Politics Archives

Saturday

6 Nov 2010

Let councils take the decisions – and the blame

Let councils take the decisions – and the blame If there’s something strange in your neighbourhood, the coalition wants you to call ‘bureaucracy busters’. This may sound like an irritating bit of alliterative spin, but it’s actually one of the government’s most radical proposals. The idea is to help individuals and community groups overcome the regulations and government restrictions that stand in the way of innovation at a local level: in other words, to clear a way for the big society. Bureaucracy busters is the brainchild of Greg Clark, the minister for decentralisation. Clark has a degree from Cambridge and a doctorate from the LSE, and is astute enough to

Matthew Parris

Take it from a former MP – popular outrage is wrecking parliament

Paradoxical I know, but I must first explain that there’s little point in my writing this, and somebody else should. Paradoxical I know, but I must first explain that there’s little point in my writing this, and somebody else should. The column it’s futile for me to write sounds a warning about the mess we’re making of MPs’ pay and allowances; and the danger not only that we discourage capable men and women from considering a political career, but that we relegate the status of politics and its practitioners in a way that may reverberate through generations to come. The Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA), paralysed by the hysteria over MPs’ expenses

Ed Howker

Cameron’s clearances

James Cummings could never refuse a drink. Even after his boss — a Watford publican — threatened him with the sack he couldn’t lay off the bottle. He’d worked his way through the profits of a family business, two houses and a marriage by then. He eventually awoke in a tunnel under the Elephant and Castle three weeks after he was sacked from the pub. That was the winter before last. Now, having recovered sufficiently to rent a flat, fight his addiction and get some qualifications, James is doing everything we expect of those on unemployment benefit. He is teetotal and has avoided debt; he does voluntary work with other

Daniel McCarthy

Mr Tea

The last time Republicans retook control of Congress, in 1994, the face of the revolution belonged to the party’s leader in the House of Representatives, Newt Gingrich. This year the standard-bearer is a less obvious figure: Rand Paul, the newly elected junior senator from Kentucky. Not only is Rand not part of the leadership, he is the son of Ron Paul, a maverick former presidential candidate who is considered a pariah within his own party. But this is an outsider’s hour in American politics, and the younger Paul is everywhere hailed as the paragon of the Tea Party revolt. That revolt has been directed as much against the Republican establishment

Friday

5 Nov 2010

Alex Massie

Free Speech Is Expensive But It’s Free

Simon Heffer is very good on grammar, Thomas Carlyle and, most importantly, cricket. And much more besides. But even Mr Heffer is not immune to the unfortunate Laws of Punditry, one of which insists that while writing something in one time zone something will happen in another which rebuts one’s argument all too convincingly. So his suggestion that Hillary Clinton might challenge Barack Obama for the Democratic party’s presidential nomination in 2012 is somewhat confounded by the Secretary of State’s declaration, during a visit to New Zealand, that she has no intention of doing so, nor of ever running for President again. Of course, she may be lying! Or events

Alex Massie

Irish Austerity Diet Revealed: Cheese

Somehow, I don’t think this kind of government assistance is going to be enough to soothe Irish woes: The Government is to distribute some 53 tonnes of free cheese to people in need in the run up to Christmas. Minister for Agriculture Brendan Smith announced the EU-funded scheme today following talks with a number of charitable organisations. He said the cheese will be available free of charge for distribution to those most in need. It will be available from November 15th “in time for Christmas”. The State has been given more than €818,000 from the EU budget to purchase the cheese and the Irish Dairy Board has been awarded the

David Blackburn

Transparency: the government’s self-protection aid

Monday is eagle day for the overhaul of government machinery. Ben Brogan explains how the publication of 20 departmental business plans will enable the public to chart the progress of government reform – inaugurating a revolution is transparency, that meme of the moment. I’ve always wondered why the Tories are so keen on touting ‘transparency’. One answer, it seems, is to expose those ministers and departments who are dragging their feet. This instrument of New Politics doubles as a self-protection mechanism, which is especially useful with those dastardly Lib Dems and the odd pugilistic right winger scurrying about. Brogan writes: ‘The plans will spell out the timetables for implementing every

David Blackburn

Toughening up on Home Affairs

An intriguing argument from the Economist’s Bagehot this week: the government’s liberal prisons policy will force Coalition 2.0 to tack to the right on Home Affairs. ‘If the Lib Dems’ sway on these issues was foreseeable, so are its political dangers. One is Tory anger. Even some of the Conservative MPs who agree with the Lib Dems on control orders worry about their liberal line on crime. Behind the scenes, figures from both parties are coming together to plan “coalition 2.0”—a policy programme for the second half of the parliament. Among the rumoured Tory representatives are confirmed hawks such as Michael Gove, the education secretary, Owen Paterson, the Northern Ireland

David Blackburn

Miliband’s colossal misjudgement

The question at the bottom of this shoddy leaflet must surely join John Rentoul’s famous list. Who on earth will stand by the egregious Phil Woolas now? As with the Tower Hamlets debacle, Ed Miliband is taking eons to make a straight forward statement: the Labour leadership condemns the actions of Phil Woolas and hopes that he will not be selected to stand again. George Eaton gives a reason for Miliband’s reticence: in a colossal error of judgement, Miliband selected Woolas as a shadow Home Office minister, reward no doubt for his deft expertise in race relations. The Oldham East by-election is a test for the coalition, but it is

James Forsyth

The coalition faces a by-election test

The court’s decision that the Oldham East and Saddleworth election must be re-run because Phil Woolas was guilty of illegal practices under election law presents the coalition with a dilemma. Do both parties campaign fully in this three-way marginal? Oldham East and Saddleworth is number 83 on the Tory target seats list, it would require just over a five percent swing for them to win. But the Lib Dems are even closer, only a hundred odd votes behind Labour. If both of the coalition parties went all out for it, Labour would have a much better chance of holding on and winning the seat would be a welcome morale boost

Daniel Korski

Junior Games

Government allows some top-tier politicians to shine, while others lose the sheen they once had in opposition. So it has been with this Government. It has mostly been Lib Dems who have gleamed. Much can be said of Nick Clegg, Vince Cable, and Chris Huhne, but nobody will ever question the party’s ability to govern, or dismiss its front-line politicians as back-bench critics. In fact, if the Coalition lasts until 2015, the Lib Dems will have more Cabinet-level experience than the majority of the Shadow Cabinet, most of whom entered Cabinet under Gordon Brown in 2007. That will be quite a turnaround. The bigger problem will be for those Tories

Thursday

4 Nov 2010

Daniel Korski

In defence of UK-French defence cooperation

The Entente Cordial Redux has generated a lot of commentary, most of it ill-informed, some of it ridiculous. Tory MP Bernard Jenkin, in particular, has singled himself out to be a perpetuator of stereotypes with his reference to the duplicitous nature of the French. But many historians, like the otherwise brilliant Orlando Figes, have not fared much better, talking about the Crimea War as if it had any relevance at all for modern warfare. It’s good fun to tease the French. That is what boozy lunches ought to be about. But it should not pass for serious commentary by MPs. Since the 1990s the French have worked very closely with

James Forsyth

Europe hasn’t gone away

The Tory party’s acceptance of a 2.9 percent increase in the EU budget has persuaded Steve Richards that ‘Europe has ceased to be a toxic issue in British politics.’ As Steve acknowledges, this is in part because the Euro-sceptics have won the argument over the single currency. But it is also because the Tory parliamentary party has accepted that the coalition means nothing positive is happening on the Europe front for the next few years. One thing, though, needs to be borne in mind: the Tory party is more Euro-sceptic than it has been in living memory. Talk to new Tory MPs, who are mostly hardcore sceptics, about Europe and

Matthew Elliott

Lessons from the midterms for the AV referendum

Amid all the excitement of the US midterms, a small, local ballot took place which has important lessons for the UK’s referendum on the Alternative Vote – due to take place six months on Friday. Like us, America uses the straightforward first-past-the-post voting system for its thousands of elected offices – from local school boards and sheriffs to races for governors’ mansions and the White House itself. Their well-established primary system also gives voters a direct say in who the candidates should be – taking power away from the parties and making politicians more responsive to the demands of their local electorate. Because US politics is dominated by two parties,

Peter Hoskin

Alan Johnson: this time it’s personal

Alan Johnson has been more comic than cutting during his spell as shadow chancellor. It’s not so much that he’s doing a bad job, but rather that he’s taken a singular approach to the biggest political issue of the day. Where Labour MPs have wanted moral outrage, he has delivered easy quips. Where the public might expect self-confidence, he has chosen self-deprecation. It may be charming, but the question is: does it win votes? Which is why it’s intriguing to see Johnson change course today, via a surprisingly spiky article in the New Statesman. There is, so far as I can tell, not one intentional gag in the entire piece

Peter Hoskin

Cameron’s bad news day

Yesterday, Nick Robinson set out why the past week may count as David Cameron’s worst in office so far. It’s not a great news day for the Prime Minister today, either. First up is a new report from the Commons public accounts committee. Its headline finding relates to the last government, but has stark implications for this one: only £15 billion of the £35 billion of savings identified in the 2007 Spending Review have been implemented, and only 38 percent of those have come from “definitely legitimate value-for-money savings”. In other words, all those efficiency savings may not be as straightforward as you were led to believe – even if

Wednesday

3 Nov 2010

James Forsyth

A model for coalition policy-making

David Willetts and Vince Cable deserve huge credit for coming up with an impressive agreement on higher education funding that both the Tory and Liberal Democrat leaderships can live with. They have taken the coalition beyond the coalition agreement and shown that it can make sound policy on even the thorniest of political issues. But as important as the agreement is the way that it was hammered out. The discussions were civilised and empirical. There was—in stark contrast to the ‘blue on blue’ debates over defence and welfare—no negative briefings or anything like that. My main quibble with it is whether the £9,000 cap on fees is set too low

Alex Massie

Obama vs Labour

Compare and contrast and be reminded, yet again, that the United Kingdom and the United States play by different rules. During his press conference this afternoon – on which more later – Barack Obama took great care to reiterate his opposition to tax increases for “middle-class” Americans (ie, those earning under $200,000 a year). Increasing taxes, he said, would “take money out of the system”. In Britain, however, the Labour party has spent the last year telling everyone that cutting spending means the government is “taking money out of the system” – a proposition that invites one to wonder if Labour believes that raising taxes would be “putting money into

Daniel Korski

In international politics, the pursuit of stability is not enough

One of the biggest challenges facing the post-Iraq generation of foreign policy decision-makers, like William Hague and Hillary Clinton, is to balance the pursuit of overseas stability with promotion of the dynamic and sometimes de-stabilising forces that build countries’ long-term stability and make economic and political progress possible. This may sound like an academic question but it is a very real change- and not just because the SDSR has made the task of building overseas stability a key government objective. Take Iraq. After having lost an admirably violence-free and largely fair election, it looks likely that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki will cling to power and the voter-winner, Ayad

Peter Hoskin

Why Ed Miliband was being deceptive over debt

“Remember, our government paid down the debt before the crisis hit.” That’s what Ed Miliband said in a speech last Friday, and I took exception to it at the time. My point was, admittedly, quite blunt: how could the Labour leader make such a claim when debt was around £500 billion in 2006, and rising? So I’m glad that the excellent Full Fact blog has since looked into the matter, and come down broadly on my side – giving Miliband a 2-out-of-5 rating on their truth scale. But some of their wider points are worth developing, which is why I’m returning to the topic now. First, though, the observation that