Society

Thursday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Tory MPs launch NHS reform counter-offensive

Nick Clegg’s speech on the NHS today has fanned the flames of the Tory backbench rebellion on the issue. Tory MPs’ tribal instincts have kicked in and even those who were worried about the Lansley plan are now swinging behind it. As Nick Watt revealed earlier today, there’s currently a letter from Nick de Bois urging Tory MPs to set out their red lines on health service reform. One thing that Tory MPs keep repeating to me is that they are not prepared to see the Lib Dems ‘take the NHS backwards’. This is their most fundamental red line and it translates to a determination not to have the level

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Lansley’s original reforms are off the table

Nick Clegg’s speech on the NHS this morning was not as bad as many feared it would be. It recognised that there is a role for competition in the NHS, something that the Lib Dems were questioning last weekend, and that the NHS needs to be opened up to any qualified provider. But, on the other hand, the idea that any willing provider should be able to deliver NHS services — an idea which was in the manifesto of all three parties — will now only be introduced at a glacial pace. There’ll also be a two-tier NHS for the foreseeable future with some areas having GP-led commissioning, while NHS

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Thought Crime in the Brave New Scotland

It cannot be said that Alex Salmond’s ministry is off to a good legislative start. Not when its immediate aim is, apparently, to rush through ill-considered, illiberal, speech-curbing legislation that asks the public not to worry about the detail and trust that the legal authorities will not actually enforce either the letter or the spirit of the Offensive Behaviour in Football and Threatening Communications (Scotland) Bill. According to Salmond: “I am determined that the authorities have the powers they need to clamp down effectively on bigotry peddled online. The Internet is a force for good in so many ways – but it can also be abused by those who seek to spread hatred. That’s

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Netanyahu’s Myopia

What scares Israel more than anything else? Not, I wager, the rockets flying over the fence from Gaza or even, at least on a quotidian basis, the Iranian shadow. No, what happens if the Palestinians say Yes? Granted, the Palestinian leaderships – not without their own battles – have persistently demonstrated a fatal lack of imagination. Jerusalem or Bust and it’s always been Bust. But if the Palestinians could bring themselves to acknowledge the Jewish state, Israel would find itself in a corner, hemmed in by the Palestinians’ engagement, international pressure and its own sense of what kind of country it should be. But freezing the conflict – which is

Peter Hoskin

Cable’s punditry could come unstuck

“It’s not imminent. But you can see this happening.” So sayeth Vince Cable about the prospect of another global financial crisis, in interview with the New Statesman today. To be fair, you can see his point: there is a pervasive sense that the contradictions of the banking sector still haven’t been fixed, and — as I have written recently — our economy, and economies worldwide, are still afflicted by debt of all varieties. But that’s not going to calm those Tories who regard Cable as a combustive liability. In the weeks since the Lib Dems’  annihilation at the polls, the Business Secretary has increasingly reverted to his pre-coalition form: a

Daniel Korski

Grading Obama’s visit

It was a good state visit. Actually, it has been an excellent visit. Much better than George W Bush’s and even Barack Obama’s 2009 trip to London. The US president got his photo with Wills ‘n’ Kate. The Prime Minister got his presidential high-fives. There were some odd points. The personal chemistry between David Cameron and Barack Obama made the ping-pong match better than it would naturally have been. For, let’s be honest, table tennis is not a natural US-UK sport. There were policy differences between the two leaders too, for example on Libya and deficit reduction. In the end, though, the way to judge visits is not to think

Wednesday

Jonathan Jones

DSK arrest doesn’t spell success for Sarkozy

Before being arrested in New York for rape, Dominque Strauss-Kahn wasn’t just the Managing Director of the IMF. He was also the frontrunner in next year’s French presidential election. In virtually every poll since last summer, Straus-Kahn had posted big leads: both against his fellow Socialists in the primary and against Nicolas Sarkozy in the general. So you might have thought that the trouble that has befallen DSK would improve Sarkozy’s chances of being re-elected in 2012. Certainly the rape charges make Strauss-Kahn very unlikely to run, and much less likely to win even if he did, but the latest polling suggests it’s not Sarkzoy who benefits at his expense.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Obama re-affirms the special relationship

The speech was not a classic but Barack Obama’s address to both Houses of Parliament covered the bases today. He started with a winning line, remarking that the previous three speakers in Westminster Hall had been the Pope, the Queen and Nelson Mandela which is either “a very high bar or the beginning of a very funny joke.”   As is traditional in these kinds of speeches, Obama paid tribute to the special relationship, lauding it as the embodiment of the values and beliefs of the English-speaking tradition. He went on to say that both the British and the Americans knew that the “longing for human dignity is universal.” Indeed,

Daniel Korski

The Wei forward for the Big Society

The Big Society was dealt another blow with the resignation of Lord Wei yesterday. Sceptics will see this as a vindication of the concept’s problems. Most people, however, won’t notice that he has gone. The debate about the Big Society has long since become an elite sport, a jousting match between a determined promoter — the Prime Minister — and equally determined detractors in the media. Most people don’t care, and it won’t help or hurt the Tories at the next election. That’s a shame. For the Tories could use a positive post-Thatcher narrative about their administration. They may not need it if the country returns to economic growth. But

Peter Hoskin

The state of the NHS

I know most CoffeeHousers aren’t particularly enamoured of paywalls, but the Times has given you a persuasive reason (£) to dive behind theirs today. (Or least to borrow a copy of the paper.) It’s the first of three reports by Camilla Cavendish on the NHS, this one concentrating on the Way Things Are Now. It is both a disheartening read and a powerful reminder of how taxpayers’ cash is being funnelled into a system that is dysfunctional in the extreme. Here is one snippet for your displeasure: “Care in Britain ranges from world-class to shocking. Between 1998 and 2006, 1.6 per cent of bowel cancer sufferers died within a month

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Lock up George Davis

I suppose it’s wrong to lock people up for crimes they didn’t commit. But nonetheless, if George Davis had served his full sentence for an armed robbery which he probably didn’t commit in 1975, then he wouldn’t have been able to take part in the armed robbery on the Bank of Cyprus two years later, or indeed another armed robbery ten years after that. I don’t expect there’s much of an appetite in the Justice Department for preventative custody, though. But Davis was an odd sort of chap to galvanise the middle class lefties back in the 1970s, with their “Free George Davis” campaigns and graffiti. I chanted Free George

Tuesday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

A good time to go

Today is, as the saying has it, a good day to bury bad news. With President Obama on the ground and an ash cloud in the air, not much else is going to get a look in on the news’ bulletins. But it is worth noting that Nat Wei, the government’s big society advisor, has quit his role today having scaled back his involvement in February. Wei has been pretty detached from Downing Street for the last few months, his role rather usurped by Cameron’s big society ambassadors, Shaun Bailey and Charlotte Leslie. So his departure won’t make much difference to the government. But it is still rather embarrassing as

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The austerity hasn’t started yet

Another month, and another all-time record for state spending in Britain. The government splurged £1.8 billion a day in April — of which £332 million a day was borrowed. Up goes the national debt. All of which leaves us with the question: where is this austerity that George Osborne keeps talking about? He’s been in No.11 a year now, and each month state spending has been — on average — 4.9 per cent higher than the same month under Gordon Brown. He seems to be taking the St Augustine approach to fiscal conservatism: Lord, give me spending restraint. But not yet. The below graph shows state spending, per month. The

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Gove strikes to ease the removal of bad teachers

The quality of teaching in schools is one of the main determinants of how well a child does. But, shockingly, in almost half the local authorities in England a teacher hasn’t been sacked for being incompetent in the last five years. Retaining sub-standard teachers has harmed the life chances of goodness knows how many children. So the news that Michael Gove is now consulting on rules that will make it far easier to fire bad teachers is welcome. The Gove proposals give heads much more control and enable them to get rid of a poor teacher in a term; at the moment it takes at least a year and is

Alex Massie Alex Massie

1967 And All That

How do you reconcile these comments? Argument A: “Abbas and co have had a laughably free pass despite their serial aggression, bad faith, reneging on treaties and repeated expressions of exterminatory aggression and incitement to hatred and murder of Jews. Yet it’s Israel alone upon which Obama has dumped, by expecting it to make suicidal concessions to its attackers. At best, Obama remains even-handed between Judeophobic exterminators and their victims; that puts him on the side of the exterminators.” Argument B: “Obama offered the Palestinians nothing.” They’re from the same post. If B is true then A seems odd; if A is true then B seems even odder. Meanwhile, it’s

Alex Massie Alex Massie

“The Church of Scotland has decided to follow modern culture and not scripture.”

It’s not every day you can say that, is it? Nevertheless that’s one evangelical’s view (£) of the Kirk’s decision to consider ending its present moratorium on the induction of gay ministers. The vote came at the end of a long and passionate debate at the General Assembly in Edinburgh. Members also moved to allow ministers and deacons who were in same-sex relationships before 2009 to remain in the church and move parishes if they so wished. The vote followed six-and-a-half hours of discussion on the Same-Sex Relationships and Ministry report that was delivered by a special commission set up in 2009, in the wake of a debate over whether

Monday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Cutting through the BS

If the Big Society were a horse, it would be shot. The wounds are too deep, the contamination too great, its legs are broken. And, worse, the Big Society is giving a good idea a bad name. David Cameron tried manfully today, but we only ever hear about the BS (as most Tory MPs call it) when he’s trying to relaunch it. No agenda can be sustained with such thin support. It has become hopelessly confused as an issue. Myths have crept in that volunteering relies on heavy state spending, so Cameron is talking out of his hat. It ain’t so — Jonathan Jones did the digging — but people

Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

Memo to Mr CTB esq. (Strictly confidential)

Dear Mr CTB, We often say that the best advice a solicitor can give a client is to tell them when to back off from a confrontation. The time has come to give it to you. You must know that your cause is hopeless, and our so-called privacy injunction a laughing stock. Your name is all over Twitter, Facebook and the Scottish press. Millions of people, including your team-mates and your wife, know about your affair with Imogen Thomas. Frankly, if we had broadcast your liaison in adverts on national television, we would have made a better job of protecting your secrets.      You think it cannot get any

James Forsyth James Forsyth

What the attorney general needs to do

I’m sure that all CoffeeHousers know who the footballer is with the super injunction preventing newspapers from publishing anything about his affair with the Big Brother contestant Imogen Thomas. But if you didn’t, the papers would have made pretty odd reading over the past few days because the press keeps making little in jokes that are only funny if you know the player’s identity. David Cameron this morning announced that he knew the identity of the player.  This highlights one of many ironies of the situation, which is that far more people are now aware of who the errant footballer is than would have been if the news had just