Read about the latest UK political news, views and analysis.
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.
Governing is about choices. That goes for Europe too. The government says it can get everything it wants – that’s politics – but the reality is different. It actually faces a number of trade-offs, the biggest being a choice between staying in an EU that reforms but not as quickly or as dramatically as parts of the Tory party wants; or to pull out entirely from the EU. In his speech at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet, the Prime Minister argued that he could both change Britain’s relationship with the EU but remain inside the 27-member bloc. But I can find no serious EU expert or mandarin who believes this is
The Spectator Parliamentarian of the Year Awards bash took place this evening, CoffeeHousers, and a jubilant time was had by all. We shall be putting out a supplement celebrating the event, and Parliament’s most preeminent performers, in tomorrow’s issue of The Spectator. But, in the meantime, here’s the list of all the winners from tonight: Newcomer of the Year: Dominic Raab MP Select Committee Chairman of the Year: Andrew Tyrie MP Campaigner of the Year: Stella Creasy MP Inquisitor of the Year: John Whittingdale OBE MP on behalf of the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee Backbencher of the Year: Adam Holloway MP Double Act of the Year: The Rt
I spent this morning with Ed Miliband on a trip to a factory in Sunderland. Miliband was visiting the Liebherr plant there, which manufactures cranes. The centerpiece of the visit was a Q&A with the workforce. Now, a factory in the North East is not the toughest venue for a Labour leader to play. But Miliband appeared far more comfortable in this setting than he does when giving a traditional speech from behind a podium. Unlike Miliband’s Q&A at Labour conference, the questions were not softballs or traditional left-wing fare. One set of three questions were: why don’t we close the borders, bring back national service and do more
These days “Talking Scotland down” is both the gravest sin imaginable and the standard SNP response to any suggestion there might be even the occasional or minor drawback to independence. Thus when Philip Hammond makes the obvious point that Rump Britannia might not build warships on the Clyde he’s being “anti-Scottish”. Thus too when George Osborne suggests some firms might want the constitutional questions – including EU-access – clarified to assist their long-term planning he too is guilty of “talking Scotland down”. It is true, as Joan McAlpine says, that we have been here before and the sky did not fall. True too that Osborne could not name any firm
Another day of bad headlines about border security is, in the end, a bad day for the Home Secretary, whoever ends up getting the blame. Yesterday morning brought further revelations in the newspapers; and then at lunchtime, Brodie Clark, the senior official who was first suspended and then resigned over the affair, made his much anticipated appearance before the Home Affairs Select Committee. Meanwhile, over in the House of Commons, the immigration minister Damian Green had been summoned to answer an urgent question about further alleged border lapses. By the evening, the story was once again leading the national news. Nevertheless, as the dust settles, Theresa May is still there
David Cameron summoned all Tory special advisers to Downing Street for a meeting this afternoon. He wanted, I understand, to warn them that too much of the coalition’s internal workings were being briefed out to journalists. He made it clear that he wants an end to process stories appearing in the papers. Downing Street has been infuriated by recent reports of tensions between Steve Hilton, Cameron’s senior adviser, and George Osborne and is keen to stamp on anything that keeps this — rather misleading — story going. There are also worries about the party being seen as divided again, a return to the old Tory wars stories of the
It’s not every day a video of House of Lords business goes viral, but over the last couple of days that’s exactly what we’ve seen. Here it is, for any CoffeeHousers who may have missed it, a clip of Baroness Trumpington giving Lord King of Bridgwater a decidedly unpeerlike gesture: The Baroness, who worked at Bletchley Park during World War Two, tells today’s Mail that, ‘I didn’t mean to make the gesture. My hand must have flown up. I have never been offended by Lord King. I don’t remember doing it.’ So was it just a slip of the fingers? The comments section is yours.
The simmering feud between Brodie Clark and Theresa May has boiled over today. Speaking to the home affairs select committee earlier, the former border official didn’t just repeat the substance of his resignation statement from last week, but ramped it up into a rhetorical assault on the home secretary. ‘I never went rogue and I never extended the trial without the Home Secretary’s advice,’ he said of the recent easing of border controls. ‘I’m just very conscious that over 40 years I’ve built up a reputation and over two days that reputation has been destroyed and I believe that has been largely due to the contributions of the Home Secretary,’
Paul Krugman has a good paragraph on the euro: [T]his incident exemplified something that was going on all along the march to the eurodebacle. Serious discussion of the risks and possible downsides was simply not allowed. If you were an independent economist expressing even mild concerns about the project, you were labeled as an enemy and shut out of the discussion. In a way, the remarkable thing is that it took until now for disaster to strike. This should be a warning to all political leaders. They each need someone whispering to them: What if we’re wrong? Just as a Roman general celebrating a Triumph had a slave positioned behind
David Cameron’s speech at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet last night was a significant moment — the clearest articulation yet of his European Policy. In the crucial paragraph, he declared: ‘we sceptics have a vital point. We should look sceptically at grand plans and utopian visions. We’ve a right to ask what the European Union should and shouldn’t do and change it accordingly. As I said, change brings opportunities. An opportunity to begin to refashion the EU so it better serves this nation’s interests and the interests of its other 26 nations too. An opportunity, in Britain’s case, for powers to ebb back instead of flow away and for the European
No columnist is closer to David Cameron than Bruce Anderson. The Spectator’s former political editor spotted Cameron’s potential back in 1992 during the general election campaign and ever since he has been an advocate of the Cameron cause. In 2003, he wrote a piece for The Spectator in which he tipped Cameron for the premiership. The two remain in close touch and Bruce has, I’m told, been a recent guest at Chequers. So, it seems reasonable to assume that Bruce’s rebuttal of Cameron’s right-wing critics is, to some extent, a reflection of the Prime Minister’s own thinking. Bruce’s main message is that neither Europe nor the economy can
You know, having read through Douglas Alexander’s Guardian article a couple of times now, and listened to his appearance on the Today programme earlier, I’m still not sure how Labour’s new stance towards Europe is particularly different from the official Tory one. The shadow foreign secretary tries to suggest that Dave and George’s position is reckless — ‘they seem worryingly complacent about the prospect of a two-speed Europe’ — but he goes on to echo much of it himself. And so, he suggests, ‘We should engage now with the fact that Germany is seeking treaty change and seize this opportunity to safeguard the rights of non-euro members.’ And we read elsewhere
…here are some of the posts made at Spectator.co.uk over the weekend. Fraser Nelson calls Berlusconi the latest victim of Europe’s Gnirps Bara. Peter Hoskin says Cameron can’t ignore criticism from Patrick Mercer, and takes issue with Ed Balls’ claims. James Forsyth urges Nick Clegg to look again at cutting regulation, and says an EU treaty change may be coming. Daniel Korski says fears of rising populism in Europe are exaggerated, and asks who speaks for the euro. Jonathan Jones reports on Francis Maude’s attempt to help the unions out. Martin Bright says Ed Miliband’s in a bind. Mark Field MP answers the Book Blog‘s questions. And on the Arts Blog, Ian Rankin
A change of pace, that’s what David Cameron offers in an article on schools reform for the Daily Telegraph this morning. A change of pace not just from the furious momentum of the eurozone crisis, but also in his government’s education policy. From now on, he suggests, reform will go quicker and further. Instead of just focussing on those schools that are failing outright, the coalition will extend its ire to those schools that ‘drift along tolerating second best’. Rather than just singling out inner city schools, Cameron will also cast his disapproval at ‘teachers in shire counties… satisfied with half of children getting five good GCSEs’. And rightly so,
And the most eyebrow-raising story of the day has to be this one in the People. It’s their account of what Patrick Mercer is supposed to have said about David Cameron whilst being taped at a party last weekend — and it makes for perversely hilarious reading, whomever’s side you take. CoffeeHousers have probably read some of the quotations already. But if you haven’t, then their tone is captured in this exchange from the People’s transcript: GUEST: Where did David [Cameron] go wrong? MERCER: Well, he was born. Beyond that, Mercer allegedly described Cameron as arrogant; called him an ‘arse’ and the ‘worst politician in British history since William
Across Europe, the bien pensant are worried. They fear that the Eurocrisis could lead to the rise of populism — whatever that means — and even extremism. The spectre of the 1930s stalks a lot of discussions, as the FT’s Gideon Rachman found out at a lunch with a hedge fund manager who thought the break-up of the Euro would lead to “the next Great Depression and a resurgence of Nazism”. But is there real cause for fear or is this a matter of people projecting a particular history onto the future? Economic dislocation has in the past led to populism but not uniformly, or at least not in numbers
As the eurozone totters, David Cameron risks imitating those western politicians in the late Eighties so worried about instability that they wanted to prop up the Soviet Union. He ought to recognise that Europe’s difficulty is Britain’s opportunity. He should not be investing money or political capital in the survival of the eurozone. Since everything is changing so fast, he should say so. As with his powerful Munich speech about refusing to engage with Islamist extremists, he should choose a platform on the Continent. There he should set out the future of a Europe which learns from its currently compounding mistakes and charts a different course. At present, Mr Cameron
No job in government has its path so strewn with banana skins as that of Home Secretary. A missing criminal, slippery detainee or foreign terrorist can end a ministerial career. And with tens of thousands of people going in and out of the country daily it can happen at any moment. The Home Office has become the department where political careers go to die. There is a reason for this. As John Reid famously said of the Home Office’s immigration operation, it is quite simply ‘not fit for purpose’. Five years on from that bleak assessment, the situation has not improved. A case this summer highlighted the problem. In June
Nick Clegg’s interview in The Times today presages a major Lib Dem effort to try and promote policies to reduce youth unemployment. With figures out on Wednesday expected to show youth unemployment going over a million, the Lib Dem leader is keen to show that the government is acting. But as The Times reports, the quad—Cameron, Osborne, Clegg and Alexander—are divided on what to do about the matter. The Tories are keen to do Beecroft for young people, removing some of the employment protections that make firms so reluctant to hire new staff. But given how the Lib Dems have set themselves so firmly against the Beecroft review and its principal