Politics

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

Friday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Has Eric Pickles seen the light on expenses?

Eric Pickles says his Question Time disaster last week was a “car crash” which has changed his views on MPs expenses. He opens his heart to Andrew Neil in Straight Talk, being shown on BBC News Channel this weekend. “You’re just trying to steer away and the more I tried to steer away the worse it was. You could see the conclusion coming and I made the mistake of making actually quite a trivial point … but it has changed my views.”   And how? He says a “completely different system” is needed for expenses “on the basis where it’s a lot less.” “I cannot justify members of parliament claiming

Alex Massie Alex Massie

RBS: All fur coat and no knickers

Such is the disrepute into which Scotland’s once all-conquering bankers have fallen that the favoured put down at Edinburgh dinner parties these days is “My husband pays your husband’s salary”. A period of silence on the part of these erstwhile Masters of the Universe would be most welcome. This injunction, it seems, also applies to their spouses. That sound you hear is the noise of a righteous middle-class populism. These are disconcerting, humiliating times to be a Scottish banker. Nowhere is this more keenly felt than at the Royal Bank of Scotland’s headquarters at Gogarburn on the western outskirts of Edinburgh. RBS’s downfall and subsequent nationalisation-in-all-but-formal-name has made it open

Thursday

Martin Bright

Boris Just Doesn’t Get It

When I began making my film about Ken Livingstone last year it became clear pretty quickly that there were serious issues around the accountability of the Mayor of London. To his credit this was something that Ken always realised. When challenged about the fact that he ran London as his personal fiefdom, Ken agreed, because he understood that was this was pricedsly the structure of the office of Mayor established when the institution was set up. Quite early on in the Boris campaign, the Tory candidate was asked about issues of accountability and he admitted that he didn’t understand what the fuss was about. His advisers soon pointed out that

Martin Bright

Gordon Brings the International Stage to London

At the height of the internal Labour Party coup against Gordon Brown just before the last Labour Party conference even the Prime Minister’s greatest detratctors agreed that he did the international economic stuff rather well. I remember one senior Blairite heavyweight suggesting that after his removal, Brown should be allowed to occupy a new role as a roving economic ambassador. Since then, his reputation for economic competence has undergone an assault from which few would recover. But, whatever his opponents might say (and Fraser is right to say that it was largely done with smoke and mirrors), the G20 summit ended up as something of a triumph or Gordon Brown. I

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Brown’s illusory G20 deal

Britain has as its Prime Minister a master of political illusion. He may not be much of an orator, but there is no one better at dressing up old money as new. If the G20 nations wanted to fake progress, to spin a $1.1 trillion figure while committing no new money at all, then Gordon Brown is their man. “This is the day that the world came together to fight the global recession, not with words but with a plan,” said our Dear Leader. Well, let’s have a closer look at this supposed plan… 1) “Making available an extra $1 trillion”. Ahh, those Brown verbal tricks. What does “make available”

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Ten reasons why a Tory government should cut state spending

For most of the 15 years, an orthodoxy has governed Westminster: that cuts are bad, and that higher state spending – sorry, “investment” – is good. While the Tories stayed mute, Gordon Brown embarked on the biggest explosion of state spending in the developed world. As I say in my column today, only the oddballs say that state spending is too high: Lord Tebbit, John Redwood and 72% of the British public. This last figure is from a poll conducted by PoliticsHome – which is moving into opinion polling, but of a specific type. It has a new technique, deliberative polling, where a representative group of 1,400 people are chosen.

Wednesday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Their minds were elsewhere

How Brown must have loved reading out his day’s business at PMQs: meeting with President Obama, then his counterparts from Russia, China and Japan. For months, he will have been dreaming about today like a four-year-old dreams about Christmas. All the world leaders, all here in London – and Brown playing the statesman. Then Edward Garnier has to lower the tone of national rejoicing by raising the Lord Myners and asking Brown if he realises his ministers are “held in ridicule and contempt” by the public. “I see he has risen to the occasion of today,” noted Brown in a more-in-sorrow-than-anger way. Here is he, saving the world – and

Tuesday

Martin Bright

Time Changes Everything

It wasn’t so long ago that senior Labour politicians were suggesting that Gordon Brown should use the coup of the G20/Obama visit to bounce straight into an election. It seems bizarre now, but such was the confidence of the Labour Party in those early days of the economic crisis that there were close allies of the Prime Minister urging him to go to the polls this spring. Their only concern was that it might be too late. The ideal time for those urging a snap election (the second in a series of elections that never were) was February. Now, the idea that Brown will do anything but wait until the last minute seems inconceivable, but anything’s possible.

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Jacqui Smith Must Stay!

Over at the Motherblog, Peter writes that Gordon Brown is being damaged by, inter alia, the continuing brouhaha over Jacqui Smith and her expense claims.  A revealing PoliticsHome poll, released this afternoon, finds that a majority of voters (56 percent) think she should step down as Home Secretary – with only 36 percent thinking she should remain in the post.  Despite his support for Smith, the PM will find it difficult to ignore that level of public disapproval. Count me among the 36% then. Not because I think Mrs Smith deserves to stay in the cabinet. Quite the reverse in fact. Outside the financial departments, no cabinet minister has done

James Forsyth James Forsyth

In search of a broader shadow Cabinet

Steve Richards offers a rather back-handed compliment to the Tories in his column today, which Pete flagged up earlier. Steve writes: “The Shadow Cabinet is not bad (in terms of political talent it is the equal to Labour’s in 1997)” I think this is right. The party’s decision to use Cameron for pretty much every significant announcement has obscured the fact that there are seven or so, admittedly not a huge number, members of the shadow Cabinet who would impress in most Cabinets. The problem for the leadership is that most of the members of the shadow Cabinet who are impressive are all quite similar in style and appeal. When

Martin Bright

A Vision of the Future

A lot of us have been wondering what Westminster might be like under the Tories. What, for instance, would the parliamentary press lobby look like under a Cameron government? A return to deference, perhaps. Would the gentlemen and the ladies of the press take their information dutifully from the PM’s spokesman or woman (who would presumably be called a spokesman) and put it straight in the paper? We now have an indication from the behaviour at Eric Pickles’s bash (quite literally) last night that we may see a different kind of throwback to the days of boozing and brawling that seemed a distant memory.

Monday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Who would replace Smith?

Given that Jacqui Smith is almost certainly toast, who will replace her? I’m dismayed to hear James Purnell’s name mentioned – dismayed because we need him doing welfare reform, and because the Home Office is the graveyard of political ambition. I’d quite like Purnell around long enough to be Opposition leader, keeping Cameron on his toes. But Brown’s strategy is to identify and destroy his most likely successor – and for this reason, Brown may send Purnell to the Home Office. Ladbrokes is now taking bets on who the Home Secretary will be by Christmas. Here are the odds (note, Osborne is deemed more likely to be Home Secretary than

The Spectator

Just in case you missed them… | 30 March 2009

…here are some of the posts made over the weekend on Spectator.co.uk: Fraser Nelson tracks Gordon Brown’s Highway to Hell, and wonders whether Alistair Darling has slipped up over the Dunfermline Building Society. James Forsyth laments the absurd demands of the NUT, and says that governments can recover from rage but not ridicule. Peter Hoskin reports on some pornographic expenses, and gives his take on David Cameron’s tough love agenda. Daniel Korski says that tragedy of Afghanistan is that the Taliban has a better coordinated political and military strategy than we do. Martin Bright celebrates the wisdom of Clay Shirky. And Clive Davis observes two kinds of stoicism.

Sunday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Has Darling slipped up over the Dunfermline Building Society?

Might the collapse of Dunfermline Building Society turn into a political scandal? Tonight, Channel Four news has an interview with Jim Faulds, its chairman, who appears to be saying the Treasury have been lying about him. He didn’t want a bail out, he says, just a £20m loan (the spin had been that he wanted three to five times that). He also flatly denies Darling’s claim that the building society had any sub-prime exposure. Now, knowing the chaos surrounding every bank collapse it would be shocking but not surprising if Darling had misunderstood all this. Conspiracy theorists will note that, if he has slipped, it will be a good time

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Brown’s Highway to Hell

As Brown left Argentina, he might have thought “at least nothing else can go wrong now.” After all, Dan Hannan had started a Mexican wave of derision with his now-famous speech in Strasbourg; then Brown was introduced in New York as a man who became PM in 2007 “and it was all downhill ever since”; then to Brazil where he was snubbed by Pele and ribbed by the president; then to Chile to be given lessons in Keynsian economics. Then, finally, he learns Cameron will have 60 minutes with Obama – just 5 less than he is due. Thus the scene is set for a farcical G20 next week, and

Saturday

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

The response to Jade’s death reminded me how puzzled I was by Diana mania

It was a badly timed death, a departure which, ironically, scorned the important press deadlines. The best time to die, if you are a celebrity, is at three o’clock in the afternoon of a weekday — in time for the early evening news bulletins and the next morning’s papers. This, however, was a Saturday into a Sunday, a time when even Christ might have died and there’d be nobody sentient around to pick up the story. I was a bit drunk, having spent the evening out drinking with my then girlfriend and a bunch of friends whose names I cannot subsequently recall. Temporary drink friends, I suppose. There had been

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Politics | 28 March 2009

To comprehend the scale of the sickening task awaiting George Osborne if he becomes chancellor, consider the following. If he were to raise VAT to 25 per cent, double corporation tax, close the Foreign Office, cancel all international aid, disband the army and the police, release all prisoners, close every school and abolish unemployment benefit he would still be unable to close the gulf between what the UK government spends and what it raises in taxes. Hopes of a relatively rapid economic recovery that could conceivably fill this gap are receding every month. And there is a limit to how long the government can make up the difference with borrowed

Friday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Another trip, another embarrassment for Brown

For a while it looked like Brown was about to go to a country without some comic mishap. But he didn’t let us down. Michelle Bachelet, the Chilean President, noted at her joint press conference with Brown how her government had been able to introduce a significant fiscal stimulus because of their “decision during … the good times in copper prices, we decided to save some of the money for the bad times and I would say that policy today is producing good results.” – a prudent approach that Brown, sadly, didn’t take in Britain. It’s worth noting that Bachelet is authentically Keynesian: the whole principle behind stimulus is that

The Spectator

The week that was | 27 March 2009

Here are some of the posts made over the past week on Spectator.co.uk: Fraser Nelson wonders whether we’ve witnessed the beginning of the end, and says that Cameron should learn to love the bankers. James Forsyth tracks the internet success of Daniel Hannan’s attack on Gordon Brown, and says that Brown is hemmed in. Peter Hoskin wonders how significant Mervyn King’s intervention could turn out to be, and claims that the system of MPs’ pay and allowances needs an overhaul. Daniel Korski sets out the three Talibans. Martin Bright gives his take on the Left and radical Islam. Clive Davis laments the contestants on The Apprentice. Alex Massie asks: has Obama already failed?

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Standing up for our financial sector

I was on the Today programme this morning (here) defending bankers, up against Michael Meacher who has drafted a private members’ bill imposing a punitive retrospective tax on bonuses. This, of course, is simply vengeance – the political equivalent of smashing Fred Goodwin’s windows. And for such a bill to be even before Parliament sends a dangerous message about the mood in Westminster. My argument is simple: Britain does banking phenomonally well, and we profit from hosting this highly mobile breed. I didn’t give statistics on air, but the financial sector generates a quarter of all corporation tax, the richest 1 percent pay 23 percent of income tax. What happens