Politics

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

The quiet man barks

Almost exactly a year ago, Tony Blair’s memoirs wafted into bookshops to cause a stir ahead of conference season. Now it it seems that Alistair Darling’s, due out next Wednesday, will do exactly the same. Judging by the extracts published over at Labour Uncut, the quiet man of the last Labour government will splash his simmering frustrations and enmities right across the page. Gordon Brown, he will say, became increasingly “brutal and volcanic”. Mervyn King was “amazingly stubborn and exasperating”. And Ed Balls and Shriti Vadhera will be accused of “running what amounted to a shadow treasury operation within government”. But the most eyecatching revelation, and perhaps the one with

James Forsyth

Coalition prepares for bank bust-up

There’s a big coalition split coming down the road. Next month the Vickers’ review into banking reform, which is going to suggest a ring-fencing of the investment and retail arms of banks, will come out. The Liberal Democrats — led by Vince Cable — will push for the instant implementation of the report’s recommendations. The Treasury will argue that banks need to be given time to introduce these new rules. The result will be, as one senior Lib Dem source tells this morning’s FT, ‘a big fight’.   The tricky question for Cameron and Osborne is how do they win this argument when there’s a visceral desire for tough measures

Just in case you missed them… | 30 August 2011

…here are some of the posts made at Spectator.co.uk over the bank holiday weekend. Fraser Nelson responds to the IPPR’s latest report into employment, and charts the course of Osborne’s jobless recovery. James Forsyth says that energy is likely to be a key political issue this autumn, and previews the Liberal Democrat conference. David Blackburn examines Labour’s latest attack strategy, and has some questions for UKBA and the Home Office. And Martin Bright criticises Theresa May’s overreaction in banning marches. 

Fraser Nelson

Exclusive: Osborne’s jobless recovery

George Osborne was right to boast in the Commons that Britain has the “second highest rate of net job creation in the G7”. Coffee House recently pointed out that all of the increase is accounted for by foreign-born workers. But what if you narrow the definition to foreign nationals? We put in an information request to the Office for National Statistics and the below information came back. It is quite striking. Over the 12-month period to which Osborne refers, 90.1 per cent of the extra employment amongst the working-age population can be accounted for by an increase in foreign nationals working in the UK. Here are the figures. The phenomenon of pensioners returning to

James Forsyth

The Lib Dem conference advantage

Traditionally the fact that the Liberal Democrats hold their conference first and still vote on party policy at it has been regarded as a disadvantage. But this year, I suspect that these two things will be in their favour. By going first, they will get to set the terms of debate for conference season. They’ll be able to spike their coalition partners’ guns on a whole variety of post-riots issues. They can make clear that they won’t accept any changes to the human rights act or any government push to encourage marriage. Even better, they can pass motions to this effect. They also will have first crack at setting out

Labour’s new attack strategy: Cameron’s a right-winger

The Observer has a cracking scoop: a brief document detailing a new Labour plan to attack Cameron. The memo has been written by Shaun Woodward, the former Tory MP and Labour cabinet minister who now heads Labour’s anti-Tory unit. He will report to the shadow cabinet in the next few weeks. He says: ‘At the last election we faced a Conservative party (and a Conservative leader in David Cameron) whose strategic goal was to decontaminate their brand, intending to present themselves as reformed, modern, centrist and pragmatic. Cameron was effective in promoting a perception [that] his party had changed. But here is the paradox: whilst the Tories made changes before

Leading article: Victory in the air

Critics of our intervention in Libya said that Colonel Gaddafi’s treatment of his people was not Britain’s direct concern. Critics of our intervention in Libya said that Colonel Gaddafi’s treatment of his people was not Britain’s direct concern. They argued that a prime minister’s job is to defend the national interest, not the rebels in Benghazi. When David Cameron called for a no-fly zone, he was ridiculed at home and outvoted in Brussels. Why interfere in a civil war? Why lose ourselves in another maze of Islamic tribal conflict? The Prime Minister saw it in more simple terms. The West had the means to prevent a massacre, and very little

Barometer: Risky manoeuvres

A Red Arrows pilot was killed when his plane crashed, the first fatality in the RAF’s aeronautical troupe since 1988. — Aeronautics were once more hazardous. They were pioneered by a San Franciscan, Lincoln Beachey. In 1910 he took flying lessons, crashing on his first and second flights. He went on, in 1911, to entertain crowds by flying over Niagara Falls. — By 1913 he had earned the nickname ‘the man who owns the sky’. In that year he saw a circus picture depicting a plane flying upside down, and performed the feat for the first time on 24 November 1913. — The following year he embarked on a 126-city

James Forsyth

Why energy bills will be one of the big issues of the autumn

One of the big political issues of the autumn is going to be energy bills. Among Tory MPs, there’s mounting concern that the coalition’s green policies are driving up the price of energy rather than helping to bring it down. They fear that this is both acting as a drag on the economy and adding to the squeeze on family budgets. So, today’s story in The Times about how a carbon trading scheme—started under the last government—has led to households being charged, on average, £120 more than they should have been in utility bills is going to turn up the political heat on this subject. The paper alleges that: “Energy

Boris’s last chance to show imagination

Back in 2008, one Mayoral candidate explained that it would require imagination to solve London’s housing problems. The candidate developed a manifesto that suggested a new form of “democratic” home ownership, which which would “help build stronger communities”, and which would allow houses to “remain affordable for future generations”. He said he would “create a network of Community Land Trusts, managed by cooperatives to give homes to people who are indispensable to this city.” His name was Boris Johnson and since he was elected not a single Community Land Trust has materialised in the capital. This is a quiet tragedy. Just like Ken Livingstone, Boris has spent huge amounts of

James Forsyth

Politics: Will Gaddafi’s fall go to Cameron’s head?

David Cameron’s public utterances often appear to have been crafted to make him sound as much like Tony Blair as possible. David Cameron’s public utterances often appear to have been crafted to make him sound as much like Tony Blair as possible. But when he discussed the fall of Tripoli on Monday, he was trying to do the opposite. There was no democratic triumphalism, no paeans to liberty and no kaleidoscopes being shaken. Instead, he emphasised the post-conflict planning that had already gone on and warned, ‘no transition is ever smooth or easy’. The subtext was clear: ‘Libya is not Iraq, and I am not Blair.’ Iraq was meant to

Obama’s fatal delay

The final collapse of the Gaddafi regime is being hailed by Democrats as a triumph for the slowly-but-surely approach of the Obama administration, whereas it is anything but. In fact, it is further indication that we are moving towards, as the title of Fareed Zakaria’s latest book puts it, The Post-American World. The final collapse of the Gaddafi regime is being hailed by Democrats as a triumph for the slowly-but-surely approach of the Obama administration, whereas it is anything but. In fact, it is further indication that we are moving towards, as the title of Fareed Zakaria’s latest book puts it, The Post-American World. It was on Friday 18 February

Meeting Marine Le Pen

The Front National leader is keen to sound off on the EU, immigration and capitalism – but not on her party’s Vichy links There’s no mistaking the Front National’s headquarters in the western Parisian suburb of Nanterre. Outside the entrance stands a martial statue of a Joan of Arc in full body armour. Inside there is a garish, gigantic plastic coq gaulois. Further inside sits the party’s leader, Marine Le Pen, a handsome 42-year-old blonde in heels, tailored jeans, frilly blouse and no make-up. Bob Tyrrell, editor-in-chief of the American Spectator, and I have been granted what is (for foreign media) a rare audience with the most forceful new character

Cable falls prey to a Brown trap

The Telegraph carries a story that will enrage the right and unnerve businesses. Business Secretary Vince Cable has agreed to introduce a controversial EU directive to award agency workers the same rights as full time employees. This means that agency workers will be entitled to full holiday pay, maternity leave and so forth, as well as awarding temporary workers equal redundancy rights and basic pay. The Treasury hopes to raise an additional £332 million a year through taxes on higher wages, but that will depend on these regulations having a positive effect on the Labour market. Businesses say that this will dramatically increase their costs and they warn that they will

Welcome moves against the EDL

Great to hear that the police have formally applied to the Home Secretary to get the English Defence League march on Tower Hamlets banned. I’m something of a freedom of speech fundamentalist but this was an open invitation to violence. I have had my differences with East London Mosque and believe that it is a pernicious political influence in the area. But there are many decent people who attend the mosque and no one deserves to be threatened with violence by these extremist thugs. Hats off to Hope Not Hate, the anti-fascist organisation, which has been lobbying hard to persuade the authorities to see sense on this issue. Oddly, Sunny

Clegg paints the world yellow

Nick Clegg laughed-off the dousing of blue paint he received in Glasgow yesterday, like one of Noel Edmonds’ unwitting victims. Today, Clegg has turned into the grinning douser: drenching his coalition partners in yellow paint by saying that the European Convention on Human Rights will not be watered down. Writing in the Guardian, Clegg says that the Conservatives are right to seek operational reform of the European Court of Human Rights, but the common ground ends there. He says that “the Human Rights Act and the European convention on human rights have been instrumental” in preventing injustices from council snooping to the misuse of DNA records and that the incorporation

James Forsyth

Beating Labour’s education legacy

If it is GCSE results day, there must be a row about government education policy. True to form, the NASUWT — a union whose role often appears to be to make the NUT look moderate by comparison — has come out with a comically hyperbolic statement accusing the coalition of a ‘betrayal of young people’ because of its decision to reform the educational maintenance allowance. What the NASUWT statement ignores is that the real betrayal of young people has been pushing them into doing courses and qualifications that condemn them to a life of low-skilled labour at best. Last year, only 16 per cent of pupils achieved a C or

James Forsyth

Defining the government through argument

Every government spin doctor knows that one of the ways you can get media attention is by picking a fight. So, when the Cabinet all return to their desks in September, expect to see the coalition getting into some scraps to try and define itself in the public mind. Greg Clark, the newly appointed minister for cities and one of the most highly thought-of members of the government, has already spent much of the summer skirmishing with the National Trust and The Campaign to Protect Rural England over the government’s planned changes to the planning system. The aim is not only to push these very necessary changes through, but to

Alex Massie

A Compliment to Britain

Responding to the latest migration figures Fraser writes: The inflow to Britain has stayed steady […] but the number emigrating from Britain has fallen. This is a compliment to Cameron: the most sincere vote people can make is with their feet. And in our globalised world, countries have to compete for people. Britain is as attractive as ever it was to immigrants, and more natives are staying put.  I agree! But isn’t this also a compliment to Tony Blair since, on his watch, Britain was evidently a very attractive place to come and work and live and prosper? (Of course, it may be that some temporary immigrants have decided to