Politics Archives

Wednesday

9 Feb 2011

Burnham’s slide to the left

One of the more depressing sights in politics at the moment is how Andy Burnham is leading the Labour party back to its comfort zone on education. Burnham, who The Spectator once named minister to watch, seems to have jettisoned all of his Blairite reforming instincts. He now wants to draw as many dividing lines as possible and side with the vested interests and the status quo at every turn. In last night’s education debate, Barry Sheerman, who chaired the education select committee during the Labour years, pointed out that Gove’s education plans are building on the last government’s incomplete reforms. As Sheerman put it, “I am going to be

Jonathan Jones

Clash of the wonks

Last night the Southbank Centre hosted its second “Think Tank Clash”. As last year, it was a sell out event, and saw representatives of six of the country’s top think tanks take each other on in three debates. These debates were ably and wittily compared by writer John O’Farrell and the winners determined by audience vote. The winners of each “clash” then competed in a three-way discussion to determine the overall top tank. Round 1: “Revenge” – Res Publica v Demos Res Publica founder and director Phillip Blond commenced by making the case for breaking up the banks. He argued that the current system does not distribute capital, but rather

Nick Cohen

Feminists for Cameron?

The fallout from Labour’s morally and tactically disastrous decision to attack David Cameron’s defence of liberal values continues. Now it is Joan Smith’s turn to take a kick. She is one of the few true feminists left in Britain, and proves it by her willingness to say without equivocation that if white-skinned women in Britain should have equal rights then so should brown-skinned women inTehran. (Or to bring that comparison closer to home, if the emancipation of women is good enough for Hampstead and Highgate, then it is good enough for Bethnal Green and Bow.) ‘Labour’s response to Cameron’s speech was lamentable, appearing to have more to do with electoral

James Forsyth

Despite the difficulties, Project Merlin isn’t at all bad

Bankers make estate agents look popular and so any government deal with bankers that doesn’t involve kicking them is politically tricky. The Treasury, acutely aware of the politics of all this, are very keen to stress that the government ‘played hardball’ with Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds and RBS in the Project Merlin talks. The actual deal is not a bad one. The promised £10 billion pound increase in lending to small businesses is better than expected. On bonuses, the banks have got off relatively easily. But crucially the bonus pool will be smaller than last year and bank head’s bonuses will be dependent on meeting lending targets for small businesses.

David Blackburn

PMQS live blog

VERDICT: A rowdy session, but constructive. Miliband went for the Big Society, which is in severe difficulty at present. He was very effective, but his attacks lacked absolute coherence. He failed to establish a link between his examples and his wider political point that the agenda is mere packaging for latent libertarianism. So, Cameron had enough wriggle room to repulse Miliband and was able to launch his own attacks on the Labour leader’s irresponsible opportunism, and he also savaged Liverpool Council’s reactionary politicking. Both leaders had good lines and were deft on their feet, as point was met by counter-point. Their supporters were in full voice too, sufficient to allow

James Forsyth

Today’s battlefield

Today’s PMQs threatens to be overshadowed by the statement on Project Merlin, the government’s deal with the banks, expected at one o’clock. I suspect that Cameron will try and push away any questions on banks with the line that Miliband should wait for the Chancellor’s statement. But PMQs will still be a far livelier affair than last week’s one. Watch to see whether Miliband tries to attack Cameron for hurting the Big Society. Miliband has moved Labour away from ridiculing the idea to embracing it and saying that ‘Tory cuts’ are the threat to it. This is all part of Labour’s strategy to try and ‘recontaminate’ the Tory brand. But

David Blackburn

Parliament is expected to deny prisoners the right to vote

These are hard times for the government and there is no respite. Today, parliament will debate a prisoner’s right to vote, in accordance with the wishes of the resented European Court of Human Rights. The Guardian’s Patrick Wintour writes what many suspect: on the back of a free vote, the House will deny prisoners the right to vote in all cases and outlaw compensation claims. Such a result would seem a set-back for the government, which was thought to favour a limited franchise on prisoner voting. If it became law, then the government would apparently be at odds with the ECHR – precipitating an ignominious procession of grasping lags, searching

Tuesday

8 Feb 2011

James Forsyth

Cambridge’s £9,000 a year fees will cause political headaches

Cambridge University’s decision, leaked to The Guardian’s Nick Watt, to start charging fees of £9,000 a year from 2012 is an irritation for the Liberal Democrats who did not want any university to move to charging the highest fee possible straight away. It also threatens to overshadow Nick Clegg’s efforts to increase the social mix at Britain’s best universities. But the news has also reminded me of how tricky the question of university fees will be for Labour in 2015. If Labour says it is going to reduce the fees universities can charge, it will have to accompany this with a promise to increase state funding to make up the

Fraser Nelson

Osborne bests the Man With A Past

Balls is a bit like a vampire – he has bite, but he works best in the darkness. In the House of Commons, with those lights shining on him, his powers drain. George Osborne had the better of him in their brief exchanges at Treasury Questions. Balls led on the snow joke. But Osborne had pre-empted that earlier, when he first stood up. Balls teased him about going to Klosters in the winter, but these things only work in newspapers where you can run a picture of Osborne in ski gear. It leaves the House cold. The key Osborne line was that Balls is “the man with a past”

Nick Cohen

Labour’s Working Class Problem

Here is a dispatch from the north-east by Andrew Hankinson, one of the best feature writers around, who wrote a superb piece on the effects of the crash of 2008 on the young. It sums up one of my worries about Labour’s awful response to David Cameron’s speech on the need to revive liberal values. It is not just that Labour was refusing to defend liberal Muslims in their struggle against reactionaries, or that Labour was making itself ridiculous by refusing to take a stand against Islamic Forum Europe, the Muslim Brotherhood and other vicious outfits, but it showed that the party was impaling itself on a fork. If it

Fraser Nelson

What has Osborne done today?

In October last year, Osborne announced a new levy on banks’ balance sheets. It was 0.05 percent for this calendar year, before rising to 0.075 percent from 2012 onwards. But, today, the Chancellor has announced that the ‘introductory’ rate has been abolished – so banks will be charged the 0.075 percent rate on all liabilities. Here’s my nine-point Q&A, by way of delivering my take: 1) So, a retrospective tax? Not quite. He’s imposing a 0.05 per cent rate on balance sheets in January and February. But he’ll up the charge to 0.1 percent for March and April to compensate. It will go back to 0.075 percent in May. This

Daniel Korski

Irish to block EU integration

In continental lore, it is Britain that is often seen as the greatest impediment to EU integration. The government’s EU Bill initially caused horror in the rest of Europe. Would Britain have to vote for each treaty change, even those needed to enlarge the Union? Before the text of the bill became clear, every self-respecting eurocrat spat the name ‘Britain’ over their lait russe. Even now, they are not best pleased. But in future it may not be Britain, but Ireland that will block any further EU integration. For Ireland is turning a lot more eurosceptic. The role of the euro in Ireland’s decline remains a subject of debate. In

Peter Hoskin

Doubts remain over al-Megrahi

The morning after the day before, it seems that some of the murk around Abdelbaset al-Megrahi’s release has lifted. In particular, one thing is explicit that wasn’t before: that the policy of the Brown government was to “do all it could” to facilitate the convicted Lockerbie bomber’s transfer to Libya. We might have surmised the same from David Miliband’s statements at the time. But now, at least, we know for sure. Naturally, this is tricky news for Labour, and especially for the Ghosts of 2008 whose names are splashed across the papers today: Brown himself, Jack Straw, Des Browne, etc. And yet Gus O’Donnell’s report has also absolved them of

David Blackburn

Osborne quells some dissent with his latest ruse

This morning’s newspapers would have made grim reading for the government. The Department for Transport has been forced to reverse its helicopter privatisation plan, there are doubts that the baccalaureate will suit Michael Gove’s education reforms and diverse packs of hounds have converged on the Big Society fox – and this is a cruel bloodsport. But, the master tactician has struck again. George Osborne’s sudden decision to raise an extra £800m through this year’s banking levy has relieved some pressure from the government. This is a minor operation by the standards of Osborne’s previous political coups, but it diverts attention and illustrates that the government is making some progress in the

Monday

7 Feb 2011

James Forsyth

Osborne v Balls at Treasury questions

Tomorrow is the first Osborne Balls Treasury Questions clash. It should be a fiery encounter. There’s little love lost between the two men, they are both aggressive despatch box performers and the two of them know that their clash over the economy is likely to be the major factor in determining the next election result. Balls has a fair amount of material to work with: the disappointing growth—or, more accurately, non-growth—figures for the final quarter of last year, the limited success of the national insurance holiday for new small companies and the failure to publish a growth plan. Set against that is that Osborne will be able to accuse Balls

Fraser Nelson

King’s credibility is faltering

We at The Spectator have not had much company in criticising Mervyn King for the failure of his monetary policy. The Bank of England governor has a status like the Speaker used to: someone whose position must command respect, otherwise the system collapses. And yet there are Octopuses with a better track record in inflation forecasting. People have been repeating that the Bank’s independence is a great success for so long that it has become a truism. Why? We’ve just had a huge crash, the result of a credit bubble – fuelled by dangerously low lending rates. And the recipe for restoration? Even cheaper debt, with resurgent inflation. The British

Blair Gibbs

Bringing rights back home

Thursday’s debate on the backbench motion on prisoner voting tabled by Jack Straw and David Davis is set to be a real parliamentary event – a rare occasion where the will of the elected legislature might just make a big difference. The real news will not be how many endorse the ban, but which MPs – aside from those abstaining Government Ministers and Denis MacShane – choose to bow to Strasbourg. MPs preparing to speak out against Strasbourg are now armed with a powerful academic case. A new Policy Exchange report authored by the political scientist Michael Pinto-Duschinsky – Bringing Rights Back Home – outlines how the UK can

Piotr Brzezinski

What’s Labour’s alternative to the Big Society?

After a difficult few weeks for the Big Society, culminating in Liverpool’s nakedly political ‘withdrawal’ from the vanguard projects, Peter Oborne has already drafted an obituary for the Conservative’s policy agenda. As Oborne says, the Big Society goes to the heart of this government’s reason for existence, and its (real or perceived) failure would damage the Conservatives. But it’s notable Labour has yet to come up with an alternative to the Big Society, or even a substantive critique of the idea. The problem for Miliband is that the Big Society agenda captures the centre ground of social policy – neither pro nor anti-state – and risks sidelining his party.

The Spectator

Just in case you missed them… | 7 February 2011

…here is a selection of posts made at Spectator.co.uk over the weekend. Quentin Letts gives his bluffers guide to Egypt. Fraser Nelson says that No.10 needs to get a grip. James Forsyth defends Cameron’s muscular liberalism speech, and hopes for an orderly transition of power in Egypt. Peter Hoskin asks how much we spend on the military, and welcomes David Cameron’s muscular liberalism. David Blackburn gets to grips with a storm in a bedsheet. Daniel Korski argues that the Tories have a depth of competence. Martin Bright says it has been a bad week for the Big Society. Rod Liddle wonders if Baroness Warsi is a muscular liberal. Alex Massie

Sunday

6 Feb 2011

Daniel Korski

A good team with good policies

When the Tories were in opposition, non-aligned friends used to complain to me that the party’s front bench was unimpressive. Labour politicians had walked the political stage for more than a decade; many were household names, while the Tories were unknown. But eight months in and Labour’s top team is a largely unknown entity, with even its few ex-Ministers looking decidedly smaller without their briefcases, officials and government-issued cars. The Tory front bench, meanwhile, is the one looking serious and worthy of power. There is William Hague, a brilliant parliamentarian and that even rarer beast: a well-liked politician. Though currently suffering from a little newspaper criticism, he is seen as