Politics Archives

Friday

22 Oct 2010

The Islamic Republic of Tower Hamlets

Andrew Gilligan explains why Lutfur Rahman’s victory in Tower Hamlets is a potentially alarming development. Obviously, this is a humiliation for Ed Miliband. The victory of a de-selected Labour councillor is bad enough, but what does he say about Ken Livingstone’s involvement in Rahman’s campaign? Widening those imploring eyes, offering an apologetic shrug and saying “Ken will be Ken” probably won’t cut the mustard this time. Perversely, Livingstone might benefit from Rahman’s victory, as it has allowed him to resuscitate his ‘Red Ken the insurgent’ pose – and you can’t get much more cynically subversive than this latest stunt. Questions will and should be asked of his close association with

Patrick Nolan

Now is the time for reform

Throughout the country debates on the spending review have begun in earnest. Some of the most important questions in these debates will centre around the economics of consolidation, as I discussed on a recent radio show containing Professor Joseph Stiglitz. I also set out to discuss these issues at the launch of the Orwell Prize. In my remarks I focussed on the general case for eliminating the structural deficit within a Parliamentary term and less on the specifics of the approach that the Coalition has taken to achieving this goal (which I have outlined some thoughts on here). I made five key points. First, consolidation is not based on

James Forsyth

George Osborne is making the going

There are several interesting columns on George Osborne in the papers today. In The Times, Tony Blair’s former speechwriter Phil Collins warns Labour to stop underestimating the Chancellor, who is defining the political battle on his terms at the moment. Peter Oborne, by contrast, is highly critical of Osborne in his Telegraph column, warning that Osborne’s partisan presentation of the cuts risks undermining support for the whole project. For once, I find myself disagreeing with Peter. I think Osborne is doing some of the political heavy-lifting that Cameron could not do without undermining his standing as a national leader; Osborne’s praise for the 2004 Republican campaign is instructive in trying

Peter Hoskin

Labour’s Kill Clegg strategy

One question swirling through the sea of British politics is this: how will Ed Miliband act towards the Lib Dems? The Labour leader certainly didn’t flinch from attacking the yellow brigade during the leadership contest, at one point calling them a “disgrace to the traditions of liberalism.” But surely he’ll have to soften that rhetoric in case the next election delivers another bout of frenzied coalition negotiations. Which is why Andy Burnham’s article in the Guardian today is worth noting down. In making his point – that the Lib Dems haven’t won the pupil premium they sought – he does all he can to force a wedge between Nick Clegg

David Blackburn

Labour loses the last semblance of its economic credibility

A quiet but important change to Britain’s political landscape took place in Brussels on Wednesday. The European Parliament passed a motion to increase the EU Budget by 5.9 percent, dashing, for the moment, government hopes that the EU might share in its citizens’ austerity. Labour’s MEPs were central to the motion’s success – 10 (one of whom glories in the name Michael Cashman) out of 13 voted against the Conservative-backed amendment to freeze the EU Budget. As Alan Johnson took his feet and, like a gamey slim-line Falstaff, began to condemn public sector cuts, Labour MEPs saddled the over-stretched taxpayer with £900m in extra contributions – more than

Peter Hoskin

Clegg hits back at the IFS

It’s fast becoming a tradition: when the IFS calls the government’s work “regressive,” send for Nick Clegg to take the think tank on. He wrote an article for the FT debunking their analysis back in August. And, today, he does the same via an interview in the Guardian. It’s pretty forceful stuff from the Deputy PM, as this quote testifies: “I think you have to call a spade a spade. We just fundamentally disagree with the IFS. It goes back to a culture of how you measure fairness that took root under Gordon Brown’s time, where fairness was seen through one prism and one prism only which was the tax

Thursday

21 Oct 2010

James Forsyth

Osborne’s inoculation strategy has worked

Several of tomorrow’s newspapers lead on the IFS’ conclusion that those on the lowest income will suffer most from the cuts. This charge is problematic for the conclusion but far less problematic than it would have been if we hadn’t spent so much of the last few weeks discussing George Osborne’s decision to remove child benefit from families with a higher rate taxpayer in them. That change, however unpopular it may have been with normally Tory voters, inoculated the coalition against the charge that it was trying to balance the budget on the backs of the poor. Osborne’s preparation of the ground has not, though, stopped the Lib Dems slipping

Peter Hoskin

IFS: The Spending Review was regressive – sorta

The second half of the IFS briefing was all about the distributional effect of the Spending Review. And you know what that means: decile charts – and lots and lots of them. As it happens, there were some areas of agreement between the IFS and the Treasury figures. Both, for instance, say that the welfare measures set out in yesterday’s Spending Review will affect the least well-off the most. But there was one main area of disagreement. The Treasury says that its combined tax and welfare measures up to 2012-13 will be broadly progressive. The IFS says that they will be regressive. This is exactly the same issue that cropped

David Blackburn

Nick Robinson earns his spurs

Nick Robinson has won blogger of the year at Editorial Intelligence’s Comment Awards. However, he deserves an award for this bit of heroism on College Green. Hat-tip: Will Heaven. UPDATE: Robinson has taken the time to pen an explanation for his sign rage, good on him. PS: Oh yes. To those of a sensitive disposition, please ignore the anti-war clips accompanying the footage.

Fraser Nelson

More to Osborne’s plan than gambling

Paul Mason’s review of the cuts for Newsnight last night (from 10:20 into the video here) was one of the most powerful critiques of Osborne from the left. His package majored on Osborne’s decision to cut a further £11 billion from welfare and pensions, to soften the departmental cuts. Adopting a rather funereal tone, Mason declared that, “if you are poor, your life is about to change”. He produced a decile graph, showing the poorest are hit second hardest. It foreshadowed this morning’s Guardian cover: “Axe falls on the poor”. Danny Alexander was fed to Paxo: “You said you would not balance your budget on the backs of the poor

Wednesday

20 Oct 2010

James Forsyth

The Tory response to Osborne’s Spending Review

George Osborne was well received by the 1922 committee of Tory backbenchers when he addressed them on the spending review earlier. There was much thumping of desks, the traditional sign of approval at meetings of the ‘22. Talking to Tory MPs this afternoon, they are pretty happy with the package. They are glad that the money being taken out of the welfare budget means that the departmental cuts are less than expected. Overall, they think the package is politically sellable and has denied Labour that many targets. One concern is about how local councils, including Conservative ones, might react to a 28 percent cut in their funding from

Ed Holmes

Osborne blunts the axe – slightly

As expected, the Chancellor announced reductions in public spending – though not quite as severe as indicated in the Emergency Budget last June. Government expenditure will fall by 3.3 percent over four years rather than 3.6 percent as expected, leading George Osborne to state – correctly – that departmental budgets will be higher than those pencilled in by Labour – an outcome many may not regard as desirable. In fact, Osborne will be spending 2 percent more in 2014/15 than Gordon Brown was in 2008/9. Departmental spending will fall 10 percent rather than 13 percent – largely paid for by more optimistic assumptions about savings on welfare and debt interest

Philip Booth

A long way to go

George Osborne has probably done enough to ensure that the public finances are back on track and that the national debt will not run out of control. He has, however, taken only the first step on the road to reducing the size of the state. The government will spend the same proportion of national income in 2015 as it did in 2007. In other words, the size of the state will be no smaller when David Cameron goes to the country than when Gordon Brown left the Treasury. Much more could have been done and low-hanging fruit has been left on the tree. Child benefit should have been

Fraser Nelson

Ten points about the Spending Review

In the end, George Osborne didn’t flinch. The Chancellor is a clever political operator – too clever, sometimes – but the result is a cuts package that has surprisingly broad popular support. And this has been achieved, in part, by including measures that strike the likes of me as economically unwise. So much of this budget was known in advance that we didn’t find out much new today. The below points are my thoughts not on the overall package – which I strongly support – but the pieces of it that we learned today: 1) Total state spending is falling by 3.3 percent in real terms over the next four

Peter Hoskin

The chart that could cause trouble for the coalition

Just as they did in the Budget, the coalition have produced a chart showing the impact of the Spending Review’s tax, spend and benefit measures on different income groups (see above). In many respects, this is a noble effort: it’s a good deal more transparency than Gordon Brown could ever manage in his Budgets. But it also sets a trap for the coalition. As we’ve pointed out before, these kinds of analyses don’t account for measures that can’t be quantified in terms of the money handed out to, or taken away from, the public. So policies that might improve the life chances of the least well-off, such as better schools

Lloyd Evans

Cameron’s warm-up act for Boy George

Cameron was a mere warm-up man at PMQs today. With Osborne’s statement due at 12.30 the session felt like a friendly knock-up rather than the main fixture. Ed Miliband rose to thunderous cheers from his backbenches and he tried to capitalise on their support by opening up an ancient Tory wound – heartless attitudes to unemployment. Spotting Cameron chinwagging with Osborne instead of listening, Miliband chided the PM for not paying attention. ‘Well, it’s a novel concept,’ said Dave smoothly ‘but in this government the prime minister and the chancellor speak to each other.’ Ed’s problem was that the OBR has predicted rising employment for the next three years.

Peter Hoskin

PMQs live blog | 20 October 2010

QUICK VERDICT: More heat than light today, but Cameron easily got the better of Ed Miliband. Now to the Spending Review live blog. 1230: Cameron says that as cuts are made, the government will have to reform the way it does criminal justice. This is a prelude for the deep cuts that the Home Office and Justice department are expected to face in the spending review. 1228: The Lib Dem MP asks whether Cameron believes that better-off graduates should bear more for their university costs. Cameron says that he agrees on principle, and claims that “everyone in the House” wants the “same thing”: a fair and well-funded university system. 1226:

Peter Hoskin

How we got here – and where we’re going

With the Spending Review less than two hours away, I thought CoffeeHousers might like to be armed with a few graphs that set the scene. What follows is by no means the complete picture of the fiscal landscape, but these are certainly some of most prominent landmarks. First up, real terms spending (aka Total Managed Expenditure) from 1966 to 2015: So, yes, all the fuss is about that small dip at the end of the blue line – a dip, as it happens, of about four percent. But don’t think that the fuss is entirely unwarranted. What the government is trying to do here is curb a trend of ever-increasing

Peter Hoskin

The slog starts today

Welcome to Stage Two of the government’s life. The first stage was the Budget, which established the size of the fiscal mountain looming over the coalition. The third stage will be the difficult, four-year slog up to the top. But today – the Spending Review – is all about determining the route for that ascent. In just a few hours we will know when, where and why the pain will come. Don’t forget to pack sandwiches. Of course, with this roadmap being drawn out in Westminster, we already know some of the details. This morning’s papers major on the fact – snapped from Danny Alexander’s hands yesterday – that almost

Tuesday

19 Oct 2010

Matthew Sinclair

What we know already

At the Comprehensive Spending Review tomorrow, we will get a much clearer picture of how the Government plans to manage spending cuts. There are a few things we already know, though: 1) The overall cuts will be modest. As Fraser has pointed out, the overall cut in spending is small. Spending is going down to around the level it was at in 2006-07. It will remain several percentage points of GDP above the level at the start of the last decade. 2) Cut in some areas will be much sharper. The higher bill for Government debt interest, the ringfencing of Health and International Development and the relatively soft deal for