Politics Archives

Monday

22 Feb 2010

A Cameron-Clegg government

With even Michael Portillo predicting a hung parliament, what would Britain’s post-election government actually look like if the Tories did not secure an over-all majority. The Tories could form a minority government, hoping to persuade enough MPs from other parties, but principally the Liberal Democrats, to vote with them on the key issues. Such a government would be inherently unstable, lurching from vote to vote and dependent on the relationship between a Prime Minister Cameron and Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, as well as between George Osborne, the would-be Chancellor, and Vince Cable, who many think is a more qualified potential occupant of No 11. Party leaders would

Alex Massie

Bullying is the Least of Gordon’s Problems

I assume, in accordance with the stale conventions of our time, that the Prime Minister’s treatment of his staff will soon be dubbed Bullygate. But I think we all knew that Gordon Brown is, shall we say, a difficult man to work for. So I broadly agree with Jonathan Pearce’s take: the character of the man matters but it’s hardly the best reason for thinking a change of Prime Minister overdue. Meanwhile, as so often, there are few scenes more entertaining than the British press indulging its appetite for humbug and hypocrisy. Indeed, what with his penchant for screaming foul-mouthed abuse at subordinates and for flinging phones and anything else

Fraser Nelson

Some reasons to be cheerful about Cameron and the Tories

By way of a response to the comments on my post yesterday, here are some reasons to be cheerful about Cameron and the Tories. The poll lead dropping to six points is indeed a wake-up call, and Cameron probably worked out a while ago that things were going a bit Pete Tong. Indeed (Short the UK), there are signs that he has already started to act. Look at last Monday: three strong election videos, without a politician in sight. The perfect remedy to the Tragedy of Cameron’s Head poster. The policy of allowing management buy-outs of government departments is bold, radical and entirely in keeping with Cameron’s general policy of

Rod Liddle

Isn’t Gordon Brown being bullied?

Just a thought, but isn’t the National Bullying Helpline guilty of bullying the Prime Minister? I think I will ring its freephone number claiming to be Gordon Brown and explain that I am currently being bullied by a prominent anti-bullying charity, can they suggest a course of action. Quite clearly what the aptly-named Pratts, the bossess of this charity, has done is breach confidentiality, which is about as serious as it gets for an anti-bullying organization. That’s why its patrons are either in the process of resigning or distancing themselves from the whole caboodle. I have the suspicion that this is one of those Tory attacks which will badly misfire

James Forsyth

Cameron’s first response to the bullying question

Cameron just got the question on Brown and bullying. His reply was well pitched, right tone of voice and all that. But it contained the suggestion that Sir Phillip Mawer, who polices the ministerial code, should be asked to investigate. This is the last thing No 10 wants, it just wants this to go away. But I suspect Cameron has just given the story a nudge along.

Peter Hoskin

Cameron kicks off the transparency agenda

Here I am, in a cavernous “space” in East London, for a conference on the Post-Bureaucratic Age – or “See-Through Government,” as Guido more evocatively put it. David Cameron has kicked things off with a speech on the issue, and there’ll be talks and panels throughout the day. It’s like Glastonbury for policy wonks. So how was Cameron? Well, he’s normally at his snappiest and most persuasive when he talks about all this tech stuff – and today was no exception. All the usual lines about “handing power to the people,” and eroding “the dull, stultifying presence of state control,” made an encouraging appearance. And he outlined what this would

The Spectator

Just in case you missed them… | 22 February 2010

…here are some of the posts made at Spectator.co.uk Fraser Nelson previews Gordon Brown’s interview with Channel Four, and argues that it is time for a Cameron Lazarus act. James Forsyth explains why the political classes are underestimating the Rawnsley allegations, and wonders what lead the Tories need to win. Peter Hoskin has bad news for both Brown and Cameron, and is underwhelmed by Labour’s election launch. David Blackburn on the proposed Cameron interview with Alan Titchmarsh. Daniel Korski has some Balkan business. And Rod Liddle tells us all to get a grip.

David Blackburn

How should the Tories respond to the Rawnsley allegations?

As James predicted last night, the ‘Bully boy Brown’ story is now at full steam and will speed on as phone-ins discuss bullying in the workplace. The National Bullying Helpline’s intervention, ethically dubious in view of the charity’s supposed confidentiality, has negated Labour’s damage limitation strategy. Both Peter Mandelson’s line that Brown is a passionate and demanding man and the PR campaign to soften Brown’s image have been blown clear out of the water. Brown has made significant progress recently: David Cameron’s personal ratings have halved since September. That brief resurgence will be reversed as this story rolls. The Sun’s hot-headed frontpage says it all. Now is the time

Alex Massie

Everyone wants to cut public spending, right?

Fraser’s back and forth with the estimable Danny Finkelstein about public spending and the Tories is excellent stuff. Fraser concludes by saying that, regardless of tactical differences, on a strategic level “we’re all cutters now”. And of course in one sense he’s right: anyone who wins the election is going to have to be prepared to be unpopular. Perhaps very unpopular. And are we all cutters anyway? In the abstract yes, but not when it comes to any given project or department or priority. Consider this chart which though from a Pew survey in the United States would, I suspect, be mirrored by any comparable British poll. Pew asked voters

Sunday

21 Feb 2010

Rod Liddle

Bullying in No.10? Grow up…

Look, I know a good many of you lot would clutch at anything if it helped defeat Gordon Brown at the next election, and I understand and respect that point of view. But come on, be honest – bullying? Accusing the Prime Minister of bullying? I suppose the best that one could argue, from a rightish perspective, is that Brown has reaped what Labour has sown: a nation of whining ninnies, ever so sure of their rights, perpetually convinced that they are victims. But even that’s stretching it, because you won’t find anyone more singularly opposed to bullying than Cameron, nor more likely to stick up for the rights of

David Blackburn

Background politics

The Conservatives are at pains to emphasise that ‘it’s not where you’re from but where you’re going that’s important.’ A trite but pertinent phrase: background is neither a pre-requisite nor an impediment to a political career, nor should it be. Upbringing is important when it informs values. Many of the Shadow Cabinet have travelled together from the chapel pews of Eton to the Tory front bench; consequently, the Tories are wary of linking politics to background and experience. On the whole that is sensible, the exception is Michael Gove’s personal history, which is central to his Swedish market based education reforms. Gove may not wish to parade his life before the electorate, but to my mind his

Fraser Nelson

Time for Cameron’s Lazarus act

Two seriously worrying polls for the Conservatives today. One is a Sunday Times/YouGov poll, showing a Labour recovery reducing the Tory lead to six points well into hung parliament territory and the lowest since December 2008. The other is a PoliticsHome poll in the News of the World, according to which: Cameron’s approval rate has been steadily falling, and Brown’s similtaneously rising – the difference between them has halved, in recent months, from 90 points to 45 points. If the election is a 39-33 split, then the Tories end up with just ten more seats than Labour and are dependent on coalition with the LibDems. A result like this, against

Saturday

20 Feb 2010

Charles Moore

The Specator’s Notes

Of all the buzz-phrases which New Labour invented, ‘the many, not the few’ remains the most effective. Of all the buzz-phrases which New Labour invented, ‘the many, not the few’ remains the most effective. Labour may, in fact, have failed the many, but they retain their rhetorical advantage over the Conservatives. Now the government wants to make inequality actually illegal, through its Equality Bill, and the Tories are frightened of being on the wrong side of this argument. Yet surely common experience shows that the many need the few. This is true in the straightforward sense that the few pay a vastly disproportionate part of income tax (the top 1

Peter Hoskin

Brown faces the Rawnsley revelations, while the Tories face the polls

The question tonight is: which piece of bad news will make the biggest impact? The bad news for the Tories, or the bad news for Labour? Let’s take the second one first. I’m referring, of course, to the first installment in Andrew Rawnsley’s revelations about Gordon Brown. ConHome have already published some snippets – click here – and they give you plenty of juice for your buck. Not only are there the expected allegations about Brown hitting his staff (much of which seems to have been covered in the Mail on Sunday a couple of weeks ago), but Rawsley also reveals that the Cabinet Secretary, Gus O’Donnell, investigated and reprimanded

David Blackburn

Cameron for Middle England

David Cameron is a man for all seasons. The Bullingdon Club man told the men’s mag, Shortlist, how he takes a glug of Guinness, steps up to the oche, shoots 180 and then retires to watch the seemingly interminable Lark Rise to Candleford. He also likes pottering around his garden dispensing Miracle Grow with liberal conservative largesse. So it’s only fitting that the Leader of the Opposition will appear on housewives’ favourite, gardener and erotic novelist Alan Titchmarsh’s daytime TV show. This is a PR masterstroke. Brown has benefitted from his interviews with Piers Morgan and Tesco magazine, not in the polls but in terms of perceptions. Cameron will strike at undecided and reluctant

Peter Hoskin

No surprises – and much Tory-bashing – in Brown’s Big Speech

Move along, now – there’s nothing to see here. Or rather, reading Gordon Brown’s Big Speech, there’s nothing that you hadn’t already seen in the papers, or that you wouldn’t have expected to see anyway. The four election themes got a mention. Labour’s record in government was pushed and promoted to the point of absurdity. Words like “new”, “fair” and “change” were flung around like so much confetti. And no election date was given. No alarms, no surprises. More than anything, Brown set about attacking the Tories on every conceivable level. He caricatured Cameron & Co. as a party of privilege and wealth, who are more concerned about fox-hunting than

Peter Hoskin

Welcome to The Future Fair

So now we know. Labour’s election slogan is A future fair for all. And – as various folk, including Alex, have pointed out – it’s kinda screwy. As in, “we’re all going to The Future Fair” kinda screwy. So don’t expect it to catch on. Unless, of course, there really are bright lights, big wheels and rollercoasters on offer. The slogan kickstarts a feverish weekend of activity. Brown is going to set out the main themes of Labour’s campaign. The Tories might try to sabotage it all. And we may, possibly, perhaps, find out what the election date is. Stay tuned, so to speak. P.S. I wouldn’t be too surprised

Alex Massie

A Future Fair for All

Yup, that’s what the whizz kids and the marketing gurus at Labour HQ have come up with for Labour’s election campaign slogan*. A Future Fair for All. Try that one on for size. Note too the now traditional absence of punctuation that further obscures the meaning. As one wag put it, the Tory response might be A Fête Worse than Death. More than anything else, however, it reminded me of Wolcott Gibbs’s classic profile of Henry Luce. Published** by the New Yorker in 1939 it remains a hoot today and a devastating parody of Luce’s bombast and the special, magnificently empty prose style he favoured at Time. Timespeak, however, seems

James Forsyth

To win the election, the Tories must learn to fight dirty

James Forsyth reviews the week in politics Having to work on a Sunday is a chore — doubly so when that Sunday is Valentine’s Day. But there were plenty of worker bees at Labour headquarters on Victoria Street last Sunday, devoting themselves to the passion of their life: hounding Conservatives. They came to rebut a document that the Tories had just released on how Britain has grown more unequal under Labour. Late in the afternoon, all their Valentine’s dreams came true: they found a mistake. Somehow the Tories had managed to claim that 54 per cent of girls under 18 got pregnant in the most deprived areas of the country

Rod Liddle

Why not let politicians call each other ‘scum-sucking pigs’?

David Wright, the Labour MP for Telford, should get out more, he should be more inclusive. I have attended many Conservative party conferences and mingled late at night with the delegates, and I have to say it always seemed to me that the party was composed almost exclusively of scum-sucking pigs. Sometimes I would go to these conferences with the notion, maybe at the back of my mind, that perhaps next time an election came around I might vote Conservative, given the state of the country and the Iraq war and Harriet Harman and what have you. But the scum-sucking pig stuff cured me of that within four days. But