Politics

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

Tuesday

Peter Hoskin

A day of pomp and positivity

The sun is filtering through the garden at 22 Old Queen Street, and a brass band is marching around St James’s Park: we’re getting the light and the pomp in equal measures for today’s Queen’s Speech.  As for the actual policy, well, we largely know what it’s all about.  There will be proposals for scrapping ID cards, strengthening civil liberties, reforming schools, making the police more accountable, and more.  The emphasis from the government is on handing power back to the people. The question is whether the coalition can make today’s positives balance out the age of austerity.  The stock market today provides a gloomy reminder that their biggest challenge

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Let Us Now Praise… Liam Byrne

The new firm of Osbourne Osborne* & Laws got off to a good start yesterday. True, trimming £6bn from this year’s budget is a trivial task compared to the decisions that lie ahead but as a statement of good sense and prooof of good intentions it was, as I say, a good start**. The plain truth is that the government will lose around £500m every day this year. That’s not sustainable and when put in such terms the public can understand, one trusts, that something will have to give. Let us now praise a Labour minister: Liam Byrne. Not for the fiscal profligacy that has left the public finances in

Peter Hoskin

The media helps the coalition’s fiscal cause

This feels like a watershed moment: a national newspaper devoting its cover to an image of the country’s “debt mountain,” with a small shaded-off area showing how little of it is covered by yesterday’s cuts.  The paper in question is today’s Independent.  And while the cover may not perfectly depict what’s going on with our public finances – yesterday’s cuts will reduce the government’s annual overspend, not the overall debt burden which will keep rising for years to come – it is still a powerful reminder of Brown’s toxic legacy. In some respects, the coalition might not appreciate this kind of focus: after all, politicians don’t much like mentioning the

Monday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

A show of Cameron’s adaptability

Great to hear that David Cameron has decided to keep the 1922 committee reinstated. This is a significant, unexpected development – and sign of strength, not weakness. Interestingly, I hear that George Osborne had not been properly consulted about last week’s events: ie the way in which MPs were asked to vote into effectively abolishing the 1922 committee of backbenchers and being strongarmed, Blair-style, by the leadership. Cameron had not intended things to turn out as they did and Osborne, in particular, was dismayed.   I always suspected that last week’s fracas was a simple misjudgment, easily explained under the chaotic events of coalition. Cameron is, I fear, being poorly

Peter Hoskin

Ministers won’t be able to vote in 1922 elections

So it turns out that John Redwood’s uncertainty was well-placed. According to Jonathan Isaby over at ConservativeHome, the Tory chief whip has decreed that ministers won’t be able to vote in 1922 Committee elections after all. They will only be able to attend meetings, which, as Jonathan says, “no-one ever really had a complaint about.” All this comes on the back of confusion about what last week’s ballot even meant, making a curious situation even curiouser.  But, whatever the reasons behind it, the outcome will be seen as a climbdown by David Cameron – and perhaps the first real dent to his authority since coming to power. Meanwhile, the 118

Peter Hoskin

Coalition cuts: the IFS’s verdict is in

So, the number-crunchers at the Institute for Fiscal Studies have worked their magic and delivered their verdict on today’s spending cuts.  You can find their summary here, although the standout line is that the £5 billion in reduced borrowing implied by today’s cuts is “less than a tenth of the fiscal repair job that Alistair Darling’s March 2010 Budget forecast suggested will be needed over the next few years”.  In terms of capturing just how much remains to to be done, it’s a sobering remark.  But it’s worth remembering that a Labour government wouldn’t have made these extra £6 billion of cuts this year.  So, by the same thinking, they

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The long haul starts here

Sunshine might have won the day but today was also the start of the age of austerity, as George Osborne and David Laws laid out £6.243bn of cuts. Despite the fact that they were cutting ‘wasteful’ and ‘low priority spending’, both men were keen to insulate themselves against the Labour attack that the coalition is cutting for ideological reason. Osborne said that ‘controlling spending is not an end it itself.’ While Laws stressed that the Coalition would ‘cut with care.’ Within its first fortnight in office, the government has found savings with commendable celerity. But the fact that the whole package was agreed on at 11.45 pm on Friday for

Sunday

Charlotte Gore

Have the Tories fallen victim to the Lib Dem Hug of Death?

First, a little bit of history: as recently as last Christmas, I was a member of the Liberal Democrats. I can’t remember why I joined them, and I can’t remember why I left – which strongly implies that I put very little thought into either – but that’s a story for another time. As a member, I was part of a group within the party that wanted to pull it in a more classically liberal direction: a smaller state, lower taxes and greater personal freedom. The idea of a party committed to greater personal freedom, but not greater economic freedom, always struck me as equal parts ridiculous and confused. If

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Cameron should seek the common ground

Last weekend, David Cameron had few rebels at all in his party. This week, he has 118. The vote on the 1922 Committee membership was a free vote, of course, so this can by no means be compared to a proper, whip-defying Commons rebellion. But we have seen there are scores who are not prepared to support the leadership automatically. As I say in my News of the World column today it was unnecessary to draw such a dividing line over a party that badly wants the coalition to succeed. True, Tony Blair bossed his party about. But Blair earned the right to when he won a landslide victory. His

Martin Bright

Ken Livingstone stoops to new levels

Thanks to Richard Millett who has alerted me to the latest outburst from Labour’s failed mayoral candidate Ken Livingstone on Irainian state-funded Press TV. In an interview with Andrew Gilligan, Livingstone comes close to condoning suicide bombing in his defence of Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the controversial cleric. “There would not be any Palestine suicide bombers if Israel withdrew from the occupied lands. If Israel wants peace it should withdraw from the occupied territories and dismantle its nuclear weapons,” he says. Millett goes on to say:  “Livingstone also refers to Martin Bright… as ‘a bit of an Islamophobe’. Gilligan suggests that Livingstone makes the ‘Islamophobia’ accusation too readily against people who disagree

Saturday

Martin Bright

Is the Labour Party Thinking Seriously About Downing Street or Planning to Become BNP-lite?

I have yet to get really excited about the Labour Party leadership race. I was deeply depressed by the manner of Andy Burnham’s entry into the fray. Too many Labour politicians and activists were over-impressed by talk of immigration on the doorstep. They think that because the subject was raised again and again, then it is the key to Labour’s failure and therefore its potential future success. The point is that the issue was raised in 2001 and 2005, but Labour knew it would win on both occasions on so chose to ignore what its core voters were saying about foreigners. They believed they had their votes in the bag.

Peter Hoskin

The Tories have their eyes on Iran

You may not have expected anything less, but it’s still encouraging to see the new government pay so much attention to Afghanistan. After David Cameron’s meeting with Hamid Karzai last week, no less than three ministers have visited the country today: William Hague, Liam Fox and Andrew Mitchell. And Whitehall’s number-crunchers are busy trying to find extra money for the mission. There’s a sense, though, that all the attention actually represents an underlying shift in focus. In his interview with the Telegraph today, Liam Fox is surprisingly forthright on Afghanistan, suggesting that our troops won’t hang around to fully rebuild the country: “What we want is a stable enough Afghanistan,

Peter Hoskin

Dodging Iraq

Disowning the Iraq War: that’s the task which Ed Balls and Ed Miliband have a set themselves today, as part of their continuing efforts to distinguish themselves from the Blair and Brown years.  In interview with the Telegraph, Balls says that the public were misled by “devices and tactics” over the case for war.  And, in the Guardian, Ed Miliband argues that the weapons inspectors should have been given more time, and that the conflict triggered “a catastrophic loss of trust in Labour”.  He has since claimed that he would have voted against the war at the time. Balls and Miliband are clearly trying to take advantage of the fact

Peter Hoskin

The axeman speaketh

There’s an entire gaggle of noteworthy interviews in the papers this morning, but let’s start with David Laws in the FT. It’s generally quite hard to draw substantive conclusions about the actual interviewee in political interviews, but I’m sure you wouldn’t come away from this one thinking anything but that Laws is a good man to have in the Treasury right now. Here, anyway, are five observations about what he actually said:  1. Sharing the blame. If people in Tory circles feel that there’s one major consolation to working with the Lib Dems, then it’s that they can share the blame over spending cut.  But, encouragingly, Laws sees this as

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The Third Most Important Man in Britain

Well, in the government anyway. After David Cameron and Nick Clegg, the next most important chap is David Laws. So it’s reassuring to see that the Liberal Democrat Chief Secretary to the Treasury is prepared for the worst. I recommend this interview with the Financial Times which, frankly, offers just another reminder that the calibre of the cabinet has been improved by including the Orange Bookers: [S]ome of the decisions that have got to be made, particularly in the spending review later on this year, are going to be a choice between the unpalatable and the disastrous. […]I’m mentally prepared for getting a lot of representations from angry people about

The Spectator

Germany’s agony

When George Osborne attended his first meeting of European finance ministers on Tuesday, he may well have felt a pang of pity for his Continental colleagues. True, Britain has the worst deficit and the most rampant inflation in Western Europe. True, Mr Osborne may have been outmanoeuvred over the regulation of hedge funds. But the Chancellor has a trump card: the pound sterling. When it tumbles, we can export our way back to growth. When Greece implodes, we can maintain a studied distance. All things considered, it could be worse. We could be Germany. Germany’s dire situation today offers the most eloquent of all arguments against the concept of a

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Will any leadership candidate tell Labour the hard truths it needs to hear?

James Forsyth reviews the week in politics The entry of a forty-something, privately educated white male Oxford graduate into a political contest normally does little for its diversity. But when Ed Balls jumped into the Labour leadership race he did at least expand the pool beyond members of the Miliband family. Even now, all three candidates read the same subject at the same university. If Andy Burnham joins the fray, though, there will be a non-Oxonian candidate. Burnham went to Cambridge. For the People’s Party, the self-proclaimed champions of the working class and diversity, it is a bit embarrassing that all the likely candidates to lead it are Oxbridge-educated white

Mira Barhillel

Must do better: Boris Johnson’s half-term report

On Question Time last month, Boris Johnson, London’s Mayor, was asked about his plans to build a new airport in the Thames estuary: an idea seen as reasonable by some and insane by others. As he blustered amiably away, saying not very much, a lady interrupted and asked: ‘Why can’t you just admit it when you are wrong instead of waffling on?’ The audience roared with approval. It was an Emperor’s New Clothes moment. The innocent questioner had put her finger on Boris’s fatal flaws: he can’t admit he’s wrong, but he’s a little too lazy to do his homework properly, and that often leaves him intellectually denuded. The Mayor

Robert Beaumont

‘It’s a fight to the death here’

David Cameron has said that the two most beautiful constituencies in England are his own, in Oxfordshire, and Oliver Letwin’s in Dorset. He obviously knows little of Thirsk and Malton, a small slice of North Yorkshire heaven, but the area will certainly be on his mind next Thursday. For here, the now supposedly united tribes of Tories and Liberal Democrats are engaged in a vicious local election, the first of the new parliament. If the nasty tone and temper of this rural battle is anything to go by, the national Lib-Con alliance hasn’t a chance. In the Left corner (or thereabouts) stands Howard Keal, a local Lib Dem bigwig with

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Can Cameron assuage the Tory tribes?

Amid the chaos in the House of Commons, with newly elected MPs finding their offices and newly appointed ministers being kicked out of them, Graham Brady is the picture of calm. As the only MP to resign on principle from David Cameron’s front bench (over grammar schools), he knew there would be no phone call from Number 10. Yet next week, he may end up being more important than any minister of state. He is favourite for a position that has suddenly started to matter again: chairman of the 1922 Committee of backbench Tory MPs. In the era of Blair-style landslides, the likes and loves of backbench MPs mattered little: