Politics Archives

Saturday

5 Feb 2011

Cameron’s speech should not be lightly dismissed

The all-too-predictable reaction to David Cameron’s speech on the importance of tackling the ideology of radical Islam has been depressing. Much of what he said in Munich should be entirely uncontroversial. For too long, Whitehall has been prepared to deal with the self-appointed gatekeepers of the Muslim community without asking serious questions about their political heritage or commitment to democratic values. The following passage in the speech marks a crucially important shift in British policy in this area: “Let’s properly judge these organisations: Do they believe in universal human rights – including for women and people of other faiths? Do they believe in equality of all before the law? Do

Peter Hoskin

How much do we spend on the military?

As shocks go, Politician Uses the Correct Statistic is not particularly electric stuff. But I was struck nonetheless by Cameron’s claim in his speech earlier that, “we still have the fourth largest military budget in the world.” You see, Gordon Brown used to exaggerate this figure by various sneaky methods – and so, by his account, we’d be second in the military spending league table, rather than around fifth. Whereas Cameron had it spot on. Here’s what the latest top ten looks like, going off the best measurement that the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute knows (see their explanation here): On the face of it, this would appear to be

Peter Hoskin

Cameron signs up to muscular liberalism

“State multiculturalism has failed.” Angela Merkel put voice to that sentiment last October. Now it David Cameron’s turn to do the same. In a speech in Munich today, the Prime Minister has taken a rhetorical torch to Islamic extremism. “Frankly,” he says, “we need a lot less of the passive tolerance of recent years and much more active, muscular liberalism.” It is, at the very least, a significant political moment. What Cameron is doing here – as explained by Charles Moore and Paul Goodman – is publicly signing up to a philosophy of the world. It is a philosophy that rejects the idea that extremism should simply be contained. Instead,

James Forsyth

Politics: In times such as these, a government needs a proper strategic foreign policy

The coalition’s approach to foreign policy is not to have a foreign policy. The coalition’s approach to foreign policy is not to have a foreign policy. There is no Cameron doctrine. As events unfold in Egypt, the government does not even know what it wants to happen. Alistair Burt, the Middle East minister, summed up this position rather brilliantly when he said ‘the tide is turning very strongly. It’s not for us to sit here in London and work out where that tide is going to go.’ History had reached a turning point but the coalition wasn’t sure which way it wanted it to turn. It is strange to think

Friday

4 Feb 2011

Alex Massie

Worthwhile Canadian Attack Ad

Ah Canada! Such a nice, boringly successful place! So it’s splendid to see they do attacks ads there too. Here the Tories have some fun with Michael Ignatieff: The only problem with this? It risks making the Conservatives seem provincial and oddly jealous of anyone who dares leave Canada and succeed somewhere else. Wrapping yourself in the Maple Leaf is fine and dandy but it can make you seem small too. Even when your target is Michael Ignatieff…

Peter Hoskin

Clegg stands up for deficit reduction

Cleggologists will mark down the Deputy PM’s speech today as a typical effort. There was basically nothing in it that was new – but Clegg still put it across with more punch, and more persuasively, than most of his colleagues could manage. All of the slogans and pre-announced policies added up to something that sounded, fleetingly, like a plan for growth. Although we’ll still have to wait for Vince Cable’s review to see the outlines of that plan shaded in. Clegg’s main point was straightforward enough: that the government has to, and will, go beyond deficit reduction to stoke the embers of the British economy. He then ranged across everything

James Forsyth

Levelling higher education’s playing field

Last summer I was showing some 17 year olds around the House of Commons. They were bright and engaged and all wanted to go to university. But as they told me what they were doing for A-Levels my heart sank. They were all doing subjects that were going to put them at a massive disadvantage in applying to a top-rank university. The most worrying thing was that they were completely unaware of this. So it is welcome news that the Russell Group, made up of the 20 best universities in the country, has now published a guide advising students on which A-Level subjects are held in the highest regard by

Peter Hoskin

Miliband angles for the youth vote

For those who don’t have the inclination to delve behind the paywall, Ed Miliband’s interview with the Times can be summarised in four words: think of the children. Yep, the Labour leader is out a-courting the youth vote – and who, really, can blame him? The recent student protests have made Westminster’s strategists realise that these people aren’t apolitical after all. It was inevitable that someone would try to reach out to them. The problem for Miliband is that he doesn’t really have a prospectus to offer. He rattles off three familiar policies – a graduate tax (of uncertain design, and even more uncertain worth), votes at 16, more apprenticeships

Daniel Korski

Labour’s gravest military blunder

Labour is often seen as having presided over the erosion of the British military, squandering money on Cold War equipment and sending under-equipped soldiers to far-away battlefields. But away from the public’s scrutiny an even greater lapse occurred – the nation’s cyberdefences were left undermanned while the threat grew daily. As William Hague will tell the Munich Security Conference: “Along with its numerous benefits, cyberspace has created new means of repression, enabling undemocratic governments to violate the human rights of their citizens. It has opened up new channels for hostile governments to probe our defences and attempt to steal our confidential information or intellectual property. It has promoted fears of

Thursday

3 Feb 2011

James Forsyth

What to do about IPSA?

I wish I could tell you that the main topic of conversation in Westminster today is Egypt and the future of the Middle East. But it isn’t. It is those Sally Bercow photos. But if it wasn’t the picture of the Speaker’s wife naked but for a sheet that MPs were talking about it would be IPSA, the expenses body, following the publication of their claims for September and October. MPs detest IPSA. They believe, with good reason, it to be arrogant and inefficient. So strong is MPs’ opinion on this front, that David Cameron told Tory MPs late last year that if IPSA hadn’t sorted itself out by April,

Peter Hoskin

A new golden rule

The last few days have given us enough evidence for a new economic rule: the better the news about the economy, the less we’ll see of Ed Balls. As Tim Montgomerie notes over at ConservativeHome, the shadow chancellor was plastered right across the airwaves when last week’s growth figures were announced. This week – when the economic omens have been more encouraging – not so much. On Tuesday, as Fraser blogged, we had a record rise in manufacturing activity. Yesterday, there were heartening figures for the construction sector. And, today, the services sector has followed suit, with its strongest showing for eight months. Here’s the graph for all three: Sterling

Alex Massie

Neoconservatism’s Mini-Revival

The great thing about neoconservatism is the way it’s become a universal bogeyman. On the one hand neoconservatives – by which I mean actual neoconservatives – are criticised by the right for their utopian dreams of a better, more liberal, more democratic Arab world; on the other neoconservatives – by which I mean people who generally aren’t neoconservatives at all – are criticised by the left for urging caution in this present Egyptian crisis. Look at these dastardly neocon hypocrites backing Mubarak! It’s a lose-lose moment for neoconservatism. So much so, in fact, that the term has been stripped of almost all meaning and now simply stands for Stuff I

Daniel Korski

Coffee House interview: Julian Astle

Open any mass-circulation newspaper and you will find plenty of insider’s information about the Tory party. But precious little is known about their coalition partners, the Liberal Democrats. After decades in the political wilderness, most editors reasoned that it wasn’t really worth their while finding out what the party thought. After all, what difference did it make? Well, times have changed. What the party thinks, what it does, and, crucially, what it won’t do, really does matter. So to help us here at Coffee House, Julian Astle, a friend of the Lib Dem leadership and director of CentreForum, the liberal think tank, has agreed to answer a few questions.

Alex Massie

The Looming Liberal Democrat Paradox

You know, when you see that Neil Clark has written a piece for the Guardian arguing that, from his perspective, this government is even worse than Margaret Thatcher’s you might expect to be entertained but you don’t anticipate him making sense. But, lo, here he is: […] Clegg, and his fellow Orange Book Liberals, are actually more keen on market forces and globalised capitalism than the so-called Tory wets were. In last year’s election, the free market fundamentalism of the Liberal Democrats was ignored by many commentators and voters who saw their opposition to Labour’s security measures, and their advocacy of electoral reform, as evidence that the party was progressive.

Wednesday

2 Feb 2011

Lloyd Evans

As the oldest parliament yawned, the oldest civilisation erupted

One yawn every minute. That’s how PMQs felt today. Foreign affairs dominated the session as Ed Miliband and the Prime Minister exchanged lofty words about the Cairo demonstrations and the spread of democracy around the world. Doubtless they felt they struck a suitably elevated tone but to the viewers they came across as a pair of prep school smart-alecs trying to sound like great statesmen disposing of liberated peoples after the fall of empires. Egypt and Afghanistan were both treated to a torrent of high-minded vacuities. David Cameron found the demonstrations ‘incredibly moving.’ Ed Miliband was impressed by the sight of ‘hundreds of thousands of people facing overwhelming odds to

James Forsyth

Consensus reigns over PMQs

A very different PMQs this week: six questions on foreign affairs and almost total consensus between Cameron and Miliband. Miliband’s office had given No 10 advance warning of the topics they wanted to raise and the two agreed on pretty much everything. Miliband argued that ‘the best route to stability is through democracy.’ Cameron agreed but stressed that democracy means more than just elections. You get the picture. At the risk of disagreeing with Pete, I must say that the exchanges were a reminder of just how dull PMQs would be if it was not confrontational. For Miliband, the advantage in taking this more considered approach today was that it

Peter Hoskin

PMQs live blog | 2 February 2011

VERDICT: What a refreshing change that was. After several weeks of Punch ‘n’ Judy rivalry, the two party leaders finally put down their batons and stumbled upon a new way to do it. Much of the credit must go to Ed Miliband, for asking pacific questions about Egypt and Afghanistan in the first place. But credit, also, to Cameron, for answering them in a straightforward and statesmanlike manner. The rest of the House, for its part, was stunned into silence by this peculiar scene. Some of the blood rushed back into proceedings with the backbench questions, and as Cameron directed attacks at Ed Balls, but this must still go down

Tuesday

1 Feb 2011

Peter Hoskin

All across the political spectrum

Yesterday’s polls may seem like yesterday’s news – but it’s actually worth returning to YouGov’s effort from, erm, yesterday. It contained some distinctive questions, and results, all set around the left-right spectrum. How left wing is the Labour party? How right wing is David Cameron? That sort of thing. Of course, as Anthony Wells has already pointed out, the old labels of “left” and “right” are of decreasing relevance nowadays. But they do still tell us something about popular perceptions of the parties and their leaders. So here are the top line YouGov results in graph form: From which, a few points stand out: Ed Miliband is regarded as

Peter Hoskin

Osborne’s tax headache

No doubt about it, George Osborne is being pulled in two directions ahead of the Budget. There are those, such as the Lib Dems, who would have him reduce taxes for the least well-off. There are those, such as Boris, who would have him reduce taxes for higher earners. As I suggested yesterday, this debate pivots around two particular measures: raising the personal allowance and cutting the 50p rate. Rachel Sylvester develops the story in a typically insightful column (£) for the Times today. It quotes an “ally of the Chancellor” to the effect that Osborne is minded more to raise the personal allowance than to cut 50p. “Not many

Monday

31 Jan 2011

James Forsyth

Wheeling and dealing over the AV bill

If the AV referendum is to take place on the 5th of May, the legislation paving the way for it needs to have passed by the 16th of February. But this bill is currently being held up in the Lords where Labour peers are objecting to the ‘Tory part’ of the bill which reduces the number of MPs and equalises constituency sizes. The coalition does not have a majority in the Lords, so all the talk of simply ramming the bill through was always slightly unrealistic. But the coalition’s concession that there can be public inquiries into the boundary review has created an expectation that Labour might now drop its