Politics Archives

Saturday

22 Aug 2009

Reform the religion

A party striving to make the huge leap from opposition to office must speak with one voice, maintain scrupulous clarity and ensure iron discipline. It must reassure the voters relentlessly, persuading them at every available opportunity that it has changed and that it grasps why it has been defeated in prior general elections. Yet a party that aspires to save the country from economic crisis and to transform its public services must also be prepared to think the unthinkable, and to take deeply unpopular measures. This is the dilemma facing David Cameron, neatly encapsulated in the controversy over the NHS and the remarks made in America by the Tory MEP,

Peter Hoskin

Tories more trusted on NHS than Labour

The Tories will be pleased. After the #welovetheNHS brouhaha of the past couple of weeks, a ComRes poll in tomorrow’s Independent on Sunday gives them a healthy lead on the NHS. In response to the statement “The NHS would be safer under Labour than the Conservatives,” 39 percent of respondents said they agreed, while 47 percent said they disagreed. That’s an 8 point advantage for the Tories. It’s pretty devastating stuff for Labour, but – oddly – comes in one of the Tories’ weakest policy areas. Let’s hope this encourages Cameron & Co. to think and talk more about health service reform.

Peter Hoskin

Do the Tories need an “-ism”?

So what overarching theory do Cameron & Co. believe in now? Is it Phillip Blond’s “Red Toryism”? Are they still invigorated by “libertarian paternalism”? Or have they struck on something else? This week’s Bagehot column in the Economist gives us a useful overview of all the -isms the Tories have gone through recently, before landing on a conclusion that the policy wonks in CCHQ may not like: “The Tories should stop worrying about whether their view of the world works in theory, and concentrate more on generating ideas that will work in practice. They can live without an ideology; what they urgently require is balls.” Bagehot’s take is certainly attractive.

Peter Hoskin

The biggest failure of the Tory opposition years

Fantastic, thought-provoking stuff by Matthew Parris in the Times today, as he looks back on the past 12 years of Tory opposition and asks: “Just what did they achieve?” His response is generally unfavourable: that, until more recently, the wilderness years have largely been wasted years. And he highlights the Tories’ inability to take on Labour over their wasteful spending and burgeoning deficit: “But it was on the central domestic question of the era that the Tories’ nerve failed almost fatally. At first new Labour held to the tight spending plans that it inherited from John Major’s outgoing administration. Then the Government let go. The letting go was, in retrospect,

Friday

21 Aug 2009

David Blackburn

Widdecombe: I’ve just had enough

It’s worth reading Iain Dale’s interview with Ann Widdecombe in the latest issue of Total Politics. Widdecombe is, of course, standing down at the next election, and much of the interview concerns her future plans: she wants to appear on Strictly Come Dancing, for instance, perhaps as the feminine answer to John Sergeant. But, naturally, the outspoken MP makes some forceful points about the current state of British politics. Her conclusion? That things are so bad she’s had enough. First, she attacks Cameron’s ‘A-list’ candidate selection policy: ‘We have gone for category rather than ability. We’re looking for more women. I’m all for more women, I’m all for more members

Peter Hoskin

Labour may not be able to exploit one of the Tories’ biggest weaknesses – but that doesn’t mean others won’t

Here at Coffee House Towers, we frequently point out the risks with the Tories’ pledge to keep on increasing health spending in real terms. As I suggested last week, the two main problems are that it plays up the Brownite idea that spending is a good thing in itself, and it could force the Tories into a position from which they can’t row back in government. Now, in a acerbic article in the Guardian – in which he describes Tory policy as “an incoherent mishmash of ideas designed by focus group” – Larry Elliot kicks off by highlighting the confusion the Tory line creates: “On Tuesday night David Cameron warned

Martin Bright

That Philip Hammond Email in Full

There was some interesting discussion on the subject of interns after my post last night about the shadow chief secretary to the Treasury’s attitude to the use of free labour in parliament. Young people are now effectively paying employers to get on the first rung of their careers. I have no doubt that some people gain valuable experience in this way. But the question is, which people? As Alan Milburn’s recent work on social mobility demonstrated, the professions are still largely inaccessible to all but the relatively privileged. Make up your own mind whether Hammond’s attitude is enlightened or not: > From: HAMMOND, Philip [mailto:HAMMONDP@parliament.uk] > Sent: 12 August 2009

Thursday

20 Aug 2009

Martin Bright

Visions of Life Under a Tory Government

A fascinating post on the Interns Anonymous website. This brilliant organisation is devoted to exposing the pernicious growth in the use of free labour. It shares many of the aims of my new outfit, New Deal of the Mind. Philip Hammond, the well-respected shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury has been tipped to leapfrog George Osborne into No 11 Downing Street. According to the IA website, Hammond recently advertised for an intern post for which the terms were less than generous. When challenged by a member of the public about his failure to pay the national minimum wage he emailed back: “I would regard it as an abuse of taxpayer

Alex Massie

Sending the Lockerbie Bomber Home

I could have done without Kenny MacAskill talking quite so much about our values “as a people”, if only because, as Fraser writes, we actually often do insist that prisoners die in jail. That though, is really an argument for showing a degree of compassion more often, not for denying it in this instance, no matter the ghastliness of the cime for which Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi was convicted. Nonetheless, on balance, I thought MacAskill’s justification of his decision to release Megrahi so that he may die at home and in the company of his family, was about as good as could have been expected given both the circumstances and the

David Blackburn

Field: Harman would give Labour direction

Gordon Brown, if you are about to pick up today’s New Statesman, I advise you to put it down, return to the sofa and start re-watching those Raith Rovers tapes. In it, Frank Field writes that Harriet Harman offers Labour a sense of direction that Gordon Brown’s government, which is simply drifting towards ‘the most horrendous defeat’, has lacked. Here are the most crucial, and the most gushing, bits: ‘You have to hand it to her. Harriet Harman has really shown how to use No 10 as a platform from which to direct policy. You may not agree with how she presented her programme, but, for the first time since

Martin Bright

Meet the New Political Editor of the Jewish Chronicle

I was delighted, not to say honoured, when Stephen Pollard approached me to become the political editor of The Jewish Chronicle. It is a great publication with a long tradition of campaigning for the Jewish community in this country. But above all it is good old-fashioned newspaper with all that this entails, including, of course, having an eye to the future. I was pleased to discover that the paper has an active NUJ chapel, which is welcomed by the management. All very progressive – as indeeed is the decision to appoint a non-Jew as political editor. I am really looking forward to working with the fine team of journalists in the JC newsroom and, from time to time, finding my

Wednesday

19 Aug 2009

Alex Massie

Revisionist Labour Market History: Ulster Division

This Reuters piece on hostility towards immigrants in Northern Ireland contains the, well, oddest paragraph I’ve read today: Historically, it was economic migrants from the largely Catholic Republic of Ireland who stirred up sectarian trouble in Protestant commmunities. The south, a “Celtic Tiger” until the credit crunch kicked in, is now the euro zone’s weakest link. Mind-boggling, dizzying stuff, you’ll agree. The Pleasures of Underachievement puts it nicely: “I was wondering where all those economic migrants from the Republic were going all those years from 1922 on. Looks like it was one long border raid.”

David Blackburn

The plot against Sir Richard Dannatt

Aside from the irony that ministers think they can nail General Dannatt over his Civil List expenses, I can’t see how the government can benefit from smearing Sir Richard, assuming they placed the FOI request. (Although to be honest, I can’t see why anyone other than these defence ministers would seek to damage Dannatt.) Friends of General Dannatt say that he will “do his duty and carry out his responsibilities to the Army and the country whether he is in uniform or not”. And I imagine the man who won the Military Cross fighting the IRA will take this smear campaign in his stride and write an especially savage book

David Blackburn

Another nail in Labour’s progressive coffin

The day before A-level results are published, the Telegraph and the Independent report that traditional academic subjects, such as maths, physics and history are not being offered by a large minority of state schools. Here are the details: ‘Around one in seven schools – 264 in total – did not enter any pupils for A-level geography in 2007 – the latest available information – and a similar proportion failed to enter students for physics. Figures also show that more than one in 10 comprehensives did not enter pupils for A-level chemistry, while six percent failed to enroll candidates for maths and seven per cent shunned biology. A further 145 schools

Fraser Nelson

In Jura, Cameron has time to contemplate the emerging SNP-Tory alliance

For the first time since being elected party leader, David Cameron returned to his old holiday retreat of Jura last weekend. His father-in-law, Viscount Astor, owns an estate on the island which has some of the best deer-stalking terrain in Scotland. Although Mr Cameron is an accomplished shot, he did not join in this time — perhaps mindful of how photographs of him in tweeds and with a shotgun would go down on the urban election trail. He restricted himself instead to swimming, fishing and contemplating the battle ahead. This time next year, Mr Cameron will probably be the Prime Minister of Scotland — a title which is bolted on

Tuesday

18 Aug 2009

David Blackburn

Who’s writing Andy Burnham’s scripts?

To prolong the success of #welovethenhs, Andy Burnham wrote David Cameron a letter yesterday which was so absurd it read like a Private Eye spoof. And today, Burnham is still trying to keep the pressure on the Tories and missing his target. He writes in the Guardian that Tories intend to turn ‘Britain’s best loved institution into the world’s biggest quango’ – a soundbite worthy of The Thick of it. Burnham’s premise is that Labour is self-evidently the party of the NHS and therefore any Tory proposals are inherently a ‘Bad Thing’: The second dividing line is on NHS pay. Andrew Lansley drops heavy hints that the Tories would reintroduce

Alex Massie

Peter Mandelson and the Lockerbie Bomber

No, there’s no connection. Liberal Vision’s Angela Harbutt has some fun suggesting that the Prince of Darkness has been on manoeuvres again, this time plotting to spring the Lockerbie bomber from his cell in Greenock prison. It runs like this: Peter Mandelson was on Corfu again this summer and there he met Colonel Gaddafi’s son. Just days later reports surfaced that Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi might be released. Coincidence? Surely not! Indeed, certainly not! Now Miss Harbutt is, I assume, not being entirely serious. And nor, I trust, is Tory Bear when he leaps aboard this bandwagon. But doubtless this is the sort of thing that plenty of people are quite

Monday

17 Aug 2009

David Blackburn

Are Labour still in “send” mode?

Perhaps it was the barnstorming success of #welovethenhs, or the opportunity to create another Tsar, but Douglas Alexander has appointed Kerry McCarthy MP as ‘Labour’s Twitter Tsar’ ahead of the next election. In an interview with Labour List, McCarthy says she wants to emphasise that, “Rather than being something completely new, campaigning using new media is simply doing what we’ve always done in a new setting.” I’m intrigued to see how the government distils its ‘raft of measures’ into a tweet of 140 characters. McCarthy’s interview also suggests that Labour may have confused “sending” with “receiving”. As Robert Colvile said in a paper to the CPS, the internet is all

David Blackburn

Labour isn’t working

This PoliticsHome poll about ‘progressiveness’ hasn’t been picked up much, but it makes dreadful reading for the government. The Tories and Lib Dems were tied first for the prize of being considered the most progressive party. A mere 12% thought that Labour was the most progressive party, and they finished fourth behind the Greens. It’s clear that Labour’s response to Progressive Conservatism isn’t working. The poll demolishes the government’s lazy assumption that progressive politics is exclusively the property of the left. That assumption informed Mandelson’s barbs about “political cross-dressing”, and his strategy that had everything to do with personalities and nothing to do with policy. Also, that these results were

The Spectator

Just in case you missed them… | 17 August 2009

…here are some of the posts made on Spectator.co.uk over the weekend: Fraser Nelson sets out why we need a proper debate about healthcare. James Forsyth reveals some cartoon cowardice, and says that the Tories must cut out the unforced errors. Peter Hoskin wonders whether George Osborne has downgraded the Tories’ health spending commitment, and watches Peter Mandelson continue his anti-Osborne operations. David Blackburn highlights one way to slim down the quangocracy. Martin Bright makes stands up for Jim Fitzpatrick. And Alex Massie laments the England selectors’ timid choices for the final Ashes test.