Politics

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

Friday

Martin Bright

That Philip Hammond Email in Full

There was some interesting discussion on the subject of interns after my post last night about the shadow chief secretary to the Treasury’s attitude to the use of free labour in parliament. Young people are now effectively paying employers to get on the first rung of their careers. I have no doubt that some people gain valuable experience in this way. But the question is, which people? As Alan Milburn’s recent work on social mobility demonstrated, the professions are still largely inaccessible to all but the relatively privileged.  Make up your own mind whether Hammond’s attitude is enlightened or not: > From: HAMMOND, Philip [mailto:HAMMONDP@parliament.uk] > Sent: 12 August 2009

Thursday

Martin Bright

Visions of Life Under a Tory Government

A fascinating post on the Interns Anonymous website. This brilliant organisation is devoted to exposing the pernicious growth in the use of free labour. It shares many of the aims of my new outfit, New Deal of the Mind. Philip Hammond, the well-respected shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury has been tipped to leapfrog George Osborne into No 11 Downing Street.  According to the IA website, Hammond recently advertised for an intern post for which the terms were less than generous. When challenged by a member of the public about his failure to pay the national minimum wage he emailed back: “I would regard it as an abuse of taxpayer

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Sending the Lockerbie Bomber Home

I could have done without Kenny MacAskill talking quite so much about our values “as a people”, if only because, as Fraser writes, we actually often do insist that prisoners die in jail. That though, is really an argument for showing a degree of compassion more often, not for denying it in this instance, no matter the ghastliness of the cime for which Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi was convicted. Nonetheless, on balance, I thought MacAskill’s justification of his decision to release Megrahi so that he may die at home and in the company of his family, was about as good as could have been expected given both the circumstances and the

David Blackburn

Field: Harman would give Labour direction

Gordon Brown, if you are about to pick up today’s New Statesman, I advise you to put it down, return to the sofa and start re-watching those Raith Rovers tapes. In it, Frank Field writes that Harriet Harman offers Labour a sense of direction that Gordon Brown’s government, which is simply drifting towards ‘the most horrendous defeat’, has lacked. Here are the most crucial, and the most gushing, bits: ‘You have to hand it to her. Harriet Harman has really shown how to use No 10 as a platform from which to direct policy. You may not agree with how she presented her programme, but, for the first time since

Martin Bright

Meet the New Political Editor of the Jewish Chronicle

I was delighted, not to say honoured, when Stephen Pollard approached me to become the political editor of The Jewish Chronicle. It is a great publication with a long tradition of campaigning for the Jewish community in this country. But above all it is good old-fashioned newspaper with all that this entails, including, of course, having an eye to the future. I was pleased to discover that the paper has an active NUJ chapel, which is welcomed by the management. All very progressive – as indeeed is the decision to appoint a non-Jew as political editor. I am really looking forward to working with the fine team of journalists in the JC newsroom and, from time to time, finding my

Wednesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Revisionist Labour Market History: Ulster Division

This Reuters piece on hostility towards immigrants in Northern Ireland contains the, well, oddest paragraph I’ve read today: Historically, it was economic migrants from the largely Catholic Republic of Ireland who stirred up sectarian trouble in Protestant commmunities. The south, a “Celtic Tiger” until the credit crunch kicked in, is now the euro zone’s weakest link. Mind-boggling, dizzying stuff, you’ll agree. The Pleasures of Underachievement puts it nicely: “I was wondering where all those economic migrants from the Republic were going all those years from 1922 on. Looks like it was one long border raid.”

David Blackburn

The plot against Sir Richard Dannatt

Aside from the irony that ministers think they can nail General Dannatt over his Civil List expenses, I can’t see how the government can benefit from smearing Sir Richard, assuming they placed the FOI request. (Although to be honest, I can’t see why anyone other than these defence ministers would seek to damage Dannatt.) Friends of General Dannatt say that he will “do his duty and carry out his responsibilities to the Army and the country whether he is in uniform or not”. And I imagine the man who won the Military Cross fighting the IRA will take this smear campaign in his stride and write an especially savage book

David Blackburn

Another nail in Labour’s progressive coffin

The day before A-level results are published, the Telegraph and the Independent report that traditional academic subjects, such as maths, physics and history are not being offered by a large minority of state schools. Here are the details:  ‘Around one in seven schools – 264 in total – did not enter any pupils for A-level geography in 2007 – the latest available information – and a similar proportion failed to enter students for physics. Figures also show that more than one in 10 comprehensives did not enter pupils for A-level chemistry, while six percent failed to enroll candidates for maths and seven per cent shunned biology. A further 145 schools

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

In Jura, Cameron has time to contemplate the emerging SNP-Tory alliance

For the first time since being elected party leader, David Cameron returned to his old holiday retreat of Jura last weekend. His father-in-law, Viscount Astor, owns an estate on the island which has some of the best deer-stalking terrain in Scotland. Although Mr Cameron is an accomplished shot, he did not join in this time — perhaps mindful of how photographs of him in tweeds and with a shotgun would go down on the urban election trail. He restricted himself instead to swimming, fishing and contemplating the battle ahead. This time next year, Mr Cameron will probably be the Prime Minister of Scotland — a title which is bolted on

Tuesday

David Blackburn

Who’s writing Andy Burnham’s scripts?

To prolong the success of #welovethenhs, Andy Burnham wrote David Cameron a letter yesterday which was so absurd it read like a Private Eye spoof. And today, Burnham is still trying to keep the pressure on the Tories and missing his target. He writes in the Guardian that Tories intend to turn ‘Britain’s best loved institution into the world’s biggest quango’ – a soundbite worthy of The Thick of it. Burnham’s premise is that Labour is self-evidently the party of the NHS and therefore any Tory proposals are inherently a ‘Bad Thing’:  The second dividing line is on NHS pay. Andrew Lansley drops heavy hints that the Tories would reintroduce

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Peter Mandelson and the Lockerbie Bomber

No, there’s no connection. Liberal Vision’s Angela Harbutt has some fun suggesting that the Prince of Darkness has been on manoeuvres again, this time plotting to spring the Lockerbie bomber from his cell in Greenock prison. It runs like this: Peter Mandelson was on Corfu again this summer and there he met Colonel Gaddafi’s son. Just days later reports surfaced that Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi might be released. Coincidence? Surely not! Indeed, certainly not! Now Miss Harbutt is, I assume, not being entirely serious. And nor, I trust, is Tory Bear when he leaps aboard this bandwagon. But doubtless this is the sort of thing that plenty of people are quite

Monday

David Blackburn

Are Labour still in “send” mode?

Perhaps it was the barnstorming success of #welovethenhs, or the opportunity to create another Tsar, but Douglas Alexander has appointed Kerry McCarthy MP as ‘Labour’s Twitter Tsar’ ahead of the next election. In an interview with Labour List, McCarthy says she wants to emphasise that, “Rather than being something completely new, campaigning using new media is simply doing what we’ve always done in a new setting.” I’m intrigued to see how the government distils its ‘raft of measures’ into a tweet of 140 characters. McCarthy’s interview also suggests that Labour may have confused “sending” with “receiving”. As Robert Colvile said in a paper to the CPS, the internet is all

David Blackburn

Labour isn’t working

This PoliticsHome poll about ‘progressiveness’ hasn’t been picked up much, but it makes dreadful reading for the government. The Tories and Lib Dems were tied first for the prize of being considered the most progressive party. A mere 12% thought that Labour was the most progressive party, and they finished fourth behind the Greens. It’s clear that Labour’s response to Progressive Conservatism isn’t working. The poll demolishes the government’s lazy assumption that progressive politics is exclusively the property of the left. That assumption informed Mandelson’s barbs about “political cross-dressing”, and his strategy that had everything to do with personalities and nothing to do with policy. Also, that these results were

The Spectator

Just in case you missed them… | 17 August 2009

…here are some of the posts made on Spectator.co.uk over the weekend: Fraser Nelson sets out why we need a proper debate about healthcare. James Forsyth reveals some cartoon cowardice, and says that the Tories must cut out the unforced errors. Peter Hoskin wonders whether George Osborne has downgraded the Tories’ health spending commitment, and watches Peter Mandelson continue his anti-Osborne operations. David Blackburn highlights one way to slim down the quangocracy. Martin Bright makes stands up for Jim Fitzpatrick. And Alex Massie laments the England selectors’ timid choices for the final Ashes test.

Saturday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The Importance of Penance

Following this excellent column at the Daily Beast, Bruce Bartlett, a veteran Republican whose credentials are established by his work for Jack Kemp, Ronald Reagan and Goerge HW Bush, emails Steve Benen to make a very useful point: I believe that political parties should do penance for their mistakes and just losing power is not enough. Part of that involves understanding why those mistakes were made and how to prevent them from happening again. Republicans, however, have done no penance. They just pretend that they did nothing wrong. But until they do penance they don’t deserve any credibility and should be ignored until they do. That’s what my attacks on

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The candidate from Kabul

Rory Stewart’s career to date reads like something from the heyday of the empire. Rory Stewart’s career to date reads like something from the heyday of the empire. Eton and Oxford- educated, he has been a tutor to royalty, an officer in the Black Watch, the deputy governor of an Iraqi province, has founded a charity in Afghanistan and has written two critically acclaimed books as well as walking across Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, India and Nepal. Now he wants to be a Tory MP. With Brad Pitt having already bought the movie rights to Stewart’s life story, one would have thought that the Tories would be revelling in their new

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Let’s hear it for the python that had the civic good sense to eat Wilbur the cat

Rod Liddle takes issue with Wilbur’s grieving owners who want a change in the law to impose restrictions upon creatures such as snakes. What we really need is a new citizen’s right to defend ourselves against the feline menace It’s been a grim summer for news, all things considered, what with Afghanistan and flying pig flu and the rain and now Harriet Harman squatting over us all like one of those terrifying smallpox deities the Hindus have. So I thought I’d share with you a story which, in the midst of this gloom, cheered me up enormously. It is the story of a little ginger and white pussycat called Wilbur,

Friday

Martin Bright

Stand up for Jim Fitzpatrick

Jim Fitzpatrick, the Labour MP for Poplar and Canning Town has probably just lost his seat to George Galloway who plans to challenge him at the next election. But Fitzpatrick was right not to attend a segregated Muslim wedding if he didn’t want to. He wanted to sit with his wife, Shelia. I don’t blame him for choosing not to be separated from her. Most of the reporting of this event has been absurdly ill-informed and sensationalist.  You can read the BBC’s report for a reasonably straight account. The condemnatory words of the Muslim Council of Britain are entirely predicatble. The ceremony was held at the London Muslim Centre, which is attached to East London mosque,

The Spectator

The week that was | 14 August 2009

…here are some of the posts made on Spectator.co.uk this week. Fraser Nelson says that Lord Mandelson’s attempt to incite class war avoids the real problems confronting education, and laments the fate of ‘Brown’s children’. James Forsyth says that understanding the real origins of the Osborne – Mandelson feud reveals why Mandelson is perpetuating it, and wants a constructive debate on the NHS. Peter Hoskin argues that Mandelson’s inept counterattack proves Labour are clueless about how to respond to George Osborne’s Progressive Conservatism, and doubts that Daniel Hannan’s comments about the NHS will damage the Tories in the long run. David Blackburn asks what is wrong with being a career

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Mencken’s Thought for the Day

Writing the diary column* for this week’s edition of the magazine, I can’t believe I failed to quote from HL Mencken. The insufferable nonsense provoked by what passes for a healthcare “debate” (on both sides of the Atlantic) would have entertained the Sage of Baltimore no end. As Peter Suderman reminds one, Mencken viewed these absurdities with an appropriately jaundiced eye: “I enjoy democracy immensely,” he wrote. “It is incomparably idiotic, and hence incomparably amusing. Does it exalt dunderheads, cowards, trimmers, frauds, cads? Then the pain of seeing them go up is balanced and obliterated by the joy of seeing them come down.” Quite so. Quite so. *Probably the only