Society

Thursday

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

Stephen Vines

Twelve steps to market meltdown

At times of financial crisis there is often a feeling that all the old certainties have been blown away. But what is striking about the entire history of stock-market crises is that they fall into a pattern — and this pattern makes it possible to make broad predictions about the panic cycles that have been remarkably consistent for more than a century. American experts have dominated the sub-genre of identifying panic cycles, notably the market historian Charles Kindleberger and the economist Hyman Minsky. Based on their work, it is possible to identify the stages of the cycle — but not, to pre-empt the obvious question, to know exactly when it

Judi Bevan

‘These clouds will have a silver lining’

Judi Bevan meets Sir John Parker, who chairs National Grid and the Court of the Bank of England — and takes an optimistic view of the deepening recession Few people would have dared to walk out of lunch at the Savoy Grill leaving behind the irascible Lord King. Sir John Parker, the softly spoken Irish charmer who now chairs National Grid, did just that. When he took over as chief executive at the ailing engineering firm Babcock & Wilcox in 1993, he first had to deal with the late John King, then chairman, who believed he should still call the shots despite the decline of the company under his command.

Catherine Blyth

Don’t confuse conversation with dialogue or quips

Catherine Blyth says that conversation is an art: its essence is the acrobatic business of reading and changing minds — talking with people, not at them How would you feel if you arrived at a dinner party to find your plate garnished with a menu? Impressed, irritated or inspired to discover a new level in social intimidation? Imagine that menu listed not dishes, but conversation topics to wash down each course, such as, ‘Which of my ambitions is likely to remain unfulfilled?’ or ‘Is sex overrated?’ According to Alain de Botton, writing in Standpoint, topic menus promise the salvation of the art of conversation. Sartre reckoned hell is other people.

Christopher Lloyd

For a bit of perspective, try thinking Jurassic

Bees do democracy best. They vote, you know. Not that they bother with anything as trivial as electing a new president. Nor do they worry about the colour of their ruler’s stripes. In the natural world of a beehive there are no unnecessary arguments about popular succession, no expensive lobbying or financial fuss. When election season comes, the question they vote on is simply this: where on earth to site a new nest? Now what’s the most natural way of expressing an opinion? Let’s see… buzzing very loudly? But that might get a bit too noisy. Scribbling on a piece of paper? Not a bad idea — after all, it

Bryan Forbes

Where is our inspiration when we most need it?

Bryan Forbes remembers listening to Churchill as a 14-year-old evacuee and now looks with envy at Obama’s capacity to galvanise hope. Where are his UK counterparts? All across America, galvanised by an inspirational candidate, people stood in line for up to four hours in order to vote, many for the first time in their lives, and oh how I longed for an iota of that fervour and commitment to infect our own political scene. Instead, on our side of the pond, in our own hour of need, we were subjected to the same tired rhetoric that has long since been unfit for purpose. In this month of remembrance is there

Daniel Finkelstein

The great Tory tax and spend battle: seconds out…

In the wake of Cameron’s decision to drop his pledge to match Labour spending, Fraser Nelson and Daniel Fin kelstein of the Times trade rhetorical blows over the issue that is gripping and troubling the Conservative party as it adjusts to the transformed economic context Dear Fraser, I feel we really need to have a word about tax. It was something you said that set me off. Something you used to underpin your argument that the Tories need to start announcing tax cuts. Could I detain you for a moment, and ask for an explanation? Perhaps you remember your words. ‘The Tories were daft to focus so much on borrowing

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Thank goodness we can have a run on the pound when we need one

Martin Vander Weyer looks ahead to next week’s Pre-Budget Report and reflects on George Osborne’s contentious remarks about the devaluation of sterling. It looks like Gordon Brown is getting away with his borrowing binge — leaving the Tories isolated On Monday afternoon I rang a distinguished City economist and asked him a rather technical question about the relationship between issuance of gilt-edged stock and movements in the dollar-sterling exchange rate. ‘Not really my specialist field,’ he replied suavely. ‘But I’ll give you my overview: George Osborne is a prat.’ And that, I’m afraid — expressed with varying degrees of bluntness or circumlocution — was pretty much the consensus of all

Tuesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

One Nation Republicanism?

David Frum is leaving National Review to set up a new online venture called NewMajority.com which will launch once Obama takes the oath of office in January. Frum explains himself here: Over the past three years, I have been engaged in some intense rethinking of my own conservatism. My fundamental political principles remain the same as ever: free markets, American leadership in the world, and intense attachment to inherited moral and cultural traditions. Yet I cannot be blind to the evidence that we have seen free markets produce some damaging and dangerous results in recent years. Or that the foreign policy I supported has not yielded the success I would

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The Importance of the Reverse Ferret

I’m pleased to see that Jack Shafer is calling the New York Post’s sudden admiration for President-elect Barack Obama a fine example of the time-honoured tabloid tradition of the Reverse Ferret. (See TDL here and here for more on the importance of ferrets to tabloid newspapers). But there’s nothing terribly surprising here: Obama is enormously popular and the NYP publishes in a city that voted for the new guy overwhelmingly. It would be nuts to be anything other than gushingly enthusiastic about the new President’s prospects. Remember too that the tabloids can’t live on cynicism and manufactured outrage alone. No, they need a thick streak of sentiment too. Hence their