Politics

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

Saturday

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The spectator’s notes

Gordon Brown sat next to poor, trembling Alistair Darling on the government front bench on Tuesday for the Chancellor’s statement on the loss of 25 million people’s personal details. He had failed to do the same the day before, when Mr Darling made a statement about Northern Rock. The contrast between his absence one day and his presence the next emphasised the scale of the disaster on Tuesday. Despite his protestations when he came into office, Mr Brown has little respect for the Commons, or for Cabinet government. He is very keen on power, but not very good at leadership. In our system, the Prime Minister shouldn’t aspire to run

Irwin Stelzer

Brown has outsourced British foreign policy

Now we know. Until now, we Americans have been wondering whether we were witnessing from the new boy on the foreign policy stage a cock-up or a considered change in Britain’s policy towards the United States. When Gordon Brown exclaimed that he would never have appointed the man who wears his hatred of the American president and the neoconservatives as ‘a badge of honour’ had he known how offensive Malloch Brown would be to George Bush and the Americans, there was an inclination to believe him, even though it taxed credulity to think the Prime Minister had been so badly briefed. When the Prime Minister ‘went out of his way

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

‘The largest thorn in the side of Gordon Brown’

Alex Salmond is excitedly brandishing his new House of Commons security pass. ‘Look at the expiry date,’ he says. ‘May 2010. That’s the latest date for a general election.’ By then, on his calculations, Scotland will be seven years away from independence. Each MP has to choose a four-digit security code for the card, and I ask if he chose 2017, his new deadline to end the Union. ‘Could be,’ he smiles, as if to hint that his real timetable is even shorter. The First Minister of Scotland is sitting in his old Westminster office, looking very happy to be back. He admits he prefers the Commons feel to the

Hywel Williams

Beowulf: a digital hero from England’s lost culture

‘Beowulf! How’s your father?’ shouts Anthony Hopkins as Ray Winstone steps out of the boat which has brought the Geats’ tribal leader from Sweden to Denmark. As a way of grabbing attention it probably works better than ‘Hwaet!’ — the narrator’s initial injunction to sit up and listen in the original text. This may be English literature’s first epic, but even its admirers concede that the multiple plots recounted in 3,182 lines can confuse. These are shaggy dog stories of a somewhat bloody kind rather than Virgil or Homer, and in the absence of a unifying artistic vision we need to be kept engaged. Digitally enhanced live action brings a

Chris Patten

Westminster politics has nothing on Oxford’s battles

In the last month, another respected international survey placed Oxford and Cambridge joint second to Harvard in the league table of world-class universities. This confirms what others have suggested in recent years. Moreover, other British universities — most notably London’s Imperial College and University College — came out high on the list. There are, alas, too few areas of our national life — the armed forces, the City of London, our diplomatic service — where we do as well in global comparisons. And it matters. There is quite a lot of clichéd nonsense talked about the knowledge economy. But there’s some truth in it as well. There really is a

Friday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Grammar school numbers up by more than 20% under Labour

Labour talks about grammar schools as if they are something out of the dark ages. They’re also currently trying to make it easier for them to be abolished by ballot. Yet, all this disguises the fact that the number of grammars schools pupils in England has been rising steadily under Labour. In 1997 there were 127,780 children enrolled in grammar schools, by 2007 that number had risen to 156,800 (see Table 16). Now, with this government we can’t know if this is another failure of an intended policy or proof that Labour just cynically bash grammars for partisan advantage. One other thing worth noting, the next time Balls starts talking about

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The nightmare scenario for the Lib Dems

There is an increasing sense here in Westminster that the Lib Dem leadership race will be a far closer run thing than anyone was expecting. Indeed,judging by this poll, albeit an unscientific one, at a hustings in Cambridge, Chris Huhne might even pull off a shock victory. But he would be a leader imposed on the parliamentary party against its will, 39 of 63 Lib Dem MPs are backing Clegg. In these circumstances, it wouldn’t take long for murmurings against the leader to begin if the polls didn’t show an instant and sustained uptick. The Lib Dems might even manage to depose three leaders in a parliament, which would surely be

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Retired top brass speak out against Brown and part-time Browne

The attack on Gordon Brown’s attitude to the armed forces launched last night in the House of Lords by five former chiefs of the defence staff was absolutely devastating. Lord Guthrie called him “the most unsympathetic Chancellor of the Exchequer, as far as defence was concerned,” Lord Boyce cut through the spin to point out that “the core defence programme has had no effective budget rise at all” and Lord Craig asked the key question:  “Is it not immoral to commit forces that are under-prepared and ill-equipped for their task?” There was also understandable outrage about the fact that the Secretary of State for Defence is also the Secretary of

Thursday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Identity crisis takes Brown and Darling to Rock bottom

A new poll has devastating numbers in it for the Prime Minister and the Chancellor. Public confidence in their ability to handle economic problems has collapsed faster than Northern Rock stock and is down 33% since September. Only 28% of the public now have faith in their handling of the issue, The Times finds. Considering emails are now coming out showing that senior managers did indeed sign off on the way that the now missing data was transferred from HMRC to the National Audit Office things can only get worse for Brown and Darling, at least in the short term. The news that the NAO had expressed concern over the mode

Wednesday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

When will the guilty party be revealed to us?

So where is the “junior official” who sent all the 25m record on two computer discs? What news of the British civil service’s answer to Nick Leeson? Waiting for his Tory knighthood? In the Bahamas, collecting the £100m from the Hugo Drax of identity fraud? Or in a dungeon underneath No10 waiting for personal treatment from Mr Brown? He’s being kept safe from wicked media in a hotel, apparently, hospitality of the Public and Commercial Services trade union (who may, who knows, flog him to the highest bidder this Sunday).   All this arouses suspicion from some quarters here in Westminster. The PCS is a little too active, it is

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Too much information | 21 November 2007

“It’s nonsense to think of Brown as a principled man who wants a new constitutional settlement,” snorted one Whitehall knight. Over a light Italian lunch he revealed that there are even murmurings against the popular Sir Gus O’Donnell, cabinet secretary and head of the home civil service. “There’s a lot of anti-Gus feeling about,” he said, tucking into his veal chop. “People are saying he is too close to Brown, that he’s been seduced by the fact that he is inside the big tent. He’s not looking after other cabinet ministers and their departments. He should be telling Brown that he needs more people in the tent and that he

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Playing to a packed house

I have seldom seen the chamber so packed. Brown got his apology in early, thanks to a planted Labour question. In the Brown-Cameron clash, Brown scored a good hit, saying Cameron had proposed cuts on HMRC in the Tory 2005 James review – singling out data processing. Labour loved it. Cameron hit back, with today’s soundbite for tv: “He tries to control everything, but can’t run anything”. Brown responded by parroting his oft-vented lines about having run the economy—he didn’t, he just taxed it—low interest rates, employment etc. His words were drowned out by cheers – but they were Tory cheers. Labour were silent. Both had the sense that this

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Why the government is in so much trouble

The most important political story on the internet is nothing written by a journalist, but the reaction being posted to on the lost data catastrophe. From the BBC to our own Coffee House, people are pledging to shut down bank accounts and vote Labour out. They seem utterly unmoved by assurances that all is well, and no one is really at risk.  En route to PMQs, I bumped into a minister and we got talking about this. “Who on earth are these people?” he asked. The answer: the British public. People who live miles away from the Westminster village, who switch off when politics comes on television, the type who

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Brown survives PMQs

Gordon Brown came out of that exchange better than I thought he would. He stayed calm and was actually doing very well until he tried blame the Tories, arguing that the Tory manifesto would have cut HMRC’s budget, and that gave David Cameron the opening the needed o deliver the scathing soundbite that will be replayed on the evening news. Then Cameron hit his stride, saying that Brown wants “to control everything but can’t run anything.” Overall, though, Brown will be relieved at how the exchange went—it could have been so much worse.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

What should Gordon say at PMQs?

Gordon Brown must be sick to his stomach about going to have to face David Cameron at PMQs today. The Tory leader, who thrashes him every week, is bound to make the case that this government is just serially incompetent and a busted flush. So the question is: can Gordon say anything to counter this? Would a very un-Gordon like, full apology do the trick? Or, would it just make him look even weaker?

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Oh Gord, this is bad

Charlie Whelan takes to the Telegraph today to defend his old boss but only ends up emphasising how bad his current situation is. Whelan writes, “[Brown] also knows that there are two things that really matter. First, there is not one person in this country whose circumstances suffered in any way because there was no early election. This was no Black Wednesday, after which millions of people really suffered as a result of Tory economic incompetence. In the current volatile political climate, the polls will go up and down regularly, but, when people go to put their cross on the ballot paper, what was essentially a Westminster story will not

Tuesday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Not another one, Darling

As Alistair Darling scurries off to the House to make a statement on the latest crisis to rock the Treasury, Martin Vander Weyer has some thoughts on the latest developments in the Northern Rock saga. As Martin argues, from a position where no was really blaming the government they have managed to land themselves right in the middle of the blame game. Back before Brown took over, it used to be the joke in Whitehall that the worst job in government would be being Gordon Brown’s Chancellor. How true that has turned out to be.

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

How Cameron can win a second term

Cameron’s proposal for Swedish style school reform may not win him the next election, but if he implements it properly it will win him a second term. His speech today does what I have long hoped for: put a Swedish-style supply side revolution at the heart of Tory policy. The new schools cannot be his only proposal, hence plans for streaming by ability, reading age etc. While this will soak up today’s media attention it will be a small part of the Tory education reform now in prospect. It is hard for Britain to imagine a system where pupils choose schools and not vice versa, which is why Cameron will

Matthew Dancona

Cameron needs to modernise his world view

As James has noted, there is a yawning gulf of ideas opening up between the Tories and Brown on foreign policy. Read this piece by David Aaronovitch in The Times today for a fascinating exploration of the subject. While I am still not sure that Gordon embraces liberal interventionism with the same ardour as Blair – for all his contempt for the EU, Brown is still a believer in rules-based internationalism – there is no doubt that the PM is closer ideologically on foreign policy to his predecessor than is Cameron, the self-styled “heir to Blair”. As was once pointed out to me by a very senior Cameroon, it is

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The Brown retreat

Rachel Sylvester’s column today details how Gordon Brown is both retreating from the public service reform agenda and further into the bunker. In lots of technical ways that don’t make headlines, Brown has diluted many of the key Blairite reforms neutering their effectivemess. There is now oceans of clear blue water between the Tory education policy and Labour’s, although not that much between the Tory plans and the original intent of Blair’s education bill. However, nothing has replaced the Blairitie vision for reform.   As  Sylvester notes: “It’s not that Gordon is going backwards or forwards, he’s going sideways, like a crab,” one former Number 10 adviser told me. “There’s an