Society

Thursday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The Fox story rumbles on

It has been a relatively quiet day on the Liam Fox front today. It now seems that the report into this whole affair will not be ready until next week; Adam Werritty has not yet had a second interview with Cabinet Office. For his part, Fox has looked more confident today and by all accounts was impressively calm as he sat on the front bench today. Interestingly, one ministerial ally of Doctor Fox feels that last night’s report by Nick Robinson was more damaging for the defence secretary than most people have realised. His fear is that having people pay Werritty to push a specific agenda, even if it was

James Forsyth James Forsyth

How Lansley won over the Lords

As Ben Brogan wrote this week, the House of Lords is threatening to become one of the biggest obstacles to the coalition’s reform agenda. But the way in which the Health and Social Care Bill was steered through its second reading in the upper house does provide a model for how even the trickiest votes can be won. Andrew Lansley’s much derided operation got this one right. It realised months ago that the crucial thing was to stop the crossbenchers voting against the bill en masse. So, the health minister in the Lords, Earl Howe, and Lansley’s long-serving aide Jenny Jackson have been on a cup of tea offensive for

Peter Hoskin

Happy Birthday, Mrs T

It is, you may have heard, Margaret Thatcher’s 86th Birthday today. By way of a congratulatory toast to the Iron Lady, here’s a thought-filled article that T.E. Utley wrote about her politics, for The Spectator, some 25 years ago: Don’t call it Thatcherism, T.E. Utley, The Spectator, 19 August 1986 There is no such thing as Thatcherism. The illusion that there is is in part a deliberate creation of Mrs Thatcher’s enemies. They have proceeded on the age-old maxim that there is nothing (certainly not private scandal) more likely to injure the reputation of a British politician than the suggest that he has an inflexible devotion to principle. This maxim

Mary Wakefield Mary Wakefield

Should most orphanages be shut down?

The Spectator’s deputy editor, Mary Wakefield, recently visited Rwanda to investigate the work a charity called Hope and Homes for Children. Her article on the subject appeared in last week’s issue of the magazine, but we thought we’d publish it here on Coffee House too, along with the short film that she recorded during her visit. It contains one or two lessons for DfID and our government: Kigali, Rwanda Madame B has dressed up for our visit. She’s sitting on a bench with her back to the orphanage wall, talking about just how much she loves each child, but it’s her get-up that’s most impressive: black silk dress, hair done,

Ian Birrell

The ongoing NHS scandal

Shock! Horror! Another report reveals the shameful care given to the elderly in British hospitals. People in the twilight of their life reduced to begging for food and rattling the bars of their beds in a desperate attempt to get the attention of medical staff paid to care for them. The findings came in reports of random inspections by the Care Quality Commission watchdog that found concerns in 55 of the 100 hospitals visited, with 20 of them — one in five — breaking the law in its levels of neglect. They found patients starved of food, denied water, spoken to rudely or simply ignored. It is sickening stuff. But

Martin Bright

In it together | 13 October 2011

Governments worth their salt know that a single young person out of work is a tragedy, but a million young people being on the dole is a political catastrophe.   This week’s unemployment figures fall just short of that symbolically important figure. But they also put the coalition’s solutions in sharp focus. Ed Miliband did well in PMQs this week because he could see the panic in David Cameron’s eyes.   It isn’t that the government doesn’t have a solution. It has a solution for all the country’s ills: the riots, social dislocation, worklessness. It is called the Work Programme. According to its champions it will deliver on every front.

David Blackburn

Lansley’s real fight

Yesterday was a rare good day for Andrew Lansley: the Health Bill survived its trial in the House of Lords. But there are no fanfares in this morning’s press for the near-moribund health secretary. The Times, The Telegraph, The Independent and The Mail all lead with the story that 50 per cent of English hospitals fail elderly patients according to the Quality Care Commission. Lansley may have thought that his struggle was with nit-picking peers, who are determined that he, as the secretary state, remains ultimately accountable for the NHS in the letter of the law. But, maintaining the standard of NHS care is his real battle. The irony of the

Wednesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The Human Rights Act Protects the Innocent

Meanwhile, in the day’s other Supreme Court judgement, the justices struck down the government’s ban on non-EU spouses under the age of 21 coming to live in Britain. This legislation was, it should be noted, well-intentioned and aimed to make it harder to arrange forced marriages in this country. So far so admirable. But, as is so often the case, the law cheerfully entrapped the innocent as well as the guilty. And so, as is so often the case, there’s a balance. Mitigating against forced marriages is a worthy endeavour and one that Lord Brown, dissenting, suggested should be given greater priority: The extent to which the rule will help

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Time to scrap the minimum wage?

Today’s youth unemployment figures are simply appalling. It’s now 21 per cent amongst the under-25s, above the peak of 18 per cent seen under the 1990s recession. For the first time since then, Britain’s youth joblessness is worse than the European average. This is a tragedy, and not one we should accept as being a grimly inevitable aspect of the recession. Ed Miliband said in PMQs that a million young people are on the dole: a statistic everyone should get angry about. And we can think of what has gone wrong. The above graph shows how Britain has nothing left to boast about in unemployment. Blair used to love heading

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Three Cheers for the House of Lords | 12 October 2011

As a general rule complaints that the opposition are too beastly for words should not be taken too seriously. They reflect a sense of entitlement on the part of the governing party that, whenever it may be modestly frustrated, quickly becomes peevish, sour and silly. If this is true of parliamentarians it is even truer when considering the bleatings of partisan pundits cheering on Team Red or Team Blue. Again, if you judge these squabbling teams by different criteria then you forfeit some right to be taken seriously. So it’s depressing to see a commentator as urbane and generally sensible as Benedict Brogan make such an ass of himself in

Tuesday

Julia Unwin

Right to reply: The truth behind the poverty figures

This morning, Fraser published a piece criticising the Institute for Fiscal Studies’ definition of poverty. Here is a counterpunch from Julia Unwin, Chief Executive of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, which is the organisation that funds the IFS. This article is the latest post in our Right to Reply series.  Do we really need another debate about the usefulness of a poverty measure? Of course, no definition is perfect. One of the hardy perennials of the poverty debate is the question of measurement. I wonder what it says about us as a country: why do we spend so much effort thinking about definitions of poverty, and so little responding to the

David Blackburn

Which amendments to the NHS bill would the government accept?

The Lords has been debating the Owen/Hennessy amendment to the NHS bill, which threatens to upset the coalition. Owen and Hennessy have called for the bill to be referred to an extraordinary committee, which would report by 19 December, and they insist that the secretary of state must remain ultimately responsible for services.  Lord Howe opened for the government and spoke of the need to delegate power away from the secretary of state. The he added: ‘We are unequivocally clear that the Bill safeguards the Secretary of State’s accountability. However we are willing to listen to and consider the concerns that have been raised and make any necessary amendment to put

James Forsyth James Forsyth

BREAKING: Jeremy Heywood to be new Cabinet Secretary

Gus O’Donnell has just emailed colleagues to say that he is announcing his retirement today. He will be leaving the civil service at the end of this year. His successor as Cabinet Secretary will be Jeremy Heywood, the current permanent secretary at Number 10 who has managed to make himself indispensable to David Cameron. But Heywood, who is not overly popular with the departmental permanent secretaries, will not become head of the home civil service. That job will instead go to one of the other permanent secretaries who will take this on in addition to their current role. Ian Watmore, of Football Association fame, will become the permanent secretary at

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The poverty of the poverty measure

‘400,000 children will fall into relative poverty by 2015, says IFS’ we read on The Guardian’s front page today — yes, one of the most pernicious ideas of recent years is back. It’s the definition of ‘poverty’ as being figures on a spreadsheet, households deemed to fall beneath an arbitrary threshold. It’s almost entirely meaningless, and diverts energy and resources away from a real fight against poverty. I really do believe that, as ideas go, this one has damaged Britain more than almost any other over the last two decades — and it’s high time it was confronted.   The ‘poverty’ that the Institute of Fiscal Studies is talking about

Monday

Daniel Korski

Sarko’s dour challenger

One of France’s dullest politicians is now odds-on to take up residence in the Élysée Palace next year. François Hollande, the former leader of the French Socialists, has emerged on top in a competition to take on Nicolas Sarkozy for the presidency. Six contestants vied for the Socialist nomination, including Ségolène Royal, Hollande’s former partner who lost to Sarkozy in 2007. In the first round of the primaries yesterday, Hollande finished first ahead of current Socialist leader Martine Aubry. Here are the results based on 82 per cent of the votes cast:  The two will now face each other in a second round on Sunday, with Hollande the clear favourite.

Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

The New Statesman: The Toadies’ Gazette

Here we go again. According to the surprisingly reliable Gudio Fawkes, the New Statesman has forced Dan Hodges, a lively young writer, whom you actually want to read, to resign for being a lively young writer, you actually want to read. Specifically, he had done what free journalists in a free society are meant to do and criticised a leading politician – Ed Miliband in Hodges’ cases. As a parting snub, the Statesman failed to publish Hodges’ piece from the Labour party conference (but thanks to Iain Dale you can read it here). I was forced out of the New Statesman for departing from left orthodoxy, Martin Bright was forced

Alex Massie Alex Massie

An Ad We’ve Been Waiting For

As far as I can tell Mitt Romney has been hoping that everyone will be fed up with health care reform by the time the primary season rolls around. That way perhaps people will forget that his Massachusetts bill – once much-praised by the Heritage Foundation and other conservatives – is not wholly dissimilar to the bill President Obama signed for the rest of the United States. Rick Perry ain’t about to let Romney forget this: First thing to be said about this: it’s way cool. Second, let’s have ads like this in the UK too. Thirdly: Romney’s case is about pragmatism not principle. In a way, then, this ad

The Spectator

CoffeeHousers’ Wall, 10 October – 16 October 2011

Welcome to the latest CoffeeHousers’ Wall. For those who haven’t come across the Wall before, it’s a post we put up each Monday, on which — providing your writing isn’t libellous, crammed with swearing, or offensive to common decency — you’ll be able to say whatever you like in the comments section. There is no topic, so there’s no need to stay ‘on topic’, which means you’ll be able to debate with each other more freely and extensively. There’s also no constraint on the length of what you write — so, in effect, you can become Coffee House bloggers. Anything’s fair game, from political stories in your local paper, to