Politics Archives

Monday

14 Dec 2009

Only Ireland and Iceland have had a bigger debt explosion than the UK

An argument put forward by some Labour types is that we’re not really facing a debt crisis at all. “Yes, the national debt levels are bad,” they say, “but we started off at a low level in comparison to other countries, so we can absorb the deficits we’re racking up.” Well, you can take issue with the idea that we had “low levels” of debt before the crisis kicked in – but the real mistake this statement makes is to ignore the rate at which we’ve accumulated debt. As the latest OECD data shows, UK debt is set to rise faster than any other nation save for Iceland and Ireland:

James Forsyth

Exceeding expectations

Today’s Guardian has an interesting story on the success of the New School Network, an organisation set up to get parents’ to take up the opportunities offered by the Tories’ planned school reform. The Guardian reports that 200 parents groups and 100 groups of teachers are interested in setting up schools. I suspect that take up of the Tories new schools will exceed expectations. One person involved with the New Schools Network told me recently that they would judge the policy a failure if it did not lead to the creation of a 1,000 new schools in the first two years. From a political perspective, the problem for the Tories

Peter Hoskin

Things the Speaker shouldn’t discuss in public

As Andrew Sparrow says, it’s well worth reading Iain Dale’s interview with John Bercow in the latest issue Total Politics. It’s a fun read, mostly because the Speaker is remarkably candid – a quality that’s normally to be admired in a politician. But I can’t help thinking that he made a mistake in admitting this: “I received various approaches from various senior people in the Labour party saying: ‘Aw, you know, we’d love to have you on board. We think you’re being discarded by the Conservatives. We think you’d be quite at home with us.’ Senior people, not in a formal setting, but people sidling up to you –

The Spectator

Just in case you missed them… | 14 December 2009

…here are some of the posts made on Spectator.co.uk over the weekend: Fraser Nelson lambasts the government for playing politics with the public finances, and reports on some mixed poll results for the Tories. James Forsyth spots the signs that a fourth term Labour government would be even more fiscally irresponsible, and Labour fell between two stools with the PBR. Peter Hoskin wonders whether Mandelson has given up on Brown, and looks at the government’s waning support for ID cards. Rod Liddle speculates whether the Russians were behind the Climategate hacking. Melanie Phillips reveals why the Climategate emails are lethal. And Faith Based wonders what Rowan Williams is whinging about.

Martin Bright

Labour Now Managing the Scale of the Defeat

I was struggling towards an analysis of the true meaning of the PBR in Friday’s post, but a couple of the Sunday commentators were a little closer to the mark. John Rentoul, in an article with the provocative headline Labour is Unelectable Again the Independent on Sunday’s chief political commentator has finally announced the death of New Labour. For him, Labour’s latest pronouncement on the bankers’ bonuses is the final death rattle. Labour sorely needs to move beyond the philosophy that made it so attractive to the electorate for a decade but at the moment it is finding it difficult to put one foot in front of the other. Matthew D’Ancona gets

Sinclair McKay

Bring back Father Brown

G.K. Chesterton’s perspicacious priest is 100 next year. Sinclair McKay says that he is more colourful and insightful than any of today’s TV detectives A chap murdered by an invisible man? A decapitiated Scottish laird with the fillings stolen from his skull? A poet, hypnotised into committing suicide? Who could deal with such curious and baffling crimes? There’s only one possible answer: an amateur sleuth who specialised in the bizarre and diabolical long before Mulder and Scully; a detective long due for a comeback: G.K. Chesterton’s Father Brown. Although the 52 short stories in which he featured never go out of print, this stumpy black-clad figure with his umbrella, face

Peter Oborne

Letter from Zimbabwe

There is only one real subject of discussion at this weekend’s Zanu-PF Congress in Harare: when will Robert Mugabe stand down? The old man — whom party loyalists now refer to as the ‘second son of God’ — will be 86 in February. There is only one real subject of discussion at this weekend’s Zanu-PF Congress in Harare: when will Robert Mugabe stand down? The old man — whom party loyalists now refer to as the ‘second son of God’ — will be 86 in February. It would take a miracle for him to stand in the next presidential elections and if he did, everyone knows that — however much

Christopher Fildes

Gold’s eternal allure: only Gordon could resist it

Unhappy anniversary. Ten years ago the Chancellor of the day was congratulating himself audibly on a job well done, and in the vaults of the Bank of England grumpy porters were sticking labels on the ingots to indicate a change of ownership. This was Gordon Brown’s great clearance sale. He had chosen to auction more than half the nation’s gold reserves — a matter of 395 metric tonnes out of a holding of 715 tonnes — and to take payment in paper money, at the lowest price available for two decades. The gold was sold for $3.5 billion in 17 auctions between July 1999 and March 2002 at an average

Sunday

13 Dec 2009

Fraser Nelson

Playing politics with the public finances

It has started. The Labour attack unit is out today talking about a “Tory VAT rise” – as per Paddy Hennessy’s scoop. Osborne stated his (to me, relatively paltry) position on the deficit: that he’d reduce it faster than Labour but can’t say how much. The Labour attack unit keeps partying like its 1999 with the “Tory cuts” line, now augmented with a “Tory tax rise.” Here are the words which the attack unit has crafted for Stephen Timms, chief secretary to the Treasury: “George Osborne refuses to say what services he would cut or what taxes he would increase in order to cut the deficit ‘further and faster’ than

Peter Hoskin

The Ed Balls approach to fiscal management

Considering the fiscal crisis we face, this revelation in Andrew Rawnsley’s column is particularly dispiriting: “[Gordon Brown] has been egged on by Ed Balls [to make more spending promises], partly because the schools secretary is also obsessed with that old dividing line, partly because he wanted to be able to boast that he had won more money for his department. I am reliably told that the wrangling between the schools secretary and the chancellor went on into the early hours of the morning on the day of the PBR itself. The result was that some of the extra spending beaten out of Mr Darling by Mr Balls did not get

Saturday

12 Dec 2009

Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 12 December 2009

Polls show a slight weakening in Tory support. This reflects my own anecdotal experience. Factors suggested include Conservative sternness about the state of the public finances and some Labour success in linking David Cameron on class grounds with the greed of bankers. I suspect there is a bit of truth in these explanations, but the refusal of the referendum on the Lisbon Treaty is much more important. This is not only because a great many potential Tory voters feel strongly about Europe, and may now incline to Ukip, but also because the refusal goes against one of Mr Cameron’s greatest strengths. As an individual and in policy approach, he has

The Spectator

Brown’s toxic farewell

The Pre-Budget Report was, like the Queen’s Speech that preceded it in November, an almost empty sideshow. The Pre-Budget Report was, like the Queen’s Speech that preceded it in November, an almost empty sideshow. The Chancellor’s threatened assault on bankers’ bonuses and Gordon Brown’s sudden diatribe against high public-sector salaries were feeble attempts to distract the public gallery by playing to its prejudices. Additional ‘efficiency savings’ were piffling in scale. All these gestures combined to emphasise the bare truth: that there is nothing for this dysfunctional government to do in its dying months aside from complete the ‘scorched earth’ policy by vandalising the public finances. It may have been Alistair

Peter Hoskin

Heated debate | 12 December 2009

Major bad language warning on the video below, but this incident in the Irish Parliament yesterday is too extraordinary not to post. Maybe the Tories will take notes for their new, more aggressive approach… Hat-tip: Tim Montgomerie

James Forsyth

Labour fell between two stools this week

There were two possible strategic approaches Labour could have taken to the PBR. One option was to surprise everyone by actually making cuts. They then could have said, “we’ve made all the cuts we can. Anything else would really hurt frontline services”. This would have put them in position to challenge the Tories as to what they would cut to reduce the deficit faster. The other was to be really populist. They could have carried on spending, bashed the bankers, soaked the rich, and hope that they could get away without a crisis in the markets until the election. Instead, they’ve fallen between two stools. They’ve increased public spending, which

Peter Hoskin

Has Mandelson given up on Brown?

For any Kremlinologists among us, Peter Oborne’s latest column in the Mail sure is a juicy read. It claims that Mandelson and Brown are “at war again” – only, this time, insiders say the damage to their relationship is “irreparable”. The Business Secretary is said to be “bitterly unhappy” with Labour’s class war strategy, and with Brown’s reluctance to deal with the fiscal crisis. And – as Martin highlighted the other day – he wants out. None of this is too surprising. Indeed, Mandelson has been conspicuous by his absence from the government’s PBR media drive, fuelling more than a few Westminster mumblings about his commitment to the Brownite cause.

Rod Liddle

Don’t get so worked up — it’s only a blog

I’m not sure how many members of the London Labour party I’ve met over the last 20 years or so. A thousand? Must be something like that. Sitting in local authority buildings which smell slightly of gas, the night outside cold and damp, ploughing through an interminable agenda of candidate selections; or down the pub after canvassing. Nice people, largely — you’d be surprised. I’m not a member any more but a lot of my friends still are, so it’s a constituency I know very well. If you polled them on their views about the Royal Family, I suspect that somewhere between 1 and 2 per cent would declare themselves

Friday

11 Dec 2009

Fraser Nelson

Blair admits to misleading the British public over Iraq

It has taken eight years, but Tony Blair has finally leveled with the British public and admitted that the WMD thing didn’t really matter: he wanted to depose Saddam Hussein anyway. That’s what he has said in a BBC interview, presumably to pre-empt his appearance before the Chilcot inquiry. His chosen confessor: Fern Britton. His medium: BBC1 on Sunday. It has been trailed to the newspapers, including tomorrow’s Times. As it says: “He said it was the ‘threat’ that Saddam presented to the region that was uppermost in his mind. The development of weapons of mass destruction was one aspect of that threat. Mr Blair said that there had been

Peter Hoskin

The Tories dust off their baseball bats

Is it just me, or have the Tories developed a slightly harder edge in the couple of days since the Pre-Budget Report? We had an unusually acidic address from David Cameron yesterday, in which he likened Brown ‘n’ Darling to “joy-riders in a car smashing up the neighbourhood,” and criticised the PBR for its “irresponsibility, basic deceit and complete lack of moral principle”. There have been a couple of quite powerful attack posters from CCHQ. And now we’ve got George Osborne saying that Brown may have “betrayed the responsibilities of the office he holds.” “So what?” you say, “they’re the Opposition – it’s their job to oppose.” Well, yes, of

Peter Hoskin

Committee overload

We all know how bureaucratic and convoluted a lot of Parliamentary practice is, but this reminder from Heather Brooke of the bodies involved in reforming MPs’ pay and expenses is still pretty astonishing: “Currently we have: the senior salaries review body (which makes recommendations on MPs’ salaries and pensions); the committee on standards and privileges (appointed by the House of Commons to decide on complaints against individual MPs reported to them by the parliamentary commissioner for standards – currently John Lyon); the committee on standards in public life (which deals with complaints about unethical conduct among MPs – the current chair is Sir Christopher Kelly); the members allowances committee (made

Peter Hoskin

Why class wars don’t work

Well, it seems like Paul Richards – a former aide to Hazel Blears – wants to corner the market in quietly persuasive demolitions of his own party’s strategy. If you remember, he wrote a perceptive piece on Labour’s shortcomings in the aftermath of the Norwich North by-election, which we highlighted here on Coffee House. And, today, he’s at it again, with a very readable article in PR Week on why the class war won’t work. His three reasons why are worth noting down: “First, it is hypocritical. The Labour Party has a disproportionately far higher number of former public schoolboys and schoolgirls in parliament and in the government than a