Politics Archives

Monday

6 Apr 2009

Just in case you missed them… | 6 April 2009

Here are some of the posts made over the weekend on Spectator.co.uk: Matthew d’Ancona marks the rise of the neo-confs. Fraser Nelson reports on Alistair Darling’s less optimistic forecast, and laments Ed Balls’s take on education policy. James Forsyth thinks the Government is taking us for fools, and analyses Gordon Brown’s global temptation. Peter Hoskin highlights a frugal MP. Daniel Korski gives his take on NATO’s new man at the helm. Martin Bright reveals the plight of the lost generation. Clive Davis has an Obama-ish moment. And Alex Massie tells a tale of luck and greed.

Sunday

5 Apr 2009

Fraser Nelson

Pure Balls

Ed Balls isn’t quite sure how to attack the Tory ‘Swedish schools’ policy. But a story in today’s Observer about a Tory councillor sounding off about it gives him a chance to try. The words issued are from Jim Knight, but I put them below and by thoughts interspersed. “Once they know the truth about David Cameron’s risky and divisive plan to import the Swedish schools…” Risky? The Tories would allow charities, church groups etc to set up schools if they have enough support from parents. But Balls* is right to see community-driven initiatives as a risk – a risk to the bureaucracies serving British pupils and taxpayers so badly.

Matthew Dancona

The rise of the neo-confs

The G20 summit and its long build-up – Gordon’s world tour – clarified for me what has shifted in the geo-political landscape since the election of Obama. So dazzling is the President’s smile and so impressive his oratory that it is easy to lose sight of the content: or, more accurately, the form. But in London it became clear. The age of Obama is shaping up to be an age of multi-lateralism for the sake of it: grand summits and gatherings at which statesmen draw up communiques and statements of intent as if that was what made a difference. In today’s Sunday Telegraph, I call the new elite the “neo-confs”

Saturday

4 Apr 2009

Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 4 April 2009

Charles Moore’s reflections on the week Only connect. Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, said that her family house in her Redditch constituency was her second home. This allowed her to claim £116,000 from the taxpayer for it. Then her husband, Richard Timney, who is paid by the taxpayer as her constituency assistant, claimed pornographic films as part of her parliamentary expenses. Nobody seems to have noticed the link. By her own account, Miss Smith spends four nights a week staying with her sister in London. Mr Timney, answering his wife’s constituents’ letters in Redditch, may, therefore, be bored and lonely. His claim for the cost of Raw Meat 3 (why

Martin Bright

The Lost Generation

I always get it in the neck here when I quote Polly Toynbee. But maybe I will get away with quoting her quoting Professor Danny Blanchflower, who, like me, is warning against losing a generation to the recession. Here’s the relevant passage from Polly’s column in today’s Guardian: “The man now on a mission to persuade Nos 10 and 11 to move fast is the only monetary policy committee member who saw the coming crash. Ministers are listening as Professor David Blanchflower urges emergency spending to prevent mass youth unemployment. With 800,000 under-25s out of work and another 600,000 leaving school this summer, he wants the budget to borrow £90bn to rescue

Fraser Nelson

Brown’s G20 bounce trims Tory lead to 7 points

The figure Gordon Brown will have been waiting for is now in: the post G20 bounce. He’s reduced the Tory lead to 7 points ( from 10 points pre-G20) with Labour up a modest three points to 34% according to a YouGov poll published in the Sunday Times tomorrow. The Tories are at 41% and Labour at 34% and the Lib Dems down one to 16% Some 52% said the G20 summit had been a success (see, the power of that $1.1 trillion figure!) Brown’s approval rating is up from 36% to 41% although still outweighed by the 53% disapproving. If Labour were a rational party interested in survival, they’d

Fraser Nelson

Politics | 4 April 2009

For the last 15 years, a four-letter word has terrified and paralysed the Conservative leadership: cuts. When it has been deployed by Gordon Brown on the electoral battlefield, the Tories have had no defence. Even after they surrendered and signed up to Labour’s spending plans, Mr Brown still accused them of planning ‘deep and painful cuts’. It is, as it happens, a charge entirely without foundation. Even now, the only people openly saying that state spending is too high are a bunch of supposed oddballs: Norman Tebbit, John Redwood — and 72 per cent of the British public. The last group has crept up almost entirely undetected upon Westminster —

The Spectator

Lions led by Labour donkeys

The Labour government has been spinning aggressively that British troops are withdrawing from Iraq because the job is done. Major General Andy Salmon, the British Commander, has even made the rather dubious claim that Basra is now safer than Manchester. It is true that the progress made in recent months has been remarkable: there have only been three successful militia bomb attacks during this period. The recent provincial elections saw the extremist Fadhila party, which had controlled the city, well and truly routed. Prime Minister Maliki’s Dawa party won a plurality of the votes and a majority of the seats; a testament to the public’s view of the Charge of

The Spectator

Gordon’s April Fool

We at The Spectator would like to say sorry to the Prime Minister. When he declared in October that the world needed a ‘new Bretton Woods’ — a reference to the 1944 conference that established the global financial system — we took him at his word. And when he swore that the G20 summit in London would be a great event, and that world leaders would do ‘whatever it takes’, we assumed he meant what he said. We now realise that we severely underestimated the PM’s sense of humour and failed to see the twinkling eye of surrealist humour in those dour features. In fact, the G20 has been the

Daniel Hannan

Brussels Notebook

It’s dawning on me that the Prime Minister can’t listen to criticism. It’s dawning on me that the Prime Minister can’t listen to criticism. I don’t just mean that he can’t respond to criticism; I mean that he literally can’t listen to it. When he came to the European Parliament to drum up support for his spending plans, I made a three-minute speech in favour of balanced budgets. As I talked, he pulled his face into what I think was meant to be a disdainful smirk, then ostentatiously chatted to his officials, then pretended to doodle on a piece of paper. I’ve never doubted Gordon Brown’s convictions: he seems genuinely

Friday

3 Apr 2009

James Forsyth

Blears takes on the MCB

Over the past month, there has been a dispute going on between Hazel Blears, who has been on the right side of the debate over Islamism, and the Muslim Council of Britain. Blears has had the government break off contact with the MCB because of Daud Abdullah, its deputy secretary general, signing the Istanbul declaration. The dispute has now moved to a new level with Daud Abdullah threatening legal action against Blears as Secretary of State. Blear’s department is not backing down, it has released this statement: “We have received correspondence from Dr Daud Abdullah’s solicitors. “We have been in dialogue with the MCB since the 6 March seeking clarification

The Spectator

The week that was | 3 April 2009

Here are some of the posts made during the past week on Spectator.co.uk: Fraser Nelson analyses Gordon Brown’s G20 deal, and gives ten reasons why a Tory government should cut state spending. James Forsyth gives his take on Barack Obama’s gift for the Queen, and reports on David Cameron’s search for a broader shadow cabinet. Peter Hoskin reports on Brown’s G20 sermon, and sets the reasons why the Prime Minister shouldn’t expect a significant post-summit bounce. Lloyd Evans watches the London Summit get under way. Martin Bright says that Boris just doesn’t get it. Clive Davis reports on the G20 meeting. Alex Massie laments Benjamin Netanyahu’s recipe for disaster. Melanie

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

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

2 Apr 2009

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

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

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

1 Apr 2009

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

31 Mar 2009

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.