Politics Archives

Tuesday

20 Mar 2012

Ken launches his negative campaign

A dark, damp and freezing cellar beneath Waterloo station isn’t an obvious choice for launching a political campaign — but that’s where Team Ken officially kicked off their Mayoral bid last night. Various prominent lefties were brought into the Old Vic Tunnels to warm up for the man himself. Eddie Izzard was also present to fill in the gaps and keep everyone engaged until the bar opened. Most of the policies discussed have already been made public, but there were a few new, colourful additions. Ken pointed out that Transport for London purchases energy at half the normal price, so why don’t they buy more and sell it back to ordinary

Rod Liddle

Ken and the Prophet

Fabulous stuff from Ken Livingstone, as reported in the Daily Telegraph. Labour’s mayoral candidate wishes to make London a ‘beacon for Islam’. He was speaking at the Finsbury Park mosque, once the redoubt of Islamist mentalists. According to Andrew Gilligan’s report, the idiot also pledged to ‘educate the mass of Londoners’ in Islam, saying: ‘That will help to cement our city as a beacon that demonstrates the meaning of the words of the Prophet.’ Mr Livingstone described Mohammed’s words in his last sermon as ‘an agenda for all humanity’. He praised the Prophet’s last sermon, telling his audience: ‘I want to spend the next four years making sure that every

Peter Hoskin

Tax transparency is a triumph for Osborne

Transparency marches on, and what a joy it is. According to the newspapers today, George Osborne will tomorrow turn Ben Gummer MP’s call for tax transparency into government policy. And so we will all get statements detailing just what our tax pounds are spent on. To use the example being bandied around this morning, a £50,000 earner will learn that they contribute £4,727 towards welfare payments. As James put it at the weekend, George Osborne tends to have both economic and political motives behind his actions — and the two are present, if almost indivisible, here. No doubt the Chancellor hopes that taxpayers, on seeing where their hard-earned ends up,

Monday

19 Mar 2012

James Forsyth

The coalition needs to get a move on

David Cameron’s speech today says all the right things about infrastructure. But the test will be whether Cameron forces these changes through the system. Already, the planning reforms have been held up by a lengthy consultation. The government will respond to this consultation this week. But that won’t be the end of the matter. For even after the government has set its plans before parliament, there’ll be a ‘transition’ period between the old rules and the new ones. All of which is a reminder that if Britain, and especially the capital, is going to get the extra airport capacity it so desperately needs, then decisions will have to

The Spectator

Just in case you missed them… | 19 March 2012

…here are some posts made on Spectator.co.uk over the weekend: Fraser Nelson provides an insight into the man behind the Budget and asks if Lansley’s time is finally running out. James Forsyth examines Osborne’s logic behind local pay rates and reports on Downing St’s plans to boost construction. Peter Hoskin asks why Balls attacked Brown and looks into Osborne’s appeal to Britain’s grafters. Martin Bright is delighted that Wales won the Grand Slam. Rod Liddle believes that, with Rowan Williams going, it’s time for Sentamu. On the Book Blog, Jacob Rees-Mogg is this week’s bookbencher. And on the Arts Blog, Tessa Marchington explains why your office should start a choir.

Peter Hoskin

Where will Cameron’s road proposal take us?

Are we facing ‘toll road UK’, as the Mirror suggests this morning? That is certainly a possibility arising from David Cameron’s plan to allow private firms to bid for chunks of Britain’s motorway system — but I wouldn’t get too excited just yet. It’s a very distant possibility at the moment. After all, just note the details of the story. The routes that the coalition has in mind are very significant ones, but they still add up to only 3 per cent of the national network — ‘toll road UK’ may be pushing it. And then there’s the fact that nothing has been entirely decided yet. We’re told that, ‘The

Sunday

18 Mar 2012

Fraser Nelson

Taleb in 30 minutes

Nassim Taleb, the Lebanese-American academic whom we interviewed in The Spectator last month, is the subject of a Radio Four profile by The Economist’s Janan Ganesh that was first aired last Monday but will also be on Radio 4 at 21:30 this evening. David Willetts is interviewed, saying that Taleb’s work underlines the folly of long-term forecasts because ‘the big events that shape the world today are those which no one predicted four or five years ago’. The discovery of Shale gas, for example, could utterly change Britain’s energy requirements. Taleb’s heroes are Burke and Popper: his emphasis is on the need for humility, on how hard it is for

James Forsyth

Downing St plans to boost construction

In the last few months, there’s been a distinct change in the attitude of the Tories at the heart of government. They are now far more cognisant of just how difficult it is to drive change through the government machine. It is no longer just Steve Hilton and Michael Gove complaining about this, but Osborne and Cameron too. The Chancellor’s particular frustration at the moment is over the pace of planning reform. Osborne and his brains trust believe that simplifying the planning rules is one of the things that they could do to both give the economy a short term stimulus, by encouraging more construction, and improve its long term

Saturday

17 Mar 2012

The Spectator

Barometer | 17 March 2012

Heated debate Eric Joyce, MP for Falkirk, was fined and given a community order for butting a fellow MP in a Commons bar. Which countries’ national and regional assemblies are the most violent, according to the number of videos posted online over the past four years? Country Number of fights Ukraine 6 Taiwan, South Korea 6 Italy, India 3 Russia, Somalia 2 Argentina, Germany, Georgia, Israel, USA 1 Source: parliamentfights.wordpress.com On tap Rising water bills have not resulted in enough investment to prevent a hosepipe ban. Are water bills higher in places with less rainfall? Typical annual household water cost (200 Megalitres) Annual rainfall (mm) €166 Rome 802 €220 Madrid

The Spectator

Bookbenchers: Jacob Rees-Mogg MP

Jacob Rees-Mogg, the Conservative MP for North East Somerset, is this week’s Bookbencher. He prescribes Psmith for all ailments. 1) Which book is on your bedside table at the moment? Paper Promises by Philip Coggan. This is a straightforward review of the current financial crisis in the context of a brief history of paper money and its instability. It argues that creditors will probably lose out to debtors as the crisis is solved. I am also reading M.R. James’ Collected Ghost Stories, which I have by my bedside in Somerset. It is a splendid series of short stories which he wrote to entertain friends after dinner. I was given this

Fraser Nelson

The man behind the Budget

In today’s Telegraph, I profile Rupert Harrison, chief economic adviser to George Osborne and the man who’ll do more than anything else (including his boss) to shape next week’s Budget. In the British political system, special advisers are given very little attention — even though the best of them are more influential than the average Cabinet member. The Treasury’s vast power, assembled by Brown, is still there. That can’t be said for Osborne: he spends half his time in Downing St, and is sufficiently detached from the Budget process that he felt able to take a couple of days’ holiday in America last week to jump in the motorcade and

James Forsyth

Politics: Taking back the cities

When the Prime Minister’s chief adviser, Steve Hilton, quits Downing Street in May, he’ll leave behind what he believes to be a mechanism to solve the Conservatives’ biggest electoral problem, which is their failure to win urban seats. On 3 May, ten of England’s largest cities will vote on whether to join London in having a directly elected mayor. These mayoralties will, if the Conservatives play their cards right, provide a platform from which the party can rebuild its metropolitan appeal. Directly elected mayors could provide the accountability that local politics has so lacked in the postwar era. For the first time in generations, people might know who is running

Quentin Letts

‘I am in charge’

He needed a trilby and leather coat but there was something of ’Allo ’Allo!’s Herr Flick to the mandarin giving evidence at the Public Accounts Committee one recent afternoon. The PAC is parliament’s prime scrutineer of state spending. Civil servants have it dinned into their skulls to regard it with caution, if not respect. Yet this Herr Flick, with his little sticky-up fringe, his minimalist spectacles, his subtle pouts and sly smiles, conducted himself as a superior mortal. He toyed with the committee. He said he was there as ‘a courtesy’. The MPs should not expect him to make a habit of appearing before them. This lean-livered, bloodless Brahmin was

Peter Hitchens

The gay marriage trap

The shambling remnants of Britain’s social and moral conservative movement are marching to Stalingrad, singing as they go. They will not be coming back, but they don’t realise that yet. David Cameron has cleverly provoked them into this suicide mission, by claiming to be a keen supporter of homosexual marriage. And so, with all the self-control of bluebottles massing round a dead cat, or squirrels besieging a bird-feeder, the Moral Minority have rushed to campaign against him. The risk to them is great. The risk to Cameron is minor. Even if they succeeded, the Prime Minister would not mind much. Very probably, Cameron does not really support same-sex weddings at

Merryn Somerset-Webb

Investment Special: Searching for income

The outcome of last week’s Monetary Policy Committee meeting came as no surprise, but if you’re trying to live off income generated from capital, it was still bloody irritating. Once again, base rate was left at 0.5 per cent, its lowest level since records began in 1694. Once again, it was decided that quantitative easing must continue. So annuity rates will remain at record lows; deposit rates will remain below a level worth anything after inflation and tax; the squeeze on pensioner living standards will continue; and savers will feel forced to move into riskier markets to preserve the purchasing power of their cash. So what can you do? The

Friday

16 Mar 2012

James Forsyth

Labour miss out the details

Labour’s launch of its new youth jobs policy has been rather overshadowed by Harriet Harman’s inability to explain the costing behind the policy on the Daily Politics earlier: not a good look for a party trying to show that it is fiscally credible. But more interesting than the number behind the policy is how it marks an attempt by Labour to toughen up its position on welfare. Those young workers who have been out of work for a year will have to take one of these minimum wage jobs or have their benefits docked.     On the Labour front, the interview with Ed Miliband in the Times today is also worthy

Peter Hoskin

Cameron and Obama bargain over fuel

No wonder David Cameron and Barack Obama were being so chummy: they both knew that they could help each other. The Times carries an intriguing story (£) on its front page this morning, about how the two men discussed a plan to get fuel prices down in the UK and the US. The idea is that both countries — and perhaps more — would release some of their oil reserves. And so supply would go up, and prices would come down. As would our reliance on the oil-rich countries of the Middle East. Apparently, we’re some distance from a deal yet, but you can see why both the PM and

Thursday

15 Mar 2012

Fraser Nelson

Go on, George — scrap the 50p rate

Will George Osborne scrap the 50p tax in next week’s Budget? Whispers to this effect have been getting louder, and now the Guardian is saying that it will come back down to 40p, and it makes a lot of sense. As I argued in my Telegraph column a fortnight ago, this is the perfect time to do it. Axing the tax paid by 1 per cent of the population will be unpopular with the remaining 99 per cent, so if Osborne is going to take a political hit he should do so now. Anecdotal evidence of its harmfullness has been getting stronger: multinational companies saying they can’t persuade people to

Alex Massie

Liberal Unionism? In Ulster? Why Not?

On balance, theGood Friday Agreement was (forgive me) a Good Thing. It should be possible to welcome the Agreement yet recognise that it has not delivered everything it promised. Not the least of its troublesome consequences has been the manner in which the centre-ground of Northern Irish politics has been hollowed-out. Time passes, however, and the moment for a viable alternative to the Sinn Fein-DUP double-act cannot, surely, be delayed forever. At least that’s what Robin Wilson suggests in the Belfast Telegraph today. This, perhaps unexpectedly, is the time for a New Ulster Unionism: [N]ow the UUP – otherwise on its political death-bed – has a huge choice to make.

James Forsyth

How mayoral elections can strengthen the Tories

The most important political changes are those that will not be reversed. I think that both directly elected mayors and police commissioners fit this mould. I can’t imagine voters choosing to cede the ability to hold power to account that these positions will give them. Tellingly, more people in London now favour independence for the capital than want to scrap the office of mayor. Police commissioners and mayors also provide the Conservatives with a massive opportunity to rebuild the party in urban Britain, as I argue in my column this week. The Conservatives have little chance of gaining overall control of the council in, say, Leeds. But they could win a mayoral