Read about the latest UK political news, views and analysis.
Oh look: a poll produced by R3 “the insolvency trade body” finds – surprise! – 47% of people think “financial pressures” contributed to the riots and 92% of folk think “easy access to credit” created “a sense of entitlement”. Well played lads. Sir Humphrey would be proud of you: [Hat-tip: Hopi Sen who – huzzah! – says he will be back blogging soon.]
Boom! Phone-hacking is back and it’s yet more bad news for Andy Coulson and, by extension, David Cameron. The Prime Minister’s problem is that we are tasked with believing that he believed the former News of the World editor when Coulson claimed to have had no knowledge of phone-hacking (and other criminal acts) during his time at the paper. At best the Tory leader was deliberately naive; more probably – common sense tells us – he appreciated that the immediate advantages to having Coulson on his team were greater than the potential for embarrassment at some uncertain point in the future. Perhaps nothing would come of it anyway! Fingers crossed!
I think it’s ridiculous to argue that Obama is comparing himself to Lincoln here and his remarks about the Old School way of doing politics are a welcome reminder that American politics is not actually very much or even at all uglier now than it has been in the past. Which kinda makes it unfortunate that on his latest non-campaigning, campaign tour the President complained that: “The problem,” Obama continued, “is that we’ve got the kind of partisan brinksmanship that is willing to put party ahead of country, that is more interested in seeing their political opponents lose than seeing the country win. Nowhere was that more evident than in
As David noted earlier, the big headline in Nick Clegg’s speech this morning is that the government will hold some kind of inquiry into the riots after all. This climb down in the face of demands from Ed Miliband makes it all the more baffling that Cameron didn’t announce his own inquiry earlier. If he had taken the initiative, he could have determined both its terms of reference and membership which would have ensured that it came up with the right answers. But, in policy terms, I suspect the more important announcement is that prisoners leaving jail will now be placed straight into the work programme. The work programme, masterminded
This morning’s papers have been replete with rumours about Nick Cleg engineering some sort of official investigation into the riots, having brokered a deal between the government and Ed Miliband. Clegg has just delivered his post-riots speech. He ruled out a public inquiry (presumably on grounds of cost), but revealed that Whitehall is “tendering a contract for research” into broken communities: his Victims and Communities Commission. This is a minor victory for Clegg, who has marked his sign on these events, albeit in a wishy-washy way. It is also a limited victory for Ed Miliband, who first initiated talks of an inquiry.
Cometh the hour, cometh Nick Clegg. The Independent reports that the Deputy Prime Minister is to announce that first-time offenders convicted of looting but not given custodial sentences will be forced to do community service in the very streets that they ransacked. The government hopes to ensure that community sentences are robust, inculcating a sense of responsibility in first-time offenders and insulating them from malign criminal influences. The Probation Service already oversees similar community service programmes and will do so with this one, which Clegg is calling ‘Community Payback’. Clegg’s views also allow him to reposition the Liberal Democrats to an extent. The moisture that often characterises his rhetoric has dried
It’s rare that I disagree with James but I’m not quite persuaded by this: David Cameron and Ed Miliband both gave speeches on the riots this morning and the political dividing lines between the two are becoming more and more apparent. Cameron argues that these riots were about culture not poverty, Miliband thinks you can’t ignore inequality. Cameron believes that society needs two parent families, Miliband that it is about parental responsibility. Cameron doesn’t want an enquiry, Miliband does. Granted, James refers to “political dividing lines” not “policy divide” and that’s what saves his bacon. Nevertheless, is there anyone (sensible) who thinks inequality matters but you can’t ignore the impact
David Cameron and Ed Miliband both gave speeches on the riots this morning and the political dividing lines between the two are becoming more and more apparent. Cameron argues that these riots were about culture not poverty, Miliband thinks you can’t ignore inequality. Cameron believes that society needs two parent families, Miliband that it is about parental responsibility. Cameron doesn’t want an enquiry, Miliband does. The challenge for Cameron now is to turn the social analysis in his speech, which I think was broadly correct, into actual policy. Already in Conservative circles, people are saying that if Cameron really does want to support two parent families then surely he must
The best parts of David Cameron’s speech this morning were those passages spent defending the government’s plans for police reform and secondary education in England. This should not be a surprise: whether you agree with them or not, these are relatively coherent policies that have enjoyed the benefit of long gestation. The rest of the speech, alas, was a humdrum tour of long-familiar bromides (families are good!), items pulled from discount bins (‘elf and safety!) and impossible promises just vague enough to escape obvious ridicule (“a clear ambition that within the lifetime of this Parliament we will turn around the lives of the 120,000 most troubled families in the country”).
It’s always worse elsewhere. That, at any rate, is one conclusion to be drawn from this question: This is consistent with polls that find twice as many people think crime is “Top Three” problem for the country as a whole than consider it a major problem for their own family. Doubtless there are many reasons for this discrepancy, among them the way in which crime is reported by a breathless, always-indigant media. Nevertheless, perceptions matter in life as in politics and cannot be wished or even, sometimes, persuaded away. One aggravating aspect of all this post-riot contemplation is the way in which the violence has been taken as proof that
George Osborne has taken to the pages of the FT this morning, warning that the global economy is in torpor thanks to a ‘serious malaise’ on the part of politicians. His worries are well founded. Growth is anaemic in Britain and flat in France. Today brings news of fresh disasters louring on the horizon. The quarterly employment survey indicates that businesses in the north are preparing to shed jobs. The economy has been bumbling along, saved from deeper crisis by strong private sector job growth. If businesses downscale, it will increase the pressure on the government over insipid growth. Markets already doubt that Britain has the capacity to rebalance the
…here are some of the posts made at Spectator.co.uk over the weekend. Fraser Nelson points out that Bill Bratton has advised the British government before, and reiterates the case for an inquiry into the recent riots. James Forsyth says that Cameron must not be bullied into silence by the police, and argues that Crispin Blunt’s flawed prisoners’ rehabilitation programme must be reversed. David Blackburn thinks that Sarko’s euro tonic may not be the perfect medicine, and notes that the police have opened another front against the government. Jonathan Jones has news from the Republican battle. And The Arts Blog has been talking to Ron Arad.
August is supposed to be a languorous month, but fevered economic worries have dispelled the illusion of ease. Eurozone finance ministers will meet tomorrow to discuss the single currency, again. The luxurious coffee tables at the summit venue will be sullied by an article authored by global finance ministers, including George Osborne, who insist that the Eurozone take decisive political action to reassure the markets. The answer to this crisis, the ministers argue, is political integration. There are indications that the Eurozone agrees: dramatic gestures are required. Last week, the European Commission abandoned numerous sacrosanct policies: freedom of movement across borders was suspended in Spain and the CAP is to be
The law and order debate has come full circle: the coalition is going to be tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime. David Cameron’s promise that crime and anti-social behaviour will receive “zero-tolerance” recalls the rhetoric and politics of the Major and Blair years, an indication that, despite the annual celebration at lower crime rates and higher prison numbers, progress has been merely statistical. As James has noted, the success of the Cameron premiership now rests on delivering “zero tolerance”. Cameron is fortunate that the policies required are already in place, for the most part. Planned police reform will be essential, as will the radical plans for
As James Forsyth says today, No10 wants Bill Bratton to not just take charge of the Met but start a revolution in policing. A ‘Stop Bratton’ campaign has duly begun with Sir Hugh Orde, himself a candidate for the job, saying that he’s not sure he wants to “learn about gangs from an area of America that has 400 of them.” But it’s worth noting, though, that Bratton has advised the British government before: in June 2006, at the beginning of John Reid’s tenure at the Home Office. Allister Heath (now editor of CityAM) went to meet him and reported back in The Spectator. His piece is below. ‘You can control
If it is any consolation to David Cameron, the last really big nationwide outbreak of riots was even worse for the prime minister than this lot. This occurred in 1981, when Mrs Thatcher faced maximum danger from her Cabinet colleagues and from public opinion because of the toughness of her economic policies. The riots spread, over three months, from Brixton to Toxteth, Handsworth, Moss Side and other locations whose names are now becoming familiar again. Despite her fierce reputation, Mrs Thatcher did not quite know what to do, veering between a determination to pretend that everything was business as usual, and a desire to clamp down on the violence. The
When David Cameron returned from holiday on Tuesday to find volunteers cleaning up the mess left by the riots and shopkeepers making plans to protect their property at night, he did not dare mention the Big Society. Perhaps he should have. The Londoners who organised a clean-up — using the same technology as the thugs used for organising their looting — perfectly illustrated the point the prime minister has so often tried to make. Government has its limits and it is the action of ordinary people, on their own or working with others, that makes Britain tick. But it is the government that should protect the public from crime,
Has the sheen come off BoJo? The question is echoing around some virtual corridors in Westminster this weekend. The Mayor of London was caught off guard by the recent riots and his initial decision to remain en vacances made him look aloof and remote, a sense that grew during his disastrous walkabout in Clapham. Then he joined Labour in calls for cuts in the police budget to be reversed, a decision that reeked on opportunism, superficially at least. The FT’s Jim Pickard has an excellent post on these matters and he reveals that Boris Johnson has been voicing these concerns in private for months and that he has a brace
Internationally renowned policeman Bill Bratton has agreed to advise the government on how to defeat gang culture. Bratton’s role is not official, but he will arrive for duty in the autumn nonetheless. The former LA police chief has already offered a diagnosis of Britain’s problems. In an interview with the Telegraph, he says that hoodlums have been “emboldened” by timid policing and lenient sentencing. Quite what this means for Ken Clarke’s justice policy, supported by the Liberal Democrats, remains to be seen. But the indications are that the government will bolster its law and order policies. Doubtless a wry smile will have broken across the face of Andy Coulson, who
When Ed Balls lists the greatest accomplishments of his career, he does so with a wonderful lack of modesty. He may have been a mere Treasury adviser when Labour came to power, but even then he was — we now learn — pulling the strings of Tony Blair’s government. Bank of England independence was his idea. Ditto Labour’s decision to stick to the Tories’ eye-wateringly tight spending plans for the first few years of its rule. But Balls’s proudest boast, and one repeated with striking regularity, is that he stopped Britain joining the euro. Not so long ago, the shadow chancellor would have kept this as quiet as his friendship with Damian McBride.