Politics

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

Tuesday

Peter Hoskin

Clegg sets out the Lib Dem approach

Nick Clegg’s giving a speech tonight in which he outlines the Lib Dem’s approach for dealing with the downturn.  You can read the full thing here, but it’s centred around these passages on taxation and borrowing: “How should Britain deliver economic stimulus? We hear talk of tax cuts emerging from Downing Street, but they are likely to be small, and short term. Funded through borrowing, the money will have to be paid back later. So it’s meagre tax cuts today, giant tax rises tomorrow from Brown. Meanwhile the Conservatives want a piffling incentive for businesses to take on new workers that won’t put a penny in the pocket of a

Matthew Dancona

Imprudent, and proud of it

The most interesting line in the PM’s press conference was Brown’s argument that, precisely because it is “funded”, the Tories’ latest tax proposal does not represent a fiscal stimulus. Gordon is now positively flaunting his jilting of Prudence, scorning the Tories because they are trying to cling to the fiscal principles – “stability”, “responsibility” etc – which were the hallmarks of his decade in Number Eleven . The basis of the initial Cameroon strategy was to edge the Conservative Party towards the economic orthodoxy of the Blair-Brown years with the caveat that the Tories would “share the proceeds of growth” between tax cuts and public spending. This ideological consensus has

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Dreaming of job creation

Much as I applaud the sentiment behind David Cameron’s plan to help employment by cutting taxes, did he have to claim he’d “create 350,000 jobs” that way? He may answer: yes, the media want such a figure, and just you see they’ll put it high up the story tomorrow. Plus we’re not in power, so we’ll never have to prove it. But to my nerdy eye, this figure spoils it. I mean, there are 940,000 on Jobseekers’ Allowance – is Cameron really proposing to reduce that that by a third? In a downturn? But my more serious objection is that cutting payroll tax at the margin has a heavy deadweight

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Always honest?

“I’m always honest with the British public” said Gordon Brown at his monthly press conference. Then, this: “There can be no argument about where we’ve been over the last few years on debt. Debt was reduced from 44% of national income to 37% at the latest count. And that is a fact.” No, Prime Minister, that is a lie. The latest count was in September, when the ONS said net national debt is 43.4% of GDP. “Whatever else we want to argue about, let us be clear that we start from a low base in public debt. The question is what you do as a result of that… I just

Monday

Matthew Dancona

What are the political risks and rewards of tax cuts?

As Tory Diary notes over at ConservativeHome, Fraser is making the running on the tax cut issue. His Spectator columns and Coffee House posts have pointed UK political strategists in the direction of Obama’s tax-cutting proposals and their centrality to the President-elect’s campaign. The FT’s story on Saturday made it unambiguously clear that Brown was cooking up a pre-emptive strike – and so it has proved, with details to follow tomorrow. Over at Comment Central, my old friend and associate Danny Finkelstein has been leading the counter-charge, beating up poor Nick Clegg as a proxy for the growing number of Tories arguing for a shift of position. I think the

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The Gordfather’s hatred sets him up for a fall

“Never hate your enemies – it affects your judgement”. This advice from Michael Corleone is very relevant to Gordon Brown, who makes his worst  mistakes when he thinks he’d destabilising Tories. He loved how scared they were about talk of an October election last year, but didn’t realise how stupid he’d look when he didn’t call one. The speculation rebounded on him. Same, I suspect, with his tax cut. Still no news today, but people are expecting £15 billion. This figure is actually a guesstimate from Robert Chote of the IFS,  who told the FT last week that he wouldn’t be surprised if Brown were to cut taxes by the

Peter Hoskin

A matter of timing

The tax wars have entered a rather unedifying stage.  Cameron was set to announce the Tory proposal in a press conference at 1000 tomorrow morning.  But then Downing Street announced earlier that Brown’s monthly press conference would be at 0930 tomorrow, instead of the usual 1200.  Surely that wouldn’t have anything to do with sucking reporters, cameras and TV coverage away from the Tories, would it?  Whatever Brown’s intentions, Team Cameron have trumped him by moving their man’s press conference to 0830.  Westminster choreography at its finest. One thing’s for sure: you can expect much “we got there first” jostling over the next few days.  But, in the end, I

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Responsibility, responsibility, responsibility

You have to give David Cameron marks for trying. He’s still trying to breathe life into the word “responsibility” in hope that it can become some kind of a political battle cry. Steve Hilton literally built a business making “corporate social responsibility” into something that companies buy into – but it’s harder to do the same with politics. Every politician claims what they do is responsible, it’s not a distinguishing feature. The more Cameron uses the r-word, the more it reminds me if Brown starting every sentence “it is right that we…” Yet no new Tory idea is complete without the r-word, whether it’s the Debt Responsibility Mechanism or the

The Spectator

Just in case you missed them… | 10 November 2008

Some of the posts made over the weekend on Spectator.co.uk: Matthew d’Ancona watches two films which deal with recent history. Fraser Nelson suggests that David Cameron shouldn’t repeat John McCain’s tax error. James Forsyth reports on the latest Tory poll lead, and claims we can have a British Obama. Peter Hoskin marks Remembrance Sunday, and wonders who will win the tax war. And Clive Davis highlights two special voices.

Peter Hoskin

Osborne warns against “sowing the seeds” of the next crisis

An effective article from George Osborne in today’s FT. Here’s the key paragraph on the public finances: “Today, we must let the automatic stabilisers function. But as Lord Burns, former permanent secretary at the Treasury, warned last week, borrowing beyond that without being clear how the bills would be paid would be ‘very dangerous at this point’. ‘We begin from a position of a structural deficit. Adding to that structural deficit can only increase the problems subsequently,’ he said. I agree. Spending our way out of recession will not work. Targeted tax cuts would help but they must be properly funded. Any tax cuts must not permanently increase the structural

Sunday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Will the Tories avoid making McCain’s tax error?

I say in my political column this week that Cameron must “offer tax cuts before Brown does” – and seems I may not have to wait long before David Cameron repays my faith in him. Patrick Hennessy says in the Sunday Telegraph today that the Tories are planning an employment-orientated tax cut financed by spending cuts. As the FT said on Saturday that Darling could be mulling some £15bn of tax cuts, there was a danger that the Tories could be the only party in Britain not proposing to let people keep more of their money. Cameron was in danger of falling into the trap which ensnared John McCain. McCain

Saturday

Irwin Stelzer

The Tory quest for a fiscal Holy Grail is doomed

Brown’s golden rules have been exposed as a sham, says Irwin Stelzer, but the Tory response has been feeble. Their target should be the PM’s feathering of Old Labour nests The good news is that Gordon Brown’s golden rules are no more. These rules did not stop the then chancellor from launching a spending binge. They did not stop him from spilling red ink all over the nation’s books at a time when the flow of cash into the Treasury was at record levels. They did not stop him from raising taxes, 60 times by some counts. They did not stop him from redistributing income from wealth-creators to wealth-consumers. What

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Politics | 8 November 2008

There was something almost comic about Gordon Brown and David Cameron’s rush to associate themselves with Barack Obama’s victory, each offering their own quite different interpretation. The Prime Minister declared that people are looking to government to help them during the economic downturn. The Conservative leader, with no less confidence, asserted that people are obviously hungry for change. But neither British party leader will have felt comfortable with the slogan which the Democrats were pushing in every swing state until the last possible minute: ‘Obama-Biden for tax cuts’. The Conservative leadership persuaded itself some time ago that elections are not won with such a message. The view, held in some

Friday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Glenrothes By-Election Stunner!

It’s all very well and good getting excited about the American elections. But let’s face it, they were but the appetiser before today’s Westminster by-election in Glenrothes. The Kingdom of Fife is a strange place indeed, a sentiment confirmed by the whispers we now hear that Labour have managed to hold the seat. On the face of it, defending a seat against the 14 point swing needed for you to lose is no great triumph. And yet on this occasion it is, in fact, a rather spectacular victory for Gordon Brown. True, it’s his back yard (he represents the neighbouring constituency) and both he and his wife have campaigned in

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Tales from the House of Commons

It’s time for a new occasional series! I’ve been reading a collection of parliamentary sketches written by the Irish nationalist MP T.P O’Connor that chronicle the course of the Second Irish Home Rule bill through the Houses of Parliament in 1893. Much of it is delightful and, I thought, worth sampling from time to time here, both on grounds of entertainment and as evidence that many of the essential rules of political engagement remain unchanged. Here, for instance, is O’Connor describing the general attitude and character of political life in the era of Gladstone, Disraeli, Chamberlain, Asquith and Balfour. Mr. Gladstone had a notice upon the paper on Monday, February

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Jim Murphy, take a bow

Jim Murphy deserves some credit for last night’s win. The new Scotland Secretary has become Labour’s patron saint of lost causes, tasked with selling the EU Constitution to Britain, Blairism to Labour, and Labour to his formerly-Tory constituents. Now he’s selling Brown to Glenrothes, and yesterday they bit with an increased share of the vote – a staggering achievement given the SNP backdrop. There is something humble about Murphy, a trait he has acquired since I first saw him in the early 1990s where he was a self-aggrandising leader of NUS Scotland. His new demeanour gives him a hearing, which the average voter would not give to the more arrogant

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Labour win in Glenrothes

The SNP should have walked Glenrothes – yet Labour came out on top. Sure, the 6,737 majority is lower than the 10,644 with which they won it three years ago – but the SNP since took the Holyrood seat and the council. After Salmond’s win in Glasgow East, winning Glenrothes should have been a formality. So why did Labour triumph? For starters, their candidate, Lindsay Roy, is excellent – a local head teacher (my mum used to teach at his school!) and seen as being a non-partisan figure. So this diluted the rather less-than-popular Labour brand. The bailout of the two Scottish banks undermined the SNP’s message, reminding Scots of

Thursday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Bloggers & Ministers

I’m glad Trixy reminded me about the startlingly daft speech Hazel Blears, the Communities Minister (whatever that means), gave to the Hansard Society the other day. Though the irrepressible Mrs Blears was correct to bemoan the rise of a political class with no hinterland beyond Westminster (this also applies to the media classes, of course), it was her comments about blogs that were the purest Class A piffle. Apparently: Until political blogging ‘adds value’ to our political culture, by allowing new voices, ideas and legitimate protest and challenge, and until the mainstream media reports politics in a calmer, more responsible manner, it will continue to fuel a culture of cynicism

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Look to the inflation forecasts

Is inflation really falling? I am understandably taken to task by some CoffeeHousers for claiming that it is. When Brown claimed it was in PMQs yesterday, it was submitted to me as a possible Brownie. But what he says is perfectly true, and it’s worth looking at in more detail – for this not only explains today’s rate cut, but much about the nature of the deep recession we have now entered. It also underlines what I regard as a flaw in business reporting. You can pick up the papers and find the price of shares, bonds, wheat etc. But nowehere can you read forecasts – ie, where the markets

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Reasons to have faith in Cameron and Osborne

I have been pretty hard on Cameron and Osborne during the financial crisis for three reasons: their failure to shoot down Brown’s fake narrative, the sheer size of the open goal in front of them, but most of all because of their ability. Both can do far better than this, neither suffer from the politicians’ greatest weakness – being wedded to past mistakes. Some CoffeeHousers ask why I have such faith. The reason lies in Cameron and Osborne’s accomplishments so far: 1) Radical welfare reform, with an agenda so solid that Labour has copied rather than fought it. And in Chris Grayling they have found an energetic Shadow Minister who