Politics Archives

Monday

5 May 2008

Who’s next?

Ladbrokes has just updated its odds for the next Labour leader. Which of the below names would have the ability to unite Labour against Brown, successfully trigger a leadership challenge, secure union support to depose him, and then volunteer to lead the party into what will probably be an election defeat? And if you were David Miliband’s best mate, what would your advice to him be? David Miliband 5/2 – too young to ruin his career now Alan Johnson 6/1 – likeable, but no ambition to be no1. Ed Balls 6/1 – the PLP would lynch him sooner than Brown. Jack Straw 7/1 – if Straw is the answer, what

Fraser Nelson

Will Brown go?

“They say that Gladstone was at the Treasury from 1860 to 1930. I intend to be Minister of Labour from 1940 to 1990”- Ernest Bevin The five scariest words you will read in the press today are in The Sun, where Trevor Kavanagh says “I give him six months”. Brown, like Bevin, will have factored in far greater longevity – and I have been relying on him sending at least two more sets of No10 Christmas cards. I’m not saying he deserves to stay (though the longer he does, the longer the next period of Conservative government will be). But how can he go? Here’s my thinking – I’d be

Sunday

4 May 2008

James Forsyth

Brown bombs on Boulton

I’ve just got round to watching Gordon Brown’s interview with Adam Boulton and it makes his performance on Marr look good. He looked tired and sounded grumpy throughout. Perhaps the oddest thing was how Brown didn’t seem in command of the policy detail. When Bolton asked about helping the poor by just raising the personal allowance Brown seemed stumped. Interestingly, Brown seemed to rule out a reshuffle in the near future. Kremlinologists will note that he passed up an opportunity to defend David Miliband and instead pivoted to praise Alan Johnson’s work at Health. There was a sign of how Brown intends to try and respond to the rise of

Fraser Nelson

Outfoxing Brown

Brown’s breathtakingly bad performance on Marr risks overlooking Liam Fox’s brilliant one. As Andrew Porter has said, word perfect. We see too little of Fox for my liking. Like David Davis, he has an instinctive grasp of low-tax economics and has a wonderful emperor’s-got-no-clothes contempt for Brown’s economic record. “Labour are still caught in this mental rut that Gordon Brown was a great Chancellor, they’ve got economic stability, and if they say it often enough people will believe it,” he said. Quite so. As Allister Heath wrote in The Spectator three years ago, “It seems likely that in due course Brown will be marked down not as one of the

Fraser Nelson

Brown fails to relaunch

A friend of mine, a BBC producer, sends this text message: “I’m watching the PM ‘relaunch’ from behind the sofa. The slow public death of Mr Brown continues. Painful to watch.” Difficult to disagree too much. My thoughts:- 1) “It’s been a bad night” he started – woops! Wrong soundbite. That one was for use on Friday morning. He tries again. “It’s not been the best weekend, let’s say” – cue flash of weird smile. 2) “I think it’s true I’m a more private person in a public arena” – yip, an introvert in an extrovert’s job. But this is just a small part of the problem 3) “I come

James Forsyth

So, what should Gordon do now?

There’s lots of advice for Gordon Brown in today’s papers. Perhaps, the most interesting comes from Matthew Taylor, a key adviser under Blair. “After waiting a few days to avoid the impression of panic Gordon Brown should do a major interview. In this interview he should announce that he will dedicate his efforts to delivering a very short list of very important outcomes by the spring of 2010. One of these should be about family prosperity and economic stability, one should be about reducing poverty and one or two (but really no more) about key public service indicators. He should say that he wants to be judged on whether he

Fraser Nelson

Was this actually Labour’s worst result since World War One?

I would like to call on the collective wisdom of CoffeeHousers. I have read everywhere that Thursday was Labour’s worst result for 40 years, whereas it looks to me as if it is the worst since World War One. Here’s why. As far as I can determine, the source for this “40 years” was Tony Travers from LSE. We walked out of the BBC studio in City Hall together on election night, and Tony showed me his book of wisdom – the year 1968 was a freak bad year for Labour in London as it had 28% of the vote (as I blogged earlier). Tony made this point in the

Saturday

3 May 2008

Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 3 May 2008

If, when you read this, Boris Johnson is the Mayor of London, it will, I have just discovered, be thanks to me. When the idea of Boris’s candidacy was first suggested, I spoke on the telephone to Mary Wakefield, who is now the deputy editor of The Spectator. What did I think of Boris for Mayor, she asked. I snorted. ‘Mayor of Henley more like!’ I said, satirically. I cannot now remember why I took this line, but Mary Wakefield relayed it to Boris, who mentioned it, ruefully, to me. Now I read in the newspapers that my words stung him so much that he made up his mind to

James Forsyth

Some questions for the Tories to ponder

Charles Moore’s column in the Telegraph today rightly praises the Tories for their impressive election performance. But he also raises some issues which the party are going to have to think about. 1. How can a party that has “gone green” adjust to the fact that voters, increasingly short of money, hate green taxes – especially high imposts on cars – and long to put fortnightly refuse collections into what the Left, in other contexts, calls “the dustbin of history”? 2. How can a party that believes in the legitimacy of parliamentary government and the need to defend ourselves against terrorism put up with the ever-growing power of judges to

Peter Hoskin

Boris speaks

For those who missed it, here’s Boris’ victory speech from City Hall last night. His tribute to Ken is a highlight:

Peter Hoskin

The great what-if

The Tories’ recent success has got people looking back to Gordon Brown’s failure to call a general election in October last year. In today’s Sun, George Pascoe-Watson calls that decision “one of the worst blunders in political history”. Although it certainly set up a glorious what-if: what if Brown had called (and, most likely, won) an election? Would Labour have received such a thumping in the local elections? Would Livingstone still be Mayor? True, Brown would have made many of the same errors in the following months – after all, the 10p tax decision was formulated in Budget 2007, and was always going to come into effect last month. But they might have been cushioned by the buzz surrounding a Labour election victory, and by

James Forsyth

What’s next? | 3 May 2008

The calls for Labour to get rid of Gordon Brown come from both the left (Martin Kettle) and the right (Matthew Parris) in this morning’s newspapers. It still seems almost impossible that this will happen but Brown will have a hideous next few days, coming under attack from both sides of the party. What will worry Labour MPs most is what the numbers from these elections mean for the next general election. When even as sober an analyst as Peter Riddell describes the results as “unreservedly poor” and a sign that Labour has, fatally, lost its political authority then there is a real problem. Perhaps, the most damming part of

Peter Hoskin

Boris: the vanguard of a Tory revolution?

I’ve just been enjoying a cup of tea in my local cafe (Jose’s, Morden), and listening to the general chatter about Boris’ stunning election victory. Here, at least, there’s a bit of regret that Ken’s going – but this was tempered by talk about the cost of living. In the face of rising food and energy prices, most were angered by the extra costs that Londoners face – with the C-Charge coming under particular attack. The consensus, then: anything Boris can do to lower the burden would be alright by us. Of course, Team Boris will be more than aware of all this. But it’s worth repeating nonetheless, and I’m sure CCHQ will

The Spectator

Mayor Johnson

Scroll down for full Coffee House coverage. Here are some selected highlights: Matthew d’Ancona congratulates Boris. Mary Wakefield reflects on how Boris and Ken came to like each other during the campaign. Can Brown change or is he doomed to go down to defeat asks James Forsyth. Pete Hoskin points to the moment that summed up Labour’s election nightmare. And Fraser Nelson reveals what Boris’s secret weapon is.

James Forsyth

Can Brown change?

When Gordon Brown was enjoying his honeymoon nine short months ago, you would have got long odds on the Tories winning London and being twenty points ahead of Labour in the national vote share at the local elections. But a combination of Brown’s missteps—most notably his trip to Iraq during the Tory conference, the election that never was and the 10p tax debacle, David Cameron and George Osborne’s political judgement and Boris’s unique skills have brought us to this point. The question now is can Brown recover or is he fatally wounded? It is hard to see how Brown can turn this round. Over the last few months as things

James Forsyth

It is official: Boris has won

It is confirmed, Boris Johnson is the next Mayor of London. Boris won by close to 140,000 votes once second preferences had been counted, a 53 to 47 margin. Boris’s victory puts the icing on the cake for the Conservatives who have done better in these elections than they would have dared hope at the beginning of the week. For Boris, it is a phenomenal achievement. He has routed a politician who neither Margaret Thatcher nor Tony Blair could beat. First Round: Boris 43, Ken 37 Second Round: Boris 53, Ken 47

Irwin Stelzer

Balls wants a 100 per cent tax on inherited brains

Irwin Stelzer admires the Schools Secretary, and so regrets that his admissions policy prevents schools from taking account of a pupil’s prospects of success. Bad news all round Seemingly alone among my acquaintances, I see virtues in Ed Balls. He certainly is not media-friendly, partly because he has the Brownian habit of trying to bury questioners under a barrage of verbiage, only some small portion of which is relevant to their questions. He does have the annoying habit of believing that facts can be the enemy of truth, and therefore need, er, adjustment before they can be made available to the less skilled at their interpretation. Still, it is impossible

Fraser Nelson

Labour politicians are already preparing for opposition. The race to succeed Gordon is on

Over lunch about a year ago, I tried to tease out the intentions of someone tipped as a possible successor to Gordon Brown. He was feigning optimism and loyalty to the anointed leader-in-waiting, so I advanced some hypothetical scenarios involving various MPs being run over by buses. So would he maybe… ‘Me? God, no,’ he replied, cutting me off. ‘Forget it. As soon as this party gets into opposition then — boof.’ He mimed an explosion with his hands. ‘Trust me. The queue to be Labour’s William Hague will not be a long one.’ Here were two striking assumptions: that Mr Brown was certain to lose, and that the Labour

Lloyd Evans

IQ2 debate: America has lost its moral authority

Big names at last Tuesday’s Intelligence Squared debate. Our beaming chairman Adam Boulton called on Will Self to propose the motion that America has lost its moral authority. In his sharp black suit, Self glared at us like an undertaker whose hearse has just failed its MOT and rattled through the sins of ‘the paternalistic superpower’. America guzzles up vast quantities of nature’s resources. It has a ‘systematically biased corporate media’ and a justice system ‘where 25 per cent of black males are either in jail or on bail’. He produced a killer statistic to highlight its oligarchical political system, ‘The re-election rate for congressmen is 98 per cent.’ An

Friday

2 May 2008

Matthew Dancona

Congratulations Boris

Greetings to all CoffeeHousers from the 29th Floor of Millbank Tower, where the faithful have gathered to toast our new Mayor – who, poor fellow, is stuck at the count waiting for official public confirmation of the triumph that Downing Street conceded hours ago, the bookies have already accepted, and the Evening Standard has announced in a special late edition. It is a pleasure and a privilege to congratulate Boris on his victory – as his successor at the Spectator, his friend and (above all) a Londoner. Be in no doubt: this is a sensational achievement. Ken Livingstone has dominated London politics for a quarter century and presided over a