Politics Archives

Monday

14 Nov 2011

Alexander drags Labour closer towards the Tories on Europe

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

The Spectator

Just in case you missed them… | 14 November 2011

…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

Peter Hoskin

Cameron’s growing attachment to schools reform

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,

Sunday

13 Nov 2011

Peter Hoskin

Why Cameron can’t laugh off the Mercer story

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

Daniel Korski

The spectre of populism

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

Saturday

12 Nov 2011

Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 12 November 2011

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

The Spectator

Border skirmish

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

James Forsyth

If Clegg wants to reduce youth unemployment, then he’s going to have to look at regulation

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

Fleur Macdonald

Bookbenchers: Mark Field MP

This week’s Bookbencher is Mark Field, MP for Cities of London and Westminster. Which book’s on your bedside table at the moment? Juliet Gardiner’s comprehensive tome, The Thirties: An Intimate History of Britain. I have become an avid reader of authors such as David Kynaston, Dominic Sandbrook and Peter Hennessy who have written some magisterial socio-political summaries of brief periods of post-war Britain. Which book would you read to your children? I have a son of three-and-a-half and a four-month-old daughter so I fear it is their tastes rather than mine that matter! I must confess that I have never been a great dog lover but the Hairy Maclary books are

Martin Bright

Miliband’s bind

Ed Miliband is in a bind. He really should be concentrating on the competence argument, but keeps falling back on the ‘evil Tory ideologue’ argument. There are several reasons for this. The first is his determination to distance himself from the Blair-Brown era. This makes it difficult to provide a convincing critique of policies which appear New Labour-ish: everything from Free Schools to health service reform and the Work Programme. The second is that many of the statistics available still date from the Labour years and so evidence of the effects of Coalition policies are simply not there. The third, and most serious, is that Miliband has yet to convince

James Forsyth

Warsi: Tories will oppose plans for more state funding of political parties

In an interview in The Times today, Sayeeda Warsi makes clear that the Conservatives will oppose the idea of giving political parties three pounds of state funding for every vote they win. She says: ‘I fundamentally disagree with that. At a time when the country is facing the current economic climate, for us to be thinking about putting £100 million, which could build 20 schools and give you thousands of operations on the NHS, into party political funding is wrong. I think people would be appalled by it. They would say, “That is not what I pay my taxes for”.’ This is a welcome intervention. State funding of parties based

James Forsyth

Politics: Miliband pitches his tent with the protestors

During the Depression, tent cities sprung up across America. Today, in the second great contraction, they are appearing in the financial centres of the western world. But there is a crucial difference: the contemporary campers are there out of choice not necessity. Pitching your tent has become the fashionable form of protest. It is easy to dismiss the attention heaped on ‘Occupy London’ and its criticisms of greed in the City as a classic example of left-wing media bias. The rally for an EU referendum attracted nearly ten times as many people, but didn’t receive even a tenth of the news coverage. But the reason Occupy is causing such a

Fraser Nelson

Europe’s hit squad

If you thought the EU couldn’t get any less democratic, meet the Frankfurt Group The Old Opera House in Frankfurt — once Germany’s most beautiful postwar ruin and now its most stunning recreation — has become a symbol of European rebirth. And it was here, last month, that Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy met the EU’s bureaucratic elite in what would, in another era, be described as a putsch. They had grown tired of eurozone summits, with leaders flying here and there but getting nowhere. A smaller group needed to be formed, who would wield power firmly but informally. That evening, as they gathered to hear Claudio Abbado conduct the

Nicholas Farrell

Arrivederci il Magnifico

Berlusconi is the only person who could have sorted out Italy’s problems Where the monstrous regiment of judges, journalists and the other toxic derivatives of Italian communism failed, the Germans and the French, armed this time only with the euro, have triumphed. Silvio Berlusconi, or ‘Silvio il Magnifico’ as I am still not ashamed to call him, the 75-year-old media tycoon who has dominated politics in Italy since 1994, has lost his majority and has promised to resign as Prime Minister, and not to stand again. First the Germans and their French ‘caniche toy’ did for the Greek Prime Minister, George Papandreou, riding roughshod over the Greek people. Now it

Carla Powell

The young pretender

Can Florence’s youthful mayor save Italy from herself? If ever a country’s politics needed a shot in the arm, it is Italy’s. As the economy wobbles on the brink of catastrophe, we Italians are desperate for a new face from outside the discredited political caste: an Italian Obama, if you like. But who could possibly step into the breach? Some eyes are turning towards Florence’s handsome young mayor Matteo Renzi, who at 36 makes David Cameron and even George Osborne look like grizzled veterans. To go from running the world’s most beautiful city to leading the world’s most ungovernable country would be a huge, and daunting, step. In Italy politicians

James Delingpole

Don’t expect the BBC to tell you, but Ukip is on the march

‘Farage has only got one ball.’ The last time I made reference to the Ukip leader’s monotesticular status, I got a rocket from an outraged reader. But the reader had missed the point entirely. Nigel Farage’s handicap is a strength, not a weakness. He’s open about it, he’s unembarrassed by it and he’s a better man for it. Yes, Farage may have lost a bollock to cancer, but by God he’s got more cojones than almost any Conservative you could name. Our Nigel is a Conservative himself, of course. Just one who has been temporarily dispossessed by the mainstream party. When you talk to Farage he’s perfectly upfront about what

Friday

11 Nov 2011

Peter Hoskin

Where does Cameron stand on 50p now?

One letter, that’s all it takes. After 38 City types wrote a letter to the Daily Telegraph this morning, urging George Osborne to drop the 50p rate of income tax, Westminster types have been chirruping on about it ever since. All three party leaders have had their say, except, so far as I can tell, Ed Miliband — although Ed Balls stood in for him anyway. Of all the responses, it is David Cameron’s that is the most noteworthy and perhaps even surprising. Speaking about deficit reduction on the Jeremy Vine Show earlier, the PM was unequivocal: ‘We have to try and do this in a way that is fair

James Forsyth

How European sovereign debt became the new sub-prime

The New York Times has a great piece today on how banks became so exposed to the sovereign debt of European countries with a history of defaulting. Here’s the nub of the argument: “How European sovereign debt became the new subprime is a story with many culprits, including governments that borrowed beyond their means, regulators who permitted banks to treat the bonds as risk-free and investors who for too long did not make much of a distinction between the bonds of troubled economies like Greece and Italy and those issued by the rock-solid Germany. Banks had further incentive to overlook the perils of individual euro zone countries because of the

Daniel Korski

Britain: a European pariah?

The British government has worked hard to counteract any perception that it is being marginalised in Europe. Before the election, the Tory party went around to different capitals to assuage any fears that may have existed. The message: despite the Conservative departure from the EPP, and their anti-Lisbon Treaty remonstrations, they would not be a problem. They would be businesslike. Once in power, David Cameron unleashed his charm, showcased his polyglot Deputy Prime Minister and sent William Hague out to make everyone feel that they had a partner not a pariah in London. Further, the energetic and amiable David Lidington replaced the combative Mark Francois as Europe Minister. Links with

Fraser Nelson

Britain: a safe haven?

The Bond Bubble is growing even larger over Britain, pushing 10-year yields down to 2.1 per cent. The FT splashes on it this morning, and uses the “safe haven” line, which is also being advocated by the Conservatives. Understandably. If I were George Osborne, I’d spin this as a standing ovation from the markets for my deficit reduction plan. In fact, it’s just a grim reflection of the fact that Britain’s low-growth, high-debt economy is less unattractive than Italy’s. But it does have another side effect, that people won’t quite admit to. Osborne’s cost of borrowing is going down (partly due to expectations of more QE) and since the Budget,