Politics Archives

Thursday

25 Mar 2010

Labour’s spending cuts exposed

Darling has now exposed as false the Brown/Balls dividing line of “investment vs cuts”. If Labour were to win, he said, the cuts would be worse than anything seen under Thatcher in the 1980s. This is Darling’s problem: he’s a dreadful liar. The IFS today laid out the scale of the cuts that would happen whoever wins the election, and the below graph is worth reprinting. Overall spending falls 12 percent (once dole and debt interest are taken into account). So when Darling says this is worse than anything in the 1980s, he is simply stating a fact. You’d never catch Balls or Brown doing that, by the way, and

Peter Hoskin

The two sides of Alistair Darling

After delivering an insipid, insufficient Budget yesterday, Alistair Darling has now smuggled a little bit of honesty into the fiscal debate. In interview with Nick Robinson, he has claimed that if Labour is re-elected its spending cuts “will be deeper and tougher” than Thatcher’s. Needless to say, that’s a message which will not sit well with his Cabinet colleagues like Ed “investment vs cuts” Balls. And this is precisely why Darling is such a confusing figure. Yes, he deserves some praise for being more upfront about the public finances than his predecessor ever could be, and for restricting the wilder excesses of Brown and Balls. But it’s hard to forget

James Forsyth

Labour’s plans require non-ringfenced Budgets to be cut by 25 percent in the next parliament

At lunchtime, the press headed off to hear the referee’s verdict on the Budget. The Institute for Fiscal Studies is now so respected that its view of the Budget largely determines the news agenda. Its briefings are now so popular that they can no longer be held in their basement. So, journalists, economists and accountants piled into a room at the University of London Union which is normally used for battle of the bands contests rather than Budget analysis. The most striking number the IFS presented was that if Labour ringfences the already protected areas of spending for the whole parliament, other departmental budgets will have to be cut by

Peter Hoskin

How to foil a Dispatches sting

The producer and director behind the Dispatches lobbying sting, Philip Clothier, has a snappy article over at Prospect, in which he basically asks the question: how could MPs have been so stupid? But it’s his suggestion that some former ministers may have got off lightly which really caught my eye: “Meanwhile, one former Labour cabinet minister was interviewed, but the sound was so poor that we could only hear appetising phrases. He had the good fortune to be sitting in front of a brightly lit window, over-exposing the shot. And we just couldn’t understand much of what another former minister said because of his thick accent.” Cue all MPs adopting

David Blackburn

Vested interests at the MoD

Yesterday, Alistair Darling pledged £4 billion for the MoD, earmarked for Afghanistan. He did not specify what the cash would buy, presumably because the Defence Spending Review will take place after the election. But a day is a long time in politics and the forthcoming spending review no longer seems to be so decisive: BAE and the MoD have signed a £127million four-year contract to design the proposed Type 26 frigate. This is welcome in principle: the Type 22 and 23 frigates need to be replaced eventually and British companies and their employees will prosper. But this contract should have fallen under the spending review – defence procurement remains unreformed

Peter Hoskin

A glass of clear, blue water?

One of the most eye-catching stories this morning comes courtesy of ConservativeHome: “As part of the pre-election package, ConservativeHome expects Mr Osborne to announce that a Tory government will cancel Labour’s National Insurance tax rise. The Tories will announce an alternative way of plugging the hole. Earlier this week Policy Exchange argued that the NI rise was a very damaging way of raising extra revenue.” Sure, Cameron has hinted at this before, and there will be questions about how the Tories would fill the fiscal gap. But that doesn’t make this anything less of a smart move. Not only does it makes sense economically, but it would give the Tories

Fraser Nelson

Osborne’s weak response

I was all set up to Fisk the post-Budget analysis which Darling normally gives to the Today programme after the Budget – but he wasn’t there. The Treasury refused to have him debate with Osborne which is what Today (unusually) seems to have assumed. Well, we’d best get used to hearing Osborne post-Budget day. At first, I thought it was a coup for the Tories – but as Evan Davis sharpened his claws, it soon appeared to have been a net negative. Osborne just didn’t sound confident. A series of exchanges left him looking unprepared. His line – that he will eliminate ‘the bulk’ of the annual overspend over the

Peter Hoskin

Darling and Brown get away with it

Strange days, indeed. While most of the frontpages today are unflattering for Labour – particularly, and unsurprisingly, those of the Telegraph and the Sun – I imagine that Brown & Co. will be quite pleased with the general tone of the Budget coverage. Much of it mirrors the Independent’s view that Darling “played a weak hand well”. Or, elsewhere, there’s a kind of detached indifference about what is described as a “boring” Budget. Yes, if you like, you can take that as proof that the Darling-and-Mandelson approach to the public finances is less politically toxic, and a good degree more sensible, than the Balls-and-Brown approach. But, to my mind, it

Wednesday

24 Mar 2010

James Forsyth

Darling’s nothing budget puts the ball in the Tories’ court

This year’s Budget was never going to win the election for Labour but it could have lost it. If the markets had reacted really badly to it, warnings about how Britain is in danger of going Greek would have suddenly gained traction. But Darling avoided that fate with a Budget that did little. Listening to it, it was clear that those inside Labour who argued that the strategic imperatives for this Budget had to be appearing credible and not risking an adverse market reaction had prevailed. The mood music was very different from the PBR, with its emphasis on investment versus cuts. Politically, the challenge for the Tories is this:

James Forsyth

Fiscal drag

It is good to see the Tories calling fiscal drag what it is, a tax rise by another name. Fiscal drag is a result of holding income tax thresholds steady while both prices and earnings are increasing. This means that more people have to pay more of their income in tax. Gordon Brown indulging in this ploy so often as Chancellor was one of the main reasons that the number of people paying the 40p rate pretty much doubled between 1997 and 2008. One other good thing about the Tory line on fiscal drag today, is that it will put pressure on them to raise personal allowances and income tax

Fraser Nelson

In defence of Alistair Darling

It’s unusual for Chancellors to stand with their wives on the steps of the Treasury on budget day, and to see the Darlings together this morning gives an indication of what they have been through. Brown doubtless thought him an automaton when he appointed him to the job – but I was wrong to say that he would be “no more a Chancellor than Captain Scarlett was an actor”. He has defied Brown, bringing moderation and much-needed dullness to the worst fiscal crisis in Britain’s peacetime history. In James’s political column last week he suggested that Darling calls his autobiography “the forces of hell” – that he would defy Brown

Matthew Sinclair

Darling, what about the deficit?

Alistair Darling was terribly proud of the Government’s record in his Budget speech today. But he again dodged the question of how he’ll get the deficit under control. Ruth Lea has called this his “do little” Budget. With the country still facing hundreds of billions in borrowing, the few billion being saved are virtually neglible. There are huge downside risks for those borrowing forecasts as we get onto the more contentious growth projections from 2011-12 onwards, which are way above City expectations. And everything will get much worse if borrowing costs rise – Mike Denham has explored the frightening possibilities in a blog for the TPA. We had a proud

Fraser Nelson

A reassuringly dull budget

This was a surprisingly subdued Budget, and for that Alistair Darling is to be commended. He must have resisted all manner of pressure from Brown to put in pre-election pyrotechnics. But the budget was what it should be: a punctuation mark on the sentence of the national economy. That sentence says “our finances are going to hell,” and the Budget’s high point is that we are doing so fractionally slower than we were expecting to last November. Personally, I forgive Darling all the partisan stuff in his speech – this is a pre-election Budget after all. There is no act of wanton vandalism, like the 50p tax. Stamp duty on

Lloyd Evans

Not the main event

Cameron was scarcely trying at PMQs today. Show up, look a bit cross, slip in a joke or two, then sit down and wait for the Budget. That was his plan. When the PM offered his congratulations on BabyCam, the opposition leader quoted a text he’d received – ‘How do you find time for these things?’ Making this wisecrack seemed more important to him than attacking the PM. His tactics were odd, out of touch, retrospective. He asked about Brown’s attempts to conceal the evidence that, as chancellor, he flogged the nation’s gold too cheaply and blew vast sums in potential profits. Brown’s bungling over the bullion billions should be

Peter Hoskin

Budget Statement live blog

1400, UPDATE: The technical problems should have been resolved now. The complete live blog is now showing below. 1346, PH: Cameron sits down, and we’ll sign off. Apologies, again, for the technical problems – I filled in some of the gaps below. More from Coffee House soon. 1345, JF: Turn to page 178 of the Red Book and you see something telling. This Budget predicts growth of three to three and a half percent in 2011. But the average of independent forecasts predicts growth of 2.1 percent. Indeed, the Red Book cannot cite an independent forecast that predicts 3.5 percent growth in 2011. 1345, PH: Cameron’s on punchy form, hitting

Peter Hoskin

Spotting the Budget deceptions

There are, lest you need reminding, two levels of deception on Budget Day. First, there’s the Chancellor’s Budget statement, which is pretty obviously spun to put the best light on things. I refer you to when Brown triumphantly announced a 2p cut in the basic rate of income tax in his final Budget statement, while somehow forgetting to mention that the 10p rate has been abolished. And then there’s a Budget document itself, in which much of the most revealing content is tucked away in appendices and footnotes. Even straightforward spending figures are hard to come by in the Red Book. In which case, we’ll be doing our best to

Daniel Korski

Germany to the EU: no more integration

A Conservative Party article of faith has been the belief that other Europeans are innately more pro-EU than the British. In the past, this has undoubtedly been the case. Poll after poll has shown that Britons see the EU differently than most other Europeans. But as I have argued before, times are changing on the continent. In an article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (not a Europhile newspaper by any stretch), Germany’s new politics is explained. Nikolas Busse argues that the Greek crisis and failure of EU leaders to cobble together a plausible bail-out is the first major manifestation of Germany’s new role in Europe – that of a country

Peter Hoskin

All quiet on the Westminster front

If there’s one thing distinguishing this morning, then it’s just how placid everything feels. The clouds are moving sluggishly across the sky; there’s little excitement about the measures expected in the Budget; and there are no stories about rifts between the Prime Minister and the Chancellor. Indeed, Downing St insiders tell the FT that relations between Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling have been “pretty good” in the run up to the Budget, because both are “broadly agreed on the strategy of halving the deficit in four years while backing growth initiatives.” Many are taking this as a sign that Darling and Peter Mandelson have won out in their efforts to

Tuesday

23 Mar 2010

Martin Bright

Does America Point to a Future for the British Left?

I have had the pleasure of meeting two major figures of the American intellectual left over the past two weeks: Washington Post columnist EJ Dionne and Michael Kazin, co-editor of Dissent magazine. I’m sure there are as many differences as similarities in the politics of these two men, but what struck me about meeting them was how complacent and flabby we have become in Britain with our progressive politics. The relative strength of the Labour Party and the trade unions make us believe our radical traditions are safe here. But last night’s Dispatches made me realise just how fragile a principled left-wing politics has become. It is as well not

David Blackburn

A philanthropic future

There is barely a cigarette paper between Ben Bradshaw’s and Jeremy Hunt’s approaches to arts funding: it will almost certainly be cut. The Tories intend to plug the shortfall with National Lottery cash and Ben Bradshaw will fight to preserve his ‘miniscule’ budget but can give no guarantees. The arts are integral to Britain. Their importance extends beyond the cultural sphere. The Treasury receives £5 for every £1 that it invests in the arts. And it isn’t only a competitive tax regime that attracts business to these shores; Deutsche Bank relocated to London specifically because it’s an almost unrivalled cultural and artistic hub. This and the coming crunch has inspired