I think it’s safe to say that Shoichi Nakagawa’s resignation today is the first time a government minister’s resigned for what are – officially – cough-syrup related reasons. Although, watching the video below, it’s easy to see why people are saying alcohol, not medicine, may have been behind it all:
Here at the headline numbers from the latest Ipsos-MORI poll: Conservatives — 48 percent (up 4 percentage points) Labour — 28 percent (down 2) Lib Dems — 17 percent (no change) Aside from the hefty Tory lead, the unchanged Lib Dem position is worth noting – especially in view of the astonishing gains they’ve been making in other recent polls. I haven’t seen any below-headline findings yet, but will report back if there’s anything interesting. P.S. The last time the Tories had a 20-point lead (or above) was back in September.
Saying the things that practically no other Labour MP will say, Frank Field writes an incisive article in today’s Independent. Number 10 will not be amused by his claim that there’s a “very serious possibility of a sterling crisis'”, but I figure it’s this passage that should worry them most: “…tax increases are unavoidable even in the short run, and the Government should seize that necessity to help make our tax system more progressive. In times of economic decline it is more, not less important, to protect the poorest by developing initiatives that shift any increase in the tax burden onto those with the widest shoulders… …increasing taxes on some,
Hillary Clinton, on her tour of Asia, has announced that the Japanese PM will be the first foreign leader to be received by President Obama at the White House. Prime Minister Aso will visit Washington next week. This still leaves the race to be the first European leader to visit Obama open. But Gordon is not favoured to win that one either. PS Prime Minister Aso is, in some ways, in an even worse state than Gordon Brown. His approval rating is below 10 percent and his finance minister has had to resign after appearing tired and emotional at the G7 Finance Ministers in Rome.
…for now. The RPI measure of inflation (which includes mortgage repayment costs) dropped from 0.9 percent in December to 0.1 percent in January. The targeted measure, CPI, remains well above zero – dropping from 3.1 percent to 3.0 percent – although some forecasters think it will go negative this year. Expect further rate cuts from the Bank to stave off a period of prolonged deflation.
Watch out. The fur’s flying in Cabinet, and there may well be blood. The latest claim, revealed by Ben Brogan in the Mail, is that Harriet Harman’s being blamed by her colleagues for floating that ‘lifeboat for Brown’ story yesterday: “Last night, Harriet Harman was at the centre of a blame game over claims that Mr Brown is Germany’s favourite for a new job as a global financial watchdog. Downing Street poured scorn on reports that the Prime Minister is being lined up for an international role that would force him to quit No 10. Labour sources claimed instead that Mr Brown was the victim of a botched spin operation
James fears that Barack Obama’s healthcare reforms may be in trouble if he can’t win enough Republican support to convince centrist voters. In other words, he’ll be too much beholden to the left-wing of the Democratic party. Well, perhaps. But centrist voters in 2009 are rather to the left of where they were in 1993, the last time major health care reform was tried. Also: Obama is a better salesman than early-90s Hillary Clinton. Remember too, Obama won with more than half the vote; Clinton was elected merely by a plurality of punters. Now it may be that the GOP’s near-universal refusal to meet the new President half-way on the
Barack Obama likes to portray himself as a post-partisan politician, someone who reaches beyond party. So, it was a blow to him to have to pass the stimulus without a single Republican vote in the House and only three Republican votes in the Senate. His cabinet doesn’t look particularly bi-partisan either. Robert Gates is a hold-over from the Bush administration but he is not even a registered Republican meaning that the only Republican in the Cabinet is the Transportation Secretary Ray La Hood: Bush also chose transportation for the one member of the other party in his Cabinet, Norm Mineta. In the New Yorker, though, Hendrik Hertzberg argues that as
When Nick Herbert was moved from Justice to Department of Environment Food and Rural Affairs, which is essentially the old Ministry of Agriculture Food and Fisheries, in the Tory reshuffle there was disappointment among reformers who felt that his talents could have been better used elsewhere, most notably the Department of Communities and Local Government. But Herbert is bringing some much needed policy innovation and energy to this brief; his predecessor Peter Ainsworth was far too anonymous. Today’s policy proposal on food labeling strikes the right balance between informing the consumer of where their food has come from and avoiding crass food nationalism. Combined with last week’s proposal to create
The contrasting fortunes of Blair and Brown over the last few years are like something out of a childhood morality tale. Impatient Gordon hurries Tony out of office before he wanted to go. The result: Blair escapes the blame for the financial crisis, leaves office with impressive approval ratings and secures a string of impressive international jobs. Also, by getting out before the crunch hits, Blair makes a small fortune on the international speaking circuit and raises enough money to get several charities growing. Meanwhile, Gordon inherits the crown at pretty much the worst possible time and now finds the Labour party almost certain to go down to a massive
There has been some speculation that the financial crisis will force Britain to join the euro. But I think it is far more likely that the crisis will break the eurozone. Consider this from the FT’s Wolfgang Münchau, who could hardly be called a euro-sceptic: “The right course would be to solve the underlying problem – to shift at least some of the stimulus spending to EU or eurozone level and, ideally, drop those toxic national schemes altogether and to adopt a joint strategy for the financial sector, at least for the 45 cross-border European banks. But this is not going to happen. It did not happen in October, and
Now the Tories have nabbed David Freud from the Government, they have the perfect opportunity to recast the welfare debate for the recession years. As Alex Barker pointed out in an excellent blog post for the FT yesterday, they certainly need to. After all, recent findings suggest that the Freud-prescribed workfare measures aren’t working quite as well as many hoped they would as the downturn takes hold. Now, that’s not to say the welfare reform agenda should be jettisoned. There’s overwhelming evidence that it works better than centralised alternatives, and with unemployment levels shooting ever upwards – and with some 5.2 million Brits on out-of-work benefits – there’s a clear need for drastic
LONDON, ENGLAND – FEBRUARY 16: Photojournalists stage an act of mass photography outside New Scotland Yard police station on February 16, 2009 in London. The event aims to highlight the threat of an amendment to the Counter Terrorism Act that could be used to prevent press photographers taking pictures of the police. (Photo by Oli Scarff/Getty Images) Of course, it’s not just press photographers who are vulnerable to this sweeping, draconian legislation. More here.
So Obama has said he doesn’t feel the need for his presidency to be reinforced by the presence of a British-government-owned bust of Winston Churchill in the Oval Office. As my friend Tim Shipman reports, the bust, loaned to George W Bush after 9/11, is now in the care of the British Embassy in Washington. This is a good thing in as much as anything which damages the Cult of Churchill in the United States is to be welcomed. One can desire this without in any way compromising one’s respect and appreciation for Churchill’s wartime heroics. But the Churchill Cult in the US – especially amongst conservatives – distorts American
Westminster loves defections; they are tangible sign of the direction in which the wind is blowing. So, David Freud’s decision to move out of Labour’s orbit and to the Conservatives is being treated as big news in the village. Tory Kremlinologists should note that it was George Osborne who reeled him in. This is a sign of both Osborne’s continuing importance to the Cameron project and the fact that Freud will be reporting into the leadership not Theresa May. Paul Waugh blogs that the Tories should now be reaching out to two former heads of Blair’s No 10 policy unit, Geoff Mulgan who is now running the Young Foundation and Matthew
It’s an ill-wind that fails to blow in any silver-lined clouds and the current financial difficulties are no exception. It seems that Sir Allen Stanford, the Texan financier determined to “crack” the American “market” with Twenty20 cricket may be in a spot of bother himself. I’m going to guess that having people suggest you could be a kind of Caribbean Bernie Madoff is, even if completely untrue, not Good News. It wasn’t the money involved in the Stanford Twenty20 challenge match between his all-stars and England that was objectionable. After all, there’s a long history of big-money challenge matches and cricket’s known worse rogues than Stanford in the past. True,
I imagine CCHQ will have a ‘headless chicken’ folder, containing examples of where Brown’s numerous schemes to bolster the economy aren’t having the desired effect. If so, it should certainly include a copy of the FT’s study into the Government’s loan guarantee scheme for small businesses. Here’s how the FT introduces it: “Only about £12m has been lent to companies under the government’s £1bn loan guarantee scheme for small business, a month after it was launched, according to analysis by the Financial Times. Leading business organisations on Sunday attacked the ‘trickle’ of funding from the banks, warning that government attempts to kick-start corporate lending simply were not working.” Stories like
I wrote earlier that the papers are stuffed with bad news for Gordon Brown. The same’s true for taxpayers, especially in light of the CBI’s latest set of economic forecasts. They have GDP shrinking by 3.3 percent this year, and unemployment rising above 3 million in 2010. Which adds up to a lower tax revenue for the Exchequer and, in turn, more and more borrowing. Indeed, the CBI estimate that the government will need to rack up £100 billion more debt over the next couple of years than the PBR accounts for. It’s a fiscal mess that – as yesterday’s excellent ConservativeHome report made clear – future governments and taxpayers
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 – provided 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
Few commentators are as well plugged into the Brown circle as Jackie Ashley which makes her column this morning absorbing reading. Ashley floats the idea that Brown might quit after the G20 summit in April to become head of a new international financial regulatory body. Ashley admits that the story sounds implausible but she says that “it comes from quite close to the inner core.” Leaving aside the fact that putting Brown in charge of this body would be rather like putting the head of the West Indies Cricket Board in charge of all pitch preparation for international cricket, it seems highly implausible that Brown, who has waited so long
