Politics Archives

Thursday

25 Oct 2012

David Cameron rebuked by statistics chief over PMQs comments

David Cameron’s taunt at Ed Miliband yesterday during Prime Minister’s questions that the ‘good news will keep coming’ was taken by some as a hint at today’s GDP figures, which the PM has early access to. Now the chair of the UK Statistics Authority Andrew Dilnot has written to Cameron to rebuke him for the line. The letter, which you can read in full here, says: ‘The Pre-Release Access to Official Statistics Order 2008 states that recipients of pre-release access must not disclose ‘any suggestion of the size or direction of any trend’ indicated by the statistic to which the recipient has been given such access. It is clear from

Isabel Hardman

Herman van Rompuy’s revelatory Downing Street lunch

David Cameron had lunch with Herman van Rompuy in Downing Street today to discuss the UK’s position on the EU budget. Despite the Prime Minister’s tough talking in public about his determination to veto any real-terms increases in the money available for the multi-annual budget, the Downing Street spokeswoman refused to confirm that there was in fact any mention of this threat at today’s meeting, which Nick Clegg apparently popped into briefly. She said: ‘Discussions focused on the multi-annual budget. Both the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister made clear the Government’s position that we do not support a real-terms increase in the EU budget. They reiterated that at

James Forsyth

Adding a bit of mongrel to Number 10

The saga of whether Lynton Crosby, the hard-charging Australian strategist who ran Boris Johnson’s successful mayoral campaigns, will join the Cameron operation continues. I understand that contrary to popular belief the obstacle to Crosby coming in is not the money. One senior source tells me that ‘If it was just about money, Andrew Feldman would be sent out to raise it’. Amongst senior figures, there’s also confidence that a compromise could be reached on both Crosby’s desire for control of polling and his desire not to lose all of his current corporate clients. But the blockage is the level of control that Crosby wants. There’s a sense among the Number

Jonathan Jones

Ed Balls tells porkies about the deficit

Ed Balls has just been given a thorough grilling by Andrew Neil on the Daily Politics — particularly on his past assertions that Labour were not running a structural deficit in the years leading up to the financial crisis. Here’s the relevant section of the interview: listen to ‘Ed Balls on the structural deficit, 25 Oct 12’ on Audioboo

Steerpike

The Carswellian revolution

While Conrad Black re-entered polite society at Lulu’s in Mayfair last night, the Hospital Club in Soho saw the advent of a new political force. A tie-less Douglas Carswell, the rebellious Tory MP for Clacton, took to the stage to launch his new book The End of Politics and the birth of iDemocracy, a work described by Dominic Lawson in last week’s Sunday Times as ‘as a revolutionary text… right up there with the Communist Manifesto’. Carswell thanked his wife Clementine for allowing him to lurk in the shed for weeks on end while writing his revolutionary tome, and then confessed that he had spent much of the time ‘Skyping

James Plunkett

When a growing economy still feels bad

David Cameron was right; the good news has kept on coming. This morning’s first estimate from the ONS puts GDP growth in the third quarter at 1.0 per cent. Cue much justified squabbling over what the ‘real’ number is. A significant portion of this growth will be a one-off, post-Jubilympics bounce-back, suggesting slower underlying growth. As Jonathan pointed out yesterday, ONS first estimates have a margin of error of 0.7 percentage points, meaning that even with these factors built in, the real figure could lie between 0.3 and 1.7 per cent. Gaps of this magnitude are no small matter. But behind these arguments about the number itself lies a different

James Forsyth

Economic growth faster than expected as Britain exits recession

The economy is out of recession. It grew by 1 per cent in the third quarter of this year, which is the fastest quarterly growth rate since 2007. This positive number makes it a lot easier for the coalition to claim that the economy is ‘healing’. Expect to see ministers heading to TV studios to talk about how a million more private sector jobs have been created, how there are record number of new start ups and that inflation is down. Being out of recession makes it a lot easier for the coalition to defend its economic record. Today’s number should also serve to boost consumer confidence, to provide a

James Forsyth

The Conservatives’ Major anxiety

There’s a spectre haunting the Conservative party, the spectre of a voteless recovery. Under the gothic arches of the House of Commons, small groups of Tory MPs stand around nervously debating whether ‘it’s John Major all over again’. Their fear is that a Conservative government will preside over an economic recovery but receive scant thanks for it from the voters. This concern has been sparked by a dire set of weekend newspaper headlines for the party. What worried MPs, and even some ministers, most was that these awful front pages followed a week in which the government actually had quite a lot of good news to talk about. Unemployment, crime

Charles Moore

Lost in Europe

As you read this, the Conservatives seem to be edging towards some promise, to be contested at the next general election, of a referendum in the next parliament over Britain’s membership of the EU. You can see how far opinion has moved by the fact that government ministers — Michael Gove only last week — can now say that we should contemplate getting out of Europe without the heavens falling in on them. If Mrs Thatcher had said anything like Mr Gove did, she would have been ejected from office at once. Now of course we should welcome all genuine attempts to give our own citizens a fuller say in

Wednesday

24 Oct 2012

Isabel Hardman

Labour prepares for the worst (good news on the economy)

Whether or not he did accidentally suggest that he knew what tomorrow’s GDP figures will be at Prime Minister’s Questions, David Cameron did have a jolly good point about the way Labour responds to good news on the economy. He told Ed Miliband: ‘It’s only a bad week if you think it’s bad that unemployment’s coming down, it’s only a bad week if you regret inflation coming down… every piece of good news sends that team into a complete decline, well, I can tell him, the good news will keep on coming.’ As Fraser blogged at the weekend, Ed Miliband’s strategy is predicated on the government continually cocking up. It’s

Jonathan Jones

Why British GDP figures are almost ALWAYS wrong.

Will it be 0.5 per cent? 0.8 per cent? 1 per cent? Whatever figure the ONS tells us GDP grew by in the third quarter of 2012, there’s one thing you can be pretty sure of: it won’t be the actual amount GDP grew by in Q3. In the past 51 years, just 12 of the ONS’s 205 first stabs at quarterly growth have survived later revisions. To be fair, the ONS recognises this, and cautiously labels tomorrow’s figure a ‘preliminary estimate’. But just how wrong is it likely to be? If tomorrow’s figure is +0.5 per cent, does that mean we can be pretty confident that growth was between,

Lloyd Evans

PMQs sketch: Miliband gives up on Songs of Dispraise and attacks Cameron on competence

Goodness, he’s enjoying himself. Ed Miliband is brimful of confidence these days and he handles himself like a master juggler at PMQs. He flicks out deft gags and acerbic asides while keeping the central question in the air. He’s having fun. And it’s a pleasure to watch. Greatly helpful to him is the government’s pledge to deliver at least one major and one minor cock-up every week. Last Wednesday it was Cameron’s improvised announcement that energy companies must give customers the lowest tariff. Today he tried to explain this. ‘There were 400 different energy tariffs last year,’ the PM told the Commons. ‘That’s totally baffling.’ ‘The only people baffled,’ said

Hamish Macdonell

Salmond’s darkest day could be yet to come

For years Scotland has been waiting to see when his luck would run out – well, now it has. Alex Salmond: gambler, tipster, political animal and First Minister now has another moniker: author of the country’s first scomnishambles. Yesterday marked, without doubt, the First Minister’s worst day in office. First, he lost two MSPs. Left-wingers Jean Urquhart and John Finnie announced they were leaving the SNP because of the party’s conversion to Nato. That decision, taken at SNP conference last weekend, has alienated many left-wingers in the party because they see it – rightly – as part of Salmond’s attempts to take the SNP into the moderate, centre ground of Scottish politics. But

Isabel Hardman

Did David Cameron break an embargo on GDP figures?

Last week David Cameron found himself in trouble after Prime Minister’s Questions over a slip of the tongue about energy bills: this week he’s managed to get himself into trouble over what looks like yet another slip of the tongue at PMQs. The Prime Minster appeared to suggest that tomorrow’s GDP figures, which are under strict embargo, will be good news for the government. The heat was on for Cameron, as Ed Miliband was performing reasonably well, with some good jokes (including ‘I asked him a question about the railways – I have to say the Chancellor shouts, it’s not the ticket that needs upgrading, it’s the Chancellor of the

Isabel Hardman

Nick Clegg to tell business leaders: we’re your friends

Nick Clegg is giving a speech this evening in which he will try to re-sell the Liberal Democrats as friends of business. Admitting that he hasn’t ‘said enough’ about the party’s pro-business policies, he will tell the guests at Mansion House: ‘Many in the corporate world do not – automatically – see the Liberal Democrats as natural allies. Perhaps that’s because, most recently, we’ve rightly earned ourselves a reputation as loud critics of corporate irresponsibility… Not least in financial service following the crash in 2008. Yet, historically, the Liberal Democrats are a party of industrialists and small business… And, since coming into government, we’ve been taking decisions, day in, day

James Forsyth

David Cameron must rule out votes for prisoners at PMQs

The issue of prisoner votes has turned into a question of trust between David Cameron and his backbenchers. Most Tory MPs well remember that the Prime Minister’s initial intention was to comply with the Strasbourg court’s ruling; he only changed his mind after seeing how strong feelings were on the issue on the Tory benches and in the country. For this reason, Cameron needs to scotch all this talk of a draft bill on votes for at least some prisoners at PMQs today. If he doesn’t, he’ll have just as large a rebellion on his hands as he did last time. The issue will also drive a further wedge between

Tuesday

23 Oct 2012

James Forsyth

Margaret Thatcher and the Tory party’s change on Europe

Charles Moore’s biography of Margaret Thatcher promises to be the most important British political book in decades. Tonight, we got a preview of it when Charles delivered the Centre for Policy Studies’ second Margaret Thatcher lecture. The subject was Thatcher and Europe. I won’t say too much about it because we’re running a version of it in the coming issue of The Spectator. But one thing that Charles demonstrated was that even when Thatcher was campaigning for British membership of the European Community, as then was, she was never in favour of the European project. One of the other thing that Charles’s lecture brought out was the shift in the

Isabel Hardman

Alex Salmond branded ‘liar’ over legal advice row as two MSPs resign

It has been a disastrous day for the Scottish National Party. Its majority at Holyrood has been cut to just one this morning after two MSPs – Jean Urquhart and John Finnie – quit the party in protest at its decision at its conference in Perth this weekend to end its opposition to Nato. Then Nicola Sturgeon gave a statement to the Scottish Parliament which led to her boss being branded a ‘liar’ by Labour as she admitted that the Scottish government has not yet sought legal advice on whether an independent Scotland would continue to be a member of the European Union. She said: ‘The Scottish government has previously

Sebastian Payne

Despite everything last week, David Cameron is still on the up

Finally, some good news for the government – the public seems unconcerned by its recent difficulties. In spite of plebgate and George Osborne’s train ticket dominating this weekend’s papers, polling out today shows the Conservatives have managed to reverse their voting share decline in the wake of their party conference. The Populus/Times poll places the Tories on 35 per cent, up five points from September while Labour are down by the same amount. This brings Labour’s lead down to where it was before this year’s budget in March 2012: The Guardian/ICM polling shows a smaller increase, with Labour on 41 per cent and 33 per cent for the Conservatives. This is

Isabel Hardman

George Entwistle’s quietly savage attack on Newsnight editor Peter Rippon

George Entwistle seemed rather mild-mannered at his first appearance before the Culture, Media and Sport select committee this morning. But after listening to him for two hours, MPs were starting to suggest that the BBC director general was making a quietly savage attack on one of his juniors. It will be astonishing if, after Entwistle’s evidence, Newsnight editor Peter Rippon is not called before the committee. Entwistle told the committee that he had asked Rippon to ‘step aside because of my disappointment at the inaccuracies in the blog… he hasn’t stepped aside to prepare or the Pollard review, he’s stepped aside because of it’. He also made clear that he