Politics Archives

Wednesday

8 Jun 2011

PMQs Live-blog | 8 June 2011

VERDICT: It’s nigh impossible to overstate what a pickle David Cameron found himself in this morning: the strain of the recent health debacle continues and he has had to orchestrate a u-turn on Ken Clarke’s liberal prison reforms, although don’t call it a u-turn. But, somehow, Ed Miliband contrived the PM’s escape. Miliband’s brief reconnaissance of the sentencing reform issue served only to highlight his one-time support for Clarke’s controversial reforms. Try as he might, he could not outflank the government. He merely looked opportunistic and Cameron made light (and hay) of this. After two misfired questions, Miliband moved on to the NHS. He was better here, but not much.

David Blackburn

Cameron stamps on Clarke

Ken Clarke was summoned to Downing Street yesterday, the BBC reports. He spoke to David Cameron for half an hour, after which the controversial sentencing review was dropped: there will not be a per cent fifty discount in plea bargaining and Clarke will have to find £130m of savings from elsewhere in his department. Clarke has paid for last month’s rape victim fiasco, which so incensed the party leadership. The government is adamant that this is not a u-turn; rather, it argues, it has consulted on extending plea bargaining from the current level of 30 per cent and decided against such a move. It points to a report issued by

Tuesday

7 Jun 2011

James Forsyth

Paxman trips up Balls

Ed Balls walked into two traps on Newsnight yesterday evening. First, he seemed stumped when Jeremy Paxman asked him if he was praying that George Osborne was right. Paxman’s ‘gotcha point’ was that if Osborne isn’t right the country is in deep trouble and Balls wouldn’t want that. But Balls’ more serious slip was to say, “My view, though, is that the central outcome isn’t that we see a resumption of growth.” This, as coalition sources have been pointing out today, allows them to present any growth as a vindication of their strategy. For all the talk about the NHS today, the economy still remains the central battleground in politics.

Richard Benyon-Mp

Valuing the natural world

Today, the government launched its Natural Environment White Paper. This document is a vision for how we value and use nature, now and in the future. The public was heavily involved in the White Paper’s creation. Thousands of suggestions came from individuals and small local naturalist groups, right up to large national NGOs and bodies like the National Trust. This shows that concern for nature is alive and well in Britain. The paper was launched by Caroline Spelman; but, crucially, it received input from Greg Clark from Communities and Local Government and Norman Baker from Transport. The Treasury have also been close partners. The proposals seek to reconnect people with

David Blackburn

Cameron on a charm defensive

David Cameron is at his best when his back is to the wall. His speech on the NHS was largely as expected – a charm offensive designed to appease his warring coalition and reassure a fevered public. I’ll wager that he has succeeded; but reservations and pitfalls remain. Cameron recognises that competition is the stiking point for most Liberal Democrats, while the Tories insist on it. Competition will stay. He said, “New providers, more choice and competition raises standards and delivers value for money.” However, competition will not be unbridled. Cameron reassured doubters, “But let me clear, no: we will not be selling off the NHS, we will not be

David Blackburn

Thatcher snubs Palin?

Sarah Palin will be in town soon and she hopes to meet Mrs Thatcher. She told the Sunday Times: “I am going to Sudan in July and hope to stop in England on the way. I am just hoping Mrs Thatcher is well enough to see me as I so admire her.” However, it seems that the admiration is not mutual. The Guardian’s Wintour and Watt blog reports an old ally of the Lady’s saying: “Lady Thatcher will not be seeing Sarah Palin. That would be belittling for Margaret. Sarah Palin is nuts. “Margaret is focusing on Ronald Reagan and will attend the unveiling of the statue (in Grosvenor Square).

David Blackburn

Miliband offers with one hand and stabs with the other

Ed Miliband delivered a speech at the Festival Hall this morning. A couple of strategic issues emerged from it. The first is that Labour has decided that the IMF is wrong: “This Government is going too far and fast, hitting families and making it harder to reduce the deficit.” This is not altogether surprising. Ed Balls’ recent article in the News of the World suggested that Labour will attack on the cost of living and youth unemployment, both of which may serve to slow the rate at which the deficit is reduced. As Fraser noted yesterday, Labour is aided by rising inflation, which is deepening the effect of cuts. However,

Monday

6 Jun 2011

David Blackburn

Accentuate the differences

This is an age of ideas, not of ideology. That is the thesis of Amol Rajan’s enthralling overview of the intellectual trends in contemporary British politics, published in today’s Independent. As part of the piece, Rajan has interviewed Maurice Glasman, who gives a far clearer account of ‘Blue Labour’ than he did during his recent comments to the Italian press. Communities must be organised to resist the caprices of capital and the dead-hand of the state. Resist is probably the wrong word because the aim appears to be, in Philip Blond’s celebrated phrase, the ‘recapitalisation of the poor’, which implies some form of empowerment. Rajan notes that Glasman holds a

Ed Holmes

Vince Cable dances with the unions

The Business Secretary’s words to the GMB union today about the government’s reluctance to reform Britain’s antiquated trade unions laws could hardly have been more modest. He called for a ‘mature and productive relationship’ with the trade union movement. Given the reception he received, this seems like wishful thinking (we at Policy Exchange had a dose of the GMB’s approach when it described our recent report on public sector pay as ‘propoganda [sic] in the tradition of reports by Joseph Goebbels’). Despite the heckles, Vince Cable was keen to emphasise that the government has no plans to reform strike laws and that it would only do so if pushed. It

James Forsyth

The IMF delivers its verdict

While Dominque Strauss-Kahn was in a New York court room, pleading not guilty to charges of sexual assault, his former IMF colleagues were delivering their verdict on the UK economy at the Treasury. The IMF are very polite guests and their report has provided some timely support for the coalition’s fiscal approach by declaring that there is currently no need for a Plan B. The Osborne operation has been quick to point out that even in various alternative scenarios the IMF set out in their report, they don’t call for more spending or smaller cuts. But there are things which the IMF says that won’t be music to Osborne’s ears.

Peter Hoskin

Cable tries to keep everyone happy – apart from the unions

When the GMB union invited Vince Cable to address their conference today, I doubt they wanted this: a warning that the government could legislate if the brothers decide to militate. The Business Secretary does add that “the case for changing strike law is not compelling,” so long as industrial action remains limited. But, on the surface, this is still the firmest coalition attack on the unions since David Cameron and Boris wrote that angry article for the Sun in January. And it comes from the side of the coalition, the Lib Dems, who were thought to be opposed to taking on the unions in the first place. Perhaps Cable really

Sunday

5 Jun 2011

Rod Liddle

The C-word is no longer the most dangerous word of all

Should we be as worked up as the Mail on Sunday about a BBC Radio Four panellist implying the word “cunt” in a show broadcast at six thirty in the evening? The paper has got itself into a right old lather. Apparently, Sandi Toksvig made the typically hilarious “quip”, that “The Tories have put the ‘n’ in cuts,” while appearing on The News Quiz. The supposed pun doesn’t work semantically; it is just ad hominem abuse of the Tories, which I why I suppose the BBC let it go through. They would have baulked at the word “nigger”, I would guess, and probably cavilled at “motherfucker”, unless it was implied

Peter Hoskin

The return of the signature parade

Oh dear, we’re back to letter-writing again. 52 academic sorts — including the Labour advisor Richard Grayson and Blue Labour proponent Stuart White — have a letter in today’s Observer urging George Osborne towards a ‘Plan B’ for the economy. They even sketch out, in less than 150 words, what that Plan B might look like. And, strangely enough, it has more than a tinge of Ed Miliband about it, including — and I quote — a green new deal; a focus on targeted industrial policy; the empowerment of workers; “unsqueezing” the incomes of the majority, and so on. I say we’re back to letter-writing again, because it’s all so

Saturday

4 Jun 2011

The Spectator

Barometer | 4 June 2011

This wek’s Barometer Crime lords — Lord Taylor of Warwick was jailed for 12 months for fiddling his expenses. He is the fourth peer of the realm to be jailed, after Lord Archer (jailed for four years in 2001 for perjury), Lord Watson of Invergowrie (16 months in 2005 for setting light to hotel curtains at the Scottish Parliamentarian of the Year awards) and Lord Ahmed of Rotherham (12 weeks in 2009 for dangerous driving). Lord Hanningfield, convicted last week of fiddling his expenses, is also likely to receive a custodial sentence. — If five out of 789 peers are jailed over a ten-year period it suggests an annual imprisonment

David Blackburn

Glasman sings the blues

Maurice Glasman, a favoured thinker of Ed Miliband’s, has given an interview to someone called Filippo Sensi who writes for an Italian magazine called Europa. I sound a firm note of caution here because there is a distinct possibility that it’s a spoof. Take Glasman on the etymology of Blue Labour: “There is a sense of bravery and tragedy in our position and that is one meaning of the word blue, that links Miles Davis with Picasso and Aristotle. It is not mentally ill or depressed to feel triste and out of that understanding can flow a deeper understanding of the world and a more durable courage in resisting it than

James Forsyth

Charles Moore warns that the Downing Street machine isn’t working

Charles Moore, Margaret Thatcher’s biographer, is one of the columnists most sympathetic to and best informed about what David Cameron is trying to do. So when Charles warns that the current set-up of Downing Street isn’t working for the Prime Minister, Number 10 should take notice. Charles’ worry is that the new Downing Street set up is insufficiently political, that policy and politics are being kept too far apart. I think Charles is right about this. The Number 10 policy unit is now made up mostly of civil servants or former management consultants who, by their very nature, aren’t intellectually or ideologically committed to the Cameron public service reform agenda.

Hugo Rifkind

I don’t want to believe that we’re cocking up Libya. But we are, aren’t we?

I’m not sure it’s fair to call Colonel Gaddafi ‘paranoid’. I’m not sure it’s fair to call Colonel Gaddafi ‘paranoid’. Not really. ‘Paranoid’ is what the King of Bahrain would be if he decided that western governments actually did care that he was rounding up protestors — and the doctors who treat them, and reporters, and students, and pretty much anybody else with the wrong sort of beard — and that these western governments were actually secretly planning to do something about it, despite giving every outward appearance of not giving a monkey’s arse. Say. Whereas Gaddafi just seems to think everybody is out to get him, and they are.

Friday

3 Jun 2011

The Spectator

The week that was | 3 June 2011

Here is a selection of posts made at Spectator.co.uk over the past week. Fraser Nelson has been reminded of the proximity of evil. James Forsyth asks if FIFA really matters, and reveals the extent of Ken Clarke’s crimes. Peter Hoskin reveals the scale of Britain’s debt crisis, and notes that Clegg has ermine troubles. David Blackburn sees the Lords trying to frustrate the coalition’s EU referendum lock, and examines Labour’s malfunctioning front bench. Jonathan Jones believes Sarah Palin hasn’t a chance of becoming President. Rod Liddle has a complaint. Alex Massie anatomises Sri Lanka’s dramatic collapse. And Melanie Phillips awaits the arrival of the floating theatre of jihad.

David Blackburn

The green consensus in action

A couple of days ago, I wrote about the deleterious effects of political consensus on energy policy. A good example of this has emerged today. According to Politics Home, Luciana Berger and Caroline Lucas are seeking an amendment to the Green Deal to impose a target for domestic carbon reduction. A number of salient points emerge from this. First, it’s a fine instance of the obsession with targets; itself an indication that this area of policy is largely a top down initiative – driven by targets, taxes and penalties. The Green Deal, as it currently stands, is one of the few areas that put incentive before directive. The idea was

James Forsyth

Cameron’s European opportunity

Jean-Claude Trichet’s speech yesterday proposing a ministry of finance for the eurozone (£) can be taken as setting out how the European Central Bank wants to resolve the eurozone’s problems. It is yet another example of how the European elite use crises to advance integration. But just as important from a British point of view is Trichet’s admission that the overall package of changes he is talking about “naturally demand a change of the [EU] treaty”. This, as Fraser has written previously, presents David Cameron with a glorious opportunity to take advantage of this moment to redefine Britain’s relationship with the European Union. There are those who say that