Society

Tuesday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Glenrothes will either inflate the Brown bubble or deflate it for good

Guido has the scoop that Brown has written to Labour MPs telling them that he and Sarah will campaign in Glenrothes ahead of the by-election there “global financial situation permitting”. This is a sign of renewed confidence in the Brown bunker and if Labour does hold the seat after Brown has campaigned there the media will rush to declare that ‘the mighty Gord is back’. It will cement the media narrative that the financial crisis has revived Brown’s premiership and restored his authority. But if Labour lose to the SNP, who hold the equivalent seat at Holyrood, then it will be the beginning of the bursting of the Brown bubble.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Sats for 14 year olds to be abolished

Ed Balls is making a statement to the House at 3.30 today in which it is expected that he will announce the abolition of Key Stage Three tests, those that are sat by 14 year olds. This is actually quite a canny move even if it does come in response to the whole Sats debacle of this summer. Nation-wide testing at 11, 16 and 18 (for those who remain in education) should be quite sufficient. 

James Forsyth James Forsyth

How the Tories plan to respond

Tim Montgomerie has an absolute must-read up on what the Tories are thinking about the current economic crisis and its impact on the political situation. Tim reports that the Tories believe that Brown’s weakness is that while he might have rescued the banks he has not rescued the real economy. The Tories are confident that they can present themselves as the party that can sort out the real economy.   Tim notes that the Tories are relatively relaxed about being out of the news. I think this is sensible of them. Gordon Brown wants the Tories to either be echoing him or rubbishing his plans. If they do the former he’ll

James Forsyth James Forsyth

A good day for Gordon but the reckoning is coming

I suspect Gordon Brown let out a roar of delight on hearing that the US government has reversed course and is going to take an equity stake in nine of the banks that it is bailing out. This deviation from the Paulson plan brings the US response to the financial crisis more closely into line with what is being done in this country and allows Brown to claim that he is setting the policy agenda that the world is following. This is an exaggerated claim—as Fraser has noted—but to be fair, the British model is better than the appalling, original-version of the Paulson plan. The Prime Minister should enjoy this

Monday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

RBS is Nationalised

The big news, obviously, is the collapse of RBS as an independent entity, now that the government is going to pump in as much as £20bn and take 60% of the company. In the long-run this is probably a good deal for taxpayers. At least in as much as that 60% ought to bring a return once (if) healthier times return. Still, it is a stunning fall from grace for RBS. And for Scotland. The financial implications are one thing, so too the political and, just as importantly, the psychological impact. It’s not a coincidence that Alex Salmond was always quite happy to let folk know he had once been

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Blogger wins Nobel Prize for Economics

This is going to upset a lot of people… Paul Krugman wins the Nobel Prize for Economics. I can’t wait for the loopy-right to complain that even when the Nobel committee awards prizes to Americans they only give them to Americans who hate America. Or something like that. UPDATE: Tyler Cowen, as you might expect, has much, much more. I should also say that whatever anyone thinks abotu Krugman’s politics, pretty much everyone I know who knows a lot about economics considers him a serious, hugely influential figure. So the award is not, or should not, be that controversial. Still, don’t expect that argument to convince everyone…

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Cricket and ASBOs

Like Norm, I am entirely unsurprised by this: The Phrase “it’s not cricket” is reverberating again around state school classrooms. Good old-fashioned cricketing values have prompted an improvement in behaviour in schools, according to the evaluation of a project to promote the sport in schools to be published later this week. The “Chance to Shine” scheme, designed to promote cricket in state schools by sending in club coaches to teach the game, has had a spin off beyond PE lessons. According to researchers at Loughborough University, schools which have taken part in the scheme report improved behaviour in school generally as a result of participating in it. Admittedly even cricket

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Apple Grumble

Can anyone explain why Apple thinks it’s fine* to charge one £800 for a new MacBook that arrives without a proper freakin’ word processing programme? This seems to be a new development, since my previous two Apple computers were so equipped. Why, Steve Jobs why? *I suppose it’s because brand loyalty and convenience  – ie, knowing how to use Macs but not a  PC – means that they can fob one off with this sort of nonsense and trust that we’ll still pony up for the latest edition of iLife. So, anyone have recommendations for a good open source word processing programme?

James Forsyth James Forsyth

42 days fails in the Lords, government to drop measure from counter-terrorism bill 

It is a sign of the extent to which the financial crisis is dominating the news that the Lords voting down 42 days by a huge margin, 309 to 188, is not a headline-grabbing story. Jacqui Smith will, The Guardian reports, make a statement at 8.30pm in the Commons. It is expected that she will announce that the government will drop the 42 days clause from the bill but prepare separate legislation for if it is required in an emergency. The legislative language around 42 days was a dog’s dinner; one left-wing Labour MP even told his fellow backbenchers to vote for it because the bill was so badly drafted

James Forsyth James Forsyth

McCain’s near-impossible task

John McCain faces an almost impossible task over the next three weeks. He has to claw back at least a six point deficit, the new Washington Post poll has the gap at 10 points, as the candidate of the incumbent party in an environment where 90 percent of registered voters think that the country has “gotten pretty seriously off on the wrong track”. Today, he unveiled a new stump speech. It uses the word fight, or some variation of it, 17 times and is beautifully written but it is hard to see it being a game changer. McCain almost certainly needs some outside event to intervene if he is going

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Why the government is taking common shares in these banks

Last week the government stressed that it did not want to take seats on the boards of the banks into which it was injecting money. But today’s injection of £37bn into the Royal Bank of Scotland and into Lloyds TSB and HBOS ahead of their merger will see the government taking seats. The New York Times has an explanation for this volte-face: “It also turns out that the charters of some banks did not allow the issuing of enough preferred shares to boost the banks’ capital ratios to safe levels. This means that, in order to top up the banks’ reserves, the government needs to make part of its investment

Liz Anderson

Not just bad but offensively bad

Liz Anderson It  beggars belief that anyone – particularly the artist himself — could have thought that a bronze frieze of a commuter falling in front of train driven by the Grim Reaper would be appropriate for St Pancras station. While the banal sculpture of a man and woman embracing, also by Paul Day, is just bad the suicide sculpture is shocking. Now, after complaints from the Samaritans, train drivers and families of people who have killed themselves, the frieze will not be installed.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Turning Brown’s happier mood against him

George Osborne’s piece in the Evening Standard today marks a stepping up in the Tory rhetoric on the financial crisis. Osborne ends with this line directed at Gordon Brown, “You presided over the biggest economic disaster of our lifetime and we will not let you forget it.” But in the short term, perhaps, the most effective Tory attack is the idea that Brown’s apparent enjoyment of this crisis is unseemly. Osborne frames the charge thus: “to regard today as a triumph, as some in government seem to do, is bizarre. And it misjudges the public mood. For this is no triumph. It is a necessary but desperate last-ditch attempt to

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The key question

Clive Crook’s column in the FT is, unsurprisingly, well worth reading. He is relatively relaxed about the political state of play after this crisis, arguing that the overall argument about the role of the state and government intervention in the market will be “rhetorically adjusted” but “about where it was before the crisis”. Crook’s thinking is that while the intellectual climate will become more favourable to the left, the realities will still keep politicians on a relatively fiscally conservative path. Crooks ends on this note: “The financial crisis was indeed a failure of regulation. The system was overwhelmed by innovation. Regulators are going to have to catch up and, you

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The financial crisis scalps another two banks

If t is a weekday, there must be an injection of public money into the banking system. The government is going to take a majority stake in Royal Bank of Scotland and a roughly 40 percent stake in the bank to be formed from the merger being Lloyds TSB and HBOS. This move will require an outlay of up to £37 billion of taxpayer money. On the Today programme, Alistair Darling was unwilling to say whether this would be the last intervention that was needed or what the time scale for selling off the stakes that the government is taking is. It does, though, seem that Barclays has been able

Sunday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Psychological flaws

The Mail on Sunday reports that the Tories are considering psychometric tests to assess which MPs are suitable to run departments. There is also talk of asking peoples’ secretaries to report on how they react to stress.  Unsurprisingly, the Mail find several MPs who are—anonymously—prepared to rubbish the idea as big brother, control freakery. But what I find most worrying about the whole story is this quote from a “well placed source” defending the scheme: “The idea is to find out before we get into government which Shadow Ministers are capable of controlling a major department and a big budget – and which ones are not.” Surely, this is something

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The banker precedent

By rescuing the banks, Brown has illustrated that—in extremis—the government can find the money to do things. As Andrew Rawnsley argues in The Observer this is going to be a problem for Brown in the coming months: “ballooning government debt points to a severe squeeze on services. Whitehall is already anticipating the bloodiest spending negotiations for a generation. Mr Brown has guaranteed spending only on health and education, which implies serious pain everywhere else. Politically difficult in any circumstances, the boggling billions directed to the banks makes this even harder to sell to the voters. Every time a cut falls, the cry will go up: you could find £500bn for the

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Brown gets a poll boost but the Tories are still ten points ahead

There are two ways of looking at today’s YouGov poll, the first carried out since the announcement of the government’s rescue plan for the banks. The first is to see it as evidence of how the financial crisis is reviving Gordon Brown’s premiership. Labour are up three point to 33 percent—their highest rating with YouGov since February, 59 percent support the government’s rescue plan and Brown and Darling are 33-27 ahead of Cameron and Osborne on the question of who voters trust to best handle this crisis. The other, and to my mind more accurate, way of looking at it is of proof of how much trouble Labour is still