Society

Tuesday

10 Mar 2009

Obama administration: Only 5 percent of the Taliban is incorrigible

Chuck Todd at First Read flags up some fascinating comments from Vice-President Biden on his visit to Nato: “5 percent of the Taliban is incorrigible, not susceptible to anything other than being defeated. Another 25 percent or so are not quite sure, in my view, the intensity of their commitment to the insurgency. And roughly 70 percent are involved because of the money, because of them being — getting paid.” Biden goes onto say that the “idea of what concessions would be made is well beyond the scope of my being able to answer, except to say that whatever is initiated will have to be ultimately initiated by the Afghan

Andrew Haldenby

Is this Government finally talking small government?

I’ve just got back from the launch of The Lab, a new initiative by NESTA to increase innovation in public services (which I’m helping). Gordon Brown turned up, with John Denham and Liam Byrne, to give his blessing and to bang the drum for his own contribution today, the new White Paper by the Cabinet Office on public service reform. The opposition parties have been too quick to dismiss the White Paper. They’d have been best advised to engage with it, as it tackles head-on one of the day’s Big Questions: what should happen to the size of government in the wake of the recession? Most of the paper repeats

James Forsyth

Labour’s economically inactive support

I’m fairly sceptical of polls at the moment, politics has been so unusual these past few weeks I’m not sure how worthwhile a snapshot is right now. But the breakdown of today’s numbers in The Times —Labour 30, Tories 42, and Lib Dems 19—does strike me as fascinating. Peter Riddell points out the differences between public and private sector voting intentions. Amongst private sector workers the Tories are at 45, Labour 29 and the Lib Dems 17. But with public sector workers it is Tories 38, Labour 26 and lib Dem 17. It is not that surprising that support for the party of the centre-right is higher among private sector workers.

Fraser Nelson

Don’t hold your breath for a manufacturing-based recovery

Hmmm. So much for manufacturing-based recovery that is supposed to come as a result of the crash of sterling. Manufacturing output was off 2.9% in January, the eleventh consecutive drop. The fact that we’re a lot cheaper to Americans and Europeans doesn’t seem to help much – partly because any sane foreign client will demand price reductions, mindful of the currency drop. Result: a precipitous fall in the ONS Manufacturing Index of Production (below): And in case you were wondering then yes, it’s the worst of any post-war recession as the below graph from Citi shows. A Major-style bust? If only.

James Forsyth

Even the BBC now thinks spending has to be cut

There’s a trailer playing on Radio 4 at the moment for Decision Time. It’s a new show in which Nick Robinson looks at how tough political decisions are made. In the trailer, Nick Robinson talks about the aim of the programme and then says the first programme will look at public spending. His sign-off is: “How would you cut spending–because it does have to be cut” This strikes me as a hugely important shift in the political weather, the BBC now accepts that public spending has to be cut: not the rate of growth slowed but cut. This should embolden the Tories as it suggests that knee-jerk cries of ‘Tory

Peter Hoskin

More must be done for the victims of the recession

Just returning to the theme of my earlier post, I thought I’d flag up some IFS figures which indicate how fiscally squeezed the least well-off are, even before we consider taxes, job losses and the rest. Here’s how today’s Times reports them: “The poorest tenth of the population suffers inflation more than 50 times higher than the RPI measure, which is 0.1 per cent, the Institute for Fiscal Studies said. The most hard-pressed households have an effective inflation rate of 5.4 per cent, while those aged over 80 face a 7.1 per cent annual rise in prices because both of these households spend a bigger proportion of income on food

Peter Hoskin

Moral fervour gives way to technical lingo

Alistair Darling’s article* in the Guardian this morning is a perfect example of why Brown’s global focus will struggle to impress voters. The lingo of international finance settlements is just too dry and disconnected from the plight of the British public. Here are some yawn-inducing excerpts: “For those most at risk, we need to increase financing through the IMF and multilateral banks, through swap-lines between central banks and an enhanced lending facility at the EU level. On Saturday, the G20 finance ministers will meet here in the UK. This will be followed by the London summit on 2 April under the presidency of Gordon Brown. The G20 should agree on

Alex Massie

A brilliant, horrifying, moving article

It’s hard to know how to describe Gene Weingarten’s piece in the Washington Post’s magazine, except to say that it is one of the most heart-breaking, moving, humane, pieces of journalism I’ve read in years. And one of the best. In a sense, mind you, even saying that trivialises the story. It’s about how a parent can inadvertently leave their toddler in the back of their car on a hot day to swelter and, god help us, bake to death. And it’s about how a parent can ever hope to come to any sort of terms with the consequences of such a desperate, fatal, mistake. Just read it.

Monday

9 Mar 2009

Alex Massie

The Libertarian Moral High Ground

James writes: “Too often, politicians on the right, wrongly and short-sightedly, cede the moral high ground to the left. Conservatives in Britain have been particularly guilty of accepting, or at least not disputing, the left’s claims to moral superiority and merely arguing that their approach is more effective.” Well that’s not a problem the libertarians have is it? No shortage of moral high ground there and no small sense of moral supriority either. The libertarian problem is that not many enough people believe it…

James Forsyth

Making the moral case

Too often, politicians on the right, wrongly and short-sightedly, cede the moral high ground to the left. Conservatives in Britain have been particularly guilty of accepting, or at least not disputing, the left’s claims to moral superiority and merely arguing that their approach is more effective. One result of this is when the left manages to look competent, as it did under Blair, voters flock to it. So it is refreshing to see Michael Gove making the moral case for the Tory’s education policies in a speech to Barnado’s tonight: “Our approach to education reform is driven, explicitly, by a sense of moral purpose. We believe education is a good

James Forsyth

The benefits of the vision thing

Amidst the torrent of bad economic news, people want to know where the growth will come from once this crisis has passed. It would be foolish to imagine that we can go back to the status quo-ante, that financial services and property can again drive the British economy as they did during the late 1990s and the early years of this century. George Osborne’s speech on Friday was the best attempt we have heard yet from a politician to answer the future growth question. Matthew Parris, not a man given to hyperbole, described it as “thrilling” and “an example of what politics should be for”. Matthew Taylor, Tony Blair’s former policy

James Forsyth

Frum, Limbaugh and catering to media audiences

British Conservatives can tell Republicans at least one thing about recovering from electoral rejection: don’t believe that what makes a media product successful will do the same for a political party. For years, the Tories looked at the popularity of The Daily Mail, a brilliantly produced newspaper, and imagined that if they could ape its style, tone and positions they’d be onto a winner. But that turned out not to be the case: people wanted something very different from a potential government than they do a newspaper. Equally, a political party has to appeal to far more people—in the British context about 40 percent of the electorate, in the US

Alex Massie

America Moves to the Left

Another problem with the Republican party’s apparent belief that the Same Old Tunes are just as popular as they ever were, if, that is, they’re played properly is that, just as the United States is changing demographically, so its political centre-of-gravity has moved to the left. As Ross Douthat says, persuasively to my mind, what seemed radical 15 years ago now seems possible and much less scary. Thus, the rising cost – and insecurity – of health coverage has helped persuade voters that the government must be a larger part of the solution. Thus too, the rising cost of college education helps persuade families that more needs to be done

James Forsyth

The state of education

A statistic in today’s Daily Mail reveals just how badly comprehensives are failing their pupils. “They educate only seven per cent of pupils, but independent schools produce more teenagers with three A grade A-levels than all our comprehensives put together. More than 10,000 pupils at fee-paying schools achieved three As last year. But among those at comprehensives, fewer than 7,500 achieved such good results.” In his first speech to the Labour conference as party leader, Gordon Brown declared: “the reason I am here – the real reason I am here – is that I want their children and their grandchildren whom I also represent to have all the chances that

Alex Massie

The Prior Problem

Apart from being England wicket-keepers what do Matt Prior and Godfrey Evans have in common? Congratulations if you answered that they’re the only keepers in the history of test cricket to have twice conceded 25 or more byes in an innings. Of course, Evans’s “achievement” came in 91 tests; Prior has done it in just 15. In fact, at the time of writing Prior has the misfortune to rank 3rd and 4th in the list of “most byes conceded in an innings”. The 34 he’s conceded (so far!) in the current test goes along with the 33 he let through against India at the Oval in 2007. In one sense

Peter Hoskin

Is welfare reform becoming a consensus issue?

Just returning to this Compass / YouGov poll of Labour members which I flagged up yesterday, as some of the other results are worth noting. There’s plenty of support for ostensibly leftist measures, such as a crackdown on bankers’ bonuses and higher taxes for the well-off. But James Purnell’s welfare reform agenda also gets a fair amount of backing, despite the fact that it’s been unpopular with the left of the party before now. On the question of what should be done with the reforms, the response is thus: Implemented as planned — 50 Delayed until after the recession is over, and jobs are more readily available — 35 Scrapped

Peter Hoskin

The requirement to rethink aid

Following my earlier post, on how Brown will contribute British funds to a World Bank fund for poorer countries, I just thought I’d recommend this excellent interview with Dambisa Moyo and Richard Dowden in the latest issue of Standpoint. Fraser’s already commented on Moyo’s book Dead Aid (here, and The Spectator’s review here) but a good thesis is worth repeating. So here’s her take on the failure of “government-to-government flows or multilateral-to-government flows” to improve conditions in Africa: “…if you are a government and you have as much money as you would like to maintain the military, then you don’t actually worry about being kicked out of office because the

Fraser Nelson

The language of terror

Terrorism is a propaganda war where words matter as well as bullets, and those who murdered the British soldiers at Massereene Barracks could not complain at the much of the coverage today. The BBC news, and much of the other news, announced simply that the Real IRA had carried out the attacks. Someone who does not follow the Northern Ireland peace process carefully could well take this statement at face value, and assume the IRA is back. And this is exactly what the terrorists want to convey. An integral part of the “Real IRA’s” mission is to make out as if they are the genuine IRA and that the McGuinness/Adams

Alex Massie

Frum vs Limbaugh: the Newsweek Edition

Regular readers will not be surprised to learn that I think David Frum’s Newsweek piece on the Trouble with Rush has a lot going for it. I admire David’s bravery in sticking to his guns. Bravery? Why what could be easier than selling out to the Mainstream Media and the Washington cocktail party set? Frum is Canadian Low-life! Since when was he a conservative anyway? The reaction to Frum’s criticisms of Limbaugh is telling: it’s the reaction of a party losing interest in governing. Here for instance is Jay Nordlinger, writing at the Corner, claiming that “Rush’s politics are the politics of Reagan” and that William F Buckley “loved” Rush

James Forsyth

Will Darling bite?

There’s a great scene in the BBC’s Margaret when Willie Whitelaw says after Margaret Thatcher has humiliated Geoffrey Howe, ‘Beware the fury of a patient man’. One feels much the same way about Alistair Darling. Darling might, according to Treasury civil servants, be rather out of his depth in the job but he has tried to do his best and has never been less than loyal to the Prime Minister. His reward for this is a constant whispering campaign against him from Number 10, which put him in the job in the first place, and rumours—which flared up again towards the end of last week—that he’ll be replaced by Ed