Politics Archives

Wednesday

18 Mar 2009

The unemployment pain is only just beginning

This is not even the end of the beginning. Unemployment is rising at the fastest rate since monthly records began, but it will keep rising for two more years. Every month we’ll get this. Every month, Cameron will say “your ‘help’ isn’t working,” and every month he’ll be right. I have two graphs below that make this point. The first compares the monthly rise of this recession to that of Major’s recession. And, below that, the trajectory of this recession versus the previous three. Have a look at the bottom scale: that’s 36 as in 36 months. Three years of rising unemployment. So it will last right up to the

Fraser Nelson

Phoney footage

After PMQs, the burning question around Westminster is this: did Cameron overstep the mark when he shouted at Brown, “What a phoney”? Good point well made, I thought, but to other kinder souls it may come across as a bit harsh. Alan Johnson talks about Cameron coming across like Harry Flashman at times. That’s because they look at Cameron and think “public school bully”. The “phoney” moment comes 2:22 into the footage above – so what do CoffeeHousers think?

Lloyd Evans

Cameron scores a direct hit with his “phoney” jibe

A good old-fashioned punch-up at PMQs today. Much dust was raised, much smoke emitted and our old friend, the Truth, barely got a look in. Brown was ready and waiting for Cameron when he led on the surge in unemployment to 2 million. His note of piety was well received, at least by his fellow Labour penitents. ‘I came into politics to tackle unemployment and poverty,’ said a sorry-sounding Prime Minister. Cameron asked him to admit he’d been talking ‘nonsense’ when he claimed Britain was better placed than other economies to survive the recession. Brown quoted investment figures at him, millions here, billions there. Cameron disregarded this and turned to

Fraser Nelson

Cameron pummels Brown in PMQs

My, but David Cameron was good today. Assertive, contemptuous, energetic and all over Gordon Brown. Today’s unemployment rise is the highest since records began (in 1972) so he had plenty of ammo. His point was strong and simple: nothing Brown has done is working. Unemployment is getting worse, all the time. Did this not show how stupid it was for Brown to claim Britain was best-placed to weather the recession? I’ll say this for Brown: he is nothing is not audacious. Britain’s unemployment is better, he said, than France, German, Japan and this country called the “European Union” (whose figures are dominated by France and Germany). He should have added: “But

Tuesday

17 Mar 2009

Alex Massie

A Lib Dem future? Not so fast my friends!

Tom Harris doesn’t much care for the Liberal Democrats: Having seen the damage done to the Labour Party through its association with the Liberals in the Scottish Parliament in previous years, there is, if anything, more hostility among MPs to the idea of power sharing than ever. On the other hand, if the Liberal Party want to sign up to the implementation of Labour’s manifesto in the aftermath of the election, fine. So long as they don’t expect either Labour or Tory MPs to agree to a change in the electoral system so that every possible outcome in future would result in the Liberals being in government. Now I’m as

David Blackburn

The Myners contradictions

Lord Myners finally came before the Treasury Select Committee this morning to answer for his role in the Sir Fred Goodwin pension saga. John McFall asked Myners if he had been misled or negligent. Myners pleaded “neither”, but his answers did not support that claim and were totally inconsistent with what he has said in the past. They also highlighted the government’s reckless approach to the bailout negotiations; an approach which ignored all necessary scrutiny. Myners recalled the tumultuous weekend of 11th-12th October 2008, when he met RBS’s directors to negotiate the first banking bailout. On the evening of Saturday 11th, it became clear that the directors had decided to

James Forsyth

Should the Tories use localism to snare Lib Dem inclined voters?

Rachel Sylvester’s column this morning contains this revealing statistical nugget: “As Lord Ashcroft told the Shadow Cabinet in a presentation about his private polling some months ago, there are more discontented potential Tory voters who have switched to the Liberal Democrats than the BNP.” This suggests that we are unlikely to see the Tories adopting a shrill, populist tone on immigration and other BNP issues. However it does make one think that the Tories missed a trick in not appointing Nick Herbert to DCLG with a brief to be bold on localism. Localism is a good Tory issue is that it makes public servants more accountable and will, over time,

Alex Massie

Mullin on Cameron

I’ve been reading Chris Mullin’s entertaining diaries and was interested to be reminded that David Cameron was a member of the Home Affairs Select Committee, chaired by Mullin. The Tory leader doesn’t feature often in the diaries, but here’s what Mullin has to say: November 15, 2001: “We have an impressive new Tory on the committee – David Cameron, a young, bright libertarian* who can be relied upon to follow his own instincts rather than the party line.” April 9th, 2002: “More than once, when we reached an impasse, David Cameron came to the rescue. The more I see of him, the more I like. He’s bright, personable and refreshingly

Fraser Nelson

Cameron’s secret meeting: live blog

As I type, David Cameron is in the Boothroyd Room, in Portcullis House, addressing Tory MPs who are anxious to hear if his Big Sorry on Friday amounts to a change in direction. True in the Cameroon spirit of open information, I’m being sent some dispatches in real time. Whether it’s interpretation or verbatim quotes isn’t clear: I’ll just pass it on to you raw. The party, Cameron is saying, must reassure the public that they value public services. Internal polling (which is the basis for the presentation – basically about party aims in 2009) has shown recently that the Tories are still vulnerable to being seen as anti-NHS. So care must be taken to combat this. Europe

Monday

16 Mar 2009

James Forsyth

Why the Tory poll lead is likely to grow during the general election campaign

Conventional wisdom has it that the governing party recovers in the polls during an election campaign. The theory is that the incumbent party both gests to choose when the election is and benefits from the polls moving from being a referendum on the government to a choice between the parties. But—as Anthony Wells, Mike Smithson and Daniel Finkelstein argue—there is no evidence to support the idea that there is an automatic pendulum effect. So, those arguing that Labour’s poll numbers are definitely understating what the party will get in the general election are wrong. Looking ahead to the next election, I’d expect the Tories to actually have the better of

Fraser Nelson

Cameron’s five reasons to vote Tory

So the winning question to David Cameron was Rhoda Klapp’s “Give me five good reasons to vote tory”. It chimes with our winning 2009 resolution for Cameron: “To resolve to produce 5 core reasons to vote Conservative which every British voter is familiar with by the next election”. And his answer? 1) Get rid of an exhausted Labour government 2) Tories would give people more power over their lives, and devolve power to people and local authorities 3) Move away from an economy built on debt to one built on saving 4) Mend the broken society, with radical welfare reform 5) Radical school reform, too. My take… 1) Amen: an

Fraser Nelson

It won’t be enough to just say “sorry”

So just how sorry is David Cameron? On Friday he put his hands up to being part of a “cosy consensus” on tax and spending. So I had expected his press conference today to declare he’d torn up his plans to outspend what he inherits from Labour. All bets are off, I expected him to say, it’s time for clean slate, and the Tories can make no promises on spending until they see the government books – i.e. real spending cuts aren’t ruled out. But nope – his original position still stands: that the only question in his mind is the rate of increase in spending. But it will increase.

Fraser Nelson

Any questions for Cameron?

So what would you ask David Cameron after his apology on Friday? It’s his press conference at 12.15pm today and I’m going along. If any CoffeeHousers have thoughts on a good question, let’s have them…

The Spectator

Just in case you missed them… | 16 March 2009

…here are some of the posts made over the weekend on Spectator.co.uk: Fraser Nelson salutes an unlikely hero for taxpayers. James Forsyth spots another G20 disappointment for Brown, and says that failure in Afghanistan would have terribel consequences. Peter Hoskin reports on the clique at the heart of the Tory party, and asks: where is the foreign policy? Martin Bright offers some thoughts on political history. Clive Davis looks into the future of news. Alex Massie wonders whether Europe is a new threat to America. And Melanie Phillips looks into shallow science and its victims.

Sunday

15 Mar 2009

Martin Bright

Some Thoughts on Political History

The brutal truth about politics is that a whole career can often be telescoped into a single defining event. The judgement of history can be particularly cruel on unlucky Prime Ministers. Ted Heath’s reputation is dominated by the 1972 miners’ strike, Jim Callaghan is synonymous with the “winter of discontent” and Anthony Eden, perhaps the most ill-starred of all post-war PMs, will be forever associated with a single word: “Suez”. All those years of vaulting ambition, grinding thankless work and genuine public service reduced, in the end, to those two damning syllables. And how thin sometimes is that line between success and failure. Who remembers John Major for his remarkable

Fraser Nelson

Alistair Darling, the taxpayers’ unlikely hero

Might Alistair Darling prove to be a hero of the Labour endgame? When he was first appointed, I argued that he’d be a puppet – “no more a Chancellor than Captain Scarlet was an actor”. I have since heard plenty of stories to the contrary: that he is doing a pretty good job saving taxpayers from the baser intentions of Brown, Balls, Cooper etc. He has been busy chasing Shriti Vadera away from his territory – she’s prowling the City, claiming to speak with Brown’s authority. He is pushing for transparency and honesty in the government, insisting that his Pre-Budget Report went to 2013/14 so he could show how he

Saturday

14 Mar 2009

Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 14 March 2009

Why are people surprised that two soldiers and a policemen have been murdered in Northern Ireland? One of the key parts of the ‘peace process’ was the Patten report on policing. This recommended the disbandment of the RUC. The part of the RUC which caused most offence to republicans was the Special Branch. As a result, almost its entire body of expertise has been destroyed, and many of its individual former members brought under suspicion of loyalist ‘collusion’ by the authorities. So the new Police Service of Northern Ireland (the word ‘force’ is not permitted, of course) knows terrifyingly little about the activities of dissident republicans. This is why the

David Selbourne

Blairism has destroyed the Labour party

David Selbourne says that New Labour won elections but eradicated all that was good in the party’s traditions. The Cameroons should learn from this terrible lesson The Thirties taught us that conditions of slump are a mixed blessing for the Left. But in today’s Weimar-like social and economic conditions, and with Toryism a shadow of its former self, it remains surprising that New Labour is in poor political shape. Other European left and social democratic parties are in a similar pickle. Why? In Britain, it is not the fault of any single individual, not even Gordon Brown. On the contrary, we are in the midst of a systemic failure which

Dean Godson

We are not ready for an escalation of violence in Ulster

Dean Godson says that this week’s murders have yielded impressive displays of cross-party unity. But they also draw attention to Northern Ireland’s vulnerability to terrorist attack, and the risks that were always inherent in the dismantling of the Province’s security structure ‘After they die, they will be forgotten, just as the policemen and soldiers who died are forgotten after a while, except by those who loved them.’ So said Florence Cobb, widow of RUC Inspector Harry Cobb, murdered in Lurgan by the Provisional IRA in 1977. I recalled those simple but powerful words when I heard that Constable Stephen Paul Carroll had been murdered by dissident Republicans on Monday night

Fraser Nelson

Politics | 14 March 2009

The right to keep one’s political affiliation secret is in many eyes a sacred feature of British life. There are households where married couples don’t tell each other how they vote. Those who grew up during the Cold War era remember the years when, in some countries, party membership was a grim prerequisite of a halfway decent life. So it is still a matter of pride that, in Britain, one is never required to discuss one’s political beliefs. Unless, that is, you want to do a certain type of business with the state-controlled Royal Bank of Scotland. Geoff Robbins, a Cheshire-based computer consultant, recently approached RBS to ask for a