Politics Archives

Thursday

5 Dec 2013

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

Wednesday

4 Dec 2013

Fraser Nelson

In praise of John Woodcock MP

Earlier on this evening, I bumped into John Woodcock who I’ve known since my days at The Scotsman. He’s swapped journalism for politics and is now Labour MP for Barrow and Furness. We met in an ITV studio, and I asked what he was going on to talk about. “Popping pills,” he replied. He has decided to go public about the fact that he is being treated for depression – which is no small decision for an MP. It has, historically, been the sort of thing people keep quiet about. And that’s what John is trying to change. At any one time, about two million of us are being treated for

Alex Massie

A choice for Tories: Goldman Sachs or UKIP?

Hats-off to James Kirkup for noticing that Goldman Sachs have suggested they would “drastically” cut their UK workforce (and operations) should Britain decide to leave the European Union. That is the view of Michael Sherwood, the fellow responsible for running Goldman’s european operations. I am sure eurosceptics will dismiss this as the usual scaremongering just as Scottish nationalists dismiss warnings that some businesses (RBS?) might shift their operations south in the event Scotland votes for independence next year. This is but one of the many ways in which the european and Scottish questions overlap or dovetail with one another. Perhaps it is only scaremongering! But what if it isn’t? In any case, the Tory High Command

Fraser Nelson

Finally, Osborne cracks the tax cutting code

When George Osborne releases the bumpf accompanying his Autumn Statement tomorrow, I understand that there will be one paper that will be quite unlike anything presented by a previous chancellor. There will be a study on dynamic tax scoring: ie, recognizing that tax cuts stimulate the economy, and that the Treasury can expect to claw back money when it liberalises. This paper is seen by Team Osborne as something of a quiet revolution in the Treasury. The machine they inherited was programmed to see tax cuts as a permanent loss to the government, when in fact most tax cuts recoup some of their cost in the extra activity they unleash. The

Lloyd Evans

PMQs sketch: Clegg has fun on the train set, but he’s killed chances of a Lib-Lab pact

Crash-bang-wallop. The chances of a Lib-Lab pact in 2015 have just gone hurtling through the floor. David Cameron is away in Beijing looking for Chinese venture capitalists who can turn Britain into the new Africa. Nick Clegg took his place at PMQs. He lost no time socking it to Labour. They were intellectually bankrupt, he said, and economically illiterate. Their energy policy was a con. And union stooges were swamping their membership lists. Harriet Harman hit back. ‘Leave it to us to worry about our party members,’ she said, ‘especially as so many of them used to be his.’ She dismissed Clegg’s favourite idea that he acts as a brake on

Douglas Murray

Who is more powerful: a backbench MP or Alan Rusbridger?

Well Alan Rusbridger has certainly received a glowing review from his own newspaper for his appearance in Parliament yesterday. In a moving paen, Roy Greenslade today describes how his boss ‘was able to bat away MPs’ concerns without raising a sweat, despite bluster from a couple of them who sought to suggest he might be guilty of breaching the Terrorism Act.’ Which, if it is true, says more about the MPs than it does about Rusbridger. As it happens, I don’t know why some of the Select Committee MPs went into some of the cul-de-sacs they did. Why the ‘outing’ of the sexuality of some people working at GCHQ should have

Isabel Hardman

Cameron focuses on long-term plan for Autumn Statement, not short-term goodies

Much of the meat of the Autumn Statement has already been briefed, which raises the question of what’s left to get excited about tomorrow. There will likely still be a number of crowd-pleasing announcements, but ministers are clearly keen to clear some space on the decks to focus on the figures that George Osborne will announce on the deficit and the updated growth forecasts. And a lightly-filled rather than overflowing goody bag from the Chancellor also gives him the opportunity to drive home his message about the ‘responsible recovery’ and a responsible government, rather than one that starts handing out prizes the moment the recovery appears on the horizon. David

Steerpike

Leaders debates are on: officially

Westminster Christmas party season is in full swing. Half the Cabinet dropped by the Sky News bash at the Intercontinental last night. Mick Hucknall was also there, which was odd. The big news of the evening came when the head of Sky News, Jon Riley, confirmed that all three party leaders have now officially agreed to TV debates at the next election. Details were sparse because there appears to be deadlock over formats, timings and even the number of debates. The debates are on, though. Officially. In some form. It was a busy old evening for political-ornithologists. Tim Yeo lurked in the corner, looking glum. Chris Bryant refused to ‘twerk’ with

James Forsyth

PMQs: Labour’s constant attacks make a Lib-Lab coalition unlikely

Today’s PMQs showed that Labour still have no plan for Nick Clegg other than to attack him. With Clegg standing in for Cameron, Harriet Harman didn’t try and tease out any differences between the coalition partners but instead attacked him as the best deputy any Tory Prime Minister could have and as an accelerator on the Tory agenda not a brake. On one level, this makes sense. There are a certain number of votes on the centre-left of British politics that Labour and the Lib Dems are competing for. Painting the Lib Dems as Tory accomplices helps Labour in this market. But on another, these highly personal attacks on Clegg

Alex Massie

Tory attacks on Alistair Darling show that WMD Unionism is MAD

I don’t really understand why politicians spend so much time talking to journalists. Most of the time little good can come from doing so. Of course, from a personal or professional perspective, this is fine and adds greatly to the gaiety of trade and nation. Nevertheless… Take, for instance, the reports in today’s Financial Times and Daily Mail in which “senior” government sources stick their shivs into Alistair Darling. The leader of the Unionist campaign fighting next year’s referendum on Scottish independence is, we are informed, “comatose most of the time”. A different (I think) Downing Street figure complains that Darling is a “dreary figurehead”. Meanwhile in the Mail, Gerri Peev finds

Sebastian Payne

New constituency polling: who would vote Ukip?

What do the Liberal Democrats and Ukip have in common? According to the second round of Survation’s constituency polling, they are both locally outperforming their national trends. Thanks to the Ukip donor Alan Bown, we can see how the seats of Great Grimsby and Dudley North would vote, were there a general election tomorrow: These seats are important because they are numbers nine and ten on the Conservatives’ target list for the 2015 election (requiring a one per cent swing to win). Both suggest some worrying trends for the Tories. Since 2010, Labour’s voting share has risen by six/seven points, while the Conservatives have dropped 11/12 points. The Lib Dems

Tuesday

3 Dec 2013

Lloyd Evans

Sketch: Alan Rusbridger’s select committee interrogation

Guardian editor, Alan Rusbridger, was quizzed about the Snowden leaks in select committee today. The chair was amply filled by Keith Vaz who always comes across as well-fed, well-meaning and well-nigh useless. He began by thanking the Harry Potter clone for showing up at all. ‘I didn’t know it was optional,’ said Rusbridger frostily. Vaz wondered if the Guardian boss loved his country. Rusbridger affected surprise at the question and said he loved our principles of free speech and democracy. He was a patriot. Labour members toadied up to him and hailed his paper as a champion of liberty. But the Tories were ready to lock him in the slammer and