Society

Wednesday

Peter Hoskin

The Lansley commitment

ConHome’s Tim Montgomerie – instrumental in getting the Cameroons to ditch their pledge to match overall Labour spending plans – has launched his most acerbic attack  yet on the Tories’ commitment to hefty real terms spending increases in health, as reiterated by Andrew Lansley on Today this morning. His points deserve repeating: “There is indeed something incredible about the Conservative position on health spending.  It’s a leftover from George Osborne’s 2007 pledge to match all Labour spending.  It’s the wrong policy for at least three reasons; — At a time when Britain’s debt mountain is causing international rating agencies to reconsider Britain’s credit status it is unaffordable.  Public sector spending

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Same old Gordon

Perhaps the most comic aspect of the past few days is how the Cabinet and then the PLP have been persuaded to give Gordon Brown a stay of execution by promises that Brown would be more collegial and call off his bully boys. (I’ve lost count of the number of times Gordon Brown is said to have made this pledge). But the Brown operation ain’t going to change as this story in The Independent makes clear: “…on the same day as his Parliamentary Labour Party speech, hard-nosed Brownites were telling journalists that Mr Purnell had quit because he was not up to his challenging welfare brief (a myth) and were

Peter Hoskin

Hunting for a vision

And so the Glorious Fightback begins for Gordon Brown.  Stage One is his announcement on Parliamentary reform today; but it’s Stage Two, his “national plan” next week, which seems to be getting the most hype.  Indeed, an insightful article in the FT suggests that the Dear Leader’s inner circle regards it as “the last throw of the dice”.  And Peter Mandelson drops in words like “boldness,” and phrases such as “decisive action,” just for good measure. The key point, though, comes towards the end of the article: “Some doubt that Mr Brown’s plan will be able to demonstrate anything more than government impotence before the election. ‘This is classic Gordon.

Nick Kochan

The bruiser who fought his way back

History will regard Gerald Ronson as the man who withstood the humiliation of a high-profile trial and conviction, took his punishment without flinching, and returned quietly to his métier of making millions. Speaking from the comfort of his boardroom at Heron, his family’s property empire, the 70-year-old tycoon says, ‘Did I get a black eye, yes; did I take it, yes; and did I come back better than anyone else in the Guinness case? Yes.’ The circumstances were very different when I first met Ronson. This was in 1990, between sessions at Southwark Crown Court. We happened to be travelling in the same lift, he to meet his lawyers, me

Melissa Kite

Gordon pleads for one last chance from the girls

Melissa Kite says that the PM is ill at ease with female colleagues. No surprise that it was the women — Blears, Flint, Kennedy — who rebelled while the men hid under the table Remember the Brown Bounce? Yes, there really was one. It was back in September 2007 and Gordon was riding high on a wave of popularity. Honestly, I’m not making this up. A YouGov poll gave the Prime Minister a commanding 11-point lead over the Tories after his appeal to traditional values at the Labour party conference. What’s more, among women voters the Labour lead was an astonishing 16 per cent — 16 per cent! Mr Brown

Irwin Stelzer

This is how you should use your reprieve, Gordon

Irwin Stelzer says the PM should seize the opportunity presented by this stay of execution: plot a path to fiscal sanity, cut red tape and restore Britain’s stature on the world stage Now that Gordon Brown is determined to go down with the Labour ship, or to sink it, if you believe his harshest critics, he might want to consider a few things he can do in the short time left to him at Number 10 to enable historians to be kinder to him. Leave office he might be forced to do after the general election he has so long resisted. But it remains open to him to do so

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

If anything, this result understates the support for the BNP

So, why the great shock? Why the hand-wringing? It’s not as if they weren’t warned. Why all those metropolitan journos disembarking at Barnsley station on the 11.47 from King’s Cross and gingerly approaching the local Untermensch with a sort of disgusted awe: what is it about this ghastly place that resulted in 17 per cent of its benighted inhabitants voting for Hitler’s bastard offspring, the British National Party? It must be simply that they don’t like the local darkies, think that there are too many of them and, poor dumb creatures that they are, feel threatened. Not racist, as such; simply lacking an education. But this approach to explaining the

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Brooding Prince

Hamlet Wyndhams Arcadia Duke of York’s ‘No one can do the definitive Hamlet. It’s too big for that. But you can do an enormous amount.’ Wise words. Jude Law’s as it happens. All Hamlets fail and it’s a great tribute that Law’s fails remarkably little. His stage presence is thrilling, intense and highly athletic, and he has no trouble capturing the pace and rhythm of the verse. What he misses is any hint of humour or warmth. There’s very little ordinary likeability about the Prince. Instead we get a brooding, frustrated outsider full of scorn and bile, and with a strain of impatient mockery that hints at priggishness and even

Tuesday

Peter Hoskin

Osborne sets out the “risky choice” that is voting Labour

So what’s the story, George Osborne?  Reading his speech today, there’s plenty of sturdy talk about lowering the national debt burden and encouraging saving – but a few gaps that need filling if the policy is to live up to the rhetoric.  Osborne seems to recognise this himself: for every reference to the Office of Budget Responsility or the IHT cut, there’s an admission that the Tories will release more detailed proposals “in due course”. In which light, the most striking passage reads thus (my emphasis): “The markets are saying that Britain needs a Conservative Government with a working majority if we want to avoid the costs to the British

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The True Nature of Twenty20 Cricket is Revealed

First things first: congratulations to Ireland and the Netherlands for enlivening the World Twenty20 Cup. Secondly, well-done Australia who now have an extra couple of weeks to prepare for the Ashes. Typically, England flattered us with their cunning in their opening fixture only to let us down in their second. Thirdly, I’m indebted to Pootergeek for drawing my attention to the fact that the tournament’s organisers have endorsed my view of the essential nature of Twenty20 cricket: namely that like anything that is barbarous and, in some sense, grotesque it has a certain fascination but that, nonetheless, we are supposed to have evolved from this sort of thing en route

Peter Hoskin

Brown’s last chance (or maybe not)

According to Steve Richards today, Labour figures have given Brown until this autumn to improve the party’s position or they’ll ditch him. Hm. Hasn’t Brown been threatened with these kinds of utlimatums before? Oh yes: The Sunday Telegraph, 20 April, 2008 “The Prime Minister, who is battling a growing rebellion over his abolition of the 10p tax rate, has been given until the end of the summer to turn things round by backbenchers angry at a string of image and policy failures.” (here) The Telegraph, 24 May, 2008 “It is that Mr Brown be given until the end of July to prove himself and restore morale. If by then things

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Tory Foreign Policy: Where’s the Beef?

ConservativeHome interview William Hague and it’s all very jocular and genial. Except for when it’s being a little bit troubling and alarming. To wit: ConservativeHome: Name three specific things you would change about British foreign policy. William Hague: First, we would create a fully fledged National Security Council, comprising all relevant senior ministers and chaired by the Prime Minister. This would be a decisive break from the sofa style decision making of the last twelve years, which has often led to decisions being made without all the necessary information being considered or understood. Second, we would be firmly opposed to the greater centralisation of power in EU institutions, which reduces

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Justice is done

That the civil case against the Omagh bombers has succeeded is wonderful news, a triumph for justice against terror. Ruth Dudley-Edwards, who is writing what will be a superb book on the trial, has a moving piece in the Mail today about what the families went through and what the verdict meant to them. All those who helped the family achieve justice—the lawyers, Robert Cranborne, Peter Mandelson, the Mail and many others —deserve immense credit. Thanks to them and the awe-inspiring determination and courage of the families, the bombers have not got away with murder.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

How much of a drag on Labour’s support is Brown? Well, Balls would do better

One detail from the Indy’s poll about how Labour leaders other than Brown would do particularly amused me: Ed Balls would do a better job than Gordon Brown at holding down Cameron’s majority. Now, in a way this illustrates the problem with this kind of poll: the one percent uptick in Labour support is due to the fact that the public know they don’t like Brown and have yet to find that they don’t like Balls either. But it does show how strong anti-Brown sentiment is in the country. On the subject of polls, I’d be fascinated to see someone do a name recognition poll on the various leadership contenders.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Does the government now oppose the setting up of academies?

The Guardian reports that the new schools minister Vernon Coaker is a member of the Socialist Educational Association. The SEA campaigns, among other things, for ‘the Government to end the setting up of academies’. So, we have a schools minister who is opposed to the biggest educational innovation Labour has made in its 12 years in power.   With Brown so weak, we can expect a lot more of this kind of thing. Every Labour pressure group will be pushing at an open door until Brown finally goes. Policy will be decided not on the basis of what is good for the party, but on what might just keep the party behind Gordon.   One

Peter Hoskin

Is the rebellion over for this week?

So where have the emails and signed letters calling for Brown to resign gone to?  They certainly didn’t appear during the PLP meeting yesterday, which leads you to wonder why.  Didn’t they get enough signatures?  Did the signatories decide to hold off, to give Brown time to reconstruct his premiership?  Or are they planning to drop a bombshell over the next few days?   You feel that if the letters – and possible stalking horse challenges – were to appear, then they’d have done so last night.  After all, that was the moment for the Labour party to speak to the Dear Leader; to make their case en masse.  The

Peter Hoskin

Behind the desk-banging

One figure I’d like to see is the ratio of Labour MPs who think Gordon should go against those – all six of them – who actually told him to go during the PLP meeting yesterday. What would it be?  10:1?  20:1?  30:1?  One thing’s for sure: those half-dozen honest souls aren’t the only ones who’d like to see the back of Brown.  So why all the desk-banging?  It’s just utterly surreal. The behind-the-scenes loathing is a theme developed by Rachel Sylvester in her Times column this morning.  She writes of Cabinet dissent; of MPs fed up with the “sense of paralysis” at the heart of government; and of the

Monday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

There are more twists left in this plot

As Fraser said earlier, the rebellion has not been defeated: Brown has not had some moment that restores his authority. Instead, he has made the same pledges that he has made before—to set out his vision, to be more inclusive and to call off his bully boys—and they look like they will be enough to buy him a few more weeks. But these pledges won’t be met because Brown can’t change. (Hands up if anyone thinks we’ll make it through the summer without a minister being briefed against by Downing Street). So, soon enough there will be another trigger for a rebellion—defeat in Norwich North or a string of polls

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Bar talk | 8 June 2009

It’s over and Brown is safe. This, at least, is the verdict from the Commons bars from which I have just done a brief tour to sample the mood on behalf of Coffee Housers. One minister I spoke to – by no means a diehard Brown loyalist – whipped out a list of dissenters who had spoken at the meeting. He had jotted down the names by instinct. It kinda reminded me of that Judean People’s Front sketch where they read out the name of a rival group and shout “splitters!” It’s within Labour’s instincts. Sniff out and round on the minority faction. It’s what they do. I haven’t spoken