Politics

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

Saturday

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.

Daniel Korski

Renegotiation reality

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

Wednesday

Peter Hoskin

The Spectator Parliamentarian of the Year Awards winners

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

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Miliband finds his niche

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

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Why are the SNP Talking Scotland Down?

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

Matt Cavanagh

The Tories may have left it too late for that realistic debate about border security

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

Tuesday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Cameron stamps on the SpAds

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

Jonathan Jones

Lords at loggerheads

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.

Peter Hoskin

Clark versus May, round 2

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,’

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Lessons in Leadership from the Eurocrisis

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