Politics

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

Alex Massie

George W Bush and Immigration

George W Bush seems to agree with me. This isn’t as alarming as it might sound. Here’s some of what the President had to say at his final press conference this morning: I am concerned that, in the wake of the defeat, that the temptation will be to look inward and to say, well, here’s a litmus test you must adhere to. This party will come back. But the party’s message has got to be that different points of view are included in the party. And — take, for example, the immigration debate. That’s obviously a highly contentious issue. And the problem with the outcome of the initial round of

A new approach to Euroscepticism

As was reported over the weekend, we at the TaxPayers’ Alliance have teamed up with Global Vision to launch a new, joint campaign on the EU. Given that the issue of Britain’s relationship with the EU has been fought over so many times in the past, what – CoffeeHousers might be justified in asking – is new with this effort? The campaign, which will run up to the European Elections in June, will make a conscious break from the issues and language of Eurosceptic campaigns of the past. All the evidence points to the fact that no matter how accurate the sceptical voices of the last 40 years have been,

Fraser Nelson

Making debt a real, human issue

Superb poster by the Tories which makes debt into a real, human issue (just as Coffee House urged him to in November) – a picture of a baby with the words “Dad’s nose, Mum’s eyes, Gordon Brown’s debt”. It calculates that a baby born today will owe £17,000 – and there is no exaggeration here. Brown repeatedly claims to have reduced debt, such a whopper that he’s seldom contradicted by interviewers. The truth: in 1996-97 the UK debt was £347bn. By the end of the boom in 2007-08 it had soared to £527bn and is forecast to  hit £1.02 trillion in 2012-13. And this is using Brown’s method: ie, not including the nationalised

Fraser Nelson

Davis / Purnell

James Purnell is the welfare and pensions secretary – the title ‘work and pensions’ is a bit of a euphemism. Britain isn’t a planned economy, the government doesn’t set employment levels, so the ‘jobs summit’ today is based on a false premise. We ain’t Cuba. Yet Brown wants to play up to the narrative that he is ‘taking action’. So poor old Purnell needs to speak about jobs, and did so in interview with Evan Davis on the Today programme earlier. It brought up some interesting points… 1. How bad can this get, asked Davis. “Governments don’t forecast unemployment, that has been the case for some time,” said Purnell. Actually,

Alex Massie

Tales from a Convert

A friend of mine, once armed with impeccable progressive credentials, recently came out s a Conservative – much to the bemusement of his family and many of his friends. With Neill’s permission, here’s the explanation he published on his Facebook page. Sure, this is just one person’s story, but I wonder how many other people might have come to similar conclusions after 12 years of Labour government. Anyway, I think this a pretty persuasive critique of Labour in power: I grew up in a Tory-hating family in Thatcher’s Britain. In those divided times, we were definitely not “one of us” – Mum was a teacher, Dad brought up the kids

Alex Massie

Karl Rove and the SNP

I doubt many Nationalists would welcome the comparison but facts are stubborn things and the fact is that the SNP and Mr Rove have quite a bit in common. Just as Rove orchestrated campaigns in 2002 and 2004 that portrayed the Democratic party as being, in some odd sense, fundamentally unpatriotic (principally for the crime of not being Republicans) so the SNP’s default presumption is that any opposition to any of their policies is somehow an attack on Scotland itself. They are the only patriots in town. No-one else really has the country’s best interests at heart. How can they, after all, when they’re in thrall to a “foreign” power

Alex Massie

Et Tu Grover?

Granted, no-one in their right mind would choose Michelle Malkin as a political standard-bearer. Or gate-keeper for that matter. Nonetheless, there is the awkward fact that she’s extremely popular amongst a certain class of American conservative. I’ve already suggested that organisations such as the Club for Growth and Americans for Tax Reform are just as much a part of the conservative problem as they are likely to contribute to any solution. Frighteningly Michelle Malkin agrees with me; thankfully her reasoning is different. The problem with Grover Norquist, you see, is that he’s insufficiently right-wing. No, really. Which brings us back to Grover Norquist and the unpleasant realities that these strategists

Fraser Nelson

McDonald’s take-away a Tory aide

More defections from Tory HQ: Natalie Kirby, Cameron’s assistant head of media, is off to run the press at….. McDonald’s UK. Before Coffee Housers snigger, I’d like to point out that McDonald’s corporate debt has a lower risk rating than UK government bonds, so the markets are in no doubt about which is the dodgier institution. I’m not joking: McDonald’s has a credit default swap rating of about 70 while the UK government’s is about 100. This means that the market genuinely thinks that quarter-pounders are a safer bet than pounds. Cameron will argue that as companies prepare for a change of government, its inevitable that Tory staff will be

Staffing the Pentagon

Michele Flournoy is expected to be nominated today  by President-Elect Barack Obama as the first female Under Secretary for Policy in the Pentagon. Her appointment will be greeted on both sides of the Atlantic with a huge sigh of relief. The policy position became hugely controversial in the Bush years when Douglas Feith occupied the post and  argued strongly for the invasion of Iraq as a manifestation of the preeminence of Pentagon power. It was Feith who set up secret cell in the Pentagon to produce doctored intelligence that fitted the party line and justified the Iraq war. By contrast, Flournoy is a centrist, a well known figure among all

Fraser Nelson

What options remain after rate cuts?

As expected, base rates are down half a point to 1.5% – so, yet again, drinks are on those lucky few with variable mortgages. I suspect they’ll hit 1% before Easter. Then what? “Nobody is talking about printing money” says Alistair Darling – but this is a little Brownie. Quantitative Easing – the equivalent of printing money – is being spoken about by everyone and can come in many forms. The Bank of England can start buying stuff – Treasury IOU notes, company bonds, or even shares. So you’d attempt to lower market interest rates by boosting asset prices. Darling is right: he can fund the deficit through issuing gilts,

Fraser Nelson

Ed Balls debuts the apprenticeships Brownie

Ed Balls never gets enough credit for the Brownies that he cooks up. One was served today, when he spent an interview with the Beeb denouncing those Tory plans to axe 220,000 apprenticeships. As he put it: “There is a choice for our country – a choice between a Government which says we must act to get through difficult times and the Conservatives, who on Monday announced cuts in public spending which would mean over 200,000 apprenticeships cut. In fact, it would mean almost no apprenticeships for young people at all.” Except there are no Tory plans to axe apprenticeships. Not one. It was concocted by Mr Balls, on the

Fraser Nelson

Will Brown benefit from the interest rate cuts?

The VAT cut may have been economically and electorally irrelevant, but might all these interest rate cuts deliver for Gordon Brown? History will be made tomorrow when the Bank of England cuts rates to the lowest in its 315-year history – probably by half a point, to 1.5%. And even that will probably fall to 1% before Easter. A friend emails to say he has become a “reluctant buyer of Gordon Brown stock” – his mates are getting cheap mortgage deals, at 4% or 4.5%, saving hundreds a month. This will create a feelgood factor amongst a certain group. Once rates do fall to 1%, of course, the Monetary Policy

Fraser Nelson

Politics | 7 January 2009

Only when Tony Blair popped up on the airwaves did it become clear just how different it is this time. Israel is again at war — yet, unlike 2006 there are no MPs clamouring for Parliament to be recalled. There is no Prime Minister who regards himself as a peacemaker offering his opinion to the world. Nor is there even an opposition seeking to outflank the government by using loaded phrases like ‘disproportionate response’. There is a recession on — and strong opinions on the Middle East seem to have fallen victim to the credit crunch. When asked, Gordon Brown says he is alarmed by Israel sending troops into Gaza.

Restoring the Taj is just part of Tata’s challenge

As guests made their way out of the Taj hotel in Mumbai after spending New Year’s Eve in its restaurants, many stopped to study a small memorial plaque erected to commemorate the 12 staff who died protecting guests from terrorists at the end of November. If it has the same dignified simplicity as a British village war memorial, that’s probably no coincidence. Because within the Tata Group — the Taj’s owner, through a subsidiary called Indian Hotels — the ideals of duty, loyalty, courage and grit, which seem to British sensibilities to come from another era, are still very much alive. ‘There was not a single person who did not

Alex Massie

The Scottish Tory Dilemma

Someone needs to tell Tom Harris MP that the “Unionist” in the “Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party” referred to the Union with Ireland, not that between Scotland and England. Equally, the fact that the Conservatives (in London) and the SNP (in Edinburgh) sometimes seem to be reciting similar talking points should scarcely come as any great surprise: the Labour party is their common enemy. True, the Conservatives oppose the Nationalists north of the border but as far as the UK party is concerned that’s a secondary front and one, more particularly, on which there’s little need for a fresh offensive this year. If, as Alan Cochrane hints, the Scottish Tories

Alex Massie

Chump of the Day

The National Gallery of Scotland needs to raise £50m to prevent the sale of Titian’s Diana and Actaeon from being sold. The painting, part of the Bridgewater Collection, has been loaned to the gallery for decades but is now being sold by its owner, the Duke of Sutherland. Well, £50m is quite a lot of money. Then again, it’s a pretty nifty painting (though my own tastes run a little later – to Caravaggio and Velazquez in particular). Anyway, it’s hard to imagine there being any discussion in France or Italy or Germany of the rights and wrongs of committing public money to the fund-raising effort. And while I have

Alex Massie

This Britain

Since coming to power in 1997 Labour has created 3,605 new ways for you to break the law. That’s an average of 320 new offences a year or, to put it another way, more than one new offence is created every day Parliament is in session. Time to dust off an old and favourite proposal: every new offence or law should be accompanied by the repeal of an old one…

Fraser Nelson

Wedgwood’s contribution to the abolition movement

As Waterford Wedgwood goes bust and its obituaries written, it’s worth noting its contribution to an area for where it gets little credit: outlawing the slave trade. Much rot is spoken about the abolition campaign, mainly due to the vanity of MPs who like to portray it as the result of a parliamentary initiative. Rather, it was a grassroot social movement – in many ways a viral campaign which owes much the marketing genius of Josiah Wedgwood, the company’s founder, who joined the anti-slave trade campaigners in 1790. He had a genius for what is today called product placement. He’d find ways of getting his vases into famous paintings, for

Festive highlights

Here are some articles from Spectator.co.uk that you may have missed over the Christmas and New Year break: Andrew Lambirth previews some of the best exhibitions in the year ahead. Douglas Murray writes that studying Islam has made him an atheist. Fraser Nelson says that David Cameron needs a robust economic policy that will stand up in an election campaign. James Forsyth highlights some things to look out for in 2009. Matthew d’Ancona wonders what maps will guide us through 2009. Peter Hoskin says that the defeat of Hamas is a humanitarian cause. Toby Young delivers his New Year advice for journalists.