Politics

Read about the latest UK political news, views and analysis.

Thursday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Salmond on the Riots: Ned In Our Name!

The great traditions of journalistic hyperbole justify this magazine’s cover image this week (Subscribe!) but that doesn’t mean we must take it literally. “Britain” is not “ablaze” even if the riots we’ve seen in London, Birmingham and Manchester might make it seem as though the entire country is on fire. So a little perspective might be thought useful. Is the situation serious? Yes, of course it is. Is it crippling? Of course it is not. So one can see why Alex Salmond – and his allies –  have been determined to point out that these are not “UK riots” but “English riots”. In one sense this is correct. There have

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Cameron has the opportunity to lead the nation

The recall of parliament today offers David Cameron the chance to take command of the current situation. The police might have horribly mishandled the situation on the first few nights of the riots and Cameron’s government might have been caught flat-footed by them. But he now has the opportunity to build on the successful policing of the last two nights and his strong statement yesterday and lead the national response to this crisis. The mechanics of a parliamentary statement allow Cameron to set the terms of debate. He also has the huge advantage of simply being the Prime Minister. The nature of his office affords him the opportunity to speak

David Blackburn

Coalition united in restoring law, order and property

David Cameron’s convictions are best expressed in anger. Cameron exuded an air of the patrician yesterday with his righteous moral certainty. This may have made some observers squirm, but others would have seen this seething performance as the essence of leadership in crisis. Cameron is likely to sustain this tone in parliament today. He will say that there is a “sickness” in our society and set out his plan for curing the malaise. The political class has already offered the government a panoply of options to pursue, but the coalition is expected to stand by its current course of education and welfare reform; if anything, these riots confirm their necessity.

Wednesday

Peter Hoskin

Gove versus Harman

The Guardian’s Nick Watt already has a detailed and insightful post on last night’s Newsnight bout between Michael Gove and Harriet Harman. Here’s the video, so CoffeeHousers can watch it for themselves:

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Tories Should Not Be Surprised By the Riots

If a riot has a hundred causes then it’s caused by everything and anything and any all-purpose, universal explanation for it is bound to be implausible. When a 31 year old teacher is among the first people charged in the aftermath of the worst of the violence you can put away your handy explanations about youthful alienation and all the rest of it. Of course that’s doubtless a factor but it doesn’t explain why the majority of those who might be thought most likely to take to the streets did not in fact do so. Indeed, as I suggest in passing in a piece for the Daily Beast, if these

Peter Hoskin

Cameron gets forceful

So far as words matter, David Cameron has just delivered one of the most forceful statements of his political career. It contained all the anger of his address yesterday, but went much further in its diagnosis. “There are pockets of our society that are not only broken, but frankly sick,” he said, adding that, “the one word I would use to sum it up is irresponsibility.” His most memorable line was that, “It is as much a moral problem as it is a political problem.” This was the campaigning Cameron that we have glimpsed only briefly, most notably during his conference speech in 2009. Tim Montgomerie is saying that Cameron

Peter Hoskin

The politics of police cuts

Wow, that was a howitzer of a performance from Boris Johnson on the Today Progamme earlier. And all his shells were aimed at Downing St. Not only did the Mayor of London slander Cameron’s Broken Society thesis, not only did he support Diane Abbott against the jibes of Tory HQ, but he also committed the gravest act of all, given the current climate. He lined up with Labour in attacking the coalition’s police cuts. “This is not a time to think about making substantial cuts in police numbers,” said BoJo. “I think it would be a good thing if the government had another look,” he added, for emphasis.  There’s little

Tuesday

Peter Hoskin

Cameron announces that Parliament will be recalled

So far as its tone went, David Cameron’s statement just now was firm and unyielding. He did express his sympathy for the victims of the riots; the emergency services, the shopkeepers, the fearful. But the major emphasis was on bringing the culprits to book. His “clear message” for the perpetrators of this destruction was that “you will feel the full force of the law”. He preceded that by describing their actions as “criminality, pure and simple — and it has to be confronted and defeated”. There were no excuses nor prevarications, and rightly so. As for the content, it seems that the government is eager to keep this a police

Monday

Peter Hoskin

Cameron to return to London as the riots spread

There we have it: David Cameron is to return to London tonight, and chair a meeting of Cobra in the morning. There was an inevitability to the decision even earlier today, with the news that both Theresa May and Boris Johnson had curtailed their own holidays. But the fact that the riots have spread — starting in Hackney this evening, and erupting even in Birmingham — served to underline the point. It is the right decision, in any case. Cameron’s ability to control the situation may be limited, but his continued absence might only have inflamed things further. There are a lot of people scrabbling around for a grievance to

Peter Hoskin

Diamond pushes back

The question of what to do with the banks is a sore point in Westminster — and the Barclays boss Bob Diamond has just aggravated it. According to Sky’s Mark Kleinman, he suggested to a meeting of Barclays investors last week that the bank might move its headquarters away from London as a result of the Banking Commission’s proposed changes for the sector. “It’s not a question of whether Barclays wants to stay in the UK,” quoth Diamond Bob, “but whether the UK wants Barclays to be here.” In rhetorical terms, it’s a significant escalation of his previous statement, in March, that Barclays had an obligation to consider moving if

David Blackburn

Eurozone maintaining the status quo

As Pete has noted, George Osborne has been making headlines while braving rollercoasters in California. The chancellor’s view that the Eurozone must accept ‘the remorseless logic of monetary union that leads from a single currency to greater fiscal integration’ marks the moment when the British government began to campaign for a two-tier Europe, which would allow Britain to sit on the periphery of the union. No doubt a wry smile will have danced across Bill Cash’s lips, because this arrangement was first envisaged by the Maastricht rebels all those years ago.   The Eurozone, however, appears intent to remain on its current course of half measures. Francois Baroin, France’s new finance minister, rejects

Peter Hoskin

Osborne’s debt dilemma

If there’s one sentiment that defines George Osborne’s article for the Telegraph today, it’s that there is no need for us Brits to panic. The economic convulsions of the past few days, contends the Chancellor, serve to prove that the coalition was right to approach deficit reduction as it has. “The alternative of more spending and yet more borrowing is now frankly ludicrous,” he says, “and places those who advocate it on the outer fringes of the international debate.” He has a point. As I blogged on Saturday, there are reasons to believe that we’d be hurtling towards a credit downgrade and higher borrowing costs were it not for the

Peter Hoskin

The politics of our discontent

Even by the normal standards of Monday mornings, this one reeks. Just sniff around you. That burning smell, it’s either coming from the global stock markets as they strain against the US downgrade, or from those places in London where the rioting spread last night. Although the destruction in Brixton, Enfield, Walthamstow and Waltham Forest didn’t match up to that on Saturday in Tottenham, it still involved fires, missiles and clashes between rioters and the police. Reading the reports and watching the footage online, looting appears to have been one of the most popular sports of the evening. In terms of the short-term politics — as opposed to the slightly

Sunday

Peter Hoskin

Voters back the death penalty in polls — but will they petition for it?

Really, I expected a tidal rush of new opinion polls on the death penalty after Guido launched his campaign for its restoration last week — but, strangely, that hasn’t happened yet. There is one poll today, though, by Survation for the Mail on Sunday. It suggests that 53 per cent of people support the death penalty being reintroduced for “certain crimes”, against 34 per cent who don’t. So far as the supplementary findings go, the death penalty is more popular among older people and among Tory and UKIP voters. Almost half of all respondents believe that serious crimes would decline were the penalty reintroduced. And the three crimes deemed most

Martin Bright

The coalition can’t ignore the Tottenham riots

As the early 1980s is recreated before our eyes, we now have a fully-fledged retro riot. Various Conservative commentators have been tweeting and blogging away about this today, including Nile Gardiner on the Telegraph blog and Iain Dale. They are right to warn against a knee-jerk reaction to the situation in Tottenham today. Clearly these riots were not caused by Tory cuts, which have only just begun to bite on the ground. There is certainly an argument that many of the cuts in services in Haringey are the result of mismanagement by a notoriously dysfunctional Labour council. But David Cameron needs to show some leadership here. Having admitted that there

Saturday

Jonathan Jones

Why Obama is still odds on for re-election — just

A credit downgrade, unemployment at 9.1 per cent, spluttering growth — the economic cards are certainly stacked against Obama for his re-election in 2012. But here’s the thing: American punters still think that he’s more likely to win next November than not. Perhaps that’s because, contrary to Clinton’s famous slogan, it’s not actually all about the economy. According to Nate Silver’s analysis of the last 25 presidential elections, a better rule of thumb is “it’s half the economy and half everything else, stupid”. So if Obama’s losing the first half, what about the “everything else”? The proportion of Americans telling Gallup they approve of Obama’s performance hit a new low

Christopher Caldwell

America’s overdue financial crisis

When Congress went into deadlock on the debt ceiling, it was the culmination of years of bitterness and complacency – and there is worse to come Washington DC It’s obvious to me why the United States found itself so deep in debt that only an ugly compromise — rushed through Congress on Tuesday and Wednesday — could save it from failing to pay its bills for the first time in its history. The country is in the middle of a moral crisis. So often have Americans heard the tale of their forebears’ self-reliance and genius for political accommodation that they have grown complacent. If the crisis is new, the danger

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

The Chilcot inquiry is too early to really savage Tony Blair

The Chilcot inquiry is too early to really savage Tony Blair Apparently Sir John Chilcot is likely to be ‘critical’ of Tony Blair in his long-awaited report into the Iraq war. We know this, or think we know it, because the Mail on Sunday has told us as much, in some detail. How does the Mail on Sunday know? It is odd of the committee to leak its findings, but I suppose that must be what has happened. Perhaps they are gripped by committee-envy, annoyed that other investigative committees have recently stolen their thunder and prominence, and wish to set up some advance publicity for the publication of the report.

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

My painter uncle had his wife’s support. He needed Brian Sewell’s criticism

I have spent a day committing to oblivion by far the greater part of a man’s whole life’s work. I have spent a day committing to oblivion by far the greater part of a man’s whole life’s work. Let me start this story at the beginning. Donald Young, my uncle, died 21 years ago. Lung cancer killed him at 66, an age he was lucky to reach, given the pipe he had puffed at almost continuously since he was a teenager. The only other thing he had done continually since youth was paint. A working-class boy with a bad stammer, he had taken a scholarship to study at the Slade