Politics
Read about the latest UK political news, views and analysis.
Wednesday
Last chance saloon
So what to make of today’s Queen’s Speech? Myself, I’m finding it hard to drum up much excitement. After all, we already know most of its contents (if you want a primer, then check out this excellent Guardian summary article here), and much of it is either underwhelming, unworkable or – as everyone from David Cameron to Michael White has pointed out – self-servingly political on Labour’s part. Tory peers are saying that they’ll block the proposals, but you’ve got to doubt whether they’ll be enacted before the next election anyway. All in all, Danny Finkelstein’s analysis is attractive. As he puts it: “who cares?” But there is one sense
Things are as they seem
Steve Richards writes a stirring defence for what is likely to be Labour’s last legislative programme. Richards argues that if you suspend your disbelief and ignore everything you have read about current political situation and you will see not a tired, regressive government but a radical political force. ‘Perhaps none of the proposals will be implemented by the election. Maybe they will all turn into dust, but they mark a departure from cautious incremental approaches usually adopted by the Government. The Conservatives’ equivalent proposals have an echo with the mid 1990s, while their Euro-scepticism takes us further back, and their plans for spending cuts to 1981. Yet it is the
A special form of disrespect
Barack Obama’s increasing disregard for Britain’s views is no way to treat an ally whose troops have fought side by side with America since September 11, says Con Coughlin Washington It says much about Britain’s rapidly disappearing ‘special relationship’ with America that when I happened to mention to some of our senior military officers that I was visiting Washington, they begged me to find out what the Obama administration was thinking about Afghanistan. It is not just that the transatlantic lines of communication, so strong just a few years ago, have fallen into disuse. There is now a feeling that, even if we reached the Oval Office, there would be
Will Kraft’s plastic cheese smother Cadbury’s heritage?
Elliot Wilson says there are synergies between the takeover protagonists — but it will be sad to see the British chocolate maker swallowed by a bloated US conglomerate When consumer goods giant Kraft tabled a £10.2 billion bid for Cadbury two weeks ago, the outcry was immediate and heartfelt. Here was an American monster buying an iconic British household name, one of our very last independent, home-grown, corporate crown jewels. Some of the resentment was understandable. Cadbury’s heritage is part of our national psyche. Founded 185 years ago by John Cadbury, a Quaker tea-and-coffee trader, the firm’s aims were as much to do with social improvement as with profit. Moreover,
Tuesday
Your chance to grade Gordon
The public’s judgement on Gordon Brown will probably come with the general election, but CoffeeHousers may have fun with this webpage in the meantime. It has been created by the clean-up-politics organisation Power 2010, and will let you grade Gordon Brown in the aftermath of tomorrow’s Queen’s speech. Naturally, the grades run from A (“Top of the class”) to F (“Brown fail”); you can leave comments; and Gordon will receive a school report in December. I suppose it’s meant to help close the democratic deficit between Downing St and the rest of the country – but it could just help some folk let off a little steam…
The liberal centre’s continuing confusion on challenging the BNP
My recent post about the BNP has offended liberals as well as the hard right. Liberal Conspiracy’s Sunny Hundal writes: ‘David is highly confused. This is because he says: “The Spectator has maintained that the party’s domestic policies are inspired by racial supremacist ideology and that its economic policies are like Dagenham – that is, three stops beyond Barking.” Yes, I’ll agree with that. The party’s domestic policies are indeed inspired by a racial supremacist ideology. Which is why people should avoid following those policies right? Except, he does on to say centrist parties “must engage with (and I mean engage with, not shout down)” BNP policies. What a muddle.
The SNP flees for the hills
Last week, I argued that the Glasgow North East by-election would force the SNP to alter its tactics. The Scottish press are reporting that Salmond will scrap his plans for a straight referendum on independence in favour of a multi-option poll on what further powers Holyrood should assume, short of independence. Such a withdrawal was being mooted before the election but has been accelerated by the scale of the SNP’s defeat and its disintegrating confidence. This concession is seen as the only way the SNP minority government can maintain the co-operation of opposition parties on the issue. Only, according to the Daily Record, they won’t play ball. Opposition parties are
Are we heading for a repeat of 1992?
Much as I hate to provoke, you have to say it’s been a very good couple of weeks for both the Prime Minister and the Labour Party. It is probably true that Labour SHOULD have won the by-election in Glasgow North East, but that is not what tends to happen with extremely unpopular governments these days, not even in Scotland. And Labour won with a certain comfort. Ah, but Scotland is different, you might console yourself (forgetting your glee when the government, for the first time in 50 years, ceased to be the controlling party north of the border.) Well, sure; but in the weeks leading up to the poll,
Cameron fires a broadside at ‘petty’ Brown
David Cameron has written an apoplectic editorial in the Times condemning Gordon Brown’s partisan hijacking of the Queen’s Speech. Here is the key section: ‘We are mired in the deepest and longest recession since the Second World War, with deep social problems and a political system that is held in contempt. The State Opening of Parliament tomorrow ought to be about radical ideas to deal with this triple crisis. Instead, by all accounts, the Queen’s Speech will be little more than a Labour press release on palace parchment. Don’t take my word for it. As The Times reported yesterday, a Cabinet minister has been boasting about the contents of the
Balls dumps Brown into another lose-lose situation
Things never seem to go smoothly for Gordon. On a day when the Telegraph carries details of his Whitehall savings programme, the FT has news that one of his closest allies, Ed Balls, is calling for relatively hefty spending increases elsewhere. Apparently, Balls has asked the Treasury to grant his department – the Department for Children, Schools and Families – real-terms spending increases of 1.4 percent until 2014. That’s an extra £2.6 billion in total – and goes beyond previous Labour commitments to “protect” schools spending. It’s a brassy move by Balls and one which is sure to aggravate his colleagues. After all, remember when Labour called Cameron “Mr 10
Are Big Ideas Back?
I can’t quite decide whether there really is a return of ideas to British politics or whether the political columnists have just grown tired of writing yet another piece about just how bad things are for the Prime Minister this week. Jackie Ashley’s column in today’s Guardian complements Janet Daley’s in the Sunday Telegraph yesterday. From opposing political perspectives they say the same thing: the two major parties are beginning to develop distinct political visions, which will allow the British public to make a genuine choice at next year’s general election. Ashley suggests that David Cameron’s speech on the role of the state and Ed Miliband’s grasping of the environmental
Monday
Carry on camping | 16 November 2009
Over at his blog, Nick Robinson has put together a useful digest of the different attitudes towards Brown’s premiership inside the Labour party. Putting it briefly, he thinks Labour MPs fit into three distinct “camps”: 1) The plotters: “…believe that Mr Brown is taking their party to certain oblivion and are still desperately searching for ways to remove him and to install a new leader by January.” 2) The quitters: “…agree with [the plotters’] analysis but have given up hope of installing a new leader who just might do better.” 3) The fighters: “…are beginning to hope that a recovery might just be possible.” It’s a neat outline, albeit one
Going broke and going for broke
The Times has a fascinating story on how Labour’s lack of cash is forcing it to give up on seats and groups of voters. The paper reports that seats with a majority of less than 3,000 have been effectively written off. So even before the campaign has begun, Labour is basically forfeiting 60 seats. By contrast, the Tory marginal seat operation — funded by Lord Ashcroft’s cash — is pushing further and further up the Tory list of target seats. (I was talking to one Tory candidate recently who thought that the resources poured into her seat — currently held by Labour — in the last 18 months or so
Unnecessary respite from reform
This snippet from Jon Snow’s latest blog-post (with my emphasis) is jaw-dropping: “To add to matters, I have learned that the Labour party is now going through its ranks of peers to determine where their ‘principal residence’ is. This after years of wholesale abuse of the system in which lords and ladies of all persuasions have claimed distant holiday homes to enable them to get the accompanying unreceipted travel expenses. I have also learned that ‘arrangements’ have been made to allow serving ministers in the Lords to claim a residence out of town ‘for necessary respite’, retrospectively protecting ministers and law officers who may have claimed for such provision.” It’s
Labour’s next election broadcast
Over at his New Statesman blog, James Macintyre reveals that Labour’s next election broadcast will be the sentimental, two-and-half minute history of the Labour party shown before Brown’s speech at the last party conference. We’ve embedded it below, for the – ahem – benefit of CoffeeHousers; so I’ll repeat the question I asked during our live blog of Brown’s speech: “This is clearly a Labour crowd-pleaser, but will it make any difference outside the conference hall?”
The Tory leadership could be talking like Boris soon
So Boris is attacking the 50p tax rate again – and rightly so. In his Telegraph column today, the Mayor of London repeats the lines he pushed in April: that the measure will drive business talent away from our shores, that it will damage London’s competitiveness, and that it could actually lose money for the Exchequer. It all comes to a punchy conclusion: “What Gordon Brown wants to do is therefore economically illiterate.” I imagine a few commentators will see that last line as a veiled attack on the Tory leadership, given that they’re committed to the tax rate too. But, as Tim Montgomerie says over at ConservativeHome, and going
Just in case you missed them… | 16 November 2009
…here are some of the posts made at Spectator.co.uk over the weekend. Fraser Nelson praises Jeremy Hunt’s plan for the BBC, and answers your questions. James Forsyth sees the government commit another u-turn, and argues that Obama’s Afghan position is pennywise but strategically foolish. David Blackburn believes that the BNP remain a party of racists, and finds Gordon Brown at the heart of Labour’s emerging election strategy. Susan Hill says that teenagers living in rural areas are left with nothing to do and nowhere to go. Rod Liddle can’t understand how Britain has become the global capital of busybodies. And Alex Massie condemns a betrayal of justice and common sense.
Sunday
Cutting MoD staff will not win wars
Liam Fox has made clear that the Conservative Party is planning to slash the number of civilian posts at the Ministry of Defence as a way of balancing the military budget if they win the general election in 2010. “We have 99,000 people in the Army and 85,000 civilians in the MoD. Some things will have to change – and believe me, they will,” Fox has said. But if the Conservatives thought they had stumbled across a sure-fire criticism of Labour’s way of war, in The Times, ex-soldier, author (and, I will wager, future MP) Patrick Hennessey asks the public not to lay off the “MoD desk-jockeys.” ‘The MoD deploys
Last man standing
That Gordon Brown is still the prime minister proves that it isn’t only Peter Mandelson who is a fighter not a quitter. It became clear this week that Brown will fight to the bitter end, and that Labour’s election strategy has emerged through him. Labour depicts the Tories as Bullingdon boy toffs and crazed Thatcherite cutters; Brown is the stern, serious figurehead, the still small voice of calm at the vanguard of Labour’s arguments on immigration and the economy. Matthew d’Ancona’s Sunday Telegraph column details how Brown has returned to the fore this week and delivered policy statements aimed exclusively at maintaining Labour’s core support. Why else did he humiliate himself