Inflation up to 4.7 percent
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Politics
Read about the latest UK political news, views and analysis.
Tuesday
Monday
The Lib Dems’ tax cut con
Nick Clegg is right when he says that “Labour are on the wrong side of the biggest issue in British politics – the argument about the big state versus the smaller state.” But which side are the Liberal Democrats on? His plans for tax cuts look about as sound as a No10 soufflé. The 4p cut in income tax would be replaced by a local income tax – so a tax shift, not a tax cut. The £20 billion cuts in Whitehall spending are not all for tax relief, some of this (they don’t say how much) would be diverted to other state spending. Compared against the £679bn of state
The plotters insist that a leadership contest could help Brown
Whether or not it does oust Brown, it’s hard not to be impressed by just how well-managed the Labour backbench rebellion is. The plotters’ latest strategic shift is to point out that Brown could actually emerge triumphant from a leadership contest. Here’s George Howarth speaking to the Beeb earlier today: “We’ve got to confront our problems and deal with them and i think a leadership contest is the best way to do that … It might not even be a new leader. It’s quite possible that Gordon could contest a contest and emerge stronger.” Of course, I doubt Howarth, or any of the other plotters, believe that a leadership contest
Just in case you missed them… | 15 September 2008
…here are some of the posts made over the weekend at spectator.co.uk: Fraser Nelson ponders whether the McDonagh insurgency is doomed to failure, and thinks that Zac Goldsmith’s role as a “green-witness” could have hurt the Tories. James Forsyth looks at who could take on Brown in a leadership contest, and shows that David Miliband has lost confidence and fallen in line. Peter Hoskin thinks the Labour rebel mess allows the Tories time to fine-tune, and tells us Gordon Brown has lost his chance for a relaunch. Theo Hobson explores the legacy of Cardinal Newman in his new weekly column on religion. Clive Davis points us in the direction of
The Brown & Greenspan bubble is well-and-truly bursting
Today brings mammoth financial news: Lehman Brothers has filed for Chapter 11, and Merrill Lynch is has been taken over by Bank of America. Two giants of Wall Street have fallen on the same day, and there will be more to come. I love the footage of a puzzled-looking Alan Greenspan talking about a “twice in a century” shock to the system, as if he had nothing to do with all this. The decision to pump America full of cheap debt was one taken by him at the Fed – it’s his bubble that’s bursting here. Brown copied him in Britain, leveraging up Britain in the same way. Neither saw
Sunday
Delivering progressive ends by conservative means<br />
Jenny McCartney’s column in the Sunday Telegraph today pinpoints the key flaw to the Labour project: in its drive for equality, it produces inequality. This apparent paradox is the regular consequence of left-wing politics world over: the best of intentions produce the worst of results. There is now enough data on the 11 years of the Labour Project to show its failure on every important yardstick. Employment figures: a mirage created by immigration. Economic boom: a mirage created by debt. NHS performance: dismal, for the money injected. Education: Britain hurtling down the international league tables in absolute and relative terms. Defence: let’s not go there. But it is in social
Another Tory problem that Labour should have capitalised on
I have one more for James’ list of stories that would cause problems for the Tories if Labour were not entertaining us all with the longest death scene in political history. Last week a jury at Maidstone Crown Court decided that the threat of global warming justified breaking the law – a story that made news worldwide. Specifically, six Greenpeace activists who vandalised a coal-fired power station and caused £35,000 of damage were acquitted on the grounds that the vandalism was done to prevent even greater damage to the environment. Random verdict from a strange jury, you might think. But speaking as an “expert witness” in the activists’ defence was
Is the McDonagh insurgency doomed to failure?
The Siobhan McDonagh insurgency is on its third day, with a wide range of names and rather devastating quotations in today’s press all aimed at Labour activists who gather in Manchester this time next week. I’ve just come from News 24 which is leading with footage it has today of Fiona McTaggart on today’s Politics Show but but there are far more names. Here’s a list of who’s saying what:- — Barry Gardiner, a special envoy for Brown: accusing him of “vacillation, loss of international credibility and timorous political manoeuvres that the public cannot understand”. (Sunday Times) — Frank Field: “Given we haven’t got a cabinet stuffed with people who
As Brown flounders, the Tories can fine-tune their message
It’s yet another 20-ish point for the Tories in the latest YouGov poll for the Sunday Times. They’re on 46 percent (up 1 on last month); Labour are on 27 (up 2); and the Lib Dems on 16 (down 2). I guess it’s fair to say that Brown’s economic recovery package – or what we’ve seen of it so far – isn’t making much difference. The problem for Brown is that the foreseeable future doesn’t present many opportunities to close the gap. He’d have pencilled in the party conference as a chance to do something – anything – to get some of the public back on side; be it a
Saturday
No relaunch left
The calls for a leadership contest are certainly getting louder. (UPDATE, 1500) Earlier today, Fiona MacTaggart became the fifth Labour MP to confirm that they’ve asked for leadership nomination forms to be sent out. And the expectation is that more will follow, as this increasingly takes on the complexion of an attempted coup. Who might the discontents be? Here are a few key paragraphs from the Telegraph this morning: “The Daily Telegraph understands that about a dozen Labour MPs, including several former senior ministers, have asked officials to provide nomination papers for a leadership contest at the party’s conference later this month. They include Janet Anderson, Kate Hoey, Frank Field,
Politics | 13 September 2008
James Forsyth reviews the week in politics If Labour does dump Gordon Brown before the next election, then each of the three major parties will, this decade, have replaced a leader before he has had a chance to fight a general election. What used to be exceptional has become almost routine. This is a consequence of politics now running in double-time; the speeded-up news cycle means that what used to take years now happens in weeks. Consider the almost total reversal of Gordon Brown and David Cameron’s political positions since the last conference season. Then Gordon swept all before him, while Cameron had to make a brilliant speech to save
Friday
The week that was | 12 September 2008
Here are some of the posts made over the past week on Spectator.co.uk: Fraser Nelson shows that Balls still hasn’t got the right schools policy and highlights Brown’s immigration and jobs fudge. James Forsyth shows how Cameron and Osborne differ on Iraq and explores the dangers of a Tory Brown bubble. Peter Hoskin picks up on another non-electoral milestone for the Tories and questions whether power-sharing will work in Zimbabwe. Brian Cullen explains why Labour’s agenda is confused and how China is keeping quiet about change. Sean Martin shows Brown may be in trouble after all and gets CoffeeHousers to test their maths. Melanie Phillips is shocked by the
Brown’s energy plans unravel even further
Yesterday Guido revealed that Brown’s insulation programme will most likely take around 10 years to complete. And today, the FT’s blog suggests that energy companies will be able to offset some of the costs of the energy package against their tax bills. In effect, that means that – rather than paying £1 billion towards the cost of the measures – they’ll probably face a bill of around £655 million. News, surely, that will aggravate those in the Labour Party who thought the companies had got off lightly enough as it was.
Thursday
Brown’s got his notebook at the ready
A self-standing quote from a Telegraph story entitled “Gordon Brown takes part in children’s reality show”: “Broadcaster Jonathan Dimbleby is the Sir Alan Sugar figure in the 10-part [children’s TV] series Election, which is being filmed at the moment for CBBC. [Gordon] Brown will meet the victor in the final episode and hear their thoughts on democracy and the political system. He is expected to take notes and glean inspiration from the encounter.”
YouGov: the Tories on course for 150 majority
This latest YouGov poll for Channel 4 will really give Labour MPs the cold sweats… It was conducted across 60 constituencies which currently have Labour majorities of 6 to 14 percent. Why? Because they’re the seats that the Tories will need to win to be Britain’s largest party after the next election, and they’ll need an overall swing of 7 percent to achieve that. According to YouGov, though, there’s currently a 12 percent swing in favour of the Tories. That would actually give Cameron & Co. a 150 majority in the Commons. And leave Jack Straw among the many Labour casualties. YouGov’s Peter Kellner may be insisting that Labour could still win the next election. But these latest results confirm just how difficult that
Balls’s co-op schools won’t do the job
Ed Balls’s announcement today of 100 co-operative schools deserves to be taken seriously, as it shows sign of Brown responding to Cameron’s “choice” agenda in schools. First, Brown dismissed choice as he had done under Blair. Now, he realises he has to respond to it and today’s move is, as Joe Murphy says, a “battle over parent power”. Michael Gove (in Sweden right now, looking at the schools model he proposes for Britain) scored a success in his version of parent power, where they’d be free to choose whatever school they want. Balls proposes a “co-operative” model which sounds a lot more radical than it is. It would – in
The curse of being the Next Big Thing
I almost feel sorry for the Tory Ten in Tatler. Great to get the profile, of course, but there’s no greater curse in politics than being tipped as the Next Big Thing. And the spread even assigns them all Cabinet positions (“tipped as a future Chancellor of the Exchequer” etc). The media mood has swung – see The Guardian’s leader the other day – and there’s a huge appetite to crown a new establishment. The media loves heroes, especially new ones, just as it loved villains in the Hague/IDS era. But this swing of the pendulum brings mixed blessings. The public don’t like feeling that their vote is being taken
Wednesday
Is Jonathan Freedland working for John McCain?
I was going to write about Jonathan Freedland’s absurd column in today’s Guardian, but thankfully Norm has said pretty much all that needs to be said. Do these people really want to increase one’s sympathy for McCain? Because all this stuff about how the US owes it to the rest of the world to elect Obama is one good way of achieving just that.
Brown’s “new jobs” boast is down to immigration
Gordon Brown’s boast of having created “three million new jobs” has always had to come with the major unspoken caveat that (according to the Statistics Commission) 81% of these “new jobs” in this working-age population are accounted for by immigration. Yet for my cover story on immigration tomorrow I asked the Office for National Statistics to do one further exercise for me: break it down by public and private sector. The results were as I expected. In the period Apr-Jun 97 there were 18.1m UK-born people working in the private sector. In Apr-Jun 07, it had actually fallen – to 18.0 million. So strip away immigration and state sector expansion
Another non-electoral milestone
A leader in today’s Guardian is another entry for the Cameroons’ list of non-electoral milestones. Entitled “Progress in Blue”, its case seems to be that the Tories are pushing the kind of progressive agenda that Guardian readers should consider voting for. Here’s the nub of it: “There have been moments in the postwar history of Britain when people who would naturally be inclined to vote Labour have been driven to ask themselves whether the return of a Conservative government would be the worst possible outcome for the country or for the general cause of progress? For those in Britain who think of themselves as progressives, the answer has usually been