public sector pay bargaining. It’s something George Osborne is understandably keen on — James laid out the political and economic reasons behind it just before the Budget — but now the Lib Dems are making clear that they don’t share the Chancellor’s enthusiasm. In the Q&A after his pupil premium speech on Monday, Nick Clegg said: ‘Nothing has been decided. I feel very, very strongly, as an MP from South Yorkshire with a lot of people in

Alex Massie

Mitt Romney’s Invisibility Strategy

Joe Klein complains that the Republican nominee is being beastly to the press. Mitt Romney is clearly a candidate terrified by his own mouth. What other explanation for his campaign’s extreme efforts to prevent reporters from asking him questions? I know that there isn’t much public sympathy for journalistic whining – including my own occasional, stupid laments – about the lack of access. But Romney’s staff has clearly taken this to a new level, preventing reporters from even watching the candidate’s mini-town meeting with middle-class voters at one stop. Given how grim these events tend to be (and how repetitive life is on the campaign trail) one might think being

Alex Massie

I See No Ships

There are times when the SNP’s attempts to persuade us that there are no regrettable consequences to Scottish independence cross the line between worthy and absurd. The future of shipbuilding on the Clyde is one such case. According to the nationalists the suggestion that the Royal Navy (or what is left of it) might be less likely to place orders with Scottish yards is just the usual “scaremongering” put about by Unionist parties that want to put the frighteners on braw and brave Caledonia. Aye right. It is, of course, true that an independent Scotland might have modest shipbuilding needs. True too that the Clyde yards, if they remained open, could

James Forsyth

Cameron vents his euro frustration

David Cameron’s speech today is a sign of his frustration with the eurozone. Numbers 10 and 11 are increasingly irritated by how eurozone leaders are refusing to accept the logic of their project. What Downing Street is keen to avoid is another wasted year as Angela Merkel gears up for her reelection campaign. So, intriguingly, we see Britain throwing her weight behind Hollande’s support for project bonds. Cameron also uses the speech to again back eurobonds, which Merkel is firmly opposed to as she knows that this would mean Germany effectively standing behind everyone else’s debt. I can’t see a resolution to this crisis coming anytime soon, though. The economics

Rod Liddle

Free speech and satsumas

The government is being petitioned to get rid of Section Five of the 1986 Public Order Act, which effectively makes it a crime to be rude to anyone. David Davis is one of the MPs who is fighting for a repeal; so too, from other quarters, the Peter Tatchell Foundation, the National Secular Society and the Christian Institute. Some of you may disagree with this, but I find that Tatchell is usually on the side of the morally just. It is very hard to find people who think the law IS a good thing. As you might expect, Zoe Williams comes close, in the Guardian this morning. However, the best

Wednesday

16 May 2012

James Forsyth

The 301 Group purge the 1922 committee

The 1922 elections were not a clean sweep for the loyalist 301 Group slate, they missed out on one of the secretary position. But they have pretty much succeeded in purging the ’22 and the Backbench Business Committee of the so-called ‘wreckers’. Indeed, the only ‘wrecker’ who has survived is Bernard Jenkin who remains on the ’22 executive. But, significantly, I understand that Stewart Jackson, who spoke up in defence of Nadine Dorries at ’22 last week and was very critical of David Cameron at the weekend, came — in the words of one who has seen the actual voting numbers — ‘within a whisker’ of being elected to the

James Forsyth

Cameron gets tough with the eurozone

Today’s PMQs will be remembered for one thing, Cameron saying that the eurozone had to ‘make up or it is looking at a potential break-up’. This is a distinct hardening of the government’s line on the single currency. Cameron’s comment was particularly striking coming just days after George Osborne said that ‘open speculation’ about whether or not Greece would leave the euro was ‘doing real damage across the whole European economy’. However those close to Cameron are not resiling from the remark. Instead, I understand that we can expect more from the Prime Minister on this subject when he makes a speech on the economy tomorrow. The break-up of the

Peter Hoskin

PMQs live blog | 16 May 2012

James Forsyth

Miliband’s reshuffle isn’t necessarily to the left

Ed Miliband’s reshuffle turned out to be a rather small affair. The news out of it is that control over the policy review passes from Liam Byrne to Jon Cruddas, although Byrne continues to shadow Iain Duncan Smith. Given that Byrne is a Blairite who has been pushing for a tougher line on welfare, and that Cruddas rebelled to vote against the second reading of the welfare reform bill, some will see this as a shift to the left. But Cruddas is a more interesting thinker than that. The Blue Labour philosophy that he is an advocate of is, in many ways, a rather socially conservative view of the world.

Tuesday

15 May 2012

Clarissa Tan

Basel III and the EU’s strange desire not to compete

Greece is the centre of European attention, but as George Osborne met with other EU finance ministers today there was another issue bubbling in the background — Basel III. This had been brewing for a while and is yet one of those matters that threatened to isolate Britain from the rest of the EU (though some would argue this is a good place to be). The Chancellor this morning appears to have agreed to the Basel III accord, which stipulates the amount and quality of capital that banks are required to keep. But this was after much haggling — and an Osborne outburst where he said signing on to the

Peter Hoskin

The staring contest over Greece

Now that negotiations have broken down in Athens, and there will be another election, we face the prospect of an almighty staring contest. On one side, the Eurocracy, who will be urging Greek political parties — and particularly the left-wing coalition Syriza, which is ahead in the polls at the moment — to soften their anti-austerity stance. On the other, the Greek politicians, who might be hoping that the eurozone relents to some extent, and allows the cuts to be decelerated. The question is: who will blink first? As it stands, it’s difficult to come up with an answer. The leader of Syriza, Alexis Tsipras, is unlikely to blink over

Tim Morgan

How Britain is using spin to con the bond markets

Austerity, austerity, austerity. The A-word is cropping up everywhere at the moment, whether in France or Greece or Germany. And the UK isn’t immune from it either. If there is anything on which Britain’s political factions agree, it is the reality of fiscal austerity. Whether it’s Ed Balls banging on about ‘too far and too fast’, or the coalition saying that their programme of painful austerity is essential if the UK is to defend its triple-A ‘safe haven’ status, this is something on which our political class has reached consensus. But, as we at Tullett Prebon argued in a briefing paper yesterday (available here as a pdf), the tale