Politics Archives

Tuesday

17 Nov 2009

Balls dumps Brown into another lose-lose situation

Things never seem to go smoothly for Gordon. On a day when the Telegraph carries details of his Whitehall savings programme, the FT has news that one of his closest allies, Ed Balls, is calling for relatively hefty spending increases elsewhere. Apparently, Balls has asked the Treasury to grant his department – the Department for Children, Schools and Families – real-terms spending increases of 1.4 percent until 2014. That’s an extra £2.6 billion in total – and goes beyond previous Labour commitments to “protect” schools spending. It’s a brassy move by Balls and one which is sure to aggravate his colleagues. After all, remember when Labour called Cameron “Mr 10

Martin Bright

Are Big Ideas Back?

I can’t quite decide whether there really is a return of ideas to British politics or whether the political columnists have just grown tired of writing yet another piece about just how bad things are for the Prime Minister this week. Jackie Ashley’s column in today’s Guardian complements Janet Daley’s in the Sunday Telegraph yesterday. From opposing political perspectives they say the same thing: the two major parties are beginning to develop distinct political visions, which will allow the British public to make a genuine choice at next year’s general election. Ashley suggests that David Cameron’s speech on the role of the state and Ed Miliband’s grasping of the environmental

Monday

16 Nov 2009

Peter Hoskin

Carry on camping | 16 November 2009

Over at his blog, Nick Robinson has put together a useful digest of the different attitudes towards Brown’s premiership inside the Labour party. Putting it briefly, he thinks Labour MPs fit into three distinct “camps”: 1) The plotters: “…believe that Mr Brown is taking their party to certain oblivion and are still desperately searching for ways to remove him and to install a new leader by January.” 2) The quitters: “…agree with [the plotters’] analysis but have given up hope of installing a new leader who just might do better.” 3) The fighters: “…are beginning to hope that a recovery might just be possible.” It’s a neat outline, albeit one

James Forsyth

Going broke and going for broke

The Times has a fascinating story on how Labour’s lack of cash is forcing it to give up on seats and groups of voters. The paper reports that seats with a majority of less than 3,000 have been effectively written off. So even before the campaign has begun, Labour is basically forfeiting 60 seats. By contrast, the Tory marginal seat operation — funded by Lord Ashcroft’s cash — is pushing further and further up the Tory list of target seats. (I was talking to one Tory candidate recently who thought that the resources poured into her seat — currently held by Labour — in the last 18 months or so

Peter Hoskin

Unnecessary respite from reform

This snippet from Jon Snow’s latest blog-post (with my emphasis) is jaw-dropping: “To add to matters, I have learned that the Labour party is now going through its ranks of peers to determine where their ‘principal residence’ is. This after years of wholesale abuse of the system in which lords and ladies of all persuasions have claimed distant holiday homes to enable them to get the accompanying unreceipted travel expenses. I have also learned that ‘arrangements’ have been made to allow serving ministers in the Lords to claim a residence out of town ‘for necessary respite’, retrospectively protecting ministers and law officers who may have claimed for such provision.” It’s

Peter Hoskin

Labour’s next election broadcast

Over at his New Statesman blog, James Macintyre reveals that Labour’s next election broadcast will be the sentimental, two-and-half minute history of the Labour party shown before Brown’s speech at the last party conference. We’ve embedded it below, for the – ahem – benefit of CoffeeHousers; so I’ll repeat the question I asked during our live blog of Brown’s speech: “This is clearly a Labour crowd-pleaser, but will it make any difference outside the conference hall?”

Peter Hoskin

The Tory leadership could be talking like Boris soon

So Boris is attacking the 50p tax rate again – and rightly so. In his Telegraph column today, the Mayor of London repeats the lines he pushed in April: that the measure will drive business talent away from our shores, that it will damage London’s competitiveness, and that it could actually lose money for the Exchequer. It all comes to a punchy conclusion: “What Gordon Brown wants to do is therefore economically illiterate.” I imagine a few commentators will see that last line as a veiled attack on the Tory leadership, given that they’re committed to the tax rate too. But, as Tim Montgomerie says over at ConservativeHome, and going

The Spectator

Just in case you missed them… | 16 November 2009

…here are some of the posts made at Spectator.co.uk over the weekend. Fraser Nelson praises Jeremy Hunt’s plan for the BBC, and answers your questions. James Forsyth sees the government commit another u-turn, and argues that Obama’s Afghan position is pennywise but strategically foolish. David Blackburn believes that the BNP remain a party of racists, and finds Gordon Brown at the heart of Labour’s emerging election strategy. Susan Hill says that teenagers living in rural areas are left with nothing to do and nowhere to go. Rod Liddle can’t understand how Britain has become the global capital of busybodies. And Alex Massie condemns a betrayal of justice and common sense.

Sunday

15 Nov 2009

Daniel Korski

Cutting MoD staff will not win wars

Liam Fox has made clear that the Conservative Party is planning to slash the number of civilian posts at the Ministry of Defence as a way of balancing the military budget if they win the general election in 2010. “We have 99,000 people in the Army and 85,000 civilians in the MoD. Some things will have to change – and believe me, they will,” Fox has said. But if the Conservatives thought they had stumbled across a sure-fire criticism of Labour’s way of war, in The Times, ex-soldier, author (and, I will wager, future MP) Patrick Hennessey asks the public not to lay off the “MoD desk-jockeys.” ‘The MoD deploys

David Blackburn

Last man standing

That Gordon Brown is still the prime minister proves that it isn’t only Peter Mandelson who is a fighter not a quitter. It became clear this week that Brown will fight to the bitter end, and that Labour’s election strategy has emerged through him. Labour depicts the Tories as Bullingdon boy toffs and crazed Thatcherite cutters; Brown is the stern, serious figurehead, the still small voice of calm at the vanguard of Labour’s arguments on immigration and the economy. Matthew d’Ancona’s Sunday Telegraph column details how Brown has returned to the fore this week and delivered policy statements aimed exclusively at maintaining Labour’s core support. Why else did he humiliate himself

Saturday

14 Nov 2009

The Spectator

Can Cameron deliver?

There is something about ‘compassionate conservatism’ that infuriates the Labour party, as if the very phrase were a deceitful contradiction in terms. The notion sends Gordon Brown into apoplexy. He can handle the Tories talking about economic efficiency or immigration, but he regards concern for the poorest as a subject purely for Labour. And for too many of the last 20 years, it has been. As a result Labour has incubated, through its dysfunctional welfare state, the most expensive poverty in the world. From the beginning of David Cameron’s leadership, he has focused on this outrage. It was for ‘hugging hoodies’ that he was lampooned early on, and it was

Fraser Nelson

Cameron’s licence fee cut – and how he’ll pay for it

All hail, Jeremy Hunt, the axe man. Cameron’s first tax cut will be a licence fee cut* – and Hunt is planning to axe some stations to pay for it. Hunt is thinking of axing 1Extra, apparently, with BBC3 and BBC4 already under threat. Also under Hunt’s axe would be the National Lottery’s runnng costs. The Sunday Times apparently has the details tomorrow, but I give Hunt this warning: if he even tiptoes in the direction of Cbebbies then he will have a revolution on his hands. Parents depend on it now, utterly. Personally, I’d pay £100 a year just for it – just for its kid-sedating powers. But it

David Blackburn

No longer a racist party, but a party of racists

The Guardian reports that the BNP membership is going to vote overwhelmingly in favour of allowing non-whites to join the party. The BNP’s electoral success entitles it to a fair hearing in the political mainstream. The Spectator has maintained that the party’s domestic policies are inspired by racial supremacist ideology and that its economic policies are like Dagenham – that is, three stops beyond Barking. The membership’s decision, forced on them by a court order with which they must comply, changes nothing. There is more chance of Dennis Skinner being elevated to the peerage than there is of Afro-Caribbeans and Asians joining the BNP. But this development is a

Fraser Nelson

In answer to your questions

So, what is The Spectator coming to? Dishing out trophies to Harman and all these Labour types? Has the editor’s chair made me crawl up to people like Harman and Darling? Am I angling for a political seat? The comments to my earlier blog post raise some excellent points – about politics, polemic and The Spectator itself. I thought they deserved a response in a post rather than a comment. The Spectator’s tradition of honouring talent on all sides of the political divide in its annual awards is a long one: La Harman was our 24th Parliamentarian of the Year. While Harman was speaking, Boris and I were holding her

Rod Liddle

Why is everyone determined to be outraged all the time?

There’s been a rather wonderful debate bubbling along at the Guardian, about the French minister Pierre Lellouche’s use of the word ‘autistic’ to describe the English Tories. Well, in fact that’s not quite what the debate has been about; everyone is agreed that Lellouche is beyond the pale. The debate has been about whether or not the Guardian was right to report what was said by the chap in a headline. Quite a lot of readers thought that it wasn’t. Elsa and John Wingad, for example, wrote: ‘We know that the use of “autistic” in your headline was a quote, however by choosing to repeat it in such prominence [sic]

James Forsyth

The trouble with Grieve: Cameron may regret leaving the law to a lawyer

James Forsyth reviews the week in Politics After a good meal, Tory MPs like to play a game: guess the first resignation from David Cameron’s Cabinet. For a party that loves plots and intrigue, this goes some way to making up for the fact that everyone will be on their best behaviour between now and the election. When it comes to who might walk on a point of principle, one name comes up more frequently than any other: Dominic Grieve, the shadow justice secretary. This is, perhaps, appropriate given that Grieve was thrust into the limelight by David Davis’s self-immolation over 42 days. Straight after Davis resigned as shadow home

Friday

13 Nov 2009

David Blackburn

The tactics of political insurgency

That Labour held one of its safest seats is newsworthy either indicates how desperate the party’s predicament is or that it is a very slow news day. Anything other than a Labour win, and a substantial one at that, was unthinkable; even the resolutely fanciful SNP must have acknowledged that privately. However, this by-election raises some interesting points nonetheless. As Alex Massie notes, the gloss has come of the hubristic SNP. Salmond’s Braveheart act about winning 20 seats and seeing Westminster “hanging from a Scottish rope” looked optimistic-to-mad when first performed; now it just looks mad. Salmond’s tactic of simultaneously posing as ruler and insurgent has backfired: Labour can play

The Spectator

The week that was

Here are some of the posts made at Spectator.co.uk over the past week. Fraser Nelson says the city expects George Osborne to do his duty, and explains why Harriet Harman is the parliamentarian of the year. James Forsyth charts one of the worst weeks in Gordon Brown’s political career, and argues that Brown is in a nigh on impossible position over Afghanistan. David Blackburn says that the government’s immigration proposals do not address the issue that made the BNP popular, and believes that Ken Clarke must serve in a Cameron government. Mark Bathgate argues that the government made two elementary fiscal mistakes that have left the economy not waving but

Alex Massie

Is heroin more popular than Toryism in Glasgow?

Chris Dillow estimates that there are more heroin users in Glasgow North East than Tory voters*. For that matter, there are probably four heroin users in Springburn for every plucky citizen prepared to vote Liberal Democrat. I suspect Labour won’t want to use this factoid for fear it foster the impression that heroin use is much more widespread than it really is. *In, admittedly, a by-election with a 33% turnout.

David Blackburn

I dunno, how many hedgerows have we lost since the war?

There’s a tremendous post on the FT’s blog, inviting 20 influential public figures to ask questions that they believe incoming MPs should be able to answer. Jim Pickard explains: ‘But what should we be looking for in the people we elect to run the country? The question of what knowledge and expertise the ideal MP should possess is not much debated. So FT Weekend invited 20 experts in various fields to come up with questions that – in their opinion – any would-be MP should be able to answer. This exercise throws up an obvious problem right away: the areas of knowledge that our questioners address are so disparate that