Politics

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

Thursday

Andrew Neil

The post-conference landscape

The party conference season is over and we’re back to business as usual — except that in the current financial and economic turmoil, political business is anything but normal.   Last night the US Senate voted for the Bush bailout plan by a large majority, which should keep the markets happy until the House of Representatives considers the matter again. The word from Capitol Hill is that it is likely to go through on a second vote; but nothing is certain in Washington in an election year and if it fails again the global economy will be on the brink of collapse once more.   The French are now proposing

Wednesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Political Advertising 13

Dedication. Humanity. Good Sense. Fine virtues all. But enough to win an election? Jimmy Carter hopes so in 1980. But, dash it, there’s something a little forlorn about this ad:

Matthew Dancona

The speech of a Prime Minister in waiting

‘No new dawns, no immediate transformations. I’m a man with a plan, not a miracle cure’: in that line lay the key message at the heart of this astute speech, by a man who now deserves to be seen as the Prime Minister in waiting. Elected as the ‘sunshine’ leader in 2005, David Cameron said in the Symphony Hall today that he was ‘still optimistic because I have faith in human nature’. But this was the speech of an instinctive realist who knows that, if he becomes Prime Minister in the next year and a half, he will head a Government that will have to take some deeply unpopular decisions,

Peter Hoskin

Cameron’s speech: live blog

1405, Peter Hoskin: Welcome to the Coffee House team’s live blog of David Cameron’s conference speech.  Just keep refreshing to get the latest.  The Tory leader’s not expected on stage until around 1430, but preview snippets of his speech suggest that the headline message will be: “Britain needs change, not experience”.  In the meantime, here’s one for you to ponder: was Tony Blair as good a PM as Winston Churchill?  That’s certainly what Mrs Blair seems to think…  1412, PH: Make that 1452 for Cameron’s ETA. 1420, James Forsyth: Cameron’s mission today is to show the public that he—not Gordon Brown—is the leader Britain need in these tough times. He must demonstrate that

Peter Hoskin

Georgia’s PM drops by the Tory conference

In a classic piece of conference choreography, the Georgian Prime Minister – Lado Gurgenidze – has just made a surprise appearance in Birmingham.  Sure, he may have met with Gordon Brown a couple of weeks ago, but it’s still quite a coup for the Cameroons.  Not only is it a effective reminder that there are other international problems than the financial crisis (thereby forcing the debate away from Brown’s comfort zone), but it also creates the impression that the Tories are very much part of the process; a government-in-waiting.

Peter Hoskin

Councils wary over Osborne’s tax plans

One question that’s been hovering above George Osborne’s council tax pledge is whether his expectation that “100 percent” of councils will sign up to it is overly optimistic.  If a survey of London council leaders in today’s Standard is anything to go by, it may well be.  That survey finds that 16 of London’s 32 boroughs – every one run by Labour or the Lib Dems – would oppose the measure, and – allegedly – there are grumblings from Tory councillors too.  Their beef is that a freeze on council tax would force services to be cut back, and could even cause taxes to be artificially higher in subsequent years. These are not worries that

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Cameron’s task

While David Cameron is keeping his head over the credit crunch, Gordon Brown appears to be losing his. If he wants to “save” the Lloyds-HBOS deal he should stay well away from it. The Lloyds shareholders will see no greater sign of alarm than Brown’s endorsement. His blaming of America for the credit crunch looks desperate: if a house of cards collapses, do you blame the gust of wind, or the construction? Cameron is speaking directly to the public here, and his “decade of debt” narrative is one with which the indebted British household will be only too familiar. I say in my column tomorrow that Brown is using an

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Politics | 1 October 2008

The champagne ban was non-negotiable: David Cameron did not want any of his aides drinking bubbly at the Conservative party conference. Not that they needed much telling. The mood was already so sombre that some Tory staffers were decanting cans of beer under the tables of the Hyatt Hotel in Birmingham to avoid bar prices; they were later caught by the manager. What was first intended as a celebration had become a wake, mourning the prosper-ity era which the Conservatives had originally planned for. They must now prepare for an economic war. The Pol Roger was flowing defiantly at The Spectator’s reception on Monday night, but was used mainly to

Tuesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Political Advertising 12

This time we’re going back to 1956 and this short, but to the point, Adlai Stevenson advert. More than anything else, it reminds one of how long Richard Nixon was at the centre of affairs. He’s the dominant political personality between FDR and Reagan. Nixonland indeed.

Daniel Korski

Consultants be gone

One of the Tory’s main plans is to cut the number of consultants working for various government departments. Without it, it is doubtful that a Conservative government would enable local authorities to freeze council tax (a policy that incidentally makes this blogger think the Shadow Chancellor reads Coffee House). The desire to cut the cost of consultants is understandable. Spending on consultants across the public sector reached to a whopping £3bn in 2006, according to the National Audit Office. The cost has probably gone up since then. The Conservatives think they can save a total of £500 million in the first full year of government, and by £1 billion in

The Spectator

The politics of reviving the bailout deal

Politically the place a lot of members of the House of Representatives probably wanted to be yesterday was voting against the Paulson plan but it passing anyway. There is little public enthusiasm for bailing out Wall Street, both Obama and McCain are now making a concerted effort to call it a rescue plan not a bailout. Oddly enough if the plan passes and works it will become more unpopular as people will say that the crisis really wasn’t bad enough to justify this kind of measure. But House Republicans, two thirds of whom voted against the bill, now have a different problem: if everything does collapse, they’ll be the ones

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The Tories score at crisis management

When George Osborne went to meet Alistair Darling today, I wondered who had been lulled into whose trap. Both sides would want to be seen as the first actor here, being the first to extend the olive branch and rise above party politics etc etc etc. Yet when Osborne came out of the Treasury he left no doubt whose idea it was. “I am very grateful to Alistair Darling for agreeing to meet me and we had an extremely constructive meeting,” he said. Code: I called the shots here. And thing would be a lot better if I was making a daily trip up the Treasury stairs. The BBC is

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The limits of bipartisanship

I can understand why George Osborne went back to London to see Darling, but it’s good to hear that he’s coming back to Birmingham tonight. The idea of a national government for an economic war may appeal to Brown in that it delays his meeting an electorate already strapping on its Doc Martens in anticipation of booting him out. But practically it’s a joke – under this Prime Minister anyway. If Brown won’t confide in, let alone share power with, his own Cabinet, what can Cable and Osborne do? Plus I suspect Brown won’t overcome his hatred for Osborne. It would end calamitously. The national interest lies in getting rid of

Matthew Dancona

The Tories must show they are up to the task ahead

Cameron’s astute and measured speech has sealed one deal: it has awoken the Conservative Party to the fact that they really will, in all likelihood, and barring an unforeseen catastrophe (plenty of them about these days), be forming the next Government. And this is actually rather daunting. After their 20th Century addiction to power, the Tories went loco for almost a decade and a half, tearing themselves to pieces in the Major years and then for all but a year-and-a-half of the Blair era. Now, detoxified, united and redefined, they have positioned themselves adeptly for their first general election victory since 1992. Which is all well and good: but the

Peter Hoskin

Cameron strikes the right tone

Cameron’s statement on the economy to the Tory party conference was as good as it could be.  It won’t win the Conservatives votes, but that’s not the name of the game today.  The overriding drive is to look – and be – capable and cooperative.  The general message that “The financial system needs protecting; the taxpayer needs protecting; and that all the parties are in this together” will go some way to achieving that. As Iain Martin points out over at Three Line Whip, the cooperation has already started.  Cameron spoke on the phone last night with Gordon Brown, and George Osborne is on his way to meet Alistair Darling

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Events overtake the Tories

At the Spectator party last night there was an unplanned Titanic theme. The world was crashing down and here were we in an set gallery, proffering killer blue cocktails with a string quartet playing as, to borrow Bush’s argot, this sucker goes down. David Cameron and George Osborne didn’t show – ostensibly because they were too busy, but I suspect because they knew how bad this would look for the sketchwriters. It’s a dillema. Do the Tories try to insert themselves into the news story which is shunting them into the inside pages of today’s press, as American parties do so successfully? Or would this be seen as cynical? Cameron’s

Matthew Dancona

This financial Waterloo

‘It’s like the battle of Waterloo,’ one leading Cameroon said to me at the Spectator’s party last night. He meant that nobody knew what the morning would bring, and that once the battle had been joined – in this case a global financial battle between impersonal forces of unimaginable scale – nothing would be the same again. He was right. One has the sense here at the Tory Party conference in Birmingham of being in an ant colony whose residents have just realised how tiny they really are. This is not a reflection upon the Conservatives, who had a good day yesterday and are running a show as smooth as

Monday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Where’s Scotland?

Notice what’s missing from this Guardian scoop? A third runway at Heathrow airport would be scrapped by a Tory government that would instead build a £20bn TGV-style high speed rail link between London, Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds. In one of David Cameron’s boldest moves on the environment, the party will today unveil plans to cut 66,000 flights a year from Heathrow by tempting passengers on to the first new rail line north of London in more than a century. Well, working on the dubious presumption that this track will actually be built (let alone that it will be delivered on time and on budget), you’ll notice that these new lines

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

More on Ashcroft

Today on Daily Politics, David Cameron was again asked about Lord Ashcroft’s tax status – is the party vice-president, the guru of the marginal seats campaign, registered to pay tax in this country? As ever, Cameron had no answer – “You’ll have to ask him about his own tax status,” he replied. He knows this reply looks shifty and evasive and the Ashcroft Problem is one which Channel Four Dispatches look at this evening. I’m interviewed as part of it. I say in the documentary that the party owes Ashcroft a great deal. He’s a billionaire who could do anything with his life. For kicks, he goes helps Tories win seats