Politics

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

Saturday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Politics | 1 November 2008

A nanosecond is easily measured in Westminster as the time between a politician’s hearing of a colleague’s impending resignation and wondering ‘What’s in it for me?’ It takes perhaps a full second to construct a theory as to why the unfortunate soul had it coming and probably deserved it. It takes about a minute to draw up a shortlist of potential successors, and half an hour to start some gentle plotting. Sympathy comes last, if at all. So for the few hours when George Osborne’s future was in doubt last week, the corridors and the urinals of Westminster were abuzz with versions of his political obituary. If he went, one

Friday

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The Illustrated Brown Bust: negative equity

Estimated number of households in negative equity, 2003-10 If you’re a homeowner, turn away now. CoffeeHousers may remember recent reports of 1.2 million houses at risk of negative equity  – well, that may just be the start of a negative equity tsunami. This Citi graph, the latest in our occasional series, shows what would happen if prices do fall 30% as is widely expected. The left-hand scale is million, not per cent. It presumes 0.5m in negative equity now, rising above 3m – or one in four British households. As Michael Saunders from Citi says in his note: “These calculations are uncertain. But the key point is that, with house

Daniel Korski

From Motherwell to Malawi – but to do what?

A few weeks ago, Gordon Brown appointed former first minister, Jack McConnell MSP, as a Special Envoy for Conflict Resolution – provoking accusations that the move was “blatant political manipulation” to avoid the possibility of a by-election defeat in McConnell’s Motherwell and Wishaw seat. The idea had originally been to appoint McConnell as the High Commissioner in Malawi – which would have sparked a by-election. Instead, the Scottish politician will have a non-resident, part-time role as a special envoy for the Prime Minister. But what his exact job will be apparently remains unclear and the subject of some debate across Whitehall. There is no reference to the appointment – or

Peter Hoskin

The question the Tories must answer

Before George Osborne gave his speech at LSE today, I just coudn’t get a handle on what his message would be.  In his interview on the Today programme, he was making positive noises about reducing the tax burden.  “The best way to help people is through targeted, funded tax-help … certainly not increasing taxes like the government are planning to do,” he told listeners.  But the FT seemed to have a different take.  Their preview of the Shadow Chancellor’s speech began: “George Osborne, the shadow chancellor, will pave the way for tax rises under a Conservative government while warning against a ‘tax con’ short-term cut by Gordon Brown.” Thing is – as

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

A lack of clarity

Like Darling’s Mais lecture, Osborne’s speech to the LSE was rather long with no discernable points of action. No matter how much you say the word “responsible” (ten times, in his case), it just doesn’t add up to a policy. First the good news – Osborne uses Japan as an example of Keynesian spending. That’s the right analogy. Next he says he will “help people directly by getting money into their pockets through the tax system” – ie, tax cuts. Great. They can be easily funded by scrapping government waste, or abolishing failing government programmes. But Osborne goes on to complicate the issue and his signoff is this: “There is

Thursday

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Osborne needs to recast his policy for the new era

Now that even Nigel Lawson says tax cuts are not the right way to go, why am I calling for them in my column? Lord Lawson did not issue a fatwa on all tax cuts, but warned against “massive tax cuts.” He is wary of so-called Keynesian fiscal activism – borrowing massively, to cut taxes. As am I. You can argue it’s better than Keynsian spending, but both still do more harm than good. I am arguing that the new era of deficits (I don’t expect we’ll see a balanced British budget for five years) need not lead the Tories to abandon tax cuts. They need a new argument for

Mark Wallace

Poll suggests the public are against Brown’s spending splurge

The TaxPayers’ Alliance has published a new poll today, carried out by ComRes, which gives an interesting insight into the public’s view of the financial crisis and the Government’s response to it. Particularly striking is the public’s view of the big spending, neo-Keynesian response that Gordon Brown and Alastair Darling have been emphasising in recent days. Far from being the vote-winning approach they may have hoped, their plan to spend more and borrow huge amounts to deal with the recession has the support of only 18% of the public. Instead, a strong 59% majority believe tax cuts are the best way to respond to the economic crisis, and 68% also want an “immediate

Peter Hoskin

Darling demands cheaper petrol

The government’s demands that oil companies cut petrol prices are now getting beyond parody.  Alistair Darling repeated them on GMTV this morning – blithely ingnoring the fact that fuel taxes account for well over half the cost of petrol at the pumps.  Fern Britton, for one, wouldn’t have let him get away with it. The question hovering over all this is whether the Treasury will go ahead with a planned 2p rise in fuel duty.  There’s always the chance that Brown ‘n’ Darling could try and gain some political capital – and attept to steal Nick Clegg’s “reduce the burden on low-income earners” thunder – by scrapping it in the

Wednesday

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Darling reads the last rites over the fiscal rules

Alistair Darling has not set out a new fiscal framework in his much-delayed Mais lecture – but he has read the last rites over the so-called the financial rules. “To apply the fiscal rules in a rigid manner today would be perverse,” he says. Not to say impossible: the rules set a 40% limit on net debt and it was 43.4% last month. Instead there is assurance that “people should be in no doubt that Government will take the decisions necessary, to ensure sustainability in the medium term.” George Osborne – back in action, and with a major speech planned on Friday – has released other Brown quotes which pledge

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

PMQs verdict: Clegg gets the message right

Finally, the right line from Prime Minister’s Questions – and it’s one that Gordon Brown will fear the most. “What people need now is more money in their pockets. He could deliver big tax cuts for people who desperately need help”. It was from Nick Clegg. You can argue – as I do –  that the Liberal Democrats’ proposed tax cut is paltry. But the rhetoric and positioning is precisely right. It’s a binary distinction: Brown trusts the state, and wants to spend his way out of a recession. Clegg is saying he trusts the British public, and wants to stimulate the economy by letting them keep more of their own money.

Peter Hoskin

Who will triumph in Glenrothes?

According to today’s Herald, the betting markets are continuing to move towards Labour: “The bookmakers are making it an increasingly close contest. William Hill said yesterday that they had not taken any bets on the SNP winning the seat since Prime Minister Gordon Brown campaigned there at the weekend. The bookmakers have the SNP as narrow favourites, with Labour rapidly closing the gap.” Of course, we shouldn’t be surprised that Labour are in the running for a seat where they currently enjoy a 10,644 majority.  But, should they triumph, expect it to be milked for all its “Brown bounce” worth.

Peter Hoskin

The day the fiscal rules died

So today’s the day; the day Alistair Darling will confirm that Brown’s current fiscal rules are to be scrapped.  Now, the rules have always been more of a fiddle than a useful economic tool – to meet the “golden rule” that the budget remains balanced over the course of the economic cycle, Brown blithely changed his definition of the economic cycle; and his use of off-balance sheet trickery to meet the “sustainable investment rule” is well-documented.  But the worry is that if those fiscal rules failed to constrain Brown, what will he be able to achieve – what debt will he be able to accrue – under a more “flexible”

Tom Bower

Brown has come full circle since 1988

Tom Bower, the Prime Minister’s biographer, says that Gordon’s reinvention as the socialist who can save capitalism is just the latest in a series of convenient masks he has donned Gordon Brown would probably prefer to forget his magic moment in the crowded House of Commons exactly 20 years ago, on 1 November 1988. In the midst of a withering attack against Nigel Lawson’s management of the faltering economy, the Labour front bencher pierced the Tory’s façade with deadly accuracy: ‘This is a boom based on credit.’ Labour MPs frenziedly cheered as Brown artfully mocked the forlorn-looking Chancellor for allowing consumption to spiral out of control and for offering consistently

Tuesday

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The debt contagion

I was joking when I said a few weeks ago that Gordon Brown spoke about the recession as if it were the SARS virus. But at his press conference this morning, and just now at the press conference with Sarkozy, he has used a new phrase: “stop the contagion”. Contagion? If it is, it was incubated in 11 Downing Street as he pumped the economy full of debt, in the hope that he’d never be found out and rates would not rise. The contagion kept touting dangerously underpriced debt until the average British household had borrowed 172 per cent of its income – twice as much as even the Italian

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Sloganeering | 28 October 2008

Danny Finkelstein argues that I am not “precise” when I say that the Tories have been equating tax cuts to instability – and, as ever, he’s right.  This is, happily, a historical argument as the Cameron project has evolved substantially since the first weeks when this “stability before tax cuts” slogan was implied. One does not hear it now, nor does one hear “sharing the proceeds of growth”. But to plot the right course for future, the mistakes of the past need to be identified. I believe “stability before tax cuts” to be one of those mistakes, and here’s why.   Political slogans are designed have two meanings: what they

Peter Hoskin

A grim statistic

According to the Financial Services Authority, home repossessions in the second quarter of 2008 were up 71 percent on the previous year.  With the financial and economic crises now biting even deeper, the figures for the third and fourth quarters of the year will most likely be even grimmer.  Of course, this tragic human element to the downturn presents a challenge to all the political parties: they need to devise ways to limit it.  But it also creates a particular problem for Gordon Brown: the more people feel the fiscal pain, the less likely they are to go along with the Our Economic Saviour narrative of the past few weeks.

Peter Hoskin

The Mandy factor

When Gordon Brown appointed Peter Mandelson to his Cabinet he may have grabbed the newspaper headlines, but the general sentiment was: be careful Prime Minister, this could backfire.  Already, Mandy’s return has prompted the whole Yachtgate scandal. And now the media have turned their attention to the recently-ennobled one’s links with Oleg Deripaska, Brown must be even more worried about what will emerge next.  The expectation that there’s more to come is reflected in a Politics Home poll of 100 Westminster insiders today – in which only 42 percent of respondents think that Mandelson will stay in his job until the next election.  So what do CoffeeHousers’ think: is this yet

Peter Hoskin

Encouraging signs for both Labour and the Tories

Today’s ComRes poll for the Independent has the Tories on 39 percent (down 1 from the ComRes poll in the Independent on Sunday a couple of weeks back); Labour on 31 percent (no change); and the Lib Dems on 16 percent (no change).  That means the Tory lead has been more than halved in the past two months, and that they’re now in hung parliament territory – all encouraging enough for Labour. But despite the “Brown bounces back” headline in the Indy, there’s no need for the Tories to get disheartened just yet.  This poll was conducted in the aftermath not only of the most positive coverage Brown’s received since the early days of his premiership, but also of