Politics

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

Tuesday

David Blackburn

How long can Cameron blame Labour?

Understandably, David Cameron is blaming Labour for the age of austerity he must inaugurate, and will continue to blame Labour. Dominic Lawson asks a simple question in this morning’s Independent: how long can that tactic soften the opprobrium his government will incur? ‘After all, when Margaret Thatcher’s government cut the unsustainably vast subsidies to public sector industries – from coal-mining to car manufacturing – which her Labour predecessors had not dared to confront, it established her reputation among millions as a cruel and heartless prime minister. It will be fascinating to see if the much more soothing rhetoric of a Conservative government in coalition with the Liberal Democrats can convince

Alex Massie Alex Massie

2012 Tea Leaves

A pair of interesting developments in the early manoevering for the Republican party’s presidential nomination in 2012. 1. Sarah Palin endorses Terry Branstad in the Iowa gubernatorial race rather than his opponent Vander Plaats even though Plaats is the favoured candidate of Tea Partying types and prominent evangelicals such as James Dobson. Odd, no? Actually, no it’s not odd at all. Branstad, who is making a comeback a decade after he last served as Governor, is much more likely to win. Palin isn’t stupid and she knows enough to know there’s no point in needlessly antagonising the man who will probably be the next governor of Iowa. 2. A characteristically

Monday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Ed Balls and the art of opposition

There’s been a lot said about Ed Balls’ Observer piece on immigration. But the most striking thing about it to my mind is that it shows that Balls has made the transition to an opposition mindset.   Take his proposal that ‘Europe’s leaders need to revisit the Free Movement Directive’. This is classic opposition politics; suggest something that sounds good but it practically impossible. The other EU member states are unlikely to agree to agree to renegotiating this directive. But the Tories can hardly point this out; emphasising the UK government’s impotence when it comes to changing the rules of the game would hardly go down well with the Tory

David Blackburn

The Prince of Darkness passes into night

If Ed Miliband wins, it’s curtains for Peter Mandelson. Michael Crick reports this exchange between GMB president Mary Turner and Ed Miliband. ‘”As Labour leader, would you invite Peter Mandelson to join your shadow cabinet?” “All of us believe in dignity in retirement,” replied Ed Miliband.’ Is Mordor mobilising? You bet your sweet life it is. No. In reality, I think that Mandelson, the uncompromising diarist, is finished with frontline Labour politics, and it with him.

David Blackburn

The previous government’s economic failure laid bare

As Ben Brogan notes, there was a clean symmetry to David Cameron’s speech this morning: the crisis was Labour’s fault; therefore, Labour is to blame for the painful measures needed to restore stability. As Cameron put it: ‘I think people understand by now that the debt crisis is the legacy of the last government. But exactly the same applies to the action we will take to deal with it.’ Cameron made constant reference to the actions of the ‘previous government’. As a foretaste of what the Independent Office for Budget Responsibility will expose, Cameron alleged that Alistair Darling withheld estimates that Britain will be repaying £70bn per annum in debt

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Dave’s Cuts are Really Gordon’s Cuts

David Cameron’s speech on reducing public spending, curbing the deficit and tackling the national debt was important stuff. Not least because, at some length, he pointed out the poisonous position the incoming government faces to make it clear that, far from being Tory cuts, when the axe comes, as fall it must, the underlying responsibility for these spending cuts belongs to Labour not the Camerlegg Ministry.  In one sense this is cheeky: it’s Dave’s ball now and his to play with and decide the rules too. And it was a stretch to say that spending reductions aren’t driven by at least an element of “theory or ideology”. They are. Which

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Cameron lays the ground for cuts

David Cameron’s speech today was about preparing people for the cuts to come, persuading them that Labour’s mismanagement of the public finances had made this ‘unavoidable’ and reassuring them that he had no ideological desire to make cuts and so would do them in the most sensitive way possible. Cameron managed to pull this off fairly effectively. He is managing the rhetorical transition from leader of the opposition to Prime Minister fairly well. In a way, what Cameron is doing now is the easy bit: the intellectual case for dealing with the deficit is unarguable. It is when the Coalition has to outline not broad principles but the specifics that

Charlotte Gore

How the coalition makes room for Labour

Whoever wins Labour’s leadership, whether it’s a breed of Miliband or Balls, its future will be dominated by its understanding of how it found itself on opposition benches. Philip Gould, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and the other progenitors of the New Labour project – were wrong. Their fatal assumption was that their core vote, the working classes, had no-where else to go. Labour, therefore, could reach out the middle classes, broadening their support and thus New Labour was born. At first their calculations were correct. Two slogans, “Education, Education, Education” and “Tough on Crime, Tough on the Causes of Crime” brought together the two separate demographics to create a powerful

The Spectator

Just in case you missed them… | 7 June 2010

…here are some of the posts made at Spectator.co.uk Fraser Nelson tells the story of another Rachel, and catches Vince Cable on manoeuvres. James Forsyth sees that David Cameron will not campaign either for or against voting reform, and notes that George Osborne is off to a fine start on the global stage. David Blackburn believes the Labour leadership candidates pine for the past, and notes that the coalition is committed to tackling poverty. Susan Hill comments on a dish best never served. Rod Liddle runs against prevailing opinion on David Laws. And Melanie Phillips attacks the western left’s alternative universe.

David Blackburn

D-Day (plus one)

Cuts are here. The most important news of the weekend was the G20’s official backing for spending cuts. It was a significant volte face, and doubtless the sight of violent uprisings in Greece concentrated minds. Finally, George Osborne has been vindicated; but having convinced finance ministers, he must now carry the coalition and the country with him. The first thing to do is ignore Nick Clegg and his claim that cuts will not be savage. Cuts will re-configure government in Britain, the current invasive Leviathan will be dismantled; but the process will be painful in the short-term, it must be. Osborne has been influenced by the Canadian model, which turned

Sunday

David Blackburn

Balls: we have to be more bigoted

Meet Ed Balls, the candidate for Mrs Duffy. As the race for nominations closes, the Labour leadership candidates are beginning to focus on party members. With varying degrees of conviction, the contenders have identified immigration as the issue the party must address if it is to reconnect with those voters who spurned it. Ed Balls is that analysis’s most fervent advocate. He devoted an article in the Observer to the subject.  Balls argued that there has been too much migration from Eastern Europe, and it has caused economic and social ills in communities such as the one he represents. In hindsight, Britain should have accepted the transitional controls during the eastern bloc’s accession in 2004. Labour rejected

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Cable, the free radical, dreams of a grand future

What is Vince Cable up to? He is on manoeuvres, keeps making attempted power grabs from George Osborne. Barely a week passes without him rattling the cage to which Cameron and Clegg have confined him  – that is, the unwieldy and yet fairly powerless Department for Business, Innovation & Skills. For all its bulk, the department doesn’t really do anything. It has the universities brief, which is important, but it is certainly not an economics department as Cable was pretending last week. “It is a bit like the German economics ministry and the finance ministry,” he claimed. “Two departments, working in parallel.” As if. Cable may like economics, but he

Daniel Korski

Lord Ashdown’s the right man for the Balkans

Last week, Europe’s foreign ministers gathered in Sarajevo under much fanfare – and did very little except issue a repetitive press release about the region’s future in the EU. The only highlight of the event was William Hague’s speech, which was excellent.   Enlargement, however, is deeply unpopular among European elites, and the gathered foreign ministers seemed to be acutely aware of how little the market will bear by way of new ideas and initiatives.   So the ideas I put out in a brief in the run-up to the summit for improving the EU’s accession process went nowhere. Only Austria and Estonia openly defended proposals at the meeting. Germany

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The other Rachel

The boat the Israelis peacefully intercepted was called Rachel Corrie  – named after a young American protester accidentally killed when  offering herself as a human shield in Gaza. Her name became immortalised, some 30 songs have been written for her, a London play named after her and a film last year. But another Rachel, completely forgotten, is Rachel Thaler – a 16-year-old British citizen murdered by a Palestinian suicide bomber in 2002. Only one British publication has ever mentioned her: The Spectator. Here, below, is Tom Gross’ article from 22 October 2005: ‘Dead Jews aren’t news: British newspapers care greatly about some victims of the Israel army, says Tom Gross,

Saturday

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 5 June 2010

In Monday’s Guardian, Julian Glover wrote that David Laws broke the rules of parliamentary expenses ‘because he could not bring himself to reveal that he loved his landlord’. In Monday’s Guardian, Julian Glover wrote that David Laws broke the rules of parliamentary expenses ‘because he could not bring himself to reveal that he loved his landlord’. On the same day, in the Times, Matthew Parris, Glover’s civil partner, spoke of the ‘stinking hypocrisy’ which caused ‘the fall of a good man’ for no more than ‘an error of judgment’. The chief object of the couple’s onslaught was the Daily Telegraph, which broke the Laws story. It was the gay equivalent

David Blackburn

Labour leadership contenders eyeing the past, not the future

I wonder if the Labour leadership contenders worry that the previous generation’s forthcoming memoirs have created more excitement than them? I would be. The insipid campaign has laid bare the paucity of talent on Labour’s benches, and the party’s ideological exhaustion. No serving Cabinet minister lost their seat at the election; Tony Blair aside, the Milibands and Ed Balls are the best Labour has. That’s a grim prospect if your colour’s red. Ed Balls has the panache of a Vauxhall Zafira; and the two Milibands are trapped in a Beckettian whirl of meaningless jargon, convinced that using abstract nouns is a mark of vital intelligence. It isn’t; it’s irritating, and

Daniel Korski

Politicize aid? It already is – and good too

On Thursday, Andrew Mitchell rolled out the government’s first overseas aid initiative – a transparency watchdog – and took to the airwaves to explain the idea. It makes particular sense in a downturn to ensure that taxpayer’s money is well spent but also to give voters the feeling that independent assessments are carried out to guarantee value for their money.   On Newsnight, the International Development Secretary ran into a criticism, often voiced by the aid community – that the Conservatives are too willing to “militarise” aid or to “politicise” it. He dealt with the criticism  robustly – but I want to have a go too. Because while these are

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Osborne’s successful first outing on the international stage

George Osborne’s Asia trip has now been rounded off with a meeting of the G20 finance ministers in South Korea and he is now heading back to Britain and his Budget preparations. The trip must be marked up as a success for Osborne. In its communiqué, the meeting implicitly endorsed Osborne’s two major moves since becoming Chancellor, cuts this year and the setting up of the Office of Budgetary Responsibility:  ‘We welcome the recent announcements by some countries to reduce their deficits in 2010 and strengthen their fiscal frameworks and institutions’ No one can doubt that the Tories have comprehensively won the argument for in-year cuts. With a growing domestic

James Forsyth James Forsyth

New Labour, a question of dates

Ed Balls makes an interesting definitional point in his interview with The Times. He says that to him “new Labour was 1994 to 1997, us translating from being a party of opposition to a party of government, understanding that our radicalism had to be based on credible foundations, that no one would trust you on public services unless you were trusted on interest rates and inflation.” What many other people mean by New Labour is the public service reform agenda. But that didn’t really kick into gear until after 2001. Balls claims that, that was when New Labour lost its way. Balls is trying to argue that it was the