All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Of all the countless leaflets, pamphlets and circulars being handed out in Manchester, one of the most interesting is a glossy collection of essays entitled Cameron’s Britain. It has been put together by the folk at Portland PR – who recently hosted that “war game” which James reported back on – and has entries on
Later today, George Osborne will elaborate on the Conservatives’ plan to raise the state pension age to 66. The rise will be enacted by 2016 at the earliest and will save an estimated £13bn per year. The Tories will review how they can accelerate the original planned pension age rise, dated for 2026, that would link the state pension with earnings. There’s
So, you see, Barack Obama is a Democratic president just like Jack Kennedy and LBJ and, right, there’s a war going on in Aghanistan which is in asia, just like Vietnam! So the parallels are just uncanny. Right? Wrong. It’s time, people. for a comprehensive ban on making facile comparisons between Afghanistan and Vietnam. Prospect’s
Struggles with the conference internet connection prevented me from posting on it at the time, but it’s still worth flagging up Andrew Lansley’s big speech on the NHS today. Why so? Well, because it exemplifies how the Tory message on health undermines their general rhetoric on public spending. At the heart of the speech was
Sweet. This had to happen: A Ministry of Defence document giving advice on how to stop documents leaking onto the internet has been leaked onto the internet. …The 2,400-page restricted document has found its way on to Wikileaks, a website that publishes anonymous leaks of sensitive information from organisations including governments, corporations and religions. Known
The Tories new welfare plan is, it seems, their old welfare plan – with a more ambitious timeline. It’s to be welcomed, but this is not the step change that you’d expect. In Jan08 Chris Grayling broke new ground when he proposed diagnosing all 2.7m on incapacity benefit for what work they could do (as
Like other sensible people I’m encouraged by the Tories plans for education in England. The Swedish system of Free Schools has a lot to be said for it. Still, I wonder why the Tories have chosen Sweden as their role model rather than, say, the Netherlands or New Zealand both of which also have extensive
The white smoke lasted all of a few seconds: from the moment I became editor I knew who I wanted to succeed me as political editor. In what few discussions I had about it, the same name was clearly ahead. And reading the comment threads, you guys knew it too. But today it’s official: James
George Osborne has just announced a tax cut. Any new business started in the first two years of a Tory government will pay no employers’ national insurance contributions on the first ten people it hires. This means these first ten employees will cost new businesses 12 percent less. This is a move that makes sense
At the end of Fraser’s interview with Cameron in this week’s magazine, Dave confided that he would most like to be painted by the Maid of Margate, Tracey Emin. Cameron has been courting celebrity and popular culture, exactly as New Labour tried to align itself with ‘Cool Britannia’. Usually, the pursuit of photo-ops with celebs
Here’s something new for party conference season: real people. About 200 of them. Firemen. Unemployed. And, yes, workers. They are brought to you courtesy of Victoria Derbyshire’s Five Live show, where I am sitting at the back listening to this mass focus group session. It has become (for me, anyway) an unmissable feature of the
There is a reluctant acceptance here that Lisbon will have been ratified by next May and that the Tories won’t hold a post-ratification referendum. But it is important to understand why the leadership is getting away with a position that is so unpopular with the grassroots. Partly it is a reflection of the fact that
Welcome to the latest CoffeeHousers’ Wall. For those who haven’t come across the Wall before, it’s a post we put up each Monday, on which – providing your writing isn’t libellous, crammed with swearing, or offensive to common decency – you’ll be able to say whatever you like in the comments section. There is no
Thanks to Guido for snapping this arresting political slogan. The Conservatives will now sweep the country; of that I have now doubt. But as ever, there is a complication. In what is clearly an indication of the Tories’ target audience and political intent, lashings of Scotch and Newcastle Brown Ale are readily available, but Eric
I’m on my way to the home city of the best football club in the world (and one of the worst) shortly. In the meantime, it’s worth flagging up this morning’s reports on Tory welfare policy, which we’ll be hearing more about later today. Basically, the Tories are going to re-emphasise that they’d put incapacity
…here are some of the posts made at Spectator.co.uk over the weekend. Fraser Nelson says the times they are a changing, and thinks that now is the time to start banging on about Europe. James Forsyth wonders which of the speakers at this Tory conference will make it into Cameron’s cabinet, and watches the Tories
The phrase “we will not let matters rest” sounds slightly menacing, but it’s completely opaque. Is it time for the Tories to define what they mean by it? The leading article in the Times argues that perhaps it is. ‘Now that the Irish have ratified the Lisbon treaty at the second attempt, the Conservative Party
For some time since I came of voting age I took the view that it was more important to vote (when I bothered to vote) for the party, not the man (or woman). A lot of people, perhaps even a majority of the electorate, think this way. But I now think I was wrong and
Scouring the Sunday newspapers for any vestige of sentience, I find none whatsoever – but instead chance upon this whining, chippy, neo-Socialist drivel from Rod Liddle in the Sunday Times blaming the bankers for the economic mess from which, it’s said, we are emerging. (Incidentally, linking to oneself in a blog is narcissism on an inter-planetary
I have just been on a phone-in with Five Live, and heard Greg Clark getting into a fix over Europe. “Are you going to do some straight talking with us tonight?” asked Steven Nolan. Yes, he replied. What will the Tories say if Lisbon is ratified, then? Wriggle wriggle wriggle. “We don’t deal in hypotheticals”
When you get on a train on a Sunday and find First Class is more full than the cheap seats, it can only mean one thing: a political party conference is starting. The Tories starts tomorrow – but still, folk travel up today. Why a Monday start? And why Manchester? The seaside resorts were chosen
OK, some Sunday fun and games. A wee while back Patrick Kidd had a nice item in which Henry Blofeld listed his all-time cricket XI drawn from PG Wodehouse characters. This is the sort of throoughly entertaining, pointless exercise Wodehouse would have relished himself. And, for that matter, the sort of un-made challenge that cannot
A lovely catch and telling observation from Iain Martin* on how the Prime Minister’s speech to the Labour party conference was put together and how this exhausted government is, essentially, a real-life satire: My favourite [part of The Thick of It] is the episode in which, after a Prime Ministerial resignation, increasingly frantic meetings go
There are 29 members of the Commons and the Lords speaking from the podium at conference. Four shadow cabinet members are not — Lord Strathcylde, Lady Anelay, Patrick McLoughlin and Mark Francois. We shouldn’t read too much into who is not speaking. The Leader of the Lords and the Chief Whips in the Lords and
The official conference guide announces that at 2pm tomorrow “Alan Duncan, Shadow Leader of the House of Commons” will be speaking in a session entitled “Reforming politics: Transparency”. Of course, he won’t be. He is no longer shadow leader of the House. Ironically, it was this appointment that sealed his fate. It was thought that
The Tories have been briefing heavily that this would be a policy heavy conference. Indeed, I’m told that every shadow Cabinet member will have at least one substantive announcement to make. But there is relatively little that is genuinely new in the Sunday newspapers. One explanation for this is that the Tories accept that Lisbon
The Observer’s leading article asks the question: will David Cameron’s modernism serve Britain’s interests? The article’s conclusion is a firm ‘no’; its key is that the ‘Conservatives’ apparent relish in tackling the budget deficit is not entirely economic in motivation. It expresses a broader ideological commitment to a smaller state.’ A smaller state is better
Fraser says there’s plenty to fight for on the Great European Question and, in many ways, I’m sure he’s right. But what is Tory policy in the event that Lisbon is ratified before the election? That may be a hypothetical, but it’s not an unreasonable one. It deserves a clear answer. I’m struck too by
The Conservative conference is just hours old, but already Cameron faces a battle to hold the line over Europe and the Lisbon treaty. He produced his standard response on the Andrew Marr show: that he wanted a referendum if the Czechs refuse to ratify the treaty. And he added: “I don’t want say anything or
So how radical is David Cameron? I was on a Radio Four panel yesterday for “Beyond Westminster” (now online) where, for once, I was not the only token right-winger. It was presented by Iain Martin and had Bruce Anderson, who wrote this week’s cover piece about Cameron, and Jackie Ashley. I was begging Iain to
It’s not yet official, but everyone is couning on a big “yes” from Ireland – to the tune of about 64% says The Guardian. I say in my News of the World column tomorrow that this is far from a disaster for the Conservatives. It works well for them, in fact: it isn’t nerds who
Publicly at least, Labour MPs are jubilant that Gordon Brown has agreed to appear, in principle, in a televised election debate. They give the responses to the creed first spun by Blair: that Brown is an arch-realist and heavyweight who will undo the vacuous Tories in debate. Certainly, Mr Brown is blessed with talents. As
Despite trying to turn Adam Boulton to stone on Tuesday night, Gordon Brown has agreed in principle to appearing on the Sky election debate. It’s long been suspected that he would agree to participate, today merely confirms the rumour. If the debate goes ahead, it would represent a huge change in British electoral procedure. Mr Brown deserves credit for contributing
The pre-conference coverage today is dominated by a marginals poll which shows the Tories on course for a 70 seat majority down from 146 this time last year, a Tory proposal on elderly care and the likely Irish yes vote and interviews with Osborne and Hague. Osborne receives a thoroughly positive write-up from the Mail;