Read about the latest UK political news, views and analysis.
It seems absurd to describe our dour and jowly Prime Minister as an eternal optimist, but he is. Rachel Sylvester’s column contains this delicious snippet of gossip: ‘When Mr Darling said that Britain was facing the worst recession for 60 years, Mr Brown telephoned him to tell him the downturn would be over in six months.’ Prudent foresight, there’s nothing like it.
Ok, so tomorrow’s Pre-Budget Report is shaping up to be a horrendously political affair. But, rest assured, it could have been so much worse. In what is, by now, a familiar Budget-time story, Alistair Darling is fighting the good fight against some of Brown’s most inharmonious fiscal brainwaves. According to Rachel Sylvester’s column today, here are just some of the measures that the Chancellor has resisted: — A long-term windfall tax on bankers’ bonuses (Darling favours a temporary, one-year tax). — A call to lower the 50p tax threshold from £150,000 to £100,000. — A reversal of the plan to make it easier for couples to pool their inheritance tax
There are a couple of noteworthy snippets in today’s FT interview with George Osborne: the claim that the Tories may not take corporation tax as low as it is in Ireland; the outline of a “five-year road map” on business tax policy, etc. But, I must admit, it’s this passage which jumped out at me: “[Osborne] says his Tory conference speech in October, which included plans for a public sector pay freeze and an increase in the state retirement age, ‘was an important moment’ that showed a mental leap to being ‘an alternative government, not just an opposition’.” These self-bestowed titles – “alternative government,” and the like – are
As Anthony Wells says over at his UK Polling Report, there are plenty of reasons to doubt whether Labour could convert a third of Lib Dem voters over to their cause. But the article in today’s Times on Labour’s new strategy will still give Team Clegg pause for thought. The problem for the Lib Dems is that they haven’t yet managed to hit on an attention-grabbing issue to make their own – their favourite, perhaps only, election strategy. The cause of Parliamentary reform could have done the trick, but – beyond Nick Clegg’s call to prevent MPs from taking their summer holiday – very few of the Lib Dem proposals
Ok, so all Brown Budgets are political – but signs are that this week’s PBR could be his most blatantly partisan yet. I mean, just look at his speech this morning on improving efficiency in the public sector. Some of its measures are welcome – for instance, pledging to cut the pay of senior servants, and the general idea of using technology more effectively in government. But, as other folk have pointed out (see Guido and Iain Dale), the measures are insufficient to the scale of the debt crisis, and many are old news. All in all, the signs are as we expected: Brown is paying only lip service to
If everyone concentrates on the actual numbers in the PBR then it will be a disaster for Labour. So, instead Labour will try and distract us all with small but eye-catching measures — a new rate of inheritance tax for estates worth more than £5 million, that kind of thing. The aim will be to move the debate from the grim reality of the country’s fiscal situation to Labour’s dividing lines. There will be a lot of pressure on Cameron and Osborne to denounce Labour’s soak the rich measures. But the most important thing for them to do is to get the debate back to the state of the public
…here are some of the posts made at Spectator.co.uk Fraser Nelson relates what happened when he tried to debate climate change with an expert, and says that Brown is ready to strike. James Forsyth argues that the Tories musn’t allow Labour to define their tax policy, and finds a quote from the NUT that epitomises everything that is wrong with the British educational establishment. David Blackburn argues that tax cuts will stimulate growth, and thinks that Alistair Darling has made the correct decision but a political blunder on IHT. Mark Bathgate says that all Gordon Brown has saved is the bonus pool. Daniel Korski sends a dispatch from Copenhagen. Susan
David Cameron’s ‘nothing to do with me guv’ response to the Ashcroft tax question on yesterday’s Politics Show has not put the issue to bed. In fact, his obfuscation has the reverse effect. The Independent runs an article today describing how little is known about individuals and authorities. ‘The House of Lords Appointments Commission says that it does not know whether Lord Ashcroft is UK resident. The Cabinet Office and HM Customs and Revenue have declined to answer questions about his status, on grounds of privacy.’ The reality need not be as dodgy as rumour and perception suggest – the reason that there is no official record of Ashcroft’s main residence is that
My posh Tory friends get really irritated when I talk about class. Almost as annoyed as my posh Labour friends. The idea that class was somehow excised from the political discourse by New Labour is absurd. We live in a country where the two dominant political parties are essentially representative of their class. And why not? It is completely understandable that a political coalition would coagulate around the interests of business and big money. It would be a pretty rubbishy ruling class that didn’t protect its position. We should also be proud of living in a country which has developed a major political party (and a moderate one at that) to
The rumour mill is pulling 24/7 shifts. In recent days, newspapers and newswires have turned into gossip columns devoted exclusively to Alistair Darling’s Pre-Budget Report. If the rumours are true, which is a huge assumption, Darling will not offer the taxpayer a pre-election lolly-pop besides deferring the Age of Austerity until 2011, by which time he will probably be out of office. If Labour’s 1992 manifesto was a tax bombshell, then by all accounts this PBR will be like Dresden. Everyone, both rich and poor, is in the firing line, and there is no space here to analyse every alleged proposal. Darling looks likely to prolong the VAT cut until at least February,
Things are shaping up nicely for Gordon Brown ahead of the Pre-Budget Report next week. The Tories were 17 points ahead on ICM in October – now it’s 11. Cameron would have a narrow majority on this basis but, given the margin of error, we’re back into hung parliament territory. And this has a self-reinforcing effect on the Tories. A shrinking opinion poll means they tend to get paralysed, avoid arguments, play it safe, wait for Labour to screw up again. As I say in my News of the World column today, the voters who are looking for leadership then don’t really see it. This, of course, softens the Tory
On Thursday night Michael Gove announced that a Conservative government would pay off the student loans of those with good science degrees from quality universities. The move, paid for by cutting out a level of bureaucracy in teacher development, would help address the shortage of science and maths specialist in state schools. It was a smart piece of policy that even Ed Balls didn’t attack. But the Telegraph reports carping amongst various unions that the scheme does not go far enough. The NUT says that, “It is a real mistake to think that they can designate small number of universities as being better than the others.” This quote sums up
I make my second foray into the climate debate with trepidation. But visiting Denmark a few days before COP 15, it is impossible to escape the subject. Whether I speak to friends, family or strangers on the bus, everyone has a view and wants to share it. TV coverage of the forthcoming climate talks is relentless and there is even a separate passport queue for COP participants at Copenhagen’s stylish airport. The latest “story” to emerge has pitted the new Climate Change Minister, the former commentator Lykke Friis against the Speaker of Parliament, Thor Pedersen. Though they are both from the same centre-right/liberal party, Mr. Pedersen has made himself
The Telegraph reports that Alistair Darling will allow married couples to continue to pool their inheritance tax allowances. Downing Street has pressed the Treasury to abolish pooled allowances in order to demarcate between Labour, the party that promotes fairness, and the Tories, the party that entrenches privilege. For all the recent polls and bravado, the near-bankrupt Labour party is still fighting an intensive rearguard. If it is avoid annihilation, the party has to hold on in Scotland, Wales and urban Northern England. Darling’s pledge illustrates that there is more than one way to fight a defensive battle. Theoretically, tax free pooled allowances worth up to £600,000 help middle income
Anyone interested in climate change should buy The Spectator today. We don’t normally make such naked plugs here on Coffee House, but our global warming special has a line-up of the variety and quality which I guarantee you will find in no other British magazine or newspaper. As the FT’s Samuel Brittan says: we dare to debate. You’ve seen the piece about why the Maldives aren’t sinking, from a world-leading sea levels expert who has made six field trips to the islands. We also have the Freakonomics guys showing how geo-engineering has such potential, even though the environmentalists don’t seem interested. We unearth a never-seen-before CIA file from 1974 which
Jack Straw has finally got his wish: despite valiant efforts in the Lords, his Coroners and Justice Act has castrated one of our most ancient and overlooked institutions. Why? Because the ‘people’s judge’ was just too good at winkling out inconvenient truths. The office of coroner has existed in this kingdom since the year 1194. The medieval version was chiefly concerned with the protection of Crown revenue and determining responsibility for violent deaths as a means of raising fines. But seven centuries of gradual evolution resulted in a coroner rather more concerned with the welfare of the public. The modern incarnation emerged in the Victorian era when large numbers of
Pity Alex Salmond and his separatist supporters. The publication of their manifesto for Scottish independence this week is no threat to the Union, but a requiem for a dream now vanquished. The devolution settlement gave them the rope, and now they’ve managed to hang themselves with it. During Mr Salmond’s tenure as First Minister, Scotland’s economic situation has become progressively worse. If Gordon Brown did not send home pocket money — a subsidy of £11 billion each year — Scotland would have a budget deficit that would put even Britain’s to shame. So now Mr Salmond is under pressure: this week he had to demote one of his ministers to
A ‘new paradigm’ built on sand At Dubai’s soaring, spurious peak, one factoid the emirate’s bling-burdened battalion of ‘corporate communications consultants’ liked to slip to junketing media was that Dubai had the world’s densest concentration of cranes. Impossible to verify but too good to ignore, the glib observation almost always made it into media reports. It compelled people to want to go where the action was: subliminally, it suggested an economy where the fast buck came easy. And it certainly seemed true from the spas of Dubai’s ‘seven-star’ hotels, rising over a city-state-as-building-site which was also constructing that contrived archipelago for Premier League millionaires and their ilk. One towering temple
Gordon Brown’s much heralded tripartite regulatory system failed the first time it was faced with a financial crisis, proof that taking away regulatory powers from the Bank of England was a massive mistake. Now, Ben Bernanke — who is trying to secure a second term as Fed Chairman and keep the Fed’s regulatory powers intact — is citing the Brown model as what not to do, telling the Senate banking committee: “[O]ver the past few years the government of Britain removed from the Bank of England most of its supervisory authorities. When the crisis hit – for example when the Northern Rock bank came under stress – the Bank of
Here are some of the posts made at Spectator.co.uk over the past week. Fraser Nelson calls for a debate, a proper debate, about climate change, and asks who cares about the playing fields of Eton. James Forsyth ponders some testing times for the Tories, and reckons there might be life in the class war yet. Peter Hoskin wonders if Brown did himself more harm than good at PMQs, and believes that doubts still remain over Afghanistan. David Blackburn is unimpressed by the Lib Dem’s Mansion Tax, and doubts if David Cameron should reward marriage fiscally. Mark Bathgate exposes Labour’s City free for all. Lloyd Evans watches the latest round of