Politics Archives

Friday

27 Nov 2009

Caledonian Blues

Ochone, ochone! The plight of the Scottish Tories has been receiving attention again this week. As Pete pointed out, the latest Tartan poll puts the Tories at just 18% north of the Tweed. This means, 12 years on from the 1997 disaster, that, in Iain Martin’s words, “They’re getting absolutely nowhere, slowly.” True. In 1979, Scottish Conservatives won 22 seats and comprised 6.5% of the UK parliamentary party. It’s fair to say they’ll get nowhere near that next year. But look at this list of some of the seats the Tories won thirty years ago: Aberdeenshire East, Angus South, Argyll, Banff, Galloway, Moray &Nairn, Perth & East Perthshire. Most were

Daniel Korski

Tory government should be manoeuvrist government

The greatest challenge facing a new government may be that Britain’s national security institutions are not fit for purpose. They were built for a different era and focused on a set of now obselete threats. Notwithstanding a few exceptions, like the Cuban Missile Crisis, the threats during the Cold War were slow-moving and predictable. Even in the immediate Cold War period, threats were nasty, but rarely novel. Now, however, Britain faces all manner of fast-moving, asymmetric threats. Terrorists and insurgents can get inside our decision-making loop. In Helmand, the Taliban stage attacks around their media strategy, not the other way around as we do it. Countries like Russia and

Peter Hoskin

The axeman cometh | 27 November 2009

Philip Hammond, the man the Tories have tasked with overseeing spending cuts should they get into power next year, has just given a speech to Policy Exchange on reducing waste and improving efficiency. Much of it reheated existing arguments about, say, transparent public spending – which doesn’t make those arguments any less valid. But there are one or two other points worth mentioning here First, the very fact that Hammond was making this speech. Introducing him, George Osborne complained that the Labour government has made Hammond’s potential role – Chief Secretary to the Treasury – a non- job, and that the Tories would restore it to being “one of the

David Blackburn

Commissioner Boris

The Evening Standard reports that Boris Johnson is set to become the Tories’ first elected police commissioner. Chris Grayling told the paper: “We envisage the Mayor of London being the elected police commissioner. This would strengthen the role of the Mayor. However, I’m absolutely clear that no reform we introduce will allow any elected politician to interfere in operational policing and we will make absolutely certain that the independence of operational policing is protected in law.” Under Tory proposals the mayor will be responsible for hiring and firing chief constables, tailoring police objectives to local requirements and budgeting. Naturally, the contrarians are gathering. I give it 24 hours before Sir

Thursday

26 Nov 2009

Fraser Nelson

Turning Japanese

Is the British economy turning Japanese? Since asking the question last year on Coffee House, the evidence has been piling up – and it makes for a cover story in this week’s magazine (which I have written with Mark Bathgate). The similarities are as follows: 1. Japan’s bust followed years of debt-fuelled growth which vain politicians saw as prosperity. 2. When the bust came, Japan’s government kept on spending. They did so in the name of Keynsian stimulus, thinking this would in itself kick start a recovery. All it achieved was to sink Japan deeper into debt. 3. Crucially, Japan didn’t do full disclosure on the collapsed banks. To fix

James Forsyth

Nudging us to go green

When the Tories first got interested in nudge theory in the summer of 2008 there was some sneering and questioning of what practical policy applications it had. But Grant Shapps’ speech today on the Tories’ Green Deal shows how nudging can be applied in government. Shapps proposes that consumers be reminded of the Green Deal offer – your house retrofitted to cut its energy usage at no immediate cost to you – every time they use the stores of one of the firms involved in the scheme. This should, in theory, boost take up of the scheme. The Green Deal, the brainchild of Greg Clark, is one of the Tories’

Peter Hoskin

What Gordon thinks of London 2012

Another good quote for the Brown ‘n’ Blair scrapbook, courtesy of Ben Brogan’s column in the Telegraph: “Only once in the 20th century has a government that won the games survived to deliver them. A change of administration in the run-up to the Olympics might be expected to herald political trouble. Thankfully, David Cameron does not share Gordon Brown’s loathing of what he refers to as ‘Tony’s f—— Olympics’. He is committed to ensuring stability by protecting London 2012’s status as the Switzerland of politics, immune from partisan attacks.” Brogan’s wider argument is worth noting: that the Cameroons think 2012 could be the tonic the country – and their potential

James Forsyth

The Red Tory

Phillip Blond has been attracting a lot of publicity in the past few weeks and it was standing room only at the launch of his new think tank Res Publica. (I should say that I am on its advisory board). David Cameron gave the opening remarks, stressing the influence Blond’s thinking has had on how the Tories think about poverty and public services, but he was also keen to point out that he doesn’t agree with everything that Blond says. Ever since the trouble caused by last summer’s Policy Exchange report advocating abandoning various northern cities, the Cameroons have been wary of getting too close to any think tank for

Peter Hoskin

Johnson: the Tories aren’t the “nasty party” when it comes to immigration

There are plenty of noteworthy snippets in Mehdi Hasan and James Macintyre’s interview with Alan Johnson today, but it’s this passage which jumped out at me: “Johnson even chooses to defend the Tories on immigration, saying they represent a ‘mainstream, centre-right’ party engaging in a ‘decent, centre-ground debate on immigration’. This, despite the Tories having stuck to the 2005 pledge, under Michael Howard, for an immigration ‘cap’, which – along with campaign posters asking ‘Are you thinking what we’re thinking?’ – led to accusations of ‘dog-whistle’ politics.” It’s a truism that in order to have a sensible debate, you’ve got to be willing to actually have a debate – so

Martin Bright

Broken Britain: The Reality

I was hugely impressed by a long article by my former colleague Rob Yates, in this weekend’s Observer magazine. Rob went back to his roots in Walton, Liverpool, one of the most deprived parts of the country on any indicator, to examine the reality of the “broken Britain” rhetoric of the Conservative Party. It was about as far from a liberal whinge as you can imagine, but Rob recognised that not everything New Labour has done to alleviate the lot of the worst off has been disastrous. In particular he points to the popularity of the Sure Start programme for mothers and young children and improvements to school buildings and

Wednesday

25 Nov 2009

Alex Massie

Obama Breaks A Promise to Britain

Perhaps there’s more to this than meets the eye, but on the face of it the Obama administration has not only broken a promise made to Britain but reneged upon a vital agreement that would have given the UK full “operational sovereignty” over the new F-35 Joint Strike Fighters we’re supposed to be buying for our new aircraft carriers. Back in December 2006 Lord Drayson, minister for Defence Procurement, travelled to Washington for urgent talks to save Britain’s participation in the programme. Crucial to this was the signing of a memorandum of Understanding that would give Britain, the only “Tier 1” partner, full access to software codes that would allow

Lloyd Evans

A game of chess

Fascinating details dominated PMQs today. Instead of the usual custard pie-fight this was a game of chess. Things began with talk of downpours and sandbags. Both leaders were concerned that the sodden folk of Cumbria are receiving enough hot soup and blankets. The PM reminded us that he’d recently popped up there to squelch around in his wellies shaking people’s hands and nodding sympathetically. Then Cameron pulled out a firecracker. He accused Brown of shambolic incompetence in allowing public money to flow into the hands of a front organization for Hizb ut-Tahrir, an extremist group whose constitution denounces non-Moslems in virulent terms. ‘They are combatants in the battlefield. Their blood

James Forsyth

Cause for concern

That Ipsos-Mori poll is still making waves, with both Steve Richards and Daniel Finkelstein devoting their columns to the prospects of a hung parliament. Steve is excited by the possibility, thinking that it would restore the Commons to its rightful place as the cockpit of the nation. Danny is concerned by it, fearful of the consitutional damage it could inflict. But it strikes me that the real reason to worry about a hung parliament is the financial markets. How would gilts traders react to a weak government that was incapable of making cuts? One of the few advantages Britain has – as it strugggles to deal with a deficit which

David Blackburn

Missing the point | 25 November 2009

The Today programme really let Paul Myners off the hook this morning. The interviewer obsessed with why the loans had remained secret for so long. It’s a fair question, and it seems bizarre that we only learn of them ten months after the borrowing was repaid in full. However, there are more important questions. As I wrote yesterday, these disclosure’s most potentially volatile revelation is that Gordon Brown was propping up HBOS whilst urging Lloyds to purchase the ailing giant. Was this issue examined in any depth? No, though it must be determined whether the Lloyds’ board understood HBOS’s predicament in its horrific entirety. The equally crucial question of how

David Blackburn

PMQs Live Blog | 25 November 2009

Stay tuned for live coverage from 1200. 12:03: Here we go. Brown gets things underway with the weekly Butcher’s Bill and remembrance of those killed or otherwise affected by the floods in Cumbria. 12:06: And here comes Cameron – he follows Brown’s thanksgiving lead. Cameron asks how quickly temporary bridges across the Derwent in Cumbria can be constructed. Brown doesn’t know as yet as he and the Secretary of State await an engineers report. Brown adds that all costs will be met by the Department of Environment. Cameron wants eveything that can be done for those affected be done. Brown rambles and says he will do everything he can and

David Blackburn

With friends like these | 25 November 2009

Bob Ainsworth has publicly criticised President Obama’s slothful deliberation on an Afghan troop surge. The Defence Secretary said: ‘We have suffered a lot of losses. We have had a period of hiatus while McChrystal’s plan and his requested uplift has been looked at in the detail to which it has been looked at over a period of some months, and we have had the Afghan elections, which have been far from perfect let us say. All of those things have mitigated against our ability to show progress… put that on the other side of the scales when we are suffering the kind of losses that we are.’ I don’t agree

Tuesday

24 Nov 2009

David Blackburn

There are more pressing financial concerns than this

The two top dogs at the Treasury Select Committee, John McFall and Michael Fallon, give remarkably different reactions to the news that ministers withheld details of emergency loans to RBS and Lloyds for over a year. McFall argues that secrecy was necessary to avoid a run on the banks; Fallon expresses outrage that Lloyds’ shareholders were not privy to all information when considering the disastrous purchase of HBOS, urged on them by the Prime Minister. Both have their points. Blind panic is the defining recollection of those autumnal days. If the situation had been exacerbated by full disclosure of the mess RBS and Lloyds were in then God alone

Alex Massie

Obama as the Liberal Reagan

So Barack Obama’s approval rating in Iowa has slipped below 50%. Indeed, he receives negative ratings from Iowans in every area except foreign policy. So much for all that Hope and Change, eh? Well, not quite. As a savvy Democratic lobbyist emails: More and more, the overlays between Obama and Reagan seem to match. Succeeding disastrous presidencies, charm/star power, awful off year elections, bad first mid-term, laggard economy on the cusp of growth, and a badly fractured opposition trying to figure out purity vs. change within their own ranks. Reagan was, of course, unabashedly conservative and more and more, it seems that pre-presidency predictions of Obama as a closet moderate

Peter Hoskin

Yet another poll for the mix

After the Ipsos MORI hullabaloo, it’s tempting to treat the YouGov/Telegraph poll on Westminster voting intentions in Scotland with extreme caution. But, for the record, here are the headline figures, and a hefty rise for Labour: Labour — 39 percent (up 9 points from August) SNP — 24 percent (down 2) Conservatives — 18 percent (down 2) Lib Dems — 12 percent (down 6) As this fits in with another recent poll, it’s safe to say that Labour have solidified their support in Scotland during and after the Glasgow North by-election. And there’s more discouraging news for the SNP: at 29 percent, support for Scottish independence is hardly overwhelming –

Peter Hoskin

Mandelson downplays Van Rompuy and Ashton – and bigs up the EU’s financial influence

To my eyes, there’s more than a little dose of mischief in Peter Mandelson’s article for the FT today. Discussing the recent EU jobs grab, he seems to suggest that the new economic and financial commissioners may have a more important role to play than either Herman Van Rompuy or Lady Ashton, the EU’s president and high representative, respectively: “Some commentators felt that the EU’s choices for its new president and high representative for foreign affairs lacked this kind of continental ambition. Herman Van Rompuy and Lady Ashton will no doubt aim to prove them wrong. But Europe’s dilemma is not just one of influence projection. Europe’s influence will inevitably