Politics

Read about the latest UK political news, views and analysis.

Wednesday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The d-word heard round the world

So how significant was Gordon Brown’s claim in PMQs that the world is in a “depression?” Those accustomed to his word-mangling wrote it off as another verbal slip. But as Dizzy points out, the world’s press were less sanguine. As a result No10 has spent much of the day trying to explain that we have a Prime Minister who mangles his words. And perhaps his slip was Freudian because it fits a trend. The other day, Stephen Timms, the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, told the Commons:  “Today, we are in a recession—the first to hit the UK since the early 1990s and face some of the harshest economic conditions

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Brown gets through PMQs smiling

After a nifty performance last week, Dave displayed lots of sluggish footwork today. Everyone was desperate for him to nail Brown over his ‘British jobs for British workers’ gaffe but instead Dave opened by asking the PM to condemn international protectionism. An easy shot, safely dealt with by Brown. What was Dave playing at? The TV news is teeming with ‘winter of discontent’ style images showing crowds of indignant workers braving the blizzards to demonstrate their anger against the PM. And the Tory leader doesn’t mention it? Eventually, on his third question, Dave finally stirred himself to ask Brown to admit that BJ4BW had been a mistake and to apologise.

Charlotte Moore

My ancestor’s private memories of Darwin

Sir Norman Moore was Charles Darwin’s doctor and friend for many years. Charlotte Moore, his great-granddaughter, reveals the intimate recollections in his private correspondence I live in the house my family have occupied since 1888. My great-grandfather, a tremendous letter-writer and note-taker, never threw anything away. Sorting through barrowloads of his correspondence, I built up an intimate picture of Darwin family life, as well as finding many accounts of the great man’s experiments and conversation. My great-grandfather’s was a remarkable Victorian success story. Aged 14, he was sweeping floors at a cotton warehouse in Manchester, but a combination of natural ability, night school and sympathetic mentors eventually took him to

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Why would the English working class consider voting Labour again?

It’s lovely to see the former geographical entity Lindsey back in the headlines, a fleeting visit from a ghost from the past. Lindsey was one of the three subdivisions of the great county of Lincolnshire, if you remember, along with landlocked Kesteven and dank, flat, blustery Holland. It was abolished in 1974, simply swept away — the bit in the news became part of something called Humberside, but with a Doncaster postcode, neither one thing nor the other. Ghosts from the past: I swear, on my evening news this week, I saw at Lindsey a picket standing on a picket line beside a brazier in the swirling snow, shouting things

Neil Barnett

We don’t need this annual outburst of pipeline politics

The Kremlin wants Western Europe to be dependent on Russian gas, says Neil Barnett, but that doesn’t have to happen if the EU is prepared — for once — to show leadership The annual New Year gas dispute between Russia and Ukraine assumed particularly menacing proportions this year, being longer than usual and coming in a bitterly cold, recession-bound winter. With a number of countries in central Europe dependent on Russia for 100 per cent of their gas supplies — and Britain needing new sources as North Sea reserves deplete — it’s worth asking if the fatalistic belief that there is no way out of growing dependence on Moscow is

Tuesday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

How Adam Smith predicted Gordon Brown

So why was Wen Jiabao, the Chinese Prime Minister, carrying Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments in his bag when he came to see Gordon Brown? My hunch is that his aides found it contained a perfect description of the man he was about to meet. I reprint Smith’s almost Nostradamus-style description here. This is Brown in a nutshell: The “man of system” is apt to be very wise in his own conceit; and is often so enamoured with the supposed beauty of his own ideal plan of government, that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from any part of it. He goes on to establish it completely and in

Alex Massie Alex Massie

In Praise of Minority Government.

Oh dear. I’m afraid I must take issue with Fraser. He claims that last week’s budget entertainment at the Scottish Parliament demonstrates the weakness of minority government. Maybe so, but I’d prefer to see it another way: minority government protects the public from the worst excesses of parliamentary rule. And where Fraser considers last weeks’ events  a “fiasco” and a “shambles” I see them as nothing more than politics as usual. Sure, there was some horse-trading as the SNP tried to find the 65 votes it needed to pass the budget. But this is normal. Has Fraser ever had a look at the House of Representatives in Washington? There was

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The pitfalls of a minority government

If anyone wants a taste of what Westminster would be like with a minority government, have a look at the fiasco in Holyrood. Alex Salmond’s nationalists failed to pass their budget last week, so he threatened to resign and have an election (which is automatic, if no other party can form a majority). The Greens were bribing him, asking for £22 million for some home insulation scheme, then upping it to £33 million. As always with the PR system, the tail wags the dog. Salmond refused to play ball, the prospect of an election loomed, and a massive outbreak of political self-indulgence at a time when the devolved government has

Monday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Michael Steele & Dog Whistles

Ta-Nehisi Coates is encouraged by Michael Steele’s election as chairman of the RNC: I have no idea whether Steele will be any good, but I think his selection marks the start of excising the Obama is a M00zlim contingent of the party. I am, perhaps, being too optimistic. But I maintain that you have to begin somewhere….I think Steele has a Sarah Palin problem. Remember the silly math that had Palin giving Obama fits for the votes of women? Ultimately, that line of attack fizzled because, I’d argue, a lot of women found Palin embarrassing–an obvious token who wasn’t ready for prime-time. I think Steele is twice the politician that

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Michael Phelps: Another Victim of Drug War Hysteria

So Michael Phelps smokes marijuana from time to time. Big deal. What a shame though that he’s released this statement: “I engaged in behavior which was regrettable and demonstrated bad judgment,” Phelps said in a statement released by Octagon, his management firm, and posted on his Facebook site. “I’m 23 years old, and despite the successes I have had in the pool, I acted in a youthful and inappropriate way, not in a manner that people have come to expect from me. For this, I am sorry. I promise my fans and the public — it will not happen again.” Phelps has done nothing wrong and has nothing to apologise

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Cameron may throw like a girl but his education policy is transformative

Oh the weather outside may be frightful, but David Cameron went ahead with his education speech today – a subject on which he doesn’t say enough, in my view, because there is so much to say. The policy he had to launch was a Carol Vorderman-led maths review, but there were plenty of other aspects to his speech. Extracts below, with my take after:-   DC: We envisage academy status – with all the freedoms it brings to generate success freedoms which have been used brilliantly here will become the norm for state schools. These big structural changes are crucial if we’re to have the sort of revolutionary change I

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Workers of the World: Vote in Our Poll

Just like at the mother-blog, many commenters here seem disinclined to endorse my euro-happy celebration of the freedome of movement for labour, capital and goods. ‘Tis the nature of the times, I guess. Still, to put a more professional-seeming gloss on this amateur, possibly muddled sense, why don’t you cast a vote in our exciting Spectator poll? Online Surveys & Market Research

Sunday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Brown lays the ground for recession rage

The prospect of a “British Jobs for British Workers” controversy will have haunted Gordon Brown long before he came up with the soundbite. He will have known, way before Fleet St did, that immigrants had taken (or created) 81 percent of British jobs. He’ll have known – as he paid for the bills – that at least 5m Brits have been on various out-of-work benefits since 1997 despite his claim to have tackled unemployment. While morally deplorable, this situation was politically manageable as long as there were enough jobs for those who want them. But in a recession, when Brits start to compete with the 6.2m immigrants for these jobs,

Saturday

Matthew Dancona

Labour has lost the next election already 

Predict in haste, repent at leisure is a sound maxim for all pundits. I have also long thought that there has been a bipolar quality to much writing about Gordon Brown – exaggerated savagery when his fortunes are waning and equally daft euphoria when they pick up (June 2007, September 2008). So I did not draw my conclusions in tomorrow’s Sunday Telegraph column lightly: namely that Labour has lost the election and that David Cameron is our next Prime Minister. It is not as if the Tories have been on a particular roll or Cameron more than usually to the fore. And yet the polls this week have been remarkably

Friday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

British jobs are not just for British workers. That’s a good thing.

It’s just like old times isn’t it? A Labour government, economic catastrophe and now, wildcat strikes across the country. It serves the Prime Minister right too. His demagogic promise of “British jobs for British workers” has come back to bite him. And deservedly so. Now, as it happens, I have some plenty of sympathy for the British contractors who have failed to win contracts at Total’s Lincolnshire refinery, but their anger would be more profitably directed at their own management. After all, it’s their own companies that have failed to win the work – presumably because they either can’t perform the work to the same standard or because it’s cheaper

Alex Massie Alex Massie

GOP Heads in the Sand

Oh dear. Jonah Goldberg has been in Britain and he doesn’t like what he sees. Fair enough, there’s plenty to deplore about the present government. But what Goldberg is most afraid of is that the Republican party might learn something from David Cameron’s Tories. This, it seems, is the very last thing the GOP should do. Because obviously when you’ve spent eight years trashing your own “brand” and suffering a brace of heavy election defeats, the very last thing you should do is look and learn from how conservative parties in the rest of the world are faring. (Insert standard caveat about the real and meaningful differences between American conservatism

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Scotland demonstrates the necessity of schools reform

When Reform Scotland was set up, I feared for their prospects. Although Scotland was birthplace of the Enlightenment, its new parliament has failing strikingly to produce any new ideas. It has instead proved a reactionary force, priding itself in banning things before England does and using powers to reject reform introduced by Blair in England. So what chance do new ideas have? But Reform Scotland has today  produced a proposal that has set debate aflame: why not give a £10,000 schools voucher to parents from poor backgrounds? It’s the subject of a BBC Radio Scotland phone in, which shows the paucity of the arguments on the other side. One is that private schools

Alex Massie Alex Massie

“The concept of good and bad schools is false”

Meanwhile, away from the budget ballyhoo comes a reminder of one of the problems afflicting Scotland: the teaching unions. Today sees the publication of an eminently sensible report from the think tank Reform Scotland that advocates, essentially, a voucher system that draws on Swedish and Dutch educational reforms and would, if ever implemented, dramatically increase the range of educational choices available to the poor. This is not controversial in other countries, so why is it so frightening here? Well, look at what we’re dealing with: The Scottish Secondary Teachers’ Association dismissed the report’s findings. Jim Docherty, acting general secretary, added: “The concept of good and bad schools is false. There

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Holyrood Drama? Not so fast, my friends!

Well, that didn’t last long. The entertainment (see yesterday’s post) at Holyrood seems to be coming to an end. As predicted by Jeff at SNP Tactical Voting, there seems every chance that the revised Scottish government budget will, far from precipitating the excitement of an issue-free* election, result in the budget being passed unanimously. Everyone will have extracted their ounce of flesh from the SNP (but no more than that).  The Scotsman’s headline claims all this amounts to a series of “shock” u-turns but I don’t see what’s so surprising about parties backing away from the prospect of an election few people really wanted. So Labour look like they’ll get

Thursday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Holyrood Drama! For Real!

So, what to make of yesterday’s drama at the Scottish Parliament? First things first: it’s good to have some actual drama. Secondly, the failure to pass a budget marks the first real defeat for Alex Salmond’s minority administration since the SNP squeaked a victory in the 2007 elections. Mr Salmond’s many enemies will revel in seeing him be embarrassed for once. What did it come down to? In a £33bn (itself a monstrous sum) budget the bill was lost for want of a measly £11m. The Green party – both of them – had demanded £100m a year for ten years to insulate every loft in Scotland. The SNP, not