Politics

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

Thursday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The Brown bust: tax

British households are far less able to deal with the credit crunch because taxes have risen by the equivalent of £6,520 per household compared to 1996/97 levels. This ratcheting up of the tax burden has been a steady feature of the Brown years but it is being felt with particular force now. During the boom years, homeowners felt richer as their house price rose at the fastest rate in the OCED and borrowed massively. So now, when the debt tap is choking, millions of households are right up against it because of this higher tax take. A tax cut is, of course, how to help people facing soaring food and

Wednesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Oh, Canada…

I’d been meaning to blog about the Canadian elections but then realised that, dash it, despite Canada actually being an interesting place stocked with charming, affable people I really didn’t have very much to say beyond, “hmm, Canada is having another election”. The BBC evidently thought so too since the elections didn’t make the 10 o’clock news last night. Poor form, I think. Still, it’s curious that Canada receives almost no foreign coverage, even in Britain where there are, after all, plenty of people with Canadian relatives or connections. Anyway, it seems that Stephen Harper has not quite pulled it off. ie, the Conservatives have improved their position, but are

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Brown’s new plan to bring down the debt

I am hearing that Brown is to make up his own debt measurement, after losing a battle to have Northern Rock struck from the official national debt. It will be used in the pre budget report, exclude Northern Rock, and would show the figure Harman gave in PMQs today, national debt falling from 43 percent to 37 percent. It sounds implausible; it is one thing to fiddle your own golden rule, another to produce a fake national debt series so you can get around an ONS ruling. So I am treating this rumour with suspicion. I mean, he couldn’t. Could he?

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

An eye catching initiative that I can be personally associated with

Ben Brogan spots this gem from an interview with the Prime Minister of Luxembourg, Jean-Claude Juncker: Gordon Brown “begged” to turn up at the Eurozone meeting last week. Brown desperately wanted to turn up so that could present to a domestic audience this carefully crafted image of Brown the Saviour, the man called in to advise the Eurozone lot. But as Juncker says in the interview: “The British prime minister had to beg to be let into the room in which the euro group was meeting. I’m sure that when the storm is over, the British will think about whether they shouldn’t become an equal in all decision-making bodies.’” This,

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The Brown bust: Unemployment

How bad can unemployment get during the Brown Bust? Predictions of two or three million unemployed miss an important point. The concept of the “dole” has changed: unlike in the 1980s it has become a way of life, as well as a safety net. There were 5.2 million on out-of-work benefits last February of which just 806,000 were claiming unemployed benefit. The number of out-of-work, working-age people sustained by the workforce could break six million next year. The progress on tackling what Beveridge memorably called the “giant evil” of idleness was woeful – mainly because 81 percent of the new jobs were either created or taked by immigrants. They may

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The illustrated guide to the Brown bust

The Brown Bust: house prices This is the first in a short series on the illustrated Brown Bust, we’ll show you graphs looking at the various aspects of the bursting of the Brown Bubble. After failing to control monetary policy – giving the Bank of England an inflation-only remit – the out-of-control money supply led (as it always does) to an asset bubble which has now burst. This graph shows how spectacularly. In little over a year, UK houses have fallen by 14 per cent – more than they did in six years under the Tories. Both lines are rebased to 100, with 100 being the peak of the market

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

PMQs live blog

Harman v. Hague with Fraser Nelson from noon: 12:00 I’m still cross with William Hague for pitching up at that Lake Como villa at the Barclays Wealth shindig that was in the papers before he left. Utter idiocy. Sure, he arrived on its last day to accompany his wife who works there. But his political instincts should have told him to stay a million miles away, when the event got in the tabloids as a fat cat extravaganza. So his stand-up comedy at PMQs had best be good today. 12:05 Hague back again on Chapter 11, this time with FSB backing “would save thousands of jobs from going under”. “Nor

Irwin Stelzer

Brown must stop sounding like a sore winner

‘I was born for this moment,’ Gordon Brown is said to have told a small group at a recent dinner party. The Prime Minister is too keen a student of history not to have known that he was parroting Winston Churchill’s famous remark on becoming Prime Minister in 1940, ‘I felt… that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour and for this trial.’ Perhaps it was reasonable of him to contend that the current financial crisis is as dire a threat to the British way of life as Adolf Hitler, perhaps not. But why quibble? The Prime Minister is entitled to his bump in the

Tuesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Lessons from a Tory Revival

At Culture11 today, I’ve a piece offering, however impertinently, some advice to the Republican party.That is to say, I suggest five lessons they could learn from the Conservatives’ revival in Britain. The extent to which they are applicable, let alone replicable, in the United States, may differ of course. But they are notions, not policy prescriptions, broadly summarised as:  The Base is Not Enough  The Elites Matter  So do Ideas  When the Electrate Moves, You Move  Atonement Needs to be More than Rhetoric; Or, Time is Not Enough Check the rest out here.

Alex Massie Alex Massie

42 Days: Gone But Not Dead

Peers reject the notion that it’s fine to lock people up for six weeks without even telling them why and how does the Home Secretary respond? Well, yet again, by impugning the motives of those opposed to granting the state these extraordinary powers: “I deeply regret that some have been prepared to ignore the terrorist threat, for fear of taking a tough but necessary decision.” And so the Labour party adopts the bullying thuggery that characterises much of the modern Republican party’s approach to security issues. Power corrupts, of course and Jacqui Smith should be ashamed of herself. Curiously, those ignoring the terrorist threat included not one but two former

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

It is grim out there in the real economy

As Gordon Brown says, Britain is indeed “leading the world” – but into recession, a property market collapse and soaring unemployment. This—not the stock market indices which mesmerise a bewildered House of Commons—is what matters. Take today’s inflation data – it shows a 30 percent rise in electricity prices, 40 percent for fuel prices and 50 percent for gas prices. And that’s before the winter sets in and everyone puts their central heating on. Food inflation is 13 percent and within that meat is up 20 percent. Globalisation continues to push down the costs of imports in relative terms, so overall CPI inflation is 5 percent. But those who have

Monday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

They Haven’t Gone Away You Know

The issue of whether the state can lock-you up indefinitely  for up to 42 days without even the courtesy of telling you why is back. Happily, the House of Lords seems certain to reject the government’s plans, sending them back to the Commons where, again hopefully, they will finally die. Here’s Labour MP Tom Harris, however, explaining that if you opposed giving the state these powers you’re a “civil liberties” (feel the sneer with which he writes these words!) nutcase and if there’s another terrorist attack on Britain, it will be your fault… It’s no secret that, along with the great, wise majority of our nation, I support a radical

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Hats off to Gordon Brown?

Commenting on this post, a reader asks: What does this do to Gordon Brown’s political future?  He sure looks like a world leader as the rest of the world falls in behind his bailout plan. Neither McCain nor Obama seem to have a clue what to do for the financial crisis, so I’m wondering if I should write in Brown’s name for President in here in the U.S.  Your opinion? This is a good question, not least because it permits one to escape from economics. My answer hunch, I guess, is that this will improve Gordon’s position in the short-term but that he is still extremely vulnerable in the long-term.

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Political Advertising 18

Is this the most famous presidential ad of all? Perhaps! Anyway, we’re back in 1964 and LBJ wanrs that Barry Goldwater will end up incinerating your children. Tough stuff.

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

He’s just making it up now

Another breathtaking Brownie at the Prime Minister’s press conference today: “I have to say we face this situation with relatively low national debt because of the steps we have taken since 1997, where we wiped off perhaps more than around £100 billion of debt by reducing the proportion of debt in our national income.” Huh? The ONS is unequivocal: net debt was £351bn in May 1997 and £632bn in August – or £545bn if you exclude Northern Rock. So where is his “wiping out” of £100 billion? Normally with a Brownie you can see how he cooked up the fake figure. But this time, it really does look like he

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Does the credit crunch weaken the case for Scottish independence?

So what would have happened to the Royal Bank of Scotland and HBOS had Scotland been independent? The Scotsman quotes an anonymous Edinburgh banker saying “HBOS would have gone bust and RBS would have followed five days later. The Scottish state simply wouldn’t have enough money to rescue two banks of that size as Iceland has done. As it would have been a Scottish problem rather than a British one – they’d both have gone to the wall.” In The Times, Jenny Hjul seductively argues that Iceland’s bankruptcy and Ireland’s woes expose the dangers of the small country model. Salmond even mentioned Iceland as a lodestar. He floated £100m –

Sunday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

What to expect from the Euro-zone meeting

The Euro summit is underway now, and I’ve spoken to a few of my better-informed contacts about it. Here are some thoughts:-   1)      The bailout model they’re meant to agree to in Paris does, indeed, seem to be that of Sweden ‘92. It’s being called that in France and Germany, but you can bet Brown will be calling it the British/Brown Model – he’s on a relentless mission to make political capital out of this. 2)      It is worth someone (like Cameron) pointing out that the UK is probably in the worst position of the EU countries. Not only were our banks the most over-extended but our household debt

Daniel Korski

We shouldn’t have to make Mandelson a Lord

Peter Mandelson is to take his seat in the House of Lords on Monday following his surprise return to the cabinet. But for one week he held the job of Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise & Regulatory Reform without having a seat in either the Commons or the Lords. He was presumably allowed to take the job by the rule-keepers because he is a member of the Privy Council. Many traditionalists will say that the constitutional anomaly will be corrected once Mandelson is made a peer and the Business Sectary can be held to proper account. But scrutiny of ministers in Parliament is becoming increasingly lax. PMQs is a

Saturday

Irwin Stelzer

Politics | 11 October 2008

Gordon Brown’s critics are confused. For months they have been accusing him of dithering, of timidity, of being unable to make the bold moves that are needed if his government is to get a grip on the unfolding problems in the financial sector and, now, in the economy as a whole. Now that he has shown more than a bit of both decisiveness and courage by bringing Peter Mandelson back from what most fair-minded people recognise is a credible stint as European trade commissioner, the critics have shifted gears. Mandelson is not the man to help craft policies with which to fight the emerging economic crisis because… well, because he