Politics

A total cheat at PMQs today. It was a swine flu swindle. Only a week has passed since Labour’s manifesto-busting tax-hikes were announced in Darling’s bankruptcy budget and the MPs’ expenses scandal is still pumping out clouds of noxious smoke and yet Cameron allowed himself to be persuaded that the pig-bug business equals a State of Emergency. If Cameron agreed to a truce today he was duped. Rather than hammering the prime minister he joined him in a stage-managed recital of announcements and statistics.  So what if a few million extra masks have been ordered? The health secretary should deal with that. People watch PMQs for a cage-fight that reveals the competing strengths

A Labour-supporting friend of mine, who should know about these things, emails with a serious question: “Do you think that GB having to withdraw the YouTube doctrine on expenses is the biggest humiliation in Downing Street communications since the Women’s Institute? I can’t think of an equal.” Well, I can. The botched election and the Damian McBride affair, to name but two – but that bizarre YouTube dance, admittedly, is a close third. As my friend continues, “I used to think the Brownites were all tactics and no strategy but that’s unfair. They are **** at tactics too. Amateurs. The budget is the worst I have seen since Howe in

Cameron is set to deliver a fiery speech to the Tory spring conference, but events are moving fast and he’s struggling to keep up. For a start, last week’s Budget implied 2.3 percent spending cuts for the three years covered by next year’s spending review. Cameron was still talking about spending “growth” in his Cardiff speech last month, and Darling buried this idea before he did. There is a strong case for the government to spend less of other people’s money, not just “restraint” in the increases. But I suspect we won’t hear it today. Instead, the case we are hearing from the Tories often lacks coherence.  ConservativeHome tells us

You have heard about Brown hurling staplers and mobiles in a rage before. But laser printers? A new one to me. Bloomberg, hardly a salacious source, says this in a story it has just released: “The prime minister, 58, has hurled pens and even a stapler at aides, according to one; he says he once saw the leader of Britain’s 61 million people shove a laser printer off a desk in a rage. Another aide was warned to watch out for “flying Nokias” when he joined Brown’s team. One staffer says a colleague developed a technique called a “news sandwich” — first telling the prime minister about a recent piece

The 50p tax bombshell is not only a reversion to the worst politics of envy – a form of politics one hoped, naively as it turned out, had been consigned to the dustbin of history. It is also the worst manifestation yet of a very modern aspect of Brownite Labour. As I wrote in the Sunday Telegraph at the weekend, Damian McBride’s vile emails sent from a Government address and the heavyhanded arrest of Damian Green both reflect a dangerous belief that the public interest and party political interest are identical, co-terminous. Last night, Labour insiders made little attempt to pretend that the logic behind the 50p tax was fiscal:

Quite simply, the 50p top tax rate is designed as a trap for the Tories. The IFS have already said that 45p wouldn’t raise any money, so 50p certainly won’t either. It may well have the effect of driving talented people away from Britain to countries like America or Switzerland, where the top rates are 35 percent and 30 percent respectively. People may not cry over the bankers, but they will cry over us losing talented software writers and the like.  That will have a deletorious effect our ability to forge a new economy after the recession.  And it is a good demonstration of Brown doing harm to the country