Society

Wednesday

Peter Hoskin

Brown’s mortgage surprise

A quick, capsule review of the Queen’s Speech debate in the Commons: Cameron was at his rapier-like best, while Brown performed his typical dodge-the-question act.  But the PM did have one trick up his sleeve, and quite a big trick it was too.  He announced an agreement between the Government and the UK’s 8 largest banks, by which downturn-hit homeowners will be entitled to defer their mortgage interest payments for up to 2 years.  The Government will guarantee against any losses that the banks would otherwise suffer because of this. It’s odd that this got no mention in the Queen’s Speech itself (I suspect the plan was to unsettle the Tories

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Speaker’s ‘regret’ leaves Brown isolated

Michael Martin came close to apologising to the House when he said that he “regrets” that police entered Parliament and searched Damian Green’s office without a warrant. Tory grandees including Michael Howard and Iain Duncan Smith pressed the Prime Minister on whether he too regretted that all this had happened without a warrant. Brown was left looking rather lonely as he repeated his pre-packaged line that he respects the police’s operational independence. It’ll be interesting to see if Jacqui Smith will go further than this when she addresses the Commons tomorrow. During Cameron’s speech, the interventions of several Labour MPs show that they wanted to pull Cameron into this affair;

Peter Hoskin

The Tories fight back

The Tories aren’t going to take Peter Mandelson’s claims lying down, if Dominic Grieve’s interview with Sky News is anything to go by.  The shadow home secretary has just said he thinks Mandy is unfit for office: “This morning, Lord Mandelson has been banging on about national security.  We don’t believe there is any national security angle to it at all. This is fantasy land, being spun by Peter Mandelson.  This is what worries me so much.  The political element keeps on creeping back in. I don’t trust Peter Mandelson.  I don’t think he should be in political office, I don’t think he’s fit for it.” Many will be sympathetic to Greive’s

James Forsyth James Forsyth

What Mandelson is up to

Over at Three Line Whip, Jame Kirkup muses whether Peter Mandelson has taken a vow never to give a dull interview. Certainly, from a hack’s point of view, Mandelson makes for great copy. But it is Mandelson who is getting the most out of this relationship at the moment. I suspect that Mandelson realised he was going to be covered in exhaustive detail on his return whether he liked it or not. His skill has been to turn this coverage to his advantage by using the press’s fascination with him to get his message across. He also understands how the 24:7 nature of media coverage and the rise of the

Lisa Hilton

Holla, ye pampered jades…

At risk of sounding like Glenda Slagg, don’tcha just hate those mealy mouthed drink aware advertisements which are crawling all over the Tube? You know: “Party this weekend – it was a party, right?”. Because we all need to feel just that little bit worse right now. What people seem to forget is that bingeing Britain is not a modern phenomenon. But until the temperance movement came along and encouraged everyone to die of cholera, no-one used to worry about it. Dr Johnson recalled that in his youth all the respectable people of Lichfield got drunk every night and no-one thought the worse of them for it. And at least

Peter Hoskin

Ceremony, bills and a joke

Nothing especially exciting to report on State Opening day yet.  The Queen’s delivered her Speech, leading with the line that “My Government’s overriding priority is to ensure stability of the British economy during the global economic downturn” (see full text here).  And Dennis Skinner’s delivered his traditional “joke”, asking whether there are “Any Tory moles in the Palace?”  Much more likely that any fireworks will come later, when we’ll see both Michael Martin’s statement on the Damian Green arrest and Parliamentary debate over the Government’s legislative programme. P.S. Good point from James Kirkup on the deemphasising of constitutional reform.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The political backdrop to the Mumbai attacks

For any CoffeeHouser trying to understand the relationship between Lashkar-e-Taiba—the group that are believed to have been responsible for the Mumbia atrocities—and the Pakistani government, I’d thoroughly recommend Steve Coll’s post over at The New Yorker. This section seems to sum it up: “On the one hand, the group’s bank accounts remain unmolested by the Pakistani government, which gives Lashkar quite a lot of running room; on the other, the group resents the accommodations reached between Pakistan’s government and the United States. Clearly, Lashkar knows what it must do to protect the Pakistan government from being exposed in the violent operations that Lashkar runs in Kashmir and elsewhere. For example,

Peter Hoskin

Bare-knuckle rhetoric from Mandy

Peter Mandelson’s performance on Sky earlier was remarkably venomous.  Here’s the main thrust of it: “I also have to say I think that for many Conservatives, it is a self-serving smokescreen, behind which to hide their own apparent collusion with a Home Office official who was allegedly systematically leaking Home Office papers to the Conservative Party, in order to pursue his own personal political ambition… …I would like to know from the Conservatives whether their frontbench and their leader knowingly colluded with that civil servant in riding a coach and horses not only through the Civil Service code but also through the law.” Putting aside the strength (or weakness) of

Peter Hoskin

The Queen’s Speech: what to expect

What can we expect from the Queen’s Speech; the centrepiece of today’s State Opening of Parliament?  So far as policy is concerned, it’s doubtful whether there’ll be any surprises.  The Times has a great round-up of the measures likely to be contained in what’s being spun as a “fairness” programme, and most have been trailed weeks and months in advance of today.  Perhaps one thing to look out for is the emphasis that’s placed on welfare reform.  It’s top of the Times’s list of measures, but there has been some rumbling on the Westminster grapevine that Brown would play it down – or perhaps even jettison it – because it’s

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

‘They treat me more like a devil than a god’

Lloyd Evans finds that Bernard-Henri Lévy is not the ageing French dandy of caricature but a serious intellectual with views on everything from Barack Obama to the Muslim veil Oh goody. He’s late. Every journalist wants the interviewee to miss the appointment, if possible by several hours. It gives us the advantage and obliges our subject to apologise or face being lacerated in print for the transgression. French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy arrives 35 minutes after the agreed time and greets me with a disarming combination of lightly salted regret and a plausible excuse. In France, Lévy is so famous that he’s known by the simple acronym BHL, like a furniture

Mary Wakefield Mary Wakefield

After Baby P: the crisis in child foster care

Mary Wakefield talks to a courageous woman who blew the whistle on the deep systemic failures in the foster care service — and whose only reward was to be hounded and vilified I spotted Sarah immediately, though I’d never seen her before and she was tucked in among the commuter crowds ebbing and flowing through Marylebone station. She walked differently from the rest, less preoccupied, more determined, and she carried, as she had said she would, a big black folder under her arm. Sarah had told me about the contents of the folder already, so I knew what it contained: a detailed account of an injustice done to Sarah and

Justin Marozzi

Dirty diggers

The Buddha & Dr Fuhrer, by Charles Allen Charles Allen’s latest book on India has a suitably exotic, occasionally improb- able, cast of characters. Centre stage is Dr Anton Führer, an unscrupulous German archaeologist hell-bent on discovering the legendary — and legendarily elusive — city of Kapilavastu, where the Buddha grew into manhood as Prince Siddhartha. Then there is the thoroughly decent British landowner, William Claxton Peppé, who in 1898 made an astonishing find: a reliquary casket, surrounded by a dazzling collection of jewels and gold, purporting to contain the ashes of the Buddha. A continent away in Europe is the most eminent Sanskrit scholar of his day, Doktor Johann

Aidan Hartley

What I learned from the Somali pirates

Aidan Hartley says that Somali piracy is very well-organised and efficient and is opposed publicly only by militant Muslims — who may yet seize power in Mogadishu The ceaseless piracy off Somalia’s shores — another, Singaporean tanker was hijacked last week — is giving rise to a modern, real-life version of the novel Scoop. Evelyn Waugh’s book is set in Africa’s troubled state of Ishmaelia, where one foreign correspondent breaks a big story from a place called Laku. As soon as it is published, Fleet Street editors begin clamouring for copy from Laku, so the press corps rush into the jungle where they become utterly lost. No wonder. It turns

Tuesday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The cheek of it

In the weeks since the Labour conference in Manchester, it has been clear that James Purnell has overtaken David Miliband as the leading contender among the Primrose Hill Set. Even though he is considerably more Blairite than Miliband, Purnell is attracting a wider range of support across the party because of his ability to put the Blairite agenda into left-wing language. Indeed, I suspect that if Labour do lose the next election, the ensuing leadership contest will come down to Purnell and Jon Cruddas. Purnell is now confident enough to indulge in a bit of tweaking of Gordon’s tale. As John Rentoul points out, Purnell wonderfully begins the final paragraph

David Blackburn

Top Tory calls for a cut in living standards

Labour have been making hay out of the tin-eared comments of various Tories on the recession. First, there was John Maples saying that the recession should be left to take its course. Then, there was Andrew Lansley speculating about the possible health benefits of a recession. But today John Redwood has topped them both with this post on his blog: ‘The truth is that both the UK and the US have to cut living standards… People and governments have spent too much and borrowed to do so.   Now the world’s markets are saying enough is enough. Living standards in both the public and private sector have to be brought

Peter Hoskin

In a spirit of cooperation

One of the more striking aspects of the Damian Green affair is how it’s angered MPs from every side, corner and alcove of the House.  And quite right too – this is something that could have hefty implications for Parliament as a whole.  The Tories and Lib Dems, in particular, have been singing from an almost identical hymn-sheet when condemning the heavy-handedness of the arrest, and now it’s emerged that they’ve taken the cooperation a stage further.  According to the Beeb, Cameron and Clegg are going to meet to “discuss tactics” ahead of the Queen’s Speech tomorrow.  Their aim is to secure a debate on the Green arrest; although one

Peter Hoskin

Shapps responds

Here are Grant Shapps’ answers to the questions put forward by CoffeeHousers: Colin “What advice do you have for the individuals who are now deep in debt, after a decade long credit bubble; especially now that the safety net of massive house price rises is not there to save them?” The first thing to say is that someone who finds themselves in debt should seek urgent debt counseling advice, ideally before things get completely out of control. Either way, seeking professional help from an organisation like the Citizens Advice Bureau is an absolute must because all creditors will prefer to be in discussion and negotiation with their debtor. Tempting as

Peter Hoskin

Jumping off a cliff?

The Standard’s Paul Waugh got there first, but it’s still worth highlighting the comments of Peer Steinbrück, Germany’s finance minister, in an interview with Der Spiegel.  He echoes Angela Merkel’s scepticism of Brown-style, debt-funded fiscal stimuli, but does so with a bit a rhetorical pizazz.  A case in point: “Just because all the lemmings have chosen the same path, it doesn’t automatically make that path the right one.” For more, head over to Paul’s blog.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The other responsibility to protect

The Pakistan problem is one of the thorniest in international politics. It is almost impossible to see how you deal with a nuclear armed failing state whose government claims, with some justification, that it can’t control its military, intelligence service and all of its territory. But as Bob Kagan writes in the Washington Post today: “…nations should not be able to claim sovereign rights when they cannot control territory from which terrorist attacks are launched. If there is such a thing as a ‘responsibility to protect,’ which justifies international intervention to prevent humanitarian catastrophe either caused or allowed by a nation’s government, there must also be a responsibility to protect