Politics Archives

Monday

16 Aug 2010

Clegg must resist temptation

As Pete notes, Nick Clegg is moderating the debate over the spending review in David Cameron’s absence. It’s an unenviable task. IDS and Liam Fox have been the most cussed opponents of George Osborne, but all ministers are fighting for their budgets behind the scenes. This morning, reports suggest that Chris Huhne could break from the ranks of the silent. The Times gives details of ‘intense discussions’ over the future of nuclear clean-up and renewable energy funding, worth more than £2bn of the Energy department’s £3.4bn budget. Obviously, any reductions in environmentally friendly initiatives carry a political cost for the Liberal Democrats. Chris Huhne has already overcome the habit of

The Spectator

Just in case you missed them… | 16 August 2010

…here are some of the posts made at Spectator.co.uk over the weekend. James Forsyth charts the university funding debate, and reports that the coalition is preparing to attack the new Labour leader. Peter Hoskin welcomes the appointment of Alan Milburn as social mobility tsar, and thinks that Simon Hughes has a hold over the coalition. David Blackburn argues that all eyes have turned to Liam Fox and the MoD budget, and notes that Ken Livingstone is playing red again. And Alex Massie praises Barack Obama’s magnanimity.

Peter Hoskin

An important fortnight for Nick Clegg

Another reason to be glad of the Brown government’s downfall is that there seems to be less silliness about the summer holidays. Today, Nick Clegg returns to London to steer government in David Cameron’s absence – but there’s no fanfare, nor energetic pretence that the Lib Dem leader is actually “running the country”. Unlike those times when Harriet used to have a go at it, followed by Peter, followed by Alistair, followed by Jack, the overriding impression is just business as usual. But that doesn’t mean that the next two weeks are insignificant for Clegg. Rather, he can make sweeping advances on a number of fronts. The most important, and

Sunday

15 Aug 2010

Peter Hoskin

Simon Hughes and the deputy leader’s pulpit

My, what a busy character Simon Hughes is at the moment. Seems like hardly a day goes by without some fresh observations from the Lib Dem deputy leader – and he doesn’t even rest on a Sunday. Today, there are two Hughesbites worth noting down, both from an interview with Sky. The first: “We should have no preference at the next election between the Tories and Labour and other parties. We are going to stand on our own.” And the second: “Our party is committed constitutionally to standing in every seat. We will be standing in every seat at the next election. There will be no deals, there will be

James Forsyth

Readying the bombardment

Westminster might be in holiday mode, but behind the scenes the coalition is preparing to take on the new Labour leader. As I say in the Mail on Sunday, the coalition is determined to hit whichever Miliband wins early and hard. The Cameroons believe that Tony Blair’s decision not to attack Cameron straight away in 2005 was crucial in allowing him to present himself to the public on his own terms. By contrast, both Hague and Duncan Smith were made to look like losers by the Labour attack machine within months of becoming leader of the opposition. The result of the Labour leadership election will be announced on the 25th

Peter Hoskin

The return of Alan Milburn

Frank Field, John Hutton and now Alan Milburn – the red tinges to the coalition mix are like a Who’s Who of reforming Labour politicians. Milburn, we learn today, is to return to government as an adviser to David Cameron on social mobility. It’s a role he should be accumstomed to, as he was tasked with writing a report on the issue under Brown. That time, his suggestions were buried by a government which didn’t want to face up to the sorry facts. This time, you hope they meet with a more constructive response. But why wasn’t a Conservative (or conservative) appointed? That’s the question which Iain Dale asks over

Saturday

14 Aug 2010

David Blackburn

Livingstone the insurgent

Ken Livingstone’s long reign as a Labour London Mayor was predicated on his supposed insurgency against New Labour’s orthodoxy. Well, he remains intent on dissociating himself from his party. For instance today, he has endorsed Eric Pickles’ abolition of the Audit Commission. ‘This is one Tory cut I support,’ he said. This contradicts John Denham’s position. Perhaps Livingstone recognises that Labour cannot give the public sector unqualified support; there are fat cats protecting vested interests in Whitehall, just as there are in the City. Livingstone scents capital in abolishing a public body that wants to pay its chairman £260,000 when ordinary voters are struggling with the bills and the Evening Standard

James Forsyth

Whelan suggests Brown will turn up to Labour conference

A poll in today’s Daily Mail might have the Tories down to 29 percent (in part due to a very large number of undecideds) but it is Charlie Whelan’s interview blaming Peter Mandelson for Labour’s election debacle that is getting all the attention. In a fit of campaign nostalgia, CCHQ has tweeted out a bunch of lines from it. But I suspect it is the last Whelan quote in the piece that has them smacking their lips. Whelan says, ‘Labour has not fallen out of love with Gordon. Quite the reverse. If he tips up at the Conference – which I think he will – he’ll go on stage and

David Blackburn

PC Plod picks up a packet

Back in May, Sir Paul Stephenson, Britain’s most senior police officer, insisted that the police should forgo bonuses to prove that their sole motivation was a sense of public duty. Such grandiosity looks absurd when a freedom of information request reveals that the police were awarded more than £150million pounds in bonuses last year. The Telegraph has the excruciating details. ‘Bonus payments across all ranks have risen six per cent over the past three years. The extra payments were introduced in 2002 by David Blunkett, the home secretary at the time, to offer incentives for performance. Five types of bonus are available, including extra payments for officers who show “professional

The Spectator

Make work pay

Just occasionally, a government comes up with a proposal that is so sensible it makes the opposition’s kneejerk criticism seem pathetically misjudged. So it is with David Cameron’s plan to use data from credit agencies to trap benefit cheats who are stealing £5.6 billion annually from the taxpayer. Opponents will have to do better to explain why this is an incursion on civil liberties when exactly the same information is used on a routine basis by banks and retailers to judge customers’ creditworthiness. If a benefit claimant is spending £2,000 a month on his credit card while supposedly unfit to work, it is the government’s duty to pick this up.

James Forsyth

The dangerous rows behind the scenes are between Tories and Tories

James Forsyth reviews the week in politics Coalition politics has thrown political journalists for a loop. For years we have been used to members of government claiming that there is not a cigarette paper of difference between them and their colleagues — even when the disagreements were obvious. But now Cabinet ministers happily admit that they differ. And when they disagree, the coalition partners set about resolving their differences in a civil and reasonable fashion. The lobby journalist’s bread and butter — the splits story — is in danger of disappearing. But the old politics is not dead. There are still vicious rows going on in government, but they are

Rod Liddle

Welcome to the age of sleb politics

Is the hip hop artist Wyclef Jean the right sort of person to run Haiti? He has announced that he will run for the country’s presidential election as the candidate of the Viv Ansanm (Live Together) party. Wyclef is wanted in the United States, where he made his fortune, on tax avoidance issues. The IRS is claiming $2.1 million in back taxes from him. Added to that there are allegations that he salted away an estimated $400,000 from a charity he set up to, er, relieve the suffering in Haiti following the earthquake which struck the benighted country in January this year. In fact ‘salted away’ is not the technical

Venetia Thompson

How Jewish are the Milibands?

At last Britain’s Jewish community has something to celebrate. Not since Disraeli has Britain had a Jewish Prime Minister (although let’s not forget that Disraeli was a practising Christian); now we have not one, but two bright, young, attractive Jewish boys running for the Labour leadership. The Miliband brothers have left every Jewish mother in the country wondering if either of them is single. But we shouldn’t start dancing the hora just yet: both the Miliband brothers seem to be having a bit of an identity crisis: are they Jewish? Jew-ish? Ethnically Jewish atheists? Does it even matter? Apparently so, or neither brother would have bothered commenting on their ‘identity’

Friday

13 Aug 2010

David Blackburn

Ambassador, you’re spoiling us

The European Union’s creeping barrage continues. Brussels has appointed the urbane looking Joao Vale de Almeida as ambassador to Washington; Vale de Almeida hopes that Henry Kissinger will call him if the old campaigner wants to talk to Europe. It is perverse that Britain is saving money by closing embassies and downscaling around the globe whilst also paying its share to install Senor Vale de Almeida in the swanky environs of the Beltway. In this era of devolution, cost-cutting decentralisation, the European Union is beginning to behave like a state, and an opulent one at that. In the past fortnight it has once again suggested that it should raise taxes.

James Forsyth

Debating gay marriage

There’s an intellectually enriching debate going on at the moment between Ross Douthat and Andrew Sullivan over gay marriage. It was all started by an eloquent and heartfelt column by Ross arguing that the idea that “lifelong heterosexual monogamy at its best can offer something distinctive and remarkable — a microcosm of civilization, and an organic connection between human generations — that makes it worthy of distinctive recognition and support” and that is incompatible with gay marriage. Andrew Sullivan, who along with Jonathan Rauch, deserves a huge amount of credit for moving the argument for gay marriage into the mainstream, wrote a powerful set of rebuttals. Personally, I subscribe to

Alex Massie

Blairism Eclipsed

Danny Finkelstein’s typically excellent column (£) this week argued that Blairism is dead and buried in the Labour party, not least because none of Blair’s followers remain in any position of authority in the party. Blair, he suggests, was a one-off and the party leadership contest has been, if not a sprint, then a trundle to the left. I think there’s a good deal to that. Indeed, it’s startling how Blair has been excised from the party’s memory. Startling, but not, perhaps, entirely surprising. Faced with a centrist government, it’s easy to see why the Labour party has shifted to the left, if only because a) a smaller parliamentary party

James Forsyth

What to do with the defeated?

One of the challenges facing the next Labour leader will be what to do with Ed Balls. Balls, as he demonstrated in the last few months, has the right mentality for opposition. Labour will need his appetite for the fight in the coming year. But if a new leader makes Balls’ shadow Chancellor, he’ll have a shadow Chancellor whose position on the deficit is simply not going to seem credible to the public; Balls has already said that he thinks the plan Labour went into the election with for the deficit was too ambitious. The Tories are convinced that if Balls is shadow Chancellor, they’ll have the dividing lines they

Peter Hoskin

Was Labour’s spending irresponsible?

An eyecatching claim from Ed Miliband, interviewed by Channel 4’s Krishnan Guru-Murthy: “I don’t think our spending was irresponsible.” And here’s a graph in response: I’ll let CoffeeHousers draw their own conclusions.

Peter Hoskin

What can Green achieve?

Handbags across Whitehall this morning, as Vince Cable responds to the government’s appointment of Sir Philip Green as an efficiency adviser in a disgruntled, if evasive, manner. He tells City AM: “There’s a lot I could say on this, but I’d better miss this one out … I’m tempted to comment, but I think I’d better not.” And it’s clear why the Business Secretary, and many others, might be a little peeved. A hard-partying, perma-tanned, rotund and ostentatious figure, with question marks hanging over his tax status, Sir Philip is simply not designed for this age of austerity. He is nothing like the cadaverous technocrats who usually sift through

Alex Massie

The Fall and Rise of the Brownites

At Labour Uncut, Dan Hodges has written a very good, very interesting piece on the demise of the Brownites and how, when the end came, Brown was compelled to rely upon Peter Mandelson and Alistair Campbell to scramble a strategy by which Labour might miraculously cling to power. As Hodges portrays it: As the battlements yielded, what of his own praetorian guard? Where were his champions, his own retinue of advisors? The collapse of the Brownite inner-circle, as a political event distinct from the fall of Brown himself, is one of the strange untold stories of the Labour government. If, as is generally perceived, Gordon was one of the two