Politics Archives

Wednesday

4 Nov 2009

City pay is no side issue: it’s an affront to society

Roger Bootle says it’s wrong to argue that bankers’ bonuses are the price we have to pay for economic success The smart thing to say — indeed, Allister Heath said it in last week’s issue — about bankers’ pay is that it doesn’t really matter: it’s a distraction from more serious concerns about regulation or the structure of the financial system. Supposedly, people who express amazement and disgust at what bankers receive are motivated by feelings of envy, and they just don’t understand the way the City works. If a bunch of bankers makes a few hundred million pounds or dollars — it hardly matters which currency the amount is

Bill Jamieson

No longer proud to wear the tartan?

Bill Jamieson wonders how badly ‘Brand Scotland’, with its associations of canniness and caution, has been damaged by the financial crisis and a dismal Scottish Prime Minister Scotland’s fortitude has certainly been tested these past 12 months. Its proud claim to have a special excellence in finance — an innate canniness and caution — has been shattered by the demise of its two banks headquartered in Edinburgh, Royal Bank of Scotland and HBOS. It didn’t matter that New York, London, Dublin and Frankfurt also suffered blows to their banking systems. These were blows that Scots took personally, a wound to our very definition. Scotland was whisky, lochs, glens, tartan —

Peter Oborne

A poisoned legacy from which Labour has never quite recovered

Judging only by its electoral performance, the Communist Party of Great Britain was a near-total failure in the 20th century. It only secured a tiny number of MPs at Westminster, while the party membership peaked at just over 60,000 at the height of Soviet popularity during the second world war. But this public lack of success was misleading. The communists exercised considerable secret influence in universities, publishing houses, journalism and even the civil service for decades after 1945. Its greatest power, however, lay inside the Labour party and the trade unions. It was perhaps especially strong in the National Union of Mineworkers and the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers. This

Tuesday

3 Nov 2009

Martin Bright

The Tories’ Euro Curse

I happened to be on the phone to the Foreign Office press office late this afternoon when I heard a huge cheer go up. The press officer I was speaking to laughed nervously. “The Lisbon Treaty has been signed”, she said. So who was cheering? It surely can’t have been independent civil servants. I guess it must have been a large group of ministers and special advisers who just happened to be walking past the press officer at just that moment. Whoever it was, they were cheering at the expense of David Cameron. The Tory leader’s twin strategy for appeasing the eurosceptic wing of the modern Tory Party has left

James Forsyth

What Cameron should now say about Europe

The accusations of betrayal being hurled at David Cameron are, for the reasons I outlined earlier, deeply unfair. It is Labour that has broken its promise, not the Tories – a point that the Tories should be shouting from the rooftops. Also, Euro-sceptics should remember that Cameron did keep the pledge he made during the leadership to take the party out of the EPP despite the many siren voices urging him to renege on this commitment. The whole referendum question, though, is turning into one of trust. Part of the reason for this is that the Tory leadership always seems slightly embarrassed by the issue of Europe. So it is

David Blackburn

Vaclav Klaus signs the Lisbon Treaty

According to the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg, Czech President Vaclav Klaus has signed the Lisbon Treaty. As James wrote this morning, Cameron has not broken any promise concerning a referendum because there was no such pledge except under circumstances that have passed; but Cameron must now detail how he intends to repatriate powers and obtain an opt-out from the Social Chapter. What is peculiar is how this has become a story about the Tories breaking pledges. It should be nothing of the sort. That ‘honour’ lies squarely with Brown and Blair. Labour’s mock-outraged line that Cameron has ‘”reneged on his cast-iron guarantee” defies belief; it’s incredible, brazen and unmistakably wrong. I

James Forsyth

Cameron hasn’t broken a pledge on Europe

With the Czech constitutional court’s decision removing one of the final barriers to ratification of the Lisbon Treaty, attention is turning to what the Tories will do next. What we know they won’t do is hold a post-ratification referendum. This is prompting cries of betrayal from some. But this charge is unfair. Cameron’s “cast-iron pledge” has been overtaken by events — the treaty will already have been ratified by the time Cameron comes to power and so a referendum would only be demonstrative. This is one of those instances where an analogy can be instructive. Imagine if someone trying to buy Liverpool Football Club gave a ‘cast-iron’ guarantee that they

David Blackburn

Public contempt for political elites extends beyond the expenses scandal

Rachel Sylvester’s essential Times column describes the ‘Court of Public Opinion’ as a lynch mob that must be placated by MPs embracing the Kelly Review. She writes: ‘The real problem about expenses is that they have made it harder for politicians to show leadership about the things that matter far more. The verdict of the court of public opinion is too harsh on many MPs. But unless they accept it, serve the sentence and move on, they will never be able to convince the voters to listen to them on anything else.’ Even if MPs accept the Kelly Review in its entirety, grovel, flagellate and repent, the Court of Public

Alex Massie

Rebranding Republicanism

Nate Silver says that while the Democratic “brand” is of marginal value in about half the country, the Republican “brand” is pretty toxic across two thirds of those United States. So, he has an idea: You can actually make the argument — although maybe it’s not a good one — that Republicans should in fact find a way to pull a Blackwater and switch their party ID when nobody is looking, from Republican to capital-C Conservative. This would probably involve at least some degree of bona fide structural change, and undoubtedly some near-term trauma: an orchestrated chaos. But the ‘conservative’ brand is just as powerful as it ever was in

Monday

2 Nov 2009

Alex Massie

A Republican Resurgence?

So, tomorrow’s off-off-year elections looks as though they will provide encouraging news for the Republican party. The special election in upstate New York may have been chaotic – it’s not often that GOP bigwigs endorse the Conservative challenger to the GOP candidate, nor that often that the Republican candidate drops out and endorses the Democratic candidate – but it looks as though Doug Hoffman, the Conservative “insurgent” in the 23rd Congressional District may well prevail. Add this to the likely GOP triumph in Virginia’s gubernatorial contest and the possibility of defeating Governor Corzine in New Jersey and you can see how you could construct a pretty decent The GOP is

James Forsyth

A Grieve error

The Conservative leadership claims that a British Bill of Rights would serve to guide judges in interpreting the European Convention on Human Rights and so give Britain some discretion in how the rights which exist in the Charter — many of which are vague — are applied in this country. But in the new issue of Standpoint the eminent legal commentator Joshua Rozenberg reports that Dominic Grieve, the shadow justice secretary and a firm supporter of the ECHR, thinks that a British Bill of Rights would only be introduced towards the end of a Cameron first term and might well not be on the statue book by the end of

David Blackburn

The Euroball is rolling

Well, it hasn’t taken long, but outright opposition to the Tories’ new stance on Europe is underway. Conservative Home has a copy of an email sent by Bill Cash calling for a full referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. Here’s the key section: ‘As David Cameron has said, we need an association of member states. In order to achieve this, we cannot simply cherry-pick individual aspects of the treaty and call for renegotiation of those. We need a full referendum on Lisbon as we were promised and as we voted in the House of Commons. No ifs or buts. This is about the Government of the United Kingdom operating in line

Alex Massie

Referendum Delayed: 2012 to be the new 2010?

So, it seems that dreams of a referendum next year have been dashed. 2010, once the Year of the Referendum, will now be plebiscite-free. No referendum on the Lisbon Treaty and no referendum on the Act of Union either. This my be good news for voters but it’s tough on hacks who’ll need to find something else to write about. But, for a moment, let’s consider some of the implications of this. I’ll leave the Lisbon question to one side for now and reiterate my suspicion that Labour, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats are helping, not hindering Alex Salmond, by agreeing to delay nay referendum until after the next

David Blackburn

Wilshire: This is exactly how Nazi Germany started

No it isn’t. The disgraced Tory MP, David Wilshire, who used £105,000 in Commons’ offices expenses to pay for a company owned by him and his good lady and was forced to stand down at the next election, has, with a flair for historical analysis possessed only by geographers, written to his constituents: ‘The witch hunt against MPs in general will undermine democracy. It will weaken parliament – handing yet more power to governments. Branding a whole group of people as undesirables led to Hitler’s gas chambers.’ Jacqui Smith and Tony McNulty cast themselves as victims, which defied belief. But Wilshire’s attempt is worthy of Basil Fawlty in its absurdity;

The Spectator

Just in case you missed them… | 2 November 2009

…here are some of the posts made at Spectator.co.uk over the weekend. James Forsyth argues that the press will make a mountain out of each of Lord Ashcroft’s actions unless he clarifies his tax status, and believes that Theresa Villiers is the ideal candidate to sell the Tories’ arguments in Europe. Daniel Korski celebrates Flemming Rose’s war, and analyses the effect Abdullah Abdullah’s withdrawal from the Afghan run-off. David Blackburn believes that Lt. Col. Thorneloe’s memo and death should serve as an epitaph for the government’s dereliction of duty. Fraser Nelson debates David Miliband’s candidature for EU Foreign Minister. Susan Hill conducts a poll in the heart of Middle England.

David Blackburn

Nanny knows best

Does Professor David Nutt’s dismissal concern the impossibility of relaxing drugs legislation, or the relationship between experts and ministers? David Nutt was sacked because he spoke the unspeakable and criticised the government for failing to acknowledge the self-evident scientific truth that horse-riding, especially after quaffing sherry, is more dangerous than taking ecstasy and dancing maniacally in a night club. As Bruce Anderson notes in today’s Independent, it is impossible to have a rational debate about drugs. The politics of narcotics always trumps evidence. Despite David Nutt’s eminently sensible view that classification must reflect quantifiable harm, for the benefit of proportionate punishment and effective education, disassociation from any leniency on drugs is a

Sunday

1 Nov 2009

James Forsyth

The Tories’ new line on Europe

Tim Montgomerie has the scoop that the Tories will not hold a referendum on Lisbon if it has been ratified by the next general election. A vote on Lisbon once it had been ratified would only have had moral force so the Tory policy shift is not a betrayal of Euro-scepticism. However, the party will seek a ‘manifesto mandate’ to begin negotiations to repatriate powers. The challenge for the Tories is to persuade the other member states to allow Britain to take back powers. As Tim says, the Tories will need a savvy negotiator with strong Euro-sceptic instincts to take charge of this process. To my mind, Theresa Villiers, a

Alex Massie

The Neather Brouhaha: A Correction

So I was wrong. It was a mistake to suggest that the alleged Neather Plot – that is, the conspiracy to “swamp” Britain with Labour-voting imigrants – was the kind of cockamamie scheme that could only be the work of over-excited junior clever chaps at the Home Office. Not so! It turns out that it’s even simpler than that: the scheme didn’t exist at all. Remember, Mr Neather originally claimed that a report from Downing Street’s Performance and Innovation Unit saw immigration as a massive political opportunity for the government: But the earlier drafts I saw also included a driving political purpose: that mass immigration was the way that the

Alex Massie

To hell with Alan Johnson, the Tories are just as moronically authoritarian as Labour

I don’t think that government ministers should necessarily listen to the advice they’re given by independent, expert authorities. That is, the government is and should be free to decide that, whatever the merits of any given piece of independent analysis the larger, more general, interest is best served by rejecting that advice. So there’s nothing wrong with Alan Johnson sacking Professor David Nutt. That’s his prerogative. But we have our own views and interests too. And we may fairly say that Johnson is a fool and that Nutt’s recommendation, shared by his colleagues at Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, that Cannabis should be reclassified at a Class C,

James Forsyth

Until Ashcroft is clear about his tax status, the press will make a mountain out of everything he does

I have long thought that the secrecy surrounding Lord Ashcroft’s tax affairs is a strategic liability for the Conservative party. The Conservatives should be able to say if their party vice-chairmen is domiciled in this country for tax purposes. Indeed, openness about this point should be a condition of him holding the position. The Observer today has a front page story about Ashcroft’s involvement in William Hague’s trip to the US. But even given my concerns about Ashcroft, I fail to see the evidence produced as particularly worrying. We know that Ashcroft has flown members of the shadow Cabinet around before—David Cameron even took a flight back from the 2007