Society

Friday

Jonathan Jones

The Republican race is taking its toll on Romney

Rick Santorum’s surprise clean-sweep of three states on Tuesday certainly suggests that the battle for this year’s Republican nomination will go on a fair bit longer than looked likely after Mitt Romney’s win in Florida a week earlier. But it doesn’t change the fact that Romney will, most likely, emerge the winner. But where it once looked like he’d make a decent — if unexceptional — challenger to Obama in November, he’s starting to seem much less electable. Just look at the slide in his poll numbers. At the beginning of the year, a Washington Post poll found that 39 per cent of Americans had a positive view of Romney,

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Lansley’s battle should’ve never been fought

A small war has broken out over Lansley’s NHS Bill — ConservativeHome has three Cabinet members attacking it. I find that shocking. At least a dozen want the Bill killed, and why ConHome found just three is beyond me. Politically, it’s probably impossible for Cameron to drop it. But if it was torn up, I for one would shed no tears. For what it’s worth, here’s my take. It’s depressing to think that Alan Milburn’s NHS Plan of 2000 was both more radical and more sensible than what Andrew Lansley is serving up now. The whole debacle has shown politics at its most petty, partisan and pointless — a complete

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Greece needs to quit the eurozone

The Greek people are being crucified on a cross of euros. Unemployment there is 21 per cent and rising fast and the austerity pact that its politicians have cobbled together to try and receive the next tranche of bailout cash will make things far worse. It is in the interests of the Greek people for the country to default and devalue but this, obviously, isn’t possible with Greece inside the eurozone. There are elections in Greece in April and it is to be hoped that one of the main parties there has the courage to break from the view that Greece must stay in the eurozone regardless of the cost.

Peter Hoskin

Lansley’s health problems are starting to look terminal

The discontent with Andrew Lansley’s health reforms has been rising since the New Year. But, one or two threatening quotations aside, most of this has come from the government’s natural opponents: Labour and the unions. That changes today. Over at ConservativeHome, Tim Montgomerie has written a post calling for the Health Bill to be dropped. It is, Tim says, ‘not just a distraction… but potentially fatal to the Conservative Party’s electoral prospects.’ And he finishes: ‘It must be stopped before it’s too late.’ This would be striking enough by itself, but its impact is doubled by a single sentence: ‘Speaking to ConservativeHome, three Tory Cabinet ministers have now also rung

Thursday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The Waugh Scale of Schools: Some Aren’t Even Schools

As is customary, one prefaces this post with the observation that there are very many fine state schools and many others, a good number of which are also grand, that do tireless work in demanding circumstances. Nevertheless… According to government data released today, in England last year there were: 137 schools where no pupils were entered for geography GCSE 57 schools where no pupils were entered for history GCSE 30 schools where no pupils were entered for a modern language GCSE 219 schools where no pupils were entered for French GCSE 1,067 schools where no pupils were entered for Spanish GCSE 516 schools where no pupils were entered for any

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Donald Trump: I Am Trying To Save Scotland

The SNP’s other big idea – apart from independence – is to make Scotland a kind of renewable energy pioneer. To that end, something close to open season has been declared on parts of the countryside as developers rush to erect as many windfarms as can feasibly be erected in, well, just about every part of the country within easy cabling distance of the national grid. Like many others, I am not wholly persuaded this is an unmitigated blessing. Tidal and wave power in the Pentland Firth (or Sound of Islay) is one thing; plastering the countryside with windmills another. Enter Donald Trump, harrumphing from stage left. The “tycoon” has

Peter Hoskin

Cameron’s quotas: a policy or a threat?

We’ve heard enough about David Cameron’s woman troubles to regard anything he says about the fairer sex as a naked pitch for votes. But I reckon his comments today, about getting more women into boardrooms, are just as much motivated by concerns about the economy. ‘The drive for more women in business is not simply about equal opportunity, it’s about effectiveness,’ is how he put it earlier, ‘It’s about quality, not just equality.’ It’s a claim that reflects both the thinking of Masters of Nothing — a book by two highly-regarded members of the 2010 intake, Matthew Hancock and Nadhim Zahawi — and its continuing influence in Cameroonian circles. Part

Peter Hoskin

A feast of Quantitative Easing

Fire up the printing presses, once again. The Bank of England has just announced another £50 billion of Quantitative Easing, bringing the total monetary expansion up to £325 billion. And it probably won’t end there: Citi, among other analysts, forecast that it could go as high as £600 billion next year.  So what are we getting for all this free money? The Bank would tell you that its supporting the economy: keeping interest rates down and encouraging investors to flush money into growth-inducing schemes and mechanisms. And there’s obviously truth in that. But we, and the suits of Threadneedle St, shouldn’t pretend that QE doesn’t create victims too — and

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Snow? What snow?

It’s not snowing again. This is the fourth day running it’s not snowing again and I live in one of the most ‘badly affected’ areas south of the Wash. By badly affected I mean that all of the roads, even the single track lanes on top of a hill where I live, are entirely free from snow. It snowed for one evening only and left five inches or so on the fields; some of this has melted, some is still there. Just about enough to tell yourself that it had definitely snowed. So where’s this icy chaos? Every BBC news programme for a couple of days had reporters standing in

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Our enemy’s enemy

It’s unusual for The Guardian and The Spectator to agree on anything, but Seamus Milne and our own John R Bradley are sceptical about these Syrian rebels whom we’re being invited to support. Bradley was alone in predicting the Egyptian revolution, and argues in today’s magazine that the conventional wisdom is once again wrong. Who’s backing the rebels? The Qataris, keen to depose the last secular regime in the Arab world. And the Saudis and Israelis, whose hatred of Iran eclipses all other considerations: this isn’t about the Syrian people, but about depriving the ayatollahs of an ally. Some in the West also take the view that the enemy’s enemy

Wednesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Size Matters: Dysfunctional Government Edition

Via Andrew, Francis Fukuyama has a new gig at Stanford University running a Governance Project. Introducing it, he lobs a hand grenade at one aspect of American Exceptionalism:   I would argue that the quality of governance in the US tends to be low precisely because of a continuing tradition of Jacksonian populism. Americans with their democratic roots generally do not trust elite bureaucrats to the extent that the French, Germans, British, or Japanese have in years past. This distrust leads to micromanagement by Congress through proliferating rules and complex, self-contradictory legislative mandates which make poor quality governance a self-fulfilling prophecy. The US is thus caught in a low-level equilibrium

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

In PMQs, Cameron plays for a draw on the NHS

How much does it cost to change a light bulb? Three hundred quid, said David Cameron at PMQs today. Ed Miliband came to the House eager to pile more pressure on the PM and his unloved NHS restructuring plan. Cameron fought back by citing the health bungles Labour presided over while in office. Billions wasted on kaput computers. Hundreds of millions blown on phantom operations. And dead light bulbs that cost more to replace than a week’s holiday in Spain. Cameron’s tactics were better than in previous weeks. Rather than citing some lone wolf medic who supports his reforms he gave us a surprise announcement, albeit unsourced. ‘Ninety-five per cent

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The Public Health Racket

A fine catch by Tim Worstall who rightly scoffs at this passage in today’s Telegraph report on the (Westminster) government’s plans to “tackle” alcohol consumption: [M]inisters are expected to unveil measures to increase the price of alcoholic drinks according to how strong they are. This could be done through higher taxation per unit, minimum pricing per unit or simply higher levels of duty for strong drinks. Ministers will also encourage companies to produce weaker alcoholic drinks. Prime Minister David Cameron is known to have sympathy with the idea of minimum pricing, which medics say could save nearly 10,000 lives per year if set at 50p per unit. Emphasis added. As

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Miliband gets the better of Cameron on the NHS

As expected, Ed Miliband went on the NHS and it helped deliver him a points victory. Whenever Miliband raises the issue at PMQs, David Cameron’s rather overly macho body language gives away that he knows he is playing on a sticky wicket. The exchanges today were not particularly enlightening but Miliband had the better of them. There was, though, one effective counter-attack from Cameron where he compared what is happening to the NHS in England to what is happening in Wales where the devolved administration is sticking with the status quo. There’s mileage in this argument if the coalition has the patience to develop it. But part of the problem

The Spectator

Transcript: Stephen Hester on bankers and bonuses

This morning, the chief executive of RBS Stephen Hester appeared on Radio 4’s Today programme to discuss the recent furore over his bonus. Hester revealed he nearly resigned over the crisis and agreed that bankers have been making too much. Here’s the full transcript for CoffeeHousers. James Naughtie: Banker without a bonus? You might say he’s a lonely figure in his business; he’s Stephen Hester, Chief Executive of the Royal Bank of Scotland. The public furore about executive pay in a bank that’s 83% owned by the taxpayer caused him to forego the bonus he was awarded this year in the form of more than three and a half million

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Miliband to keep pressing on with his NHS attacks

The last PMQs before recess gives Ed Miliband a chance to have another go at the coalition’s NHS reforms. I suspect that the ‘Andrew Lansley should be taken out and shot’ quote that appeared in Rachel Sylvester’s column (£) will make an appearance at some point.   Miliband will keep going on the NHS because he knows it is one of the Tories’ biggest vulnerabilities and one of the few subjects on which Cameron isn’t confident attacking. Based on past performance, any PMQs where the focus is on NHS reform will produce at least a score draw for the Labour leader.   But I still don’t expect Cameron to move

Tuesday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Osborne defends ‘rewards for success’

George Osborne’s speech to the Federation of Small Businesses tonight tries to offer some reassurance that the coalition isn’t caving into the anti-business zeitgeist. Referring to the recent rows over executive pay, he deplores rewards for failure before saying ‘a strong, free market economy must be built on rewards for success. There are those who are trying to create an anti-business culture in Britain – and we have to stop them.’ How reassuring business leaders will find this remains to be seen. As Robert Peston reported yesterday there’s a lot of grumbling from them about the government’s handling of the Hester bonus and other matters. (To be fair to Osborne,

Douglas Murray

Ignore the European Court and deport Abu Qatada tonight

The Al-Qaeda preacher Abu Qatada is a Jordanian national who is in the UK illegally (having come here in 1993 on a forged United Arab Emirates passport). The headache he has caused successive UK governments looks like finally reaching a peak. But there is a simple solution to the problem he poses. Last month, not only for the first time in the decade-long Qatada process, but for the first time ever in an extradition case, the European Court of Human Rights cited Article 6 ‘rights to fair trial’ to ensure that Abu Qatada could not be returned to Jordan. The Court had previously played around in the Qatada case only

Richard Marsh

No-one emerges from the health reform smash-up with any credit

Andrew Lansley should be grateful for small mercies. Rachel Sylvester’s column (£) today may quote a Downing Street source to the effect that ‘Lansley should be taken out and shot’, but there is yet no sign that a hundred Conservative MPs will write to the Prime Minister to say that the Health Secretary’s reforms have to stop. We’ve had such a letter for wind farms and for Europe, but on the NHS it’s not very likely. Most Tory MPs find the NHS a difficult rallying point at the best of times. And these are the worst: they are acutely embarrassed by the car-crash that has been the Health and Social