Politics

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

Saturday

The Spectator

The vision thing

Gordon Brown managed to keep a straight face last month when he claimed that he was abandoning plans for a snap election because he needed time to spell out his ‘vision for change’. The rest of the country, it must be said, was laughing at this nonsense, knowing full well that it was polling evidence that had changed the Prime Minister’s mind. But let us take Mr Brown at his word: he explicitly invited the electorate to judge him not only by his competence, but by the scale of his ambitions and political philosophy. The Queen’s Speech on Tuesday was intended to impress voters with its sheer sweep, as well

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

What’s so special about 2020? Brownism is all about postponement

It took the Queen only eight minutes to read the speech Gordon Brown’s advisers had prepared for her and even she looked bored by the end of it. The Prime Minister may have waited ten years for this chance to set the parliamentary agenda, but one searches this Queen’s Speech in vain for any sense of direction or drive. It was a compendium of mainly old policies, in which a wider ‘vision’ was always difficult to discern. Instead, it was a speech remarkable for what it did not contain. Gone is the sense of adventurism. Under Tony Blair, the Gracious Speech gave notice of his next series of battles with

Richard Northedge

Forty years on, we’re still confused

Next weekend is the 40th anniversary of Harold Wilson slashing sterling’s official value from $2.80 to $2.40 and telling us the pound in our pocket had not been devalued. It was a disaster, Wilson later confessed in his memoirs: a national shame that interrupted the Swinging Sixties. And now the pound has risen above $2 to its highest level for more than quarter of a century and we rejoice at sterling’s strength, gloating over the dollar’s misfortunes. That $2 is ‘high’ when Wilson devalued the pound to a then record low of $2.40 shows not only that today’s rate is a blip in a long-term slide from the pre-war rate

Neil Collins

Here’s an oxymoron: green private jets

This year’s must-have Christmas present is a small rectangle of plastic, the size of a credit card. It costs E129,000, or a little short of £100,000 at current rates of exchange. Well, actually, it was last year’s must-have for those who consider themselves really up with the zeitgeist, but a NetJets card is still a pretty cool accessory to flash around and impress your friends. It says you can whizz around the globe at short notice in one of the company’s fleet of small planes; the E129,000 ‘entry level’ card, a sort of base-metal Barclaycard, buys you 25 flying hours, enough to flip across the Atlantic and back, and have

Robert Beaumont

The bishop of Hope Street offers an organic remedy for no-hope ghettoes

This should have been Boris’s gig, of course. Our former editor’s perilous journey into the heart of the Scouse soul was a penance of sorts for that notorious Spectator editorial. But amid the media scrum, he didn’t have much chance to do anything but murmur a few defensive sorrys, hair flapping in the angry breeze. Closure wasn’t achieved. A Liverpool City Life from the great man’s pen might have made things better — or worse — but his thoughts have turned to London and good luck to him. Liverpool, meanwhile, has moved on too and I’m delighted to report that The Spectator remains substantially less loathed here than the Sun,

Friday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

More to Lord Drayson’s resignation than just fast cars

The real reasons behind the timing of Lord Drayson’s resignation are beginning to seep out. Writing for Comment is Free, Robert Fox reveals that Drayson had intended to stay until the summer but brought forward his departure because of No 10’s refusal to sign off on a new defence industrial strategy which was designed to address a shortfall in the procurement budget of around £10 to £15bn over the next decade.  What it all boils down to is how badly underfunded the military has been in recent years. Between this year and 2011, as Robert Fox notes, defence spending as a percentage of GDP will drop 2.3 to 2.1%. Everyone

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Will Lord Carlile have the Lib Dem whip withdrawn?

Nick Clegg went on Political Betting this morning to answer questions from the site’s users. Most of his answers were fairly standard, but he did hint that Lord Carlile might have the Lib Dem withdrawn from him under his leadership if he carried on advocating an extension to the 28 day pre-charge detention period.Here’s the exchange:  Q: The Liberal Democrat peer, Lord Carlile is being quoted by the Government as a supporter of an extension in the 28 days detention. If you were Leader of the Liberal Democrats what would you do about a peer actively working with the Government contrary to the party’s policy?  A: Alex and I have

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Labour and the Lib Dems raise concerns over Ashcroft

The row over the influence of Lord Ashcroft takes another turn with a story in The Guardian this morning about whether or not Lord Ashcroft has returned to the UK and is now paying tax in this country. Labour and the Lib Dems are keen to stoke up this issue and David Heath, the Lib Dems’s constitutional spokesman, tells the paper: “No one should take a place in the legislature of this country who doesn’t pay taxes in this country. If he has reneged [on his agreement] it’s very simple: he should no longer be a member of the House of Lords. He has a stark choice. He has given

Thursday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Lib Dem fight turns dirty

For all their woolly policies, the LibDem are dirty fighters, as anyone who has seen them campaign will attest. So it was only a matter of time before its leadership election turned vicious. Chris Huhne has dropped off press releases demanding that his rival Nick Clegg seeks corrections from newspapers who have suggested he’s in favour of education vouchers. Clegg repudiated the idea of vouchers, says Huhne, at a hustings meeting last weekend. All this, of course, makes me all the more favourably inclined towards Clegg. There’s nothing illiberal about school vouchers, and the idea chimes squarely with localism and empowering people rather than the state. It’s ideas like this

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Can’t get no Respect

The internecine warfare at Respect just took another turn with George Galloway denying that he has left the party. There now seems to be a bitter dispute between Galloway’s faction and the Socialist Workers Party about which group is going to have to be the one to actually break away. The SWP are claiming that Galloway’s decision to hold a rival party conference suggests that he is the one who has left, while Galloway’s lot are refusing to budge. 

James Forsyth James Forsyth

This time with feeling

Tara Hamilton-Miller has a great little blind item in this week’s New Statesman:  A shadow secretary of state, who shall remain nameless, decided to sing and briefly weep to a Radiohead song in a northern university student union (determined, clenched, porcine fist punch ing the air during the rocky bit). She sang with such feeling that even the greasy left-wing undergraduates in the smoky basement were moved enough to keep the experience private. Over to you, Coffee Housers

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Respectable behaviour

Respect is finally collapsing under the weight of its own contradictions. Daniel Finkelstein reports that George Galloway has kicked out the Socialist Workers. However, this is only the beginning of the fun. Danny points to a statement posted on the party’s website: Dear Members, Respect has been locked out of its head office. Overnight the locks were changed on the Respect national office. This action excludes most National Officers, the national office staff and the majority of Respect members who support them from their own organisation’s headquarters. All one can say is that it couldn’t have happened to a nicer party. It is a good job that they have a leader

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Brown backs away from a fight over 56 days

It was supposed to be the big day when Gordon Brown put the case for detaining terror suspects for up to 56 days and took on his backbenches. Instead he, um, bottled it. Jack Straw was sent out to open the debate on Home Affairs (called by the Tories) and Jacqui Smith closed it, talking about how she wants a consensus and hasn’t decided on 56 days at all. David Davis speech on civil liberties was strong stuff, rather wasted on the triviality of a debate where the government has very little to tell us. But then again, who was Brown going to get as his witness to call for

Wednesday

Matthew Dancona

The Lord Malloch-Brown story

Don’t miss a very important piece in tomorrow’s magazine by James and the distinguished US journalist Claudia Rosett on the star of Gordon’s “ministry of all the talents”, Mark Malloch Brown. Although plenty of people expressed concern about Lord Malloch Brown’s appointment to a senior ministerial post at the Foreign Office and his early remarks, myself included, this article is the first major investigation of His Lordship, around whom all sorts of rumours have been swirling in the past few weeks. It reveals some remarkable things. Amongst them:  The extent of Malloch Brown’s connection with George Soros when he was at the UN How, with the encouragement of friends, he

James Forsyth James Forsyth

What will it take for Sir Ian Blair to quit?

The Met have been convicted of breaching of Health and Safety Laws, the London Assembly has passed a vote of no confidence in him but still Sir Ian Blair clings onto power. At some point, actually a long time ago, Blair should have done the decent thing and resigned. Arguing, as Livingstone does, that all this fuss over Blair’s position is some kind of boon for the terrorists is tripe. By that logic for the rest of this struggle, which will go on for a generation at least, we won’t be able to hold any public figure to account for their actions. If we were to do that, we really

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Race for the White House hots up

Today is a big day in the race for the Republican nomination with both Rudy Giuliani and John McCain (pictured) rolling out major endorsements from influential Christian conservatives. Giuliani wheeled out Pat Robertson, the one time presidential candidate and a hugely powerful figure in the movement. Robertson’s backing should help reassure those who fear that Giuliani’s pro-choice stance could split the Republican Party. Although, one wonders how someone running on their leadership on 9/11 can cosy up to someone who allowed his radio programme to be used as a platform for those who blamed 9/11 on “pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians” and

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Lord Drayson resigns

I don’t mean to sound like a kill-joy but doesn’t it suggest a rather warped set of priorities for a minister in the Ministry of Defence to quit his post to prepare for a car race at a time when British forces are engaged in two wars?

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Brown fails to seize the agenda

The reaction of three of the most influential commentators on the left to the Queen’s speech is instructive. Michael White in The Guardian suggests that it was less important than people think as Gordon Brown will probably go until 2010 before calling an election meaning that there will be time for one more full legislative programme before the government goes to the country.  Jonathan Freedland is far from enthused by the speech but argues that there could be merit in aiming to do a few things on a certain theme and then getting them done. But as Freedland acknowledges if government is purely managerial it leaves itself uniquely exposed to

Tuesday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Mrs Brown

Michael White’s diary for Guardian Unlimited is always worth reading and today it has a fascinating little tit-bit that I hadn’t heard before. Apparently, it was Sarah Brown who persuaded Admiral Sir Alan West to become the security minister in Gordon Brown’s so-called gvernment of all the talents by phoning up his wife.