Politics Archives

Sunday

14 Sep 2008

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

Peter Hoskin

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

13 Sep 2008

Peter Hoskin

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,

James Forsyth

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

12 Sep 2008

The Spectator

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

Peter Hoskin

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

11 Sep 2008

The Spectator

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.”

Peter Hoskin

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

Fraser Nelson

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

Fraser Nelson

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

10 Sep 2008

Alex Massie

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.

Fraser Nelson

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

Peter Hoskin

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

Peter Hoskin

Are these the reasons why Labour could win the next election?

The Autumn issue of the Fabian Review features an article by the YouGov pollster Peter Kellner on why Labour could win the next election. It’s not out until 15 September, but the Mirror’s Kevin Maguire has seen a copy and writes about it in his column today. Here – with Maguire’s embellishments – is Kellner’s reasoning: (1) Political geography favours Gordon Brown. If the parties got the same national vote, Labour still wins 80 more seats. Cameron needs two million more votes for the same number of seats. To draw level Cameron needs a six per cent lead, a hefty 10 per cent for an overall majority. (2) Every government from

Peter Hoskin

The energy deal revealed

The Guardian has got its hands on details of the Government’s rescue package for those struggling with rising fuel bills. The centrepiece of it is a £1 billion deal with energy companies, by which those same companies will contribute more to the carbon emissions reduction target scheme – in other words, more money will be available to help people have their homes insulated. It’s all much as Brown prepared us for in his speech last week – no “short term gimmicks and giveaways” and an emphasis on “long term efficiency”. But the same questions remain. Will it actually help all that much? Will it increase support for the Government? Will

Elisabeth Jeffries

Greener than thou: the carbon tax contest

Labour’s climate change levy has led to lower emissions, says Elisabeth Jeffries, but can the Conservative alternative yield better results — or command business support? There are many ways to eat a potato: chopped into chips and deep-fried, baked in the oven or slivered as crisps. Not many consumers care about the dozens of ways to cut down on the energy used to cook, store or produce it, such as buying a super-efficient freezer. But it is a question many retailers and food suppliers have been trying to unpeel. McCain chips installed three new wind turbines and an anaerobic digestion facility (which processes food waste to capture emissions of the

Fraser Nelson

Brown has exploited immigration to hide from deep problems

The PM’s claim to have created three million British jobs is a grave deceit, says Fraser Nelson. Strip out immigrants from the picture, and Labour has barely dented the problem of British worklessness. Over to you, Mr Cameron If there were to be a British Statue of Liberty, it should be erected at Victoria coach station in London. For it is here that most of the tired, poor, huddled masses of Eastern Europeans have arrived seeking what Michael Howard once called the ‘British dream’. The influx of the last ten years has been the largest in Britain’s history, changing the country for ever. Immigrants now make up a ninth of

Tuesday

9 Sep 2008

Alex Massie

New Tories, New Danger?

How will Lbour fight the next election? Stupidly, it seems. According to a briefing paper obtained by the Guardian, Labour “has decided to attack the Conservatives at the next election as an unreconstructed, dangerous rightwing party that is only masking its true instincts behind slick positioning.” Oh dear. Labour argue that: “Occasionally the mask slips and we see the dangerous, old- fashioned Tory rightwing instincts hidden underneath. They believe in unfettered free markets, cuts in public services to fund tax cuts for the richest, and a smaller, less effective government. David Cameron believes Britain would be stronger if we stand alone, rather than come together.” I have no idea what

Peter Hoskin

A sorry tale

Ok, so it turns out that Brown’s article today wasn’t an apology of any sort. But there’s still some speculation that he’s going to use his conference speech to more or less say “sorry”. With that in mind, the Tories have just launched ‘Brown’s Big Apology’, a corner of their website where – from now until the speech – there’ll be daily suggestions of what Brown should apologise for. The first is the 10p tax debacle. What would CoffeeHousers add to the list? Hat-tip: Jonathan Isaby @ Three Line Whip

Peter Hoskin

Rethinking the rethink

Could it be? Has Brown admitted that he needs to rethink his approach, that he needs to change? Has he – in a roundabout way – apologised? It was starting to look that way earlier today, with the publication of an article by the PM in the Parliamentary Monitor. The subhead of that article: “The world has changed so much since New Labour came to power that it makes sense at this conference to rethink the way we govern Britain, writes prime minister Gordon Brown.” And it contains such calls to change as: “I believe that Britain is well placed to withstand the shocks that these transformations bring, but if we