Politics Archives

Monday

15 Mar 2010

Brown sets the stage for a scorched earth Budget

Gordon Brown must be feeling generous today, for he did the Tories two favours on Woman’s Hour earlier. David has already mentioned the first one: Brown saying that he would “keep going” as party leader even if Labour loses the next election, which ups the potential for more summertime Sturm und Drang on his own side. But the second, as Ben Brogan points out, is his claim that the state of the economy makes it difficult for the government to detail any spending cuts. The Tories will happily seize on that to justify their own “wait until we see the books” approach. More broadly, Brown’s claim also sets the stage

Fraser Nelson

Cameron must win outright

Heaven forbid that the Tories and LibDems end up in coalition – but the Guardian asked me to write a piece war-gaming what would happen if they did. The result is here. I really do believe it would be a short-lived calamity because no one would be playing for the long-term. The Westminster system does not handle coalitions, and hung parliaments lead to second elections. From day one of any Lib-Con coalition, everyone would have an eye on that second election. The Tories would want to accuse the LibDems of recklessly pulling the plug, the LibDems would be briefing against the Tories making out that they were the only competent

Alex Massie

The Tories’ Second-Best Recruiting Sergeant…

Things have come to a pretty pass when the Secretary of State for Education endorses ignorance and scoffs at knowledge pretending, one is given to understand, that it’s just a kind of posh irrelevance favoured only by the terminally stuffy and fuddy-duddy and out-of-touch. Such, however, seems to be the case for you poor English folk, lumbered as you are with the grim Mr Edward Balls. I’d thought Boris must be exaggerrating matters in his Telegraph column today. As the Mayor puts it: “Speaking on the radio, Spheroids dismissed the idea that Latin could inspire or motivate pupils. Head teachers often took him to see the benefits of dance, or

David Blackburn

Brown dithers over BA

At last, Gordon Brown has been forced from the comfort of silence on the Unite/BA strike. Yesterday, Lord Adonis said that he “absolutely deplored the strike” because the “stakes were too high”. Brown has done nothing more than echo those sentiments, but that is at least a step in the right direction. Obviously, the strike poses an enormous problem for the government. Betting men would get decent odds on BA collapsing, but it is a failing business that needs to change. Labour is a near insolvent party that needs Unite, and not just for its funds but for Charlie Whelan’s tireless work in support if the PM in an election

The Spectator

Just in case you missed them… | 15 March 2010

…here are some of the posts made at Spectator.co.uk over the weekend. Fraser Nelson uncovers Brown’s latest confidence trick. James Forsyth argues that the LibDems should receive more scrutiny, and spies electoral politicking amid Labour’s Lords reforms. David Blackburn thinks that David Cameron’s interview with Sir Trevor McDonald was a success, and reckons that Edward McMillan-Scott will make no impression. Daniel Korski welcomes Liam Fox’s approach to diplomacy. And Rod Liddle opposes Manichean approaches to Islamism.

David Blackburn

Osborne colours the water blue

George Osborne has long been in the City’s crosshairs, and criticism peaked last week when less than a quarter of a City panel believe he has the mettle to be Chancellor. Today, Osborne fights back in the FT, with a piece co-penned by Jeffrey Sachs. The pair set out an argument for immediate ‘frugality’, rather than ‘cuts’, and damn Brown’s economic policy as short-term politicking: ‘We are sceptical that a sustainable economic recovery can be based on either reinflating the sectors that have declined or believing future job creation can come simply from the public sector payroll.’ Two thirds of jobs created between 1997 and 2007 were in the public

Sunday

14 Mar 2010

David Blackburn

Cameron is synonymous with change

It was mostly standard fare for a political interview, but the Cameron/Trevor McDonald show reminds you of what I think is one of Cameron’s foremost positives, and one that is welcome amid the Tories’ current self-doubt. Cameron and his team turned the unelectable Tories into a modern and truly representative force. Jonathan Freedland may argue that the change is cosmetic, but candidates, such as Shaun Bailey, selected by the Hammersmith association, say otherwise. If Cameron saw-off grass-roots interests who were still fighting Margaret Thatcher’s early battles, if not those of Churchill too, he has the resolve to tackle the legacy that Gordon Brown is likely to bequeath him. I’d expected to be left

David Blackburn

34 percent think a hung parliament is in the country’s best interests

It would be news if the Tory lead didn’t contract every Sunday. James has already noted the latest retreat in the Tory lead, detailed in the Sunday Telegraph’s ICM poll. Tory poll contractions are the new banking bailouts – so numerous you scarcely notice them. What struck me about this poll is the large minority who want a hung parliament. Not just those who think such an outcome is likely, but actively seek its realisation – 34 percent according to this poll. I do not understand this impulse. Coalition and co-operation are laudable but, as the recent care row proves, fanciful aims. Other than fighting World Wars, modern British politics has struggled to accomodate coalitions. The Tories are losing

Saturday

13 Mar 2010

Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 13 March 2010

While generally resisting denunciations of George W. Bush, I do wonder what he has to contribute to peace in Northern Ireland. This week, the great reconciler asked David Cameron to intervene with the moderate Ulster Unionist Party, with whom the Tories now have an electoral pact, to get them to vote for the devolution of policing and justice powers to Northern Ireland. Mr Cameron rightly replied that although he supports that devolution, he cannot give orders to his allies. They voted against. But why did Mr Bush get involved in the first place? It is really all to do with our general election. The Northern Ireland Secretary, Shaun Woodward, spends

David Blackburn

McMillan-Scott makes no impression

Edward McMillan-Scott fights a lone and determined battle. Timing his defection for maximum destruction, McMillan-Scott characterises the Tory party in the style of Orwell’s Big Brother. He told the LidDem spring conference: “People are controlled within the Conservative party, as I was.” It is a common charge, but, because the Tory leadership currently resembles Channel Four’s Big Brother, it doesn’t stick. Consequently, McMillan-Scott sounds shrill. He accuses David Cameron of ‘propitiating extremism abroad’, a charge usually reserved for Abu-Hamza, and condemns Cameron as being ‘committed to power for its own sake’. You can argue the toss over whether McMillan-Scott is poetic or pompous, personally I think he makes Speaker Bercow

Fraser Nelson

Brown’s latest confidence trick

One of the Brownie’s we’ve been hearing recently from the Dear Leader is that it is in some way ambitious to “halve the deficit by 2014”. It’s a Brownie because it is technically accurate, yet designed to mislead the voter. Two years ago, he forecast no deficit at all by 2014. Now he’s projecting one of 5 percent of GDP – simply mammoth – and still makes out that this is something to be proud of. It’s a confidence trick: the voter is supposed to think ‘I don’t know about the figures, but if he’s boasting about it then it must be good’. When Brown told the Economist that his deficit

The Spectator

The Spectator Manifesto

David Cameron, should he become Prime Minister, has an urgent and momentous task – to transform Britain from top to toe. The Spectator gives him some pointers The key to great success is to follow great failure. David Cameron has this if little else in his favour if, as expected, he is Prime Minister in two months’ time. He may not have the majority he hoped for, but he will be able to command the government machine. Civil servants, for all their love of procrastination, will follow direct instructions. A Tory government can deliver them on the first day. This guide explains how, precisely, Britain can be transformed. The key

Chris Mullin

‘It’s the PM for you.’

Chris Mullin MP offers prospective junior ministers a survival guide to the ‘foothills’ of government Election Day plus four. Your party has just won a great victory. Having handed out the big jobs the new Prime Minister is taking a well-deserved weekend off. It is now Monday and you are anxiously awaiting The Call. For the past two years you have been diligently shadowing, let us say, the Europe portfolio as a junior member of the Foreign Affairs team. You know everything there is to know about the Lisbon Treaty and the Common Agricultural Policy, you maybe even speak a couple of European languages. You are raring to go. At

Antony Jay

When ‘Yes, Prime Minister’ means anything but

‘My appeal to the Home Secretary is most earnest. I believe that if ever there was a debt due to justice… that debt is one the Home Secretary should now pay.’ That was an impassioned plea by Sir Frank Soskice MP for the reopening of the Timothy Evans case. The home secretary’s reply was that it would serve no useful purpose. All very unremarkable. Except that the home secretary who rejected the appeal in 1965 was the same Sir Frank Soskice who had made it in 1961. For some reason this was not greeted with the level of public hilarity it deserved, but I remember reflecting that some very strange

Interconnect

How to spot Sir Humphrey’s schemes

Apart from a loyal army and a strong police force, the primary requirements for political power are (a) legal authority, (b) taxation revenues, (c) organisational size and (d) permanent tenure of office. Politicians certainly do not have (c) and (d), and although they may have (a) and (b) in theory, those two have long been effectively appropriated in practice by the permanent officials. As a result a general election, which is presented as a choice as to which political party will run the country, is much closer to a contest between rival marketing consultancies pitching for the civil service account for the next five years. In the course of ten

Peter Hoskin

Today’s welfare state is making poverty permanent

‘Drug addiction, alcoholism, criminal records, language difficulties, a lack of skills, depression…’ Anyone working alongside Britain’s long-term unemployed can recite a grim litany of social ills. ‘Drug addiction, alcoholism, criminal records, language difficulties, a lack of skills, depression…’ Anyone working alongside Britain’s long-term unemployed can recite a grim litany of social ills. But when I speak to a welfare adviser in Tower Hamlets – one of London’s poorest boroughs – he emphasises a single factor, above all others, to explain the area’s endemic worklessness: ‘the benefits trap’ – the idea that you can be better off on benefits than in work. Most of the claimants he encounters have fallen headlong

Matthew Parris

The Blanket Repeal Bill

How can a new government undo Labour’s mistakes? It should simply repeal everything, says Matthew Parris And finally, we shall in our first Queen’s Speech be introducing a measure whose like has never been seen among the manifesto commitments of an incoming government. It will be known as the Blanket Repeal of Legislation (Failure of New Labour, 1997-2010) Bill. The effect of the Act will be to repeal en masse and at a stroke all new legislation brought in since the fall of the Conservative government in 1997. The only exceptions will be those measures which, by affirmative resolution of both Houses, parliament votes to rescue. There will therefore arise

Frank Field

How to defuse the pensions timebomb

Frank Field argues that a radical reform of Britain’s pensions policy could enrich both pensioners and the exchequer Ten years of austerity must deliver the country a radicalism that ten years of abundance has failed to achieve. The Prime Minister’s economic war council must decree that the necessary budgetary strategy also forges a radical agenda. Every secretary of state should be instructed to bring forward one major reform which, while cutting the size of a departmental budget, also begins to transform the political landscape. Combining these individual initiatives would lay the basis for a five-year reform programme, comparable to the models of 1906 and 1945. The most obvious and necessary

James Forsyth

The words ‘hung parliament’ remind MPs that their own parties are coalitions

James Forsyth reviews the week in politics MPs have a new favourite game: Hung Parliament. To solve this communal Rubik’s Cube you have to work out how a coalition could be put together if no party wins an overall majority — and what concessions would have to be made. But the real fun comes when you start working out which party leaders would have to be sacrificed to make any deal work. One scenario even ends up with leadership challenges in all three main parties — so with multidimensional fear, loathing and civil war. Those MPs who will leave at the next election — just over half, when you count

Fraser Nelson

Can Nick Clegg sing the blues?

Nick Clegg’s office already has a Downing Street feel to it. Since becoming leader of the Liberal Democrats, he has had it redecorated so that portraits of old party leaders hang on the staircase up to his room, as portraits of former prime minsters do in No. 10. It starts plausibly enough, with portraits of Palmerston, Gladstone and Asquith. The gravitas is somewhat lost when we get to Charles Kennedy and Ming Campbell. But neither came as close to power as Mr Clegg is now. If the polls are right, then he might be just weeks away from government. The idea of a Lib-Con coalition is not one any Conservative