An eyecatching snippet from the Telegraph: “[Labour chief whip, Nick] Brown said that he was concerned that a hardcore rump of five per cent of Labour MPs were responsible for a quarter of all ‘unauthorised absences’ from the Commons.” Now, I wonder who they might be…
What is it with Gordon Brown and alarm calls? He spent years ignoring the IMF’s warnings about the state of the UK public finances. And now, thanks to a National Audit Office report, we learn that he ignored warnings about the preparedness of the Treasury to deal with a banking collapse. Here’s the relevant passage from that report, with the key part underlined: 31. The Treasury had been aware of potential shortcomings in the arrangements for dealing with a financial institution in difficulty prior to the crisis at Northern Rock. From 2004 the Tripartite Authorities had undertaken exercises to test their response to a range of scenarios. These exercises
Good to see three of my favourite whistleblowers – Katharine Gun, Brian Jones and Derek Pasquill – giving evidence to the Public Accounts Committee today. But it seems from the reporting that Carne Ross, former first secretary at the United Nations, rather stole the show by live video link from New York. Ross, it seems he suggested that there is still more to be found out about the Iraq War and said that the full papaer trail should be published. Funnily enough, Alistair Campbell didn’t use the opportunity of the guest editorship of my old publication, the New Statesman, to enlighten us further. It was a bold, if rather curious
If you want a taste of what Cameron’s speech on the public services was like earlier, do tune into his interview with Nick Robinson – video on the BBC website here. He’s considerably more unabashed about talking cuts than he has been in the past, and stresses the “tough choices” that a Tory government would have to make. It makes for a fascinating contrast with his press conference in January, when Cameron asserted that the NHS, schools, international development and defence would all see real terms spending increases under a Tory government. Pushed by Robinson today, he seems only to commit to increases for the NHS and international development and,
As this recession drags on, I suspect that three groups—apart from the finance figures who behaved so recklessly—will bear the brunt of public anger: corporations and individuals who avoid tax, those who abuse the welfare state and those public servants who take advantage of their position to unfairly enrich themselves and their families. The politician who can learn how to harness this anger would show the electorate that they are on the voters’ side. The way to make this message cut through would be to go against type. So, for example, Cameron should emphasise that he’ll clamp down on tax avoidance rather than majoring on welfare abuse. (Naturally, Labour should
Timothy Garton Ash tries to explain the Anglo-American relationship in terms of another great partnership: Jeeves and Wooster. Here, in miniature, is a classic example of that whole British approach to our relationship with the US, which I call the Jeeves school of diplomacy. Impeccable manners; a discreet smile; always perfect loyalty in public; but privately murmuring insistently, “Is that wise, Sir?” And back home in Jeeves’s own club, frequented – as devotees of PG Wodehouse will recall – only by gentlemen’s gentlemen (ie butlers), you tut-tut about the foolish conduct of the masters. This has, in some measure, been a British approach for more than 60 years, ever since
David Cameron has just delivered what struck me as his most forceful speech yet on public spending, an indication that the Tories may finally be prepared to talk about cuts. The basic theme was “more for less” – cutting down on Government waste and trimming the “quangocracy” – to deal with the crisis of our public finances. Sure, it’s all still a little nebulous. But at least it makes fiscal sense – unlike the “sharing the proceeds of growth” formula, which I suspect this speech was designed to bury once and for all. The more Cameron talks like this, the better for the Tories. As Robert Chote points out in
Robert Chote, the director of the IFS, has a piece in today’s Times detailing just how bad the state of the public finances is. As Chote puts is, ‘public spending will have to be squeezed and taxes will have to rise’ whoever wins the next election. The real worry, though, is that Gordon Brown trashes the public finances so comprehensively in the next PBR before going to the polls that it becomes more expensive for this country to borrow: “The Pre-Budget Report assumed that the Government would continue to pay an average interest rate of only a little over 4 per cent on its debt. There are good reasons to
…there’s a call for Gordon Brown to get a Nobel Prize nomination – and from the Vatican’s favourite economist, no less. Paul Waugh has the details.
Here’s how David Cameron kicks off his article in the latest issue of the magazine, before going on to outline the Tories’ “empowerment” agenda: “‘Sit back, keep quiet, let the government unravel and you will be in Number 10.’ If I had a pound for every time these words of advice have been uttered to me over the last year or so, I’d be able to make a sizeable contribution towards easing the pain of Labour’s debt crisis. But the advice — however well meaning — is plain wrong. The election is far from won and I still hold to the belief that governments don’t just lose elections; oppositions must
You felt it had to come at some time, and here it is – the Tories have reworked the original ‘Labour isn’t working’ poster (30 years old this year) for the current recession. As Fraser suggested earlier, you can expect this message to form their central attack from now until polling day.
The argument raging in America over the AIG bonuses is basically the same as the one in Britain over Fred Goodwin’s pension. Those responsible for dragging their companies down and forcing the taxpayer to bail them out are receiving huge sums of money. To add insult to injury, the government could—and should—have done something to stop it. There are two schools of thought on where we go from here. One is that these case are a distraction from bigger, more important issues. The other holds that if public support is to be maintained for the unpalatable steps that are necessary to restore the economy to health, then the wrongdoers must
Is there such a thing as the collective wisdom of Coffee House? By the end of The Spectator Inquiry into the recession, we’ll find out. It’s now live and with its own wiki site – http://spectatorinquiry.pbwiki.com. We’re very much playing this by ear, so I’d be grateful if a few CoffeeHousers could head over there, have a fiddle about with it and let us know if it works. Within the next few days we will have the transcripts from interview with William White and Nigel Lawson. Meanwhile have a look, have a tinker, play with it, add pages, get writing, get stuck in…
Reporting speculation that the Government will delay its departmental spending review, the FT contains this intriguing snippet: “According to one Downing Street insider, there is a debate between those who believe that at least the top priorities for spending should be spelt out, so Labour can challenge the Conservatives on whether they will stick to those plans. Against that is the fear that if the general election becomes a debate over who is best placed to cut public spending, the electorate might favour the Conservatives.” This internal debate suggests that the Government’s commitment to the “Tory cuts” attack is at least weakening. The question now is whether that will embolden
Stay tuned for live coverage of PMQs from 1200 onwards. 1204: Here’s Brown now. First question from Jim Sheridan – “Today’s unemployment figures are extremely disappointing … will [the PM] reassure us that he will deal with this?” An opportunity for Brown to talk about “investment” in skills and training. 1206: Cameron now. Leads on unemployment and the rise in the claimant count. “Doesn’t this mean that the PM’s claim that Britain was best-placed to weather the recession was nonsense?” 1208: Brown repsonds that the Government are spending £1.3 billion on the problem. He adds, predictably, that the Tories would “do nothing”. 1209: Good blunt attack from Cameron: “There’s a gulf
The latest set of polls has created some grumblings among Tories, and CoffeeHousers, about the party not being further ahead. Personally, I’m highly sceptical of polls at the moment. British politics has, for obvious reasons, been too unusual in the past few weeks to make a snapshot of opinion that useful. But it is worth pointing that the Tories are ahead by the exactly the same amount in the ICM poll – whose numbers are comparable – as Labour were in August 1996. The similarities don’t end there: The Guardian also presented its August 1996 poll as good news for the government that was 12 points behind. Here are extracts from its report
So would an economic recovery give Labour a slim chance of winning the next election? That’s the question mooted by the Guardian this morning, as their ICM poll discovers that some people planning to vote Tory or Lib Dem would consider switching to Labour if there are “clear signs of a recovery” by May 2010. That’s 9 percent of current Tory “voters” and 22 percent of Lib Dem “voters”, to be precise. To my mind, there are two major impediments to a significant Recovery Boost for Labour. The first is, simply, that there may not be a recovery. After all, leaked IMF figures yesterday have downgraded UK growth for this
It’s not hard to see why Robyn Nevin should have made such a beeline for Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking, or why the Melbourne Theatre Company should be hosting this production. This one-hander about the evolution of grief had been done with remarkable success in New York by Vanessa Redgrave, and it was clearly a star turn for an older actress. Joan Didion, that supremely imaginative chronicler of modern America, had seen her husband, the writer John Gregory Dunne, die before her eyes. But seeing was not, in the deeper sense of emotional credibility, believing. And so the distinguished journalist and bracingly sceptical intellect set about consoling herself
Virginia Postrel’s column in The Atlantic this month makes for fascinating reading. In it, she highlight academic research that shows that the so-called ‘great moderation’ was not down purely to central banks or government policies, as central bankers and politicians wanted to think, but “changes in business practices that occurred for competitive reasons having nothing to do with macroeconomic goals.” As Postrel puts it, “The Great Moderation looks a lot like the staid 1950s, with better inventory management and more-flexible employment contracts.” The Federal Reserve then became a huge part of the problem with its aggressive cutting of interest rates in 2001. Postrel points to research from John B, Taylor,
As it’s St Patrick’s Day, here’s a clip of the great Irish comedian Dave Allen to round off the afternoon: I’d also recommend you check out this (sadly, unembeddable) clip of Allen’s 1993 routine on banks – I reckon he may have spotted the signs of the credit crunch before anyone else…