Politics

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

Tuesday

Jonathan Jones

Republicans use Obama’s own words against him

Mitt Romney, the clear favourite to win the Republican presidential nomination, has released the first television ad of his 2012 campaign. Even though his immediate battle is against fellow Republicans – in the latest CNN poll, he trails Newt Gingrich by four points – here Romney’s attack is aimed squarely at Obama. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3a7FC0Jkv8 The Obama campaign has pushed back, particularly against the clip of Obama saying ‘If we keep talking about the economy, we’re going to lose’, calling it ‘deceitful and dishonest’. You see, when Obama said that, in 2008, he was quoting John McCain’s campaign and criticising them for it. Here’s a fuller extract of Obama using that line:

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Party funding reforms won’t happen

The recommendations of the Committee on Standards in Public Life’s review into party funding are not going to happen. Both the Labour and Tory members of the review have issued notes of dissent to it. Nick Clegg has, on behalf of the government, issued a statement gently rolling the report into the long grass. Interestingly, the Tory party – which was for a while attracted to additional state funding – has now ruled it out completely. Unlike Clegg’s statement saying it shouldn’t be done while economic times are so tough, the Tory rejection of it is not time limited. One other thing worth noting is that Labour, via Margaret Beckett’s

Monday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

How ambitious is Cameron on Europe?

Someone forgot to pack his handbag. We heard yesterday that David Cameron has agreed to let Merkel pursue full fiscal union – and in return she will… drum roll please… let him repatriate parts of the Working Time Directive. There’s nothing official from Number 10, but the well-informed Ben Brogan suggests this morning that this could well be Britain’s price for agreeing to Merkel’s deal. If so, this would be an opportunity squandered on a massive – perhaps historic – scale. Let’s recap. Cameron is in an incredibly powerful position: leading a government which is, in defiance of public opinion, giving £9 billion of overseas aid to EU member states each year.

Hamish Macdonell

The SNP hit the jackpot

Some political leaders might be a bit hesitant when it comes to approaching lottery winners in the hope of securing some of their dosh for the party cause – but not Alex Salmond. Back in July this year, when it emerged that a couple in Ayrshire – Colin and Chris Weir – had scooped a record £161 million on the EuroMillions, Scotland’s First Minister reacted with astonishing speed. Within days Mr Salmond had written a letter to the couple congratulating them on their success and adding: ‘When I heard the fantastic news that a Scot had landed the EuroMillions jackpot, I did wonder if this was the same Colin Weir

The Spectator

Just in case you missed them… | 21 November 2011

…here are some of the posts made at Spectator.co.uk over the weekend. Fraser Nelson thinks Nigel Lawson’s right: blaming ‘global imbalances’ for our economic problems does no one any good, and says a good many in the British establishment will be worried about what Saif Gaddafi may reveal. James Forsyth says we can’t forget the social problems exposed by the riots, and that the Popular Party’s victory in Spain is good news for Cameron and Osborne. Peter Hoskin looks at the proposed changes to assessing sickness, and asks what’ll happen now Saif Gaddafi’s been captured. On the Books Blog, David Davis shares his literary tastes. The Arts Blog interviews Spectator cartoon

Sunday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The vote in Spain

The expected triumph of the centre-right Popular Party in today’s Spanish elections promises to have some interesting consequences for British politics. The PP have been in close touch with the Tories here and plan to introduce an emergency budget based on the Osborne model: a clear deficit reduction plan combined with an increase in the retirement age. They hope that this will reduce the ever-upwards pressure on Spanish bond yields. Certainly, if the PP approach does succeed in gaining Spain credibility with the bond markets, it will bolster the coalition’s arguments about the importance of sticking to Plan A. As Matt d’Ancona argues in The Sunday Telegraph, the Tory argument

Daniel Korski

Are the Lib Dems pro-EU?

This might seem a very odd question. A pro-EU position is part of the party’s internationalist DNA. Listen to any EU-related speech by the likes of Nick Clegg or Paddy Ashdown and heartfelt support for the European project is apparent. The Liberal Democrats have also made a virtue of reining in Tory euroscepticism, for example rejecting a call for repatriation of powers in the Coalition Agreement. The Deputy Prime Minister remains, in private and public, pro-EU. And to many activists and MPs, the party’s European stance is what makes it different to the Tories – and is the reason why they are Lib Dems. They see in Tory euroscepticism a

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Now will we learn the truth about Saif’s British ties?

Now that Saif Gaddafi has been captured, the race will be on to interview him from a prison cell and ask what his business was with the various figures of the British establishment with whom he was so close. CoffeeHousers will remember the 2009 party at the Rothschilds’ manor in Corfu: Saif, Mandy and Nat Rothschild. A little later, Charles Moore revealed in The Spectator that the trio were later reunited in a shooting party at Lord Rothschild’s Waddesdon Manor in Buckinghamshire. I spoke to Lord Mandelson a few weeks after the piece appeared, and thought CoffeeHousers may be interested in the transcript. The noble lord was outraged at Charles’

Saturday

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 19 November 2011

Not a lot of people know that Douglas Alexander is the shadow foreign secretary, but his speech this week about the euro shows that Labour is at last thinking like an effective opposition. Mr Alexander has noticed the danger of being the status quo party. He wants Labour to hand that honour to the Conservatives. Support for Europe is ‘haemorrhaging’, he says, because people constantly feel they are not consulted. Mr Alexander’s new ‘lodestar’ by which any treaty change should be judged is that it must create more jobs and prosperity in the United Kingdom. He warns that non-euro EU members could easily be damaged by the eurozone’s efforts to

The Spectator

The Chancellor’s challenge

First the good bit: the pronouncements of George Osborne’s early weeks at No. 11 helped to pacify investors who might otherwise have treated our government bonds to the same degrading treatment as those of Greece, Ireland, Spain and now Italy. As a result of a credible programme to reduce (albeit not eliminate) the deficit, confidence in UK government debt held firm and the Treasury is now able to borrow money at a shade above 2 per cent, rather than at the 7 per cent now being imposed on Italy. This is, today, the Treasury’s greatest single boast. Unfortunately, however, Osborne has not kept up the momentum. Impending disaster averted, No.

Fleur Macdonald

Bookbenchers: David Davis MP

This week’s Bookbencher is David Davis, the MP for Haltemprice and Howden. He tells us which literary character he’d most like to be and what books would double as good doorstoppers. What book’s on your bedside table at the moment?  A Kindle, so about 150 of them. Which book would you read to your children? Given their age, the Tax Handbook, which since it is the longest and most complicated in the world would at least put them to sleep. Which literary character would you most like to be? Gulliver. Which book do you think best sums up ‘now’? Liar’s Poker, by Michael Lewis. What was the last novel you read? Surface Details,

Friday

The Spectator

The week that was | 18 November 2011

Here are some of the posts made on Spectator.co.uk over the past week: The winners of the Parliamentarian of the Year Awards are annouced. James Forsyth says Cameron has given the SpAds ‘a bit of a bollocking’ and sees Ed Miliband impress at a factory in Sunderland. Peter Hoskin can’t find much difference between Labour and the Tories on immigration, and looks at what the sale of Northern Rock means for taxpayers. Melanie McDonagh says that, in a free society, a ban on smoking in cars should be unthinkable. Daniel Korski argues that Europe’s new technocratic governments aren’t undemocratic, and thinks the government should be more realistic about what it

Jonathan Jones

From the archives: Fall of the Rock

Yesterday, George Osborne announced the sale of Northern Rock to Virgin Money. Here, to mark the occasion, is the piece Allister Heath wrote on the bailout of the bank in 2007: Northern Rock: morally hazardous, Allister Heath, 29 September 2007 First we heard about ‘sub-prime mortgages’; then it was ‘collateralised debt obligations’; now it’s the turn of ‘moral hazard’ to appear on the Ten O’Clock News. Jolted out of prosperous complacency by market turmoil, the public has started to care about economics: strange jargon and obscure concepts previously familiar only to investment bankers are going mainstream.    The best way to understand moral hazard is to reflect on how taking

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Cameron and Merkel: all smiles but no progress

David Cameron and Angela Merkel were clearly keen to show that, whatever the tensions over the role of the European Central Bank, they still get on. I lost count of the number of times in their press conference that they used the word ‘good’ to characterise their relationship and their discussions. But there did not appear to have been any actual progress on how to deal with the current crisis. Certainly, there was no softening of Germany’s opposition to using the ECB as the backstop for the Eurozone. Merkel conceded that she had raised a European-only financial transactions tax with the Prime Minister but that, unsurprisingly, no progress had been

Jonathan Jones

Farage scolds Europe’s wrecking crew

In his cover story for last week’s Spectator, Fraser described how the Frankfurt Group – which he dubbed ‘a new EU hit squad’ – has begun imposing it’s will on Greece and Italy. In the European Parliament on Wednesday night, Ukip leader Nigel Farage made the same case against them – and quite forecefully, too: It’s now going viral, with over 75,000 views so far.

Matthew Sinclair

What does the ‘carbon floor price’ mean? More emissions and fewer jobs

After the Conservative Party Conference, Fraser described this statement in George Osborne’s speech as the Osborne Doctrine: ‘Let’s at the very least resolve that we’re going to cut our carbon emissions no slower but also no faster than our fellow countries in Europe.’ The Government’s current climate policy clearly fails that test, as I set out for this site at the time, and there is no more egregious violation than the carbon floor price. It is one of those policies that can sound reasonable in theory: the EU Emissions Trading System creates a carbon market. That market produces a carbon price that is supposed to encourage business to invest in

Jonathan Jones

The debate over Europe’s future

We’ve got two interventions by high-profile European politicians in the British papers this morning. In the FT, German foreign minister Guido Westerwelle lays out Germany’s stance, providing a taste of what David Cameron can expect when he meets Angela Merkel in Berlin today. He begins by underscoring the importance of keeping the eurozone together: ‘The eurozone is the economic backbone of the European Union. Its stability directly affects non-euro states and global financial markets. An erosion of the eurozone would jeopardise Europe as a political project, and with it the chance to make our values and interests be heard in the new power set-up of the 21st century. Stabilising the

Thursday

Ruth Porter

Miliband’s ‘responsible capitalism’ requires deregulation

Despite yesterday’s gloomy unemployment figures there is, it turns out, good news for the government buried in current labour patterns: the total number of hours worked in the last three months has risen by three million. The bad news is that employers are currently filling this demand by getting current employees to work longer hours (average weekly hours over this time period rose by 0.3 to 31.5), rather than taking on new workers. Presumably this is because it is so much cheaper, and less risky, to do so.   This should come as an encouragement to the government, as they search for ways to bring about growth. Scrapping or regionalising

Peter Hoskin

Some advice for Osborne

In the latest issue of the magazine, a flock of politicians, commentators and economists offers George Osborne some advice for growing the economy. There are ten contributions in total, but here are three for CoffeeHousers’ consideration: Arthur Laffer Chairman, Laffer Associates Cut the 50p tax Reducing the burden which government places on the economy, through tax cuts, is the surest way to promote growth. I have never heard of a country that taxed itself into prosperity. Yet Britain last year raised the top rate of income tax from 40 per cent to 50 per cent. For more economic growth, and more tax revenue, this rate should be lowered immediately. This

Jonathan Jones

European champions at last

The UK can now claim to be No.1 in Europe… for inflation. Further to Tuesday’s figures, the EU has now updated its own spreadsheet. And this is what it shows: We’ve been hovering around the top for a year or so, but now we’ve finally touched the summit. Let’s see if we start to plummet down again, as the Bank of England predicts.