Politics Archives

Thursday

3 Sep 2009

Gordon Brown & The Smiths: Heaven Knows We’re All Miserable Now

Here we go again, folks! It’s Plot Against Gordon time again. And so soon after the last one too! According to Martin Kettle, Labour’s conspirators are contemplating an October move against the Prime Minister. Well, we’ll see. Maybe this one will be different and actually come to something. Basically, however, the parliamentary Labour party’s relationship with the Prime Minister is like a Smiths compilation album: Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now Me too. What are we going to do? Did you see Gordon’s performance yesterday? That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore No I guess it isn’t. Half A Person Sad but true; harsh but fair. Gordon will always only be Gordon. Panic

James Forsyth

Eric Joyce resigns as PPS to the Defence Secretary

In a move that is sure to overshadow the Prime Minister’s speech on Afghanistan tomorrow, Eric Joyce, a former army office, has tonight resigned as PPS to the Defence Secretary Bob Ainsworth. In his resignation letter, published on the Channel 4 website, Joyce says that the public would “appreciate more direct approach by politicians” to the Afghanistan question and that the public will not “accept for much longer that our losses can be justified by simply referring to the risk of greater terrorism on our streets.” Joyce also states that there must be a run off in the Afghan election if public support for the deployment there is to be

James Forsyth

If Britain hasn’t returned to growth by the end of the year, will it still be ‘no time for a novice’?

Looking at the OECD’s latest economic forecast it seems that the UK—unlike the US and the Euro-Zone–will not return to growth by the end of this year. (Although, one can’t help but wonder if Brown will start heralding zero percent growth in the fourth growth). Indeed, the OECD projects that the UK economy will shrink by 4.7 percent over this year as a whole—although the worst appears to be behind us with the rate of shrinkage slowing since the last quarter of 2008 and the first quarter of this year. As Kevin Maguire suggests today, Labour’s election strategy is likely to be that Britain is not out of the

Alex Massie

A Nice Little War for Slow Learners: Is the Army Fit for Purpose?

Most arguments about Afghanistan this summer quickly became another opporturnity to bash the Prime Minister and the Ministry of Defence. No surprise there and, of course, a good deal of the criticism about the shortage of helicopters and other equipment has some merit to it. But the government’s failures, manifold as they are, ought not to be the sole focus of attention. They matter, but so too does the actual performance of the armed forces. Is the Army doing enough with what it’s got? And can it legitimately be expected to do better? The political leadership in London matters, but that doesn’t mean the Army top brass can deftly shift

Alex Massie

Lockerbie: Why Did the SNP Do It?

Party discipline can be a troublesome thing. Especially when insisting upon it actually works against you. Yesterday’s votes in the Scottish parliament criticising Kenny MacAskill and the decision to release the Lockerbie Bomber on compassionate grounds would have had a much greater impact if members had voted their consciences, not the party line. That’s why Con Coughlin is wrong to argue that the 73-50 vote against the SNP “heaps yet further humiliation” upon the Nationalists. That a minority administration loses a vote can hardly be thought shocking. But a proper free vote – as, actually, a matter such as this should be – would actually have been of some use

Peter Hoskin

Brown’s misplaced hope

In his insightful article on Brown and the forthcoming G20 summit, Francis Elliot writes a sentence which should terrify Labour supporters: “[Gordon Brown] has already decided that his only hope of a comeback in the polls lies with the economy.” Sure, we all know that Team Brown has been putting a lot of hope in a green shoots strategy. But, as we’ve pointed out on Coffee House before, there’s little reason to believe that an economic recovery will deliver a significant boost for the Government. If that’s all that the PM has, then his situation is looking more hopeless than ever.

David Blackburn

Farage to stand against Bercow

The Telegraph’s Andrew Porter reports that UKIP leader Nigel Farage will stand against Speaker Bercow in Buckingham at the next election. Farage explained his decisision: “This man represents all that is wrong with British politics today. He was embroiled in the expenses saga and he presides over a Parliament that virtually does nothing.” Farage has more than an outside chance of winning this very safe Tory seat. It’s fair to say that Bercow’s expense claims and his election as Speaker, facilitated almost exclusively by Mr Brown’s MPs, have not endeared him to the party faithful – even Tim Montgomerie confides he’d be tempted to vote UKIP if he were registered

Alex Massie

Lockerbie: What Would Cameron Have Done Differently?

In the comments to this post, Iain Dale suggests I’m completely wrong to think that a Conservative government led by David Cameron would have been just as keen as Labour to assuage Libyan concerns and, if necessary, suggest that, yes, it would be a good thing if Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi did nto die in a Scottish prison. Well, maybe he’s right. My confidence in my own suspicions was, I confess, dented by Roy Hattersley’s column in the Times this morning. Any time one finds oneself in the unaccustomed position of thinking that the old blusterer has a point, you know it’s time to have another look at the evidence… The

Wednesday

2 Sep 2009

James Forsyth

The FT is still the Brown ‘un

Most of Fleet Street might have abandoned Gordon Brown but judging by today’s editorial the FT, along with the Mirror, will be with Brown to the end. In its editorial today it praises Brown’s “prudent suggestions” for the G20 meeting. It goes onto say that “the G20’s aim should be to provide political cover so that governments – including the UK’s – have the room to continue running large deficits, if sustainable growth should prove to be further away than hoped.” Then, bizarrely, it goes onto say that the “prime minister faces both ways on bankers’ bonuses” as if this is a good thing. In a way, it is unsurprising

James Forsyth

The government’s handling of the al-Megrahi affair has been colossally incompetent

Once one gets beyond one’s revulsion at the British government using the prospect of the release of a convicted mass murderer to grease the diplomatic skids, one is struck by the government’s incompetence during the Megrahi affair. Megrahi is the only man convicted of a bombing that killed 180 Americans—how did Whitehall think that Washington was going to react to his release? The United States is this county’s most important strategic ally and it seems bizarre to strain relations with it in the hope of improving relations with Libya. The correspondence between the Scottish Executive and the British government strongly suggests that if London had been prepared to offer this

Peter Hoskin

Brown’s fightback is hampered by the negative stories that hover over him

So Brown has said more about the al-Megrahi case, although he hasn’t said anything particularly new. Speaking at an event to mark the government’s new “Backing Young Britain” project, the PM claimed that, “There was no conspiracy, no cover up, no double-dealing, no deal on oil, no attempt to instruct Scottish ministers, no private assurances to Colonel Gaddafi”. Which is exactly the message we’ve heard from a string of ministers, and which has been thrown into doubt by all those published letters. No word yet on whether Brown agreed or disagreed with Megrahi’s release, when it finally came. All this exemplifies the problem that Labour have had for months now,

Daniel Korski

Can Cameron learn from Wilson?

Few Tories will enjoy looking back on 1974, but they may find it useful to study the second Wilson government and its successor, the Callaghan government, when it comes to the question of Europe. Back then, we had a government coming to power in the midst of a severe economic climate, and which sought to change the pro-European course that its predecessor had set, including by re-negotiating Britain’s relationship with the EU and by appealing to fraternal parties in France and Britain. However, it ultimately ran into blades of domestic discontent and international indifference. The question is: could this end up being the story of a Conservative government from the

James Forsyth

The Sky debate could be a lifeline for Brown

As the Megrahi case grows more serious by the day, one thing should be cheering up those in the Brown bunker: Sky’s plan to host a debate among the party leaders. Now, Brown might be the only party leader yet to have agreed to the debate but he is the one with the most to gain from it. If Brown is to have any hope of stopping David Cameron from winning the next election outright, he needs a game changing moment—and a debate might just produce one. The first televised leaders’ debate will be a hugely hyped event. One has to imagine that it would draw a huge TV audience

David Blackburn

The Lockerbie papers

Bill Rammell’s admission that the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary told the Libyans that they ‘did not want al-Megrahi to pass away in prison’ is the bombshell the government hoped to avoid. And, together with Jack Straw’s sudden decision not to exclude al-Magrahi from the PTA to protect ‘wider negotiations with the Libyans”, this disclosure requires answers from the government. David Miliband heightened the chaos the government now finds itself in on the Today programme when he very foolishly remarked: “We did not want him to die in prison”. It was a slip of the tongue that undoes the government’s wilfully neutral stance over the al-Megrahi affair, stoking the rumour

Sinclair McKay

David Cameron can learn from The Avengers

Sinclair McKay says the Tory leader could do worse than emulate his fellow Old Etonian — the elegant, ruthless, cucumber-cool TV hero John Steed Who is David Cameron’s role model? No one quite knows. Of course Dave would like to be a British Obama, but that’s a little far-fetched (for obvious reasons), so here’s another candidate, just as cool as the President but more up Cameron’s street. Like Cameron he’s an Old Etonian but a social progressive; like Cameron he’s a fashionable man-about-town. Basically, Dave couldn’t have a better hero than John Steed of The Avengers. Steed’s an example of how an unabashed posh chap can win over the entire

Martin Vander Weyer

Is Lord Turner ‘socially useful’ to business?

Probably not, says Martin Vander Weyer, but the banks do need reining in. We’ll all be better off when the Tories dismantle Brown’s disastrous ‘tripartite’ regulatory system The last time I argued politics with Lord Turner of Ecchinswell, he was firmly on the centre right and I was a rather confused proto-Will-Hutton of the left. But that was a lifetime ago, when we were fifth-formers on the eve of Ted Heath’s 1970 election victory. Not quite 40 years on, all has changed. Turner has been making headlines in the guise of ‘Red Adair’ (or ‘Daring Adair’ in the Guardian) and being applauded by Will Hutton for articulating the most radical

Dennis Sewell

Dave can’t govern unless he destroys the quangos

The closer David Cameron gets to the election, the more he may come to realise how short-lived the elation following his victory may be. Defeating an exhausted Labour party will be the easy part. Winning real power will be a separate, longer battle — and one that requires him to outwit an enemy far more cunning and resilient than Gordon Brown. To transform Britain means seeing off the cronies, placemen and political stooges with whom the government has packed the boards of Britain’s quangos. Over the Labour years these groups have swelled from an irritant into a state within a state. With 700,000 employees and boards that read like a who-was-who

Tuesday

1 Sep 2009

Alex Massie

Lockerbie Letters: No Smoking Gun

I know this won’t satisfy anyone who desperately wants there to have been a shady, grubby conspiracy but a quick perusal of the correspondence on the Lockerbie Affair published by the Justice Department, the Scottish Government and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office today gives no support to the notion that there was any such deal*. The pattern is quite clear: the Scottish authorities weren’t happy with a PTA being signed at all but if there was one they wanted the PTA to contain a provision specifically excluding Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi from its terms. London agreed and tried to make a deal with Libya excluding Megrahi. Libya demurred and London relented,

James Forsyth

Brown’s new dividing lines are merely muddled hypotheticals

Reading the transcript of Gordon Brown’s interview with the FT one is struck by how little of a domestic policy message Brown has. Say what you like about Labour’s mantra in 2001 and 2005 of Labour investment versus Tory cuts but it was clear. By contrast, Brown’s attempt to explain his new dividing lines to the FT is distinctly muddled. Brown’s main line is that things could have been a lot worse without the government’s action. But that is, of course, a hypothetical. It also seems doubtful that the public will share this view or forget who was Chancellor in the decade before the crisis. Brown then moves on to

David Blackburn

Cameron should be wary of taking the moral high ground in opposition

I’ve just re-read Cameron’s article in the Times and it contains one section that might come back to haunt him, should he become Prime Minister. He writes: ‘Many will be disgusted by the suggestion that ministers in Whitehall encouraged al-Megrahi’s release — and did so for commercial reasons. Diplomacy often involves hard-nosed backroom deals. It would be naive to think otherwise. But there need to be lines you are not prepared to cross; values you will not compromise, whatever deal you broker. I believe even to hint that a convicted terrorist could be used as makeweight for trade is a betrayal of everything that Britain stands for.’ I agree with