Society

Friday

The Spectator

Across the site | 21 November 2008

To accompany this week’s leading Arts article by Selina Mills, the Spectator website has been given exlcusive permission to host a clip of the recently-discovered Agatha Christie tapes.  You can listen to that clip, and read Selina’s article, by clicking here. And over at the Parliamentarian Awards section, we’ve uploaded all the articles from the special supplement in this week’s issue of the magazine.  They include Matthew d’Ancona’s review of the year in politics; an article by Iain Martin on the erosion of Parliament’s authority; Lloyd Evans on the speaking styles of the three main party leaders; an interview with Tony Benn by Mary Wakefield; and Louise Bagshawe’s account of

Peter Hoskin

Should the Tories lie low?

An engaging article by Simon Jenkins in today’s Guardian, on why the Tories shouldn’t worry about the vacillating opinion polls, and would be better served by lying low for the time being: “There is no electoral advantage ever to be gained by an opposition during a national crisis. The sane policy is to keep your head down and stay quiet… ..Political commentators have widely attributed Cameron’s fall to the vagaries of his economic policy and the vacillations of Osborne. History offers no support for this analysis. It suggests that the behaviour of an opposition at such a time is irrelevant. History also suggests that Brown’s current standing will for sure

Thursday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

So what kind of blog is this, anyway?

Well, according to this site – which purports to “analyse” your blog – I’m a Mechanic or an ISTP on the Myers-Briggs scale, just like Andrew Sullivan. This means that we’re: The independent and problem-solving type. They are especially attuned to the demands of the moment are masters of responding to challenges that arise spontaneously. They generelly prefer to think things out for themselves and often avoid inter-personal conflicts. The Mechanics enjoy working together with other independent and highly skilled people and often like seek fun and action both in their work and personal life. They enjoy adventure and risk such as in driving race cars or working as policemen

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The Parliamentary failings exposed by the tragic case of Baby P

Someone who has followed the Baby P case particularly closely, writes to Coffee House with the following observations: Haringey’s lawyers concluded on 25 July 2007 that the “the threshold for initiating Care Proceedings … was not met” despite medical staff concluding in June that there was “a reasonable probability” that Baby P’s injuries had been caused by physical abuse. This suggests that the lawyers believed that Baby P “probably” being deliberately hurt was not sufficient evidence even to argue the case for a Care Order.   Considering that the hurdle that has to be cleared to get a Care Order is that a child “is suffering, or is likely to

Peter Hoskin

Could a Brown-Darling split undermine Labour’s economic message?

The latest official borrowing statistics were released earlier today, and – thanks to a few revisions, detailed by Paul Waugh here – they’re slightly lower than you might expect.  Not that the numbers aren’t still massive.  Public sector net borrowing between April and October stood at £37 billion – bringing the total over the economic cycle up to £640.9 billion, or 42.9 percent of GDP.  While, crucially, net borrowing for October was 1.4 billion – the first time that there hasn’t been a net repayment in October since 1994.  And that’s even when leaving, say, PFI liabilities and the bank bailout off the balance sheet, as is Brown’s want. Now,

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Obama’s other challenge

There has been a lot of attention on the immense domestic challenges that Obama will face once he has been sworn in, but the foreign policy problems haven’t gone away. Not only is America fighting two wars but Obama is almost going to have work out what to do about Iran which is far along the path to nuclear status. As The New York Times puts it in its story on the latest IAEA report: “Even so, for President-elect Barack Obama, the report underscores the magnitude of the problem that he will inherit Jan. 20: an Iranian nuclear program that has not only solved many technical problems of uranium enrichment,

Peter Hoskin

Cooper spins us a choice

Paul Waugh spots this line in a speech given by Yvette Cooper an hour ago: “David Cameron has said we should not borrow to boost the economy now. But the truth is that if we don’t act, our economic problems will last longer and run deeper.” As Paul notes, this represents another hardening of the battle lines between Labour and the Tories.  The Government are spinning things as a choice between increased borrowing now (with the caveat, in the small-print, that taxes will need to rise once the downturn’s over) or a longer-lasting recession.  And you can expect them to push this message ad nauseam over the coming months.  The

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Is this how Brown plans to get Labour fired up and ready to go?

I’m still sceptical about the idea of Brown going to the country in 2009, but Martin Bright lays out one potential, and plausible, route to an ‘09 election in his New Statesman column:  It just so happens that, in April, the UK will be taking its turn at the presidency of the G20 group of world leaders, which means this country will be the venue for the next global economic summit. Brown will therefore be hosting Barack Obama on one of the first foreign trips of his presidency. Fortuitous timing indeed, with a possible snap May election to follow. As one former cabinet minister who spent a long time at

Daniel Korski

Immigration drops

Back in late summer, the ever-perspicacious Vince Cable, predicted that “if we get into a serious recession, immigration will become negative, as it has before.” According to the Office for National Statistics, this has now come to pass, with data showing that immigration into Britain fell by 8.9 percent to 577,000 last year. Separate Home Office figures show the number from the eight eastern European nations including Poland that joined the EU in 2004 dropped for a fourth consecutive quarter. At the same time, Eurostat – the EU’s statistical bureau – released immigration figures for 2006. These figures show a couple of interesting things. First, in 2006 about 3 million

Peter Hoskin

An admission of failure?

Just following up my post of yesterday evening, it’s worth pointing out the story in today’s FT that Alistair Darling is going to throw small businesses a “credit lifeline” in next week’s PBR.  This was actually one of the aims of the multi-£billion bank bailout.  But – as that doesn’t seem to be having the desired effect – the Government’s natural reflex is to throw more money at the problem and thereby increase the liabilities shouldered by the taxpayer.  Here is yet another area where the war of words – the political sloganeering – is crucial.  Will this spending-on-top-of-spending be seen as the Government doing “whatever it takes”?  Or will it be

Wednesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Chart of the Day

Nuff said, methinks. Vouchers and proper school choice programmes aren’t the only answer, of course, but it’s simple decency to extend to the working class  opportunities taken for granted by the middle-class, including, of course, many teachers themselves. More details on the chart here.

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The Libertarian Inquest

I’m a sucker for any story headlined “Where Did the Libertarian Party Go Wrong?” and sure enough Brian Doherty’s Reason article is a fun read. I particularly liked his opening line: From the outset, Bob Barr’s Libertarian run for the presidency was fraught with great expectations. The biggest problems for the LP? Apart, that is, from the fact that libertarian ideas aren’t all that popular? The failure to take advantage of the Ron Paul Revolution. That and the problem that Obama was a pretty good vehicle for protest votes this year – in a way that John Kerry never was.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

A little bit of vindication for Osborne

A few weeks ago, George Osborne warned that excessive government borrowing would make it harder for the Bank of England to cut interest rates. Labour responded by calling him “out of his depth”. Now, we see from the minutes of the Monetary Policy Committee meeting that the Bank held off from a deeper cut in rates until it had seen the pre-Budget report—in other words, until it had seen how much more the government intends to borrow. So, Osborne was right after all.

Peter Hoskin

Bashing the bailout

Looking back on PMQs – and reading Iain Martin’s deft analysis – it really was quite striking how both opposition leaders decided to major on the same issue: namely, that the banking bailout isn’t yet meeting one of Brown’s key aims for it and freeing up credit for small businesses.  It’s a potentially fruitful line of attack.  After all, Brown’s sunk a monstrous amount of taxpayers’ cash into this bailout, and if the opposition parties can in any way indicate that it’s not working – and to some extent characterise it as £billions worth of waste – then they could well strike a hammer blow against Brown’s borrow ‘n’ spend

Peter Hoskin

PMQs live blog | 19 November 2008

Welcome to this week’s Coffee House PMQs live blog.  As always, things will kick off at 1200.  It’s expected that the party leader exchanges will centre on the economy – particularly in light of the CBI’s prediction that unemployment will hit 2.9 million, and the Tories’ announcement on public spending yesterday.  Don’t bet against hearing the “Tory/Lib Dem cuts” mantra from Brown. 1200.  Here’s Brown now.  First question from Philip Dunne; “Can the PM explain why the pound has lost a quarter of it’s value against the dollar in just 4 months.”  Brown just rehashes his line of the weekend: “I’d remind Conservative members not to talk down the pound.”

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The Tories should manoeuvre Brown away from a snap election

The Tories would far rather fight an election in 2010 than early next year. By 2010, reality will have caught up with Gordon Brown. But the best way for the Tories to avoid a poll next year is to talk about it endlessly. Brown Central is aware that they cannot go through another bout of election speculation like the one in the summer of 2007; it would look hideously self-serving at this time of economic crisis. So, if Brown does decide to go early, he’ll aim for a snap announcement too. The Tory counter should be to start talking about it now. A line to take would be: “We know

James Forsyth James Forsyth

How Cameron should respond to the ‘Tory cuts’ jibe

The clunking fist will be swinging for David Cameron today at PMQs. Gordon Brown will see yesterday’s Tory decision not to pledge to match Labour’s spending plans for 2010-11 as his chance to paint them as both clueless and heartless. David Cameron should reply to Brown’s inevitable tirade about ‘Tory cuts’ with something along these lines: “We’ll match his party on education, funding for the police, the military and the frontline of the health service. But we won’t match them on waste, inefficiency and pointless bureaucratic schemes.” However tempting it might be to get into an ideological debate about how more money does not automatically translate into better services, electorally

Peter Hoskin

The dangers of high spending

The Independent’s Hamish McRae – who’s been on the money more often than most commentators during this downturn – today outlines the reasons to be wary of a Government spending boom in the PBR. They’re worth quoting in full: “The first is international. Trust is vital and there is a danger of a systemic loss of confidence in British financial management. Already sterling has fallen by as much as it did in 1992 when it was ejected from the ERM. We are going into this downturn with an exceptionally high budget deficit of around 4 per cent of GDP and that could rise to 6 per cent or more in