Politics

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

Friday

6 Dec 2013

Steerpike

Welcome to Maggie Land

Mr Steerpike was among the throng that gathered at the East India Club on Thursday night to hear about the development of the Margaret Thatcher Centre, the project to perpetuate the legacy of Britain’s greatest post-war leader. Donal Blaney, the Thatcher Centre’s CEO, and Conor Burns MP invited the Lady’s ‘most fervent supporters’ to pledge £1,000 each in a ‘true sign appreciation to Lady Thatcher’. Blaney also explained why he is ‘devoting his life’ to the project, telling the predominantly male but surprisingly young crowd: ‘Lady Thatcher delivered; now it’s our turn.’ The organisers have drawn inspiration from the USA. The centre ‘will not be a shrine, it will not

Charles Moore

Boris’s stand on equality prepares him for leadership

Boris Johnson’s Margaret Thatcher Lecture to the Centre for Policy Studies attracted attention for its remarks about IQ, but the media ignored its central thesis. The speech is against equality, eloquently so. I date the mental collapse of the Conservatives from the moment in 1995 when Labour’s newish leader, Tony Blair, jumped up in Parliament and asked the Prime Minister, John Major, whether he accepted it ‘as a responsibility of government to reduce inequality’. Mr Major’s simple answer was ‘Yes’. It shut Mr Blair up that afternoon, but it gave him the advantage ever after. If both parties say government must create equality then the one which promotes more state

Ed West

The EU is corrupt because southern Europe is corrupt

What with Britain’s dreadful performance in the PISA educational rankings, there has been comparatively little attention given to another international league table– Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index. The good news is that Bulgaria and Romania, with whom we will become much more intimate next month, are already in the EU’s top 5 for corruption, placed 2nd and 4th, with Greece, Italy and Slovakia filling out the leader board. I don’t object to Romanian and Bulgarian EU citizens being able to come to Britain as such, I object to the very idea of these countries joining the polity of which I am a member. But then I’m not too happy about

Isabel Hardman

Ed Balls, champion heckler, complains about heckling

Chris Leslie popped up on the Daily Politics today to complain about the way Ed Balls was received in the Chamber when he responded to the Autumn Statement. Asked why Balls made such a horlicks of yesterday’s performance, Leslie said: ‘Well, there are plenty of Conservatives who would like to say that, in fact there were 350 or so odd Conservative MPs barracking and jeering, and I defy anybody to try and get their voice heard in that environment.’ Andrew Neil then told Leslie that he had received three separate off-the-record briefings against Ed Balls from Labour aides, some of whom were close to Ed Miliband. The Shadow Chief Secretary

Thursday

5 Dec 2013

Charles Moore

Charles Moore: What would we call what’s left of the country if Scotland leaves? Obviously Former UK (FUK) won’t do…

The Spectator

George Osborne has seen the light on tax cuts. Now he needs to implement some more

George Osborne has not been a complete disappointment as Chancellor. He has, it is depressing to note, ended up giving Britain a leisurely ten years to get back in the black while the national debt soars. He has a worrying enthusiasm for finding new ways of hawking underpriced debt to business and homebuyers. But the British recovery is now gathering pace, Britain has more jobs than ever, and if you trawl the small print of his Budget statements, you can find a number of things that Osborne is getting right. He has stuck to his plan to shed hundreds of thousands of public sector jobs. And what Ed Balls dismissed

The Spectator

David Cameron and Ed Miliband pay tribute to Nelson Mandela

Downing Street has released the following statement from David Cameron: ‘A great light has gone out in the world. Nelson Mandela was a towering figure in our time; a legend in life and now in death – a true global hero. Across the country he loved they will be mourning a man who was the embodiment of grace. Meeting him was one of the great honours of my life. My heart goes out to his family – and to all in South Africa and around the world whose lives were changed through his courage.’ Ed Miliband has also released a statement on the death of Nelson Mandela: ‘The world has

Isabel Hardman

Ed Balls: OBR forecasts show cost of living will continue to haunt Tories

Ed Balls has not had a good day. He has just given his post-autumn statement briefing, at which he argued that Labour had set the agenda for this statement with Ed Miliband’s energy price freeze pledge. He’s right, but as James explained in his blog, while Labour set the terms of debate for the autumn, the Tories have just set the agenda for the winter. The autumn was about the cost of living and energy prices, now the winter will be about credibility. This of course assumes that the Conservatives follow up a good day today with an aggressive campaign over the next few weeks. That has not always been

James Forsyth

Autumn Statement 2013: can Labour win with Ed Balls?

After an autumn in which Ed Miliband has made the political weather, the government desperately needed a competent autumn statement that would change the terms of political trade. Today, it looks like they got that. George Osborne avoided trying to be too clever by half on the cost of living and instead stuck to the big economic picture, the government’s strongest suit. He also avoided any give-aways that would have suggested the fiscsal job was finished and that we were back to politics as usual. That the pension age will rise still further and faster was a potent reminder of how much needs to be done before Britain has an

Douglas Murray

This is Britain: a crackdown on Islamic extremism will not cause attacks on Muslims

Hallelujah, vaguely. The Prime Minister’s extremism task force set up in the wake of the murder of Drummer Lee Rigby has just reported and its findings, ‘Tackling Extremism in the UK’ include the following admission: ‘We have been too reticent about challenging extreme Islamist ideologies in the past, in part because of a misplaced concern that attacking Islamist extremism equates to an attack on Islam itself. This reticence, and the failure to confront extremists, has led to an environment conducive to radicalisation in some mosques and Islamic centres, universities and prisons.’ Who could possibly remain opposed to such prevailing common sense? Well here are the people who caused yesterday’s Independent

Isabel Hardman

Autumn statement 2013: Ed Balls’ counterattack

Ed Balls knew that his response to George Osborne’s Autumn Statement today was going to be difficult. As I blogged this morning, the Shadow Chancellor didn’t really have anywhere to go other than complain about the cost of living. This was aggravated by the fact that any Shadow Chancellor’s response to any autumn statement is a tough gig as he has no more advance sight of the figures and announcements than anyone else (perhaps George Osborne was just trying to be kind this year by briefing so much out in advance). But Balls’ strategy seems to have been the following: 1. Draft some good jokes in advance The jokes were

Alex Massie

Gerry Adams: still a revolting man and still trying to steal Irish history.

I know this is not exactly breaking news but Gerry Adams is a vile man. Since no-one devotes much attention to Northern Ireland these days it is easy to forget this. Easy to file Adams and his Sinn Fein comrades into a musty drawer marked Ancient History. But the past is not another country. In Dublin this week the Smithwick Tribunal’s report into alleged Garda collusion with the IRA in the murders of RUC officers Harry Breen and Robert Buchanan in 1989 was finally published. The report confirmed long-held suspicions that the IRA had a mole or, less dramatically, a simple informant inside the Garda station in Dundalk, County Louth. The

The Spectator

Full text of George Osborne’s 2013 Autumn statement

listen to ‘George Osborne’s Autumn Statement’ on Audioboo Mr Speaker, Britain’s economic plan is working. But the job is not done. We need to secure the economy for the long term. And the biggest risk to that comes from those who would abandon the plan. We seek a responsible recovery. One where we don’t squander the gains we’ve made, but go on taking the difficult decisions. One where we don’t repeat the mistakes of the past, but this time spot the debt bubbles before they threaten financial stability. A responsible recovery, where we don’t pretend we can make this nation better off by writing cheques to ourselves, and instead make

Isabel Hardman

George Osborne’s jubilant ‘yes, but’ Autumn Statement

Just because George Osborne had some very good figures indeed to read out at today’s Autumn Statement doesn’t mean that he had an easy job. There’s Labour’s campaign on the cost of living, which the Chancellor and his colleagues have given enough ground to that it has credence. Then there are the worries of his senior colleagues that Osborne might ‘bank’ the recovery too early. But Osborne did deliver a statement that addressed all these concerns. Threaded through it was a ‘look how wrong they were’ theme of the Chancellor outlining those predictions of doom from the Labour benches about the effects of the government’s economic policy, and contrasting them

Fraser Nelson

George Osborne’s 2013 Autumn Statement in graphs

1. Growth has been re-forecast, again (above). This year and next, it’s a lot better than Osborne forecast last time (in the red). A little worse thereafter. 2. The projected deficit is, as a result, smaller than he forecast in March. But still way ahead of his original Plan A. 3. Debt as a share of GDP, Osborne will still miss his target: to have the ratio falling by 2015/16. It’s worth remembering that he’s still going slower on debt that the Darling plan that he attacked in the last election. 4. Employment: the bright spot. Public sector workforce has fallen by 640,000 but George Osborne rightly points out this is more than offset by

Fraser Nelson

Any questions for David Cameron?

I’m interviewing the Prime Minister tomorrow – he is a keen reader of Coffee House (or so he says!) and is always happy to take some questions from CoffeeHousers. So please do leave some suggestions below. I’ll choose some, put them to him and report back.

Isabel Hardman

Autumn statement: Labour’s only safe attack line

George Osborne wants to use today’s Autumn Statement to focus on the good figures and his government’s responsible approach to the economy. This, Tory strategists hope, will leave Labour with nowhere to go: Ed Balls has been a prophet of doom whose predictions now look as useful as those offered by a chap with a sandwich board offering the definite date for the end of the world, and voters are still suspicious of Labour’s instincts when it comes to spending. Labour has obliged this morning by releasing the below poster, which shows its top dogs accept that for the time being the party has nowhere to go either, other than

James Forsyth

Mandarins routinely take Fridays off and sometimes can’t spell ministers’ names. Why does this go on?

It’s a fact that most ministers are most scared, not of their political rivals but of their civil servants. Ministers know that if they cross civil servants, all of their foibles may soon end up in print. It’s one reason why politicians so often repeat the mantra ‘Our civil service is the best in the world,’ so as to keep on their good side. One man stands out: Francis Maude, Minister for the Civil Service, has spent most of his political life telling his party why it doesn’t work as a modern institution and now he’s taking on the civil service with equal frankness. This approach has not gone down

Hugo Rifkind

Hugo Rifkind: Are those who criticise Boris for his IQ remarks just being thick?

It’s funny, really, because most of the time I think that my university education was a bit of a waste. It was pleasant enough, I’ll tell people, but I mainly spent it sitting around, eating biscuits and smoking things. Growing dreadlocks. Getting intimidatingly good at Tekken 2 on a PlayStation. Taking some excellent walks. Just occasionally, though, I’m struck with the pleasing realisation that three years of philosophy in one of the best universities in the world did, in fact, leave its mark. Because everybody else is a total idiot. It is not my plan, here and now, to discuss whether Boris Johnson was right, in his well reported speech

Ross Clark

Power struggle

It is ‘immoral’, asserted Michael Fallon at this week’s Spectator energy conference, to force basic-rate taxpayers to subsidise wealthy landowners’ wind turbines and the solar panels of well-off homeowners. It is hard to remember the last time a minister was so frank about something which had been government policy until a few hours earlier. As a result of changes announced by the government this week, consumers will save £50 a year compared with what their bills would have been. The cost of supporting energy bills for the poor will be shifted from energy bills to general taxation, and the obligation on energy companies to subsidise home insulation will be watered