Politics

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

Wednesday

Peter Hoskin

Georgia’s PM drops by the Tory conference

In a classic piece of conference choreography, the Georgian Prime Minister – Lado Gurgenidze – has just made a surprise appearance in Birmingham.  Sure, he may have met with Gordon Brown a couple of weeks ago, but it’s still quite a coup for the Cameroons.  Not only is it a effective reminder that there are other international problems than the financial crisis (thereby forcing the debate away from Brown’s comfort zone), but it also creates the impression that the Tories are very much part of the process; a government-in-waiting.

Peter Hoskin

Councils wary over Osborne’s tax plans

One question that’s been hovering above George Osborne’s council tax pledge is whether his expectation that “100 percent” of councils will sign up to it is overly optimistic.  If a survey of London council leaders in today’s Standard is anything to go by, it may well be.  That survey finds that 16 of London’s 32 boroughs – every one run by Labour or the Lib Dems – would oppose the measure, and – allegedly – there are grumblings from Tory councillors too.  Their beef is that a freeze on council tax would force services to be cut back, and could even cause taxes to be artificially higher in subsequent years. These are not worries that

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Cameron’s task

While David Cameron is keeping his head over the credit crunch, Gordon Brown appears to be losing his. If he wants to “save” the Lloyds-HBOS deal he should stay well away from it. The Lloyds shareholders will see no greater sign of alarm than Brown’s endorsement. His blaming of America for the credit crunch looks desperate: if a house of cards collapses, do you blame the gust of wind, or the construction? Cameron is speaking directly to the public here, and his “decade of debt” narrative is one with which the indebted British household will be only too familiar. I say in my column tomorrow that Brown is using an

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Politics | 1 October 2008

The champagne ban was non-negotiable: David Cameron did not want any of his aides drinking bubbly at the Conservative party conference. Not that they needed much telling. The mood was already so sombre that some Tory staffers were decanting cans of beer under the tables of the Hyatt Hotel in Birmingham to avoid bar prices; they were later caught by the manager. What was first intended as a celebration had become a wake, mourning the prosper-ity era which the Conservatives had originally planned for. They must now prepare for an economic war. The Pol Roger was flowing defiantly at The Spectator’s reception on Monday night, but was used mainly to

Tuesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Political Advertising 12

This time we’re going back to 1956 and this short, but to the point, Adlai Stevenson advert. More than anything else, it reminds one of how long Richard Nixon was at the centre of affairs. He’s the dominant political personality between FDR and Reagan. Nixonland indeed.

Daniel Korski

Consultants be gone

One of the Tory’s main plans is to cut the number of consultants working for various government departments. Without it, it is doubtful that a Conservative government would enable local authorities to freeze council tax (a policy that incidentally makes this blogger think the Shadow Chancellor reads Coffee House). The desire to cut the cost of consultants is understandable. Spending on consultants across the public sector reached to a whopping £3bn in 2006, according to the National Audit Office. The cost has probably gone up since then. The Conservatives think they can save a total of £500 million in the first full year of government, and by £1 billion in

The Spectator

The politics of reviving the bailout deal

Politically the place a lot of members of the House of Representatives probably wanted to be yesterday was voting against the Paulson plan but it passing anyway. There is little public enthusiasm for bailing out Wall Street, both Obama and McCain are now making a concerted effort to call it a rescue plan not a bailout. Oddly enough if the plan passes and works it will become more unpopular as people will say that the crisis really wasn’t bad enough to justify this kind of measure. But House Republicans, two thirds of whom voted against the bill, now have a different problem: if everything does collapse, they’ll be the ones

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The Tories score at crisis management

When George Osborne went to meet Alistair Darling today, I wondered who had been lulled into whose trap. Both sides would want to be seen as the first actor here, being the first to extend the olive branch and rise above party politics etc etc etc. Yet when Osborne came out of the Treasury he left no doubt whose idea it was. “I am very grateful to Alistair Darling for agreeing to meet me and we had an extremely constructive meeting,” he said. Code: I called the shots here. And thing would be a lot better if I was making a daily trip up the Treasury stairs. The BBC is

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The limits of bipartisanship

I can understand why George Osborne went back to London to see Darling, but it’s good to hear that he’s coming back to Birmingham tonight. The idea of a national government for an economic war may appeal to Brown in that it delays his meeting an electorate already strapping on its Doc Martens in anticipation of booting him out. But practically it’s a joke – under this Prime Minister anyway. If Brown won’t confide in, let alone share power with, his own Cabinet, what can Cable and Osborne do? Plus I suspect Brown won’t overcome his hatred for Osborne. It would end calamitously. The national interest lies in getting rid of

Matthew Dancona

The Tories must show they are up to the task ahead

Cameron’s astute and measured speech has sealed one deal: it has awoken the Conservative Party to the fact that they really will, in all likelihood, and barring an unforeseen catastrophe (plenty of them about these days), be forming the next Government. And this is actually rather daunting. After their 20th Century addiction to power, the Tories went loco for almost a decade and a half, tearing themselves to pieces in the Major years and then for all but a year-and-a-half of the Blair era. Now, detoxified, united and redefined, they have positioned themselves adeptly for their first general election victory since 1992. Which is all well and good: but the

Peter Hoskin

Cameron strikes the right tone

Cameron’s statement on the economy to the Tory party conference was as good as it could be.  It won’t win the Conservatives votes, but that’s not the name of the game today.  The overriding drive is to look – and be – capable and cooperative.  The general message that “The financial system needs protecting; the taxpayer needs protecting; and that all the parties are in this together” will go some way to achieving that. As Iain Martin points out over at Three Line Whip, the cooperation has already started.  Cameron spoke on the phone last night with Gordon Brown, and George Osborne is on his way to meet Alistair Darling

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Events overtake the Tories

At the Spectator party last night there was an unplanned Titanic theme. The world was crashing down and here were we in an set gallery, proffering killer blue cocktails with a string quartet playing as, to borrow Bush’s argot, this sucker goes down. David Cameron and George Osborne didn’t show – ostensibly because they were too busy, but I suspect because they knew how bad this would look for the sketchwriters. It’s a dillema. Do the Tories try to insert themselves into the news story which is shunting them into the inside pages of today’s press, as American parties do so successfully? Or would this be seen as cynical? Cameron’s

Matthew Dancona

This financial Waterloo

‘It’s like the battle of Waterloo,’ one leading Cameroon said to me at the Spectator’s party last night. He meant that nobody knew what the morning would bring, and that once the battle had been joined – in this case a global financial battle between impersonal forces of unimaginable scale – nothing would be the same again. He was right. One has the sense here at the Tory Party conference in Birmingham of being in an ant colony whose residents have just realised how tiny they really are. This is not a reflection upon the Conservatives, who had a good day yesterday and are running a show as smooth as

Monday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Where’s Scotland?

Notice what’s missing from this Guardian scoop? A third runway at Heathrow airport would be scrapped by a Tory government that would instead build a £20bn TGV-style high speed rail link between London, Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds. In one of David Cameron’s boldest moves on the environment, the party will today unveil plans to cut 66,000 flights a year from Heathrow by tempting passengers on to the first new rail line north of London in more than a century. Well, working on the dubious presumption that this track will actually be built (let alone that it will be delivered on time and on budget), you’ll notice that these new lines

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

More on Ashcroft

Today on Daily Politics, David Cameron was again asked about Lord Ashcroft’s tax status – is the party vice-president, the guru of the marginal seats campaign, registered to pay tax in this country? As ever, Cameron had no answer – “You’ll have to ask him about his own tax status,” he replied. He knows this reply looks shifty and evasive and the Ashcroft Problem is one which Channel Four Dispatches look at this evening. I’m interviewed as part of it. I say in the documentary that the party owes Ashcroft a great deal. He’s a billionaire who could do anything with his life. For kicks, he goes helps Tories win seats

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Smiling inside

I’d love to be in No10 right now. Gordon Brown will simply hate George Osborne’s council tax freeze plan – it will look, smell and sound too much like one of his own scams, and he’ll be hurling staplers and barking orders at his men to shoot down this balloon before it takes off. Yet it’s real enough. Just as last year, Osborne has identified a hugely unpopular tax (council tax), decided to freeze rather than cut it in keeping with the spirit. And he’ll pay for this by cutting something even less popular (consultants and Big Brother government advertising). And to top it off, only make the offer to

Peter Hoskin

Has Osborne’s speech opened the reformist floodgates?

Perhaps the most signficant aspect of Osborne’s council tax proposal is the method in which it will be funded – not by increasing tax elsewhere, but by makings savings both at a local level and on the current Government’s spending on consultants and advertising.  It’s the boldest attack the Cameroons have yet made on government waste, and their clearest admission that not all public spending is good in itself. The question now is whether Cameron and Osborne are going to pick up this ball and run with it.  They’ve tended to shy away from an out-and-out public service reform message, for fear of fuelling Labour’s “Tory cuts” attack.  But now

The Spectator

Just in case you missed them… | 29 September 2008

Here are some of the posts made over the weekend on Spectator.co.uk: Fraser Nelson reports from the Conservative Party Conference in Birmingham.  He gives his first impressions of the conference; applauds Boris Johnson’s speech; and analyses George Osborne’s plans for an Office for Budget Responsibility. James Forsyth claims that indiscipline should worry the Tories as much as complacency, and outlines the Tory task in Birmingham. Clive Davis commemorates Paul Newman. And Americano argues that a Presidential Debate draw was a good result for Barack Obama.

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Osborne’s Quango could be used to counter the tax-cutters

Naively, I missed a sixth potential function of Osborne’s new Office for Budget Regulation – to protect David Cameron against Tories who want tax cuts. Here’s the theory, which I heard last night from more than a few people. The OBR is programmed with a static rather than dynamic model of tax collection – ie, it judges a reduction in a marginal tax rate as a net loss to the Exchequer, ignoring the extra industry it would unleash. So it says “no tax cuts, we must pay off debt” and strengthens Cameron’s hand against his own party. If this sounds daft, remember that the Tory party is still in therapy