Politics

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

Friday

The Spectator

Cutting to the chase

A few things that bug me about this whole tax-cutting debate… 1)      Even Lord Forsyth’s suggestion of £21 billion worth of cuts is a tiny sum when you remember Brown will this year spend £553bn of our money – rising to £682 billion in 2011/12. Any Tory cut must be put in this context, or the sums just don’t mean anything. 2)      And let’s not forget that from now until April 2012, Brown intends to raise tax by an average £32 billion a year, according to Treasury figures. Would it be so bad if the Tories put a stop to that? Or slowed it down a little? If even Redwood

Matthew Dancona

Taxing Cameroon consistency

James is right that the Tories are not ‘lurching to the Right’. There’s nothing intrinsically ‘rightwing’ about examining the case for tax cuts: if there were, why would Gordon Brown have been so keen to present his final Budget as a ‘tax-cutting’ package? No, the real problem is one of consistency. If the Tories are serious about abolishing death duties – and I do hope they are – how do they square that enthusiasm with their absolute commitment not to make upfront promises of tax cuts, a pledge most forcefully delivered in George Osborne’s conference speech last year? That pledge is symbolic of the moderniser’s creed: economic stability first, no

The Spectator

Are the Tories really lurching to the right?

Ever since John Redwood’s proposals first began to be floated, the Tories have been accused of lurching to the right. On the Today Programme this morning, Alistair Darling predictably accused the Tories of planning 21 billion pounds worth of spending cuts. While in The Independent today, Colin Brown writes that:  “The more Shadow Chancellor George Osborne protested yesterday that the Redwood working party’s conclusions did not represent a “lurch to the right”, the more it sounded like that is just what is about to happen. Mr Cameron’s appointment of Mr Redwood to chair the commission on economic competitiveness was revealing. He must have known Mr Redwood, a committed Thatcherite, would

The Spectator

Name that book

Today’s papers report that Tony Blair is hoping to pocket £8 million for writing his memoirs. Sadly for the Tories, the book is years away from publication and so won’t see the light of day before the next election. Indeed, if it going to be a genuine account of what happened I doubt that it will come out while Gordon Brown is still in office. (There is, though, the fun possibility of a race to publish between Blair and Alastair Campbell as soon as Brown walks out of Downing Street.) But anyway, what should Blair call his memoirs? If you have any suggestions for a snappy title leave them in

Thursday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Let’s re-engage with John Edwards foreign policy vision

PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH, STRENGTH THROUGH JOY, JOY THROUGH WAR Apparently policing the world really is like cleaning up Gotham: “In this decade, for the first time in human history, half of the world’s population will live in cities. I know from personal experience that when security is reliably established in a troubled part of a city, normal life rapidly reestablishes itself: shops open, people move back in, children start playing ball on the sidewalks again, and soon a decent and law-abiding community returns to life. The same is true in world affairs. Disorder in the world’s bad neighborhoods tends to spread. Tolerating bad behavior breeds more bad behavior. But concerted

The Spectator

Use your vote because they’ll use theirs

Predictably, people are trying to derail the Tory nominating process for London Mayor. It’s an open primary, so the process is open to abuse—with the £1.50 charge unlikely to deter the committed. These attempts at sabotage make it essential that those who actually want the best candidate selected do vote. London deserves a proper contest and it would be a disaster if this vote was hijacked; any candidate selected under such circumstances would be a laughing stock from day one and would have no hope against Ken Livingstone. Of course, we’d urge you to back The Spectator’s official candidate.

The Spectator

Tories hit Brown on his record

George Osborne, who unfairly has been taking much of the flak for the Conservatives’ current woes, has an interview in The Guardian today in which he attacks Brown for failing to spread prosperity out across the country from London. Osborne is, rightly, trying to tie Brown to the failures of the Blair years such as the fact there are 600,000 more people stuck in poverty now than there were when Labour came to power. The problem with this line of attack, though, is that it is inherently backward-looking and so makes it difficult for the Tories to appear as if they are, to borrow a phrase, the future not the past.

Wednesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Salmond makes his move: l’audace, encore de l’audace, toujours de l’audace

UPDATE: Welcome, Ross’s readers. Feel free to have a poke around. Should you be so interested, other stuff I’ve written about Scottish politics and the like can easily be found by clicking on “Scotland” in the categories column on the right. Meanwhile, in Scotland… It’s been a startlingly successful first 100 days in office for Alex Salmond. His minority ministry has proved more stable – and more quietly effective – than many sceptics feared. That’s quite an achievement, even if Salmond did arrive in office with a degree of goodwill. Yes, many voters remain unconvinced by the SNP but many others who voted Tory or Lib Dem were relieved to

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Stop press: Labour numpty* stumbles upon truth!

So, as expected Jack McConnell has resigned as leader of the Scottish Labour Party. A friend emails me the best, most accurate (albeit unintentionally so) reaction to this news: “Let’s remember where he took this party from to where it is now and I think that’s a great contribution not just for the Labour party but also for Scotland.” Since McConnell inherited a party in power and leaves it in opposition, this is, for once, something Andy Kerr – Mr McConnell’s Finance Minister – and I can agree on. Of course, the proof that Scotland needed a political revolution is found in the words “Finance Minister Andy Kerr”. *A clown,

Alex Massie Alex Massie

We can’t turn them away (but we will unless you do something about it)

If you’re a British resident or citizen (subject, surely?) might I suggest you add your name to the petition calling upon Her Majesty’s Government to provide refuge in the United Kingdom for those Iraqi translators and other Iraqi civilians who have risked their lives working for the British armed forces in southern Iraq and who, consequently, have much to fear if left in Iraq. You might also want to write to your MP. This isn’t a matter of whether one was for the war or against it. It’s a matter of simple decency, honour and obligation: all of which makes one think that absent significant public and media pressure the

Tuesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

NHS advice for Cameron…

He wrote this nearly a month ago but it’s still pertinent. So, in a bid to encourage my old friend Neill Harvey-Smith to post more frequently, take a gander at his (excellent) advice to David Cameron and the Tories: The message coming from the Tories has been that Brown’s pre-Queen’s speech was “nothing new”, that “he is implicated in the failures of the last decade”, that “the only way to change the country is to vote Conservative”. Saying this is madness. He put new restrictions on the Academy programme, praised by the NUT. This is a lurch to the left. He signalled a halt to super-casinos, restricting free enterprise. This

The Spectator

The shortest of breaks

The Sun reports this morning that Gordon Brown’s holidays are over. He’ll be working for the rest of the summer from his constituency in Scotland. So, Brown took a total of four hours and five minutes off before heading back to London to deal with the foot and mouth crisis. Is this the shortest holiday on record? And, what’s the best holiday one can have in four hours? Do leave your suggestions in the comments.

Monday

The Spectator

And now the end is near | 13 August 2007

Watching the Bush-Rove conference, it was impossible not to feel that this was the end of an era. The president admitted he soon be gone too; telling Rove “I’ll be on the road behind you here in a little bit.” While both Rove and Bush were clearly moved by the moment. Rove’s departure signals that the Bush administration is done on domestic policy. The debate over whether he did Bush more harm than good will rumble onto into the history books. Indeed, what appeared like Rove’s greatest triumph—taking back the Senate in 2002 and increasing the number of Republican seats in the House—actually sowed the seeds for many of the

The Spectator

Have we turned away from the emotionalism of the Diana moment?

As the 10th anniversary of Diana’s death approaches we’re going to spend a lot of time debating whether or not the public reaction to her death ushered in a new, more emotionally open Britain or whether it was a mawkish display of grief which we all ought to be rather embarrassed about. As Jonathan Freedland points out in The Guardian there’s a political dimension to this question: “Tony Blair added to the electoral mandate he had gained on May 1 a kind of emotional mandate, forging a bond with the nation that Sunday morning when he correctly intuited the public reaction to the death of the princess – a connection

The Spectator

Prezza’s tale

I am almost certainly in a minority of one on this, but I suspect that John Prescott’s memoirs will be a lot more interesting than people are expecting. On all the Blair retrospective programmes, it was noticeable how frank Prescott was about how bad things had got between Blair and Brown. I also can’t help but wonder if Prescott, who is clearly–and understandably–irked by the way he’s depicted as an incomprehensible oaf with an excess of libido, might want to show just how much he had to do behind the scenes to keep the show on the road. Anyway, my question is what will the opening line of Prescott’s memoirs

The Spectator

‘Bush’s brain’ leaves the White House

If you want to get an idea of how important Karl Rove was to George W. Bush imagine if Peter Mandelson, Philip Gould and Alastair Campbell had all been rolled into one person who advised Tony Blair. In some ways, even this doesn’t do Rove justice as he had been with Bush long before he blipped onto the national political radar; they first met back in 1973. Rove memorably described the encounter to Newsweek thus: “I’m there with the keys and this guy comes striding in wearing jeans, cowboy boots and a bomber jacket,” he recalls. “He had this aura.” It was political love at first sight. There has always

Sunday

The Spectator

What happens when you are down

When you are ten points down in the polls everything you do is seen through that prism. So whenever the Tories announce a policy or talk about a topic, the media examine it for evidence of whether or not David Cameron is trying to shore up his right-wing or not. Everyone is looking to see if Cameron will follow Hague and Howard and tack back to the right if the polls continue to go against him.   So, news-reports—and Labour’s response–to the Redwood led economic competitiveness policy group report have concentrated not on its substance, the best analysis of which comes in the Sunday Telegraph, but on the extent to which

The Spectator

Why we must end forced marriage

Damian Green, the Tory Immigration spokesman, sets out how the Tories plan to end forced marriages in an op-ed in The Observer today. There are some good suggestions in it, including the idea that anyone who is going to marry abroad should have to name the person they are going to wed before leaving the country. This would stop young girls from only being told that they are to be married once they have left the country. Personally, I’d also like to see the legal age for UK citizens marrying abroad raised to, say, twenty-one. Ending forced marriage is crucial to demonstrating that all UK citizens—regardless of gender, race or

The Spectator

The Brown bounce becomes the Brown boom

Gordon Brown has restored Labour’s fortunes to pre-Iraq levels, according to a YouGov poll in tomorrow’s Sunday Times. The poll puts Labour on 42, the Conservatives 32 and the Lib Dems 14. The internals of the poll don’t offer much comfort for the Tories either: 55% of voters think David Cameron is doing a bad job as Tory leader and 51% believe he would be a bad PM while 65% say Brown is doing a good job. 57% also think that Brown has got his relationship with Bush about right. (The numbers on Iraq and Afghanistan are depressing for a hawk like me, with a majority favouring withdrawal within a year in both

Saturday

Irwin Stelzer

Now we know: Brown is a European, not an Atlanticist

There is little doubt, as Matthew d’Ancona and others have pointed out, that Gordon Brown is secure in the thought that he has established himself as what is called these days a ‘change agent’, cutting the ground out from Tory cries that ‘It’s time for a change.’ If you want change, go for the experienced clunking fist rather that the PR tyro. Unfortunately, not all change is in Britain’s interest. Which brings me to the by now, or at any rate soon to be, forgotten visit of the Prime Minister to President Bush’s retreat at Camp David. You know — the visit that the press hailed as a triumph for