Society

Fraser Nelson

How not to create jobs

The Keynes vs Hayek debate is at its sharpest on the issue of employment. Can government create jobs (as Balls says)? Or does large public sector employment simply displace economic activity that would happen elsewhere (as Osborne says)? A fascinating study has been released today by the Spatial Economics Research Centre at the LSE showing the damage done by public sector employment to the real economy. Drawing on a huge amount of local-level data over an eight-year period, it’s a serious piece of research that is worth looking into and deserves to impact our economic debate. 1. First, what is seen. In the short term, hiring someone to work for

A more ambitious approach to fighting poverty

‘You attack poverty by knowing what you do changes the lives of those people.’ In that phrase on this morning’s Today programme, Iain Duncan Smith summed up the difference between his approach to combating poverty and Gordon Brown’s. As Fraser has put it, Brown saw poverty as ‘a statistical game… his great spreadsheet puzzler’. The aim of the game? To reduce the number of people living in households below the ‘poverty line’ — set at 60 per cent of median income. The easiest way to achieve this is to move people from just below the line to just above it by giving them a bit of extra cash (in the

Melanie McDonagh

The battle over complementarity of the sexes is already lost

Today is the last day of the Government’s consultation about its gay marriage proposals. But as an editorial in the Telegraph points out, this is a more limited exercise than it sounds…you’re not being asked whether it’s a good idea for gay people to marry so much as how you think the Government should implement its proposals. Consultation, not. But since the opportunity is there, I’m all for sounding off about whether gay people should marry in the first place, as the Church of England has done, with uncharacteristic robustness, in its official response to the proposals. I can’t myself, see why marriage, as a status and a concept and

The View from 22 – is HS2 the rail to nowhere?

Is High Speed 2 headed for the sidings? In our cover feature this week, Ross Clark examines why the ambitious infrastructure project — designed to boost Northern cities — has all but disappeared from the government’s agenda. Despite the chancellor’s ‘boyish enthusiasm for fast trains’, the project has lacked the essential support from private business. Now, more pressing issues have taken charge.   In our View from 22 podcast this week, Ross explains why the Tories were once so enthusiastic about the High Speed link to the North: ‘It was a way for the Tories to say — as part of their decontamination  of the Tory brand — look, we’re

James Forsyth

Cameron’s difficult morning

David Cameron’s morning at the Leveson Inquiry has not been a pleasant experience for him. In the opening hour or so, Cameron was calm and statesmanlike. But as the inquiry moved onto his connections to News International and how Andy Coulson was hired, the prime minister was pushed onto the back foot. One could see why some in Number 10 refer to the inquiry as ‘the monster we have created’. The headline for tomorrow’s papers is, at the moment, coming from a text sent to him by Rebekah Brooks. The clinging text read, ‘But seriously I do understand the issue with the Times. Let’s discuss over country supper soon. On

Freddy Gray

On the road to disestablishment

There’s an inevitability about the Times’s big splash (£) this morning: Gay Marriage Plan Could Divorce Church From State. The Church of England’s historic role as ‘religious registrar’ for the State would have to be severed, we are told, if government plans to legalise gay marriage go ahead. That would not, apparently, mean ‘total dis-establishment … but it would be a significant step in that direction.’ The CofE, for all its liberalism, says it will not support a legal attempt to redefine ‘the objective distinctiveness of men and women.’   So that — if this report is to be believed — is that. Unless the government relents or the Anglican

Steerpike

Will Wintour give up her wardrobe?

Steerpike’s transatlantic cousins at the New York Post’s Page Six are stirring up the rumours (again) that Vogue editor Anna Wintour is set to become Obama’s Ambassador to the Court of St James.  Coincidentally, the fashion supremo has been pulling her weight for Obama’s fundraising. Though vaguely denying the appointment, she is not exactly doing to much to quell the speculation — apparently she’s very happy in her current job. Patrick Wintour, Anna’a little brother and the Political Editor of the Guardian, tells me he does not ‘think she wants to give up the wardrobe allowance yet.’

Another reason to part ways with Strasbourg

Even for people on the same side of an argument, opinion is often wildly divided. Among those of us who believe government should support civil marriage equality, this morning’s papers (£), and specifically Church of England fears that the religious will be ‘forced’ to carry out same-sex weddings, re-opens a fundamental division of opinion.   The coalition’s proposals rightly only relate to civil marriage equality (that the state should make civil marriage between same-sex couples equal to civil marriage between opposite-sex couples). It has always seemed obvious to me that if the government pushes ahead with same-sex civil marriage then it should do so only if it can ensure that

The language of left and right

Stephan Shakespeare has a fascinating article on Con Home today, comparing which words voters associate with the terms ‘right-wing’ or ‘left-wing’. The results aren’t too surprising: the language of the left is, generally, softer than the language of the right. Shakespeare’s article is entitled ‘Fairness versus selfish’, which gives you an idea of how voters perceive the dichotomy. The upshot is that many voters still believe that the right is intrinsically ‘nasty’; ergo, the modernisation project has not gone far enough. This research, and the conclusions drawn from it, reminds me of Jonathan Haidt’s book The Righteous Mind (indeed, Shakespeare references an article by Haidt). The Spectator interviewed Haidt two

Helping troubled families

Earlier today, the government, in the form of Eric Pickles, announced that it was launching new incentives to encourage local councils to improve the lives of 120,000 families, identified as ‘troubled families’ by the Social Exclusion Task Force in 2007. Those incentives are: A). £3,900 for each family whose children attain 85 per cent attendance at school. B). £4,000 for each adult in a troubled family who holds down a job for three months. The measures have been welcomed by the Local Government Association, which does not praise this government all that often. The cynic will say that the LGA is merely welcoming more money for its associates. While that it is

Dissenters against Osborne

George Osborne has much to ponder this morning. First, there is the small matter of his evidence to the Leveson Inquiry later today (assuming that someone can check Gordon Brown’s loquacity), which will prove diverting for those who remain gripped by those proceedings. Then there is the larger matter of the £80bn Spanish bank bailout. Osborne has welcomed the rescue, arguing that the Eurozone must survive and thrive if Britain is to prosper. His analysis is that the crisis on the continent is impeding domestic recovery. Fraser argued yesterday that this is a half-truth which verges on being a conceit. A number of Conservative backbenchers share Fraser’s scepticism and they

Fraser Nelson

Osborne’s blame game

George Osborne writes in the Sunday Telegraph today that the British recovery ‘is being killed off by the crisis on our doorstep.’ This sounds uncannily like Gordon Brown’s ‘it started in America’ excuse, and it’s only mildly more convincing. While Osborne blames Europe, and Balls blames cuts, there is no doubt that the British economy isn’t recovering, which is not good news for a chancellor whose re-election strategy was based on recovery by 2015. But, by attributing blame to Europe Osborne risks blinding himself to a major problem in Britain. The economic headwinds are certainly strengthening. But the euro’s slump doesn’t appear to have halted recovery in countries that have

Vivat Regina

This article appears in the latest issue of Spectator Australia. We thought that CoffeeHousers would like to read it. The trick to monarchy is not queening it. In The Radetzky March, Joseph Roth’s great novel of the Habsburg twilight, the Emperor Franz Joseph has it down to a tee:  ‘At times he feigned ignorance and was delighted when someone gave him a longwinded explanation about things he knew thoroughly… He was delighted at their vanity in proving to themselves that they were smarter than he …for it does not behoove an emperor to be as smart as his advisers.’  At dinner in Melbourne and Sydney, as in Toronto and Montreal,

James Forsyth

A poor man’s compromise

The expectation in both Brussels and Whitehall is that this weekend will see a bailout for Spain agreed. It appears that a compromise which would not impose harsh external conditions, which is why Madrid has been rejecting offers of help to date, but would satisfy German concerns about bailouts simply encouraging reckless behaviour, is close to being reached.   But this does not mean that the Eurozone governments will be doing anything to get properly ahead of the crisis. Instead, they have decided to wait until after the results of the Greek elections before deciding what to do next.   The increasingly agitated statements coming out of Washington reflect a

The plot against public schools

Matthew Parris has launched a critique on the charitable status of public schools in this morning’s Times. Matthew is not opposed to private education, just to the arrogance of the bastions of privilege that sell a lifestyle and connections as well as an education. Echoing the government’s social mobility Tsar, Alan Milburn, Matthew argues that these schools should earn their breaks by doing more for the communities that surround them, the vast darkness outside their hallowed walls.   He then urges the government to take the fight to the public schools, and, by extension, the legal system that protects their special position. He also backs publicly funded scholarships, a proposal

Fraser Nelson

The ladder to fulltime employment needs a bottom rung

I know it’s wrong to take John Prescott seriously, but his attack on the government’s work experience programme epitomises a sneering attitude that is quite widespread. It was most egregiously displayed by the BBC Today Programme in its flagship 8.10am report about those who volunteered to steward the Jubilee celebrations — except the BBC report never once used the word ‘volunteer’. There’s going to be a lot more of these work experience offers, thank God, and we can expect the government’s critics to ask if the labour market is ‘receding into the 19th Century’ with ‘Dickensian’ tactics (to use the BBC’s disgraceful language). Rather, this is a 21st century solution

Steerpike

A Nazi-sympathising love affair

I hear that legendary British producer Jeremy Thomas (of The Last Emperor, Sexy Beast and Crash fame) is working on a script about the tumultuous affair between Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. Before fans of France’s great intellectual exports become overly excited, it seems that Thomas wants to concentrate on the pair’s Nazi sympathies during the War. Top of Thomas’s cast wish list is French star Vincent Cassel — who had a memorable turn as a crazed sex addict in A Dangerous Method — and Marion Cotillard who won an Oscar for her portrayal of Edith Piaf. Rumour has it that Thomas could be set to hook up once

James Forsyth

May and Herbert stand firm

The police were long known as the last unreformed public service. Police reform was regarded as just too difficult by politicians of all parties. Even Margaret Thatcher flinched from it, giving the boys in blue an inflation-busting pay increase after winning the 1979 election. But Theresa May and Nick Herbert appear determined to follow through on the recommendations of the Winsor Report. They have announced today that the report’s author, Tom Winsor, is their choice to be the new Chief Inspector of Constabulary. Winsor, if he passes through his select committee hearing next week, will be the first non-policeman to do this job. The appointment is bound to cause ructions.

How the White House will be won

Want to know how this year’s race for the White House will end? Then head over to the New York Times’s FiveThirtyEight page, where expert psephologist Nate Silver has just released his model’s forecast. What makes Silver’s analysis stand out from the rest is that it doesn’t just take into account the polls, but also economic indicators (including job growth, inflation and GDP forecasts) that help predict the outcome. And it doesn’t just forecast the national result, but also the result in each of the states — taking into account all sorts of state-specific factors such as previous vote shares and demographics. But perhaps the main strength of the model