Politics

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

Saturday

Andrew J. Bacevich

Obama is in hock to the hawks

At the turn of the 20th century, an army of half a million Tommies imposed Britain’s will on the Boers, yet this nominal victory served chiefly to accelerate the downward spiral of British power. Foolishly attempting to recover its imperial holdings in Indochina after the second world war, France succeeded only in showing how weak it had become. In 1979, the seemingly mighty Red Army marched to folly in Afghanistan; within a decade the Soviet Empire disintegrated. Now comes the United States, seemingly intent on reprising the Russian experience, with Barack Obama — ironically, unexpectedly, perhaps even against his better judgment — serving as chief enabler. Once again, an inability

Friday

The Spectator

The week that was | 2 July 2010

Here are some of the posts made at Spectator.co.uk over the past week. Fraser Nelson lists 190 Tory manifesto pledges that have been ditched. James Forsyth says that George Osborne’s plans for a Tory victory are in motion, and wonders if Cameron will soften his stance on AV for the sake of the coalition. Peter Hoskin scrutinises the Treasury’s leaked unemployment figures, and catches the Milibands up to no good. David Blackburn thinks that Osborne’s amateur days are over, and doubts that this government’s foreign policy will not change.   Susan Hill considers policing. Rod Liddle wants to boycott the Guardian. Alex Massie praises Ken Clarke’s prison reforms. And Melanie

Peter Hoskin

David Davis: the coalition hasn’t got a way of negotiating with the Tory party

I doubt No.10 will be all that charmed by David Davis’s comments on Straight Talk with Andrew Neil this weekend, but they should certainly take note of them.  They contain some substantive points about the government’s relationship with Tory backbenchers, and points which Davis is not alone in making.  The key passage comes when he discusses the watered-down capital gains tax hike: “I don’t think a victory over [the Lib Dems], I mean, it’s quite interesting, we tried to design this, whatever you want to call it, I don’t know whether it’s a rebellion or a difference of view, to really be a precursor to what’s going to happen over

David Blackburn

Hague is an administrative revolutionary, not the second Canning

For a man of such rhetorical talents, William Hague’s foreign policy speech was strikingly bland. His eloquence escaped him and he sounded like David Miliband – earnest, conscientious and often unintelligible. The similarity didn’t end there. Hague was very pleased with his observation that a multi-lateral world requires bi-lateral relationships; but even David Miliband had grasped that – who could forget his stable shin-dig in India? Hague’s speech was dominated by the expression ‘network world’ and he said that Britain’s diplomacy must address new strategic needs. In fact, Hague said very little that was new. Britain’s relationship with America would remain close; European alliances would rest on co-operation not coercion;

Peter Hoskin

Three questions about the AV referendum

So now, thanks to Left Foot Forward and reports this morning, we know: the referendum on an alternative vote system will take place on 5 May 2011, the same day as same day as the English local, Scottish Parliamentary and Welsh Assembly elections.  There are plenty of ins and outs, whys and wherefores – most of which are neatly summarised by David Herdson over at Political Betting.  But here are three questions that pop into my head, and are worth idly pondering on this sluggish Friday morning: 1) Does this strengthen the divide or weaken it?  Holding the AV referendum on the same day as local and regional elections was

Thursday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Afghan manoeuvres

Ming Campbell’s comments today show that some Liberal Democrats do believe in Fox hunting. Responding to Fox’s speech in Washington yesterday and his remark that Britain would be among the last to leave Afghanistan, Campbell told the Daily Politics that the “intervention was unhelpful, indeed the government thought it was unhelpful.” “It would have been better if these remarks had not been made.” Dr Fox’s allies are less than pleased by Ming’s grandstanding. They take the not unreasonable view that the Secretary of State for Defence has every right to express his views on a war that this country is fighting without being second guessed by a backbencher from the

Peter Hoskin

Miliband stamps out an English battleground

Well, CoffeeHousers, I’ve read David Miliband’s article for the latest New Statesman so that you don’t have to.  And let me tell you: it’s classic Miliband the Elder.  Sure, the central theme – how Labour can reconnect in the English heartlands – is perceptive enough, and it runs through a few home truths which Miliband’s opponents have avoided thus far.  But what could have been a passionate rallying cry ends up reading a little cool and dreary. I mean, “Labour needs a revived politics of Englishness rooted in a radical and democratic account of nationhood”?  Maybe so, but only the wonkiest of wonks will be nodding along enthusiastically. Nevertheless, one

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Back to the West: Irish Economic Update

A follow-up to this post on the Irish economy: our friends on the Emerald Isle are now officially out of recession. That’s good news. The bad news? Unemployment remains above 13% and, if you exclude multinational corporations, the “indigenous” economy (if you can call it that) still hasn’t recovered completely. The bleeding has slowed but the patient remains enfeebled. Nevertheless, overall the economy grew by 2.7% in Q1, assisted by the euro’s decline agaist the pound and dollar. It’s going to be some time before all is well but it’s certainly possible that Irish Austerity, painful as it may be, is not proving a terrible failure. Then again, Ireland is

Peter Hoskin

Clegg’s plans to cut back the state

It may have overlapped generously with his first speech as Deputy PM, but Nick Clegg’s effort today is still a breezy read.  Its subject is how the overreaching state should be pushed back out of people’s lives.  Its rhetoric is punchy and persuasive in equal measures. And there’s even a mention for that most underrated of creatures: the grey squirrel.   But it’s not just freedom and fauna; there are dashes of substance in there too.  This, for instance, is something I hadn’t come across before: “…my colleague, Eric Pickles, will shortly be asking Councillors and Council staff to identify outmoded, outdated and obsolete secondary legislation which could be cut

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

What happened to the Tory manifesto?

During the love-in at the start of the coalition, no one really asked which Tory pledges bit the dust. It becomes relevant now: the Tory pledge to reduce immigration to the “tens of thousands,” for example, was in their manifesto but not in the coalition agreement. Although verbally restated later, it is still seen as being a flexible pledge due to its absence in that document. There is no record of what was dropped, so we at CoffeeHouse have provided one below. I won’t say it’s a rip-roaring read. But for those who think manifestos mean something, it’s good to have on the record. UPDATE: I agree with Mycroft, below,

David Blackburn

A new foreign policy?

An inventive article from Ben Brogan this morning, arguing that a new vigorously Tory foreign policy is emerging. I can be a little slow sometimes, but I haven’t noticed anything new or Tory about Britain’s foreign policy. Brogan records that the Prime Minister has let it be known that British troops will withdraw from Afghanistan by 2015. Cameron said nothing of the sort; he said he wanted British troops out of Afghanistan by 2015, something quite different. Contrary to expectations, relations with Europe are flourishing under the coalition, as pragmatic government has superseded bellicose opposition. William Hague hopes to influence the EU closely. In a speech today, he will attempt

Alex Massie Alex Massie

A Tory Case for Electoral Reform

David Aaronovitch’s column today is excellent. He makes a case for David Cameron coming out and supporting the switch to the Alternative Vote. The key bit: The pessimism that Conservatives invariably express about their fortunes under electoral reform is based on a particular assumption about the British electorate — an assumption that belies their constant invocation of “the great ignored” or the silent majority. The assumption is that there is a natural majority for the Centre Centre Left in Britain, a majority that only the division of the two centre-left parties within the first-past-the-post system neutralises. So the current system operates (in Tory eyes) as a perpetual pro-Tory gerrymander. I

Wednesday

Daniel Korski

PS don’t forget the PPS

In this exchange from the “Yes, Minister” TV series Sir Humphrey welcomes the newly-appointed James Hacker to his department. ‘James Hacker: Who else is in this department? Sir Humphrey Appleby: Well briefly, Sir, I am the Permanent Under Secretary of State, known as the Permanent Secretary. Woolley here is your Principal Private Secretary, I too have a Principal Private Secretary and he is the Principal Private Secretary to the Permanent Secretary. Directly responsible to me are ten Deputy Secretaries, 87 Under Secretaries and 219 Assistant Secretaries. Directly responsible to the Principal Private Secretary are plain Private Secretaries, and the Prime Minister will be appointing two Parliamentary Under Secretaries and you

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Ken Clarke Is Right

Actually, Ken Clarke is one of the Good Tories. Indeed, one could spend some time speculating on how the Conservative party might have fared had it chosen him to lead it and not, say, Iain Duncan Smith. (Yes, there’s europe but…) Obviously then, this means some people think he personifies everything that is wrong with the Conservative party and never mind that he was a better Chancellor than anyone who’s held that job since. And so Clarke is right to argue that we should probably send fewer people to prison and thus I disagree – respectfully! – with the Spectator’s editorial on the subject. This doesn’t mean – as the

David Blackburn

PMQs Live blog | 30 June 2010

11:50: Stay tuned for live coverage from 12:00 12:02: Labour MP Kevin Brennan attacks Ken Clarke’s criminal justice prison reform: cuts or tackling re-offending. Cameron return fire by citing the need for a new approach to tackling re-offended. 12: 03: Here’s Harman with Larry Elliott’s scoop on the Budget. Cameron responds by citing the OBR’s transparency. The figures, Cameron argues, show unemployment falling year-on-year thanks to the two-year public sector pay freeze, and 2.5million new jobs in the private sector. Cameron says that 70,000 public sector jobs would have been lost under Labour’s plan, in tune with Alistair Darling’s prediction that public sector employment would ‘inevitably fall’. 12:05: Harman re-asks

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Are you serious Mr Miliband?

Just before the voting on the Budget started, all Tory and Lib Dem MPs received a letter from David Miliband calling on them to vote against it. Attached to the letter were more than 1500 other signatories who Miliband had got to sign on to his letter online. It was a gimmick, but not a bad one. However, in an idle moment one Tory MP started to leaf through the list of signatures and was amused to find that the petition had been signed by one R U Serious:

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Abbott ducks the challenge

Guido reports that Diane Abbott has ducked out of doing the Daily Politics following her disastrous appearance with Andrew Neil on This Week when she couldn’t answer questions about her taxi claims or her justification for sending her son to private school. The rumour is that Abbott was unprepared to face yet more questioning from Andrew Neil on these points. One would have thought that she might have come up with some answers in the intervening days. Realistically, Abbott isn’t going to win the leadership so she’s standing to enhance her profile in the media and the party. But her refusal to accept scrutiny is not doing her reputation any

Tuesday

Peter Hoskin

The politics of ringfencing

Jean Chrétien, the former Canadian prime minister, has acquired an almost mythic status in certain Tory circles for the way his government cut back public spending in the 1990s. So it’s worth paying attention to his remarks about ringfencing departmental budgets last night. He didn’t quite go so far as to say that withholding the axe would fatally undermine George Osborne’s deficit reduction plan, but he did suggest that it would make the politics of the situation a good deal tricker: “Jean Chrétien, whose tough fiscal tightening programme in the 1990s is seen by the Government as a model for Britain today, warned that everyone always came up with plausible

Daniel Korski

If you were William Hague’s speechwriter what would you want him to say?

“The Foreign and Commonwealth Office requests the honour of your company at a major address by the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, The Rt Hon William Hague MP,’Britain’s Foreign Policy in a networked world’.” Thus reads the invitation from the Foreign Office. If emails could be gold-embossed, this one probably would be. The speech on Thursday is the Foreign Secretary’s first major speech in London. Colleagues like Liam Fox and Andrew Mitchell have already kept their speech-writers busy, but until now the Foreign Secretary has only done the odd interview, and one address (in Sarajevo).  He did  however open the European Affairs debate in the House of

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Waiting on AV

Every conversation I have about the durability of the Coalition comes back to the AV referendum. The conventional wisdom is that if AV is defeated then it will be very hard for Clegg to keep his party in. For this reason, people pay extremely close attention to the Tory leadership’s attitude to AV. We are waiting to see if there is even a hint that Cameron is prepared to soften his position on the issue to strengthen the Coalition.   So Danny Finkelstein’s blog this morning suggesting that ‘AV might provide the answer to the otherwise impossible question – if the parties stay together, how can they fight the election