All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Stay tuned for live coverage from 1200. 12:01: And we’re off with the butcher’s bill, remembering the 100th British servicemen to be killed in Afghanistan this year. 12:02: Robert Neal points out that Spain isn’t in the G20 and hasn’t been in recession as long as Britain – is the rain in Spain mainly in
How can you tell if you’re being lied to on budget day? Normally its easy: Gordon Brown’s lips move. But, today, there’s a handy guide. You can compare Darling’s fiction with the independent average calculated by HM Treasury. I have pulled out the relevant tables:
It’s the eve of the Pre-Budget Report, and the lunacy has already begun. Tomorrow’s FT says that Darling will copy the Tories’ plans to protect the NHS budget – and throw police and schools in to the protected status as well. This is introduced as “the biggest squeeze in pubic spending for a generation,” with
Just watching Newsnight, and the show’s economics editor, Paul Mason, has said we can expect several budgets to be ringfenced from spending cuts in tomorrow’s PBR – hospitals, schools and perhaps even the social security budget. If so, it’s another sign of how political the document is set to be. Ringfenced budgets are the other
As publicity stunts go, the debt clock the Tories beamed onto Battersea Power Station this evening is quite a decent idea. Their thinking’s pretty clear – get some coverage in tomorrow’s papers, and increase the likelihood that the horrendous state of the public finances becomes the story of the PBR – but it’s probably no
Why do so many people hate politics? Partly because politicians insist upon making everything a matter of wearying, partisan, sillyness. Take this painting for instance. Hardly a masterpiece, not least because the young girl looks as though she knows she’s marching off to doom and that is the consequence of yet another episode of national
Reform’s report, The Front Line, focused on the how of the public finance question – how to get the deficit down in practice. We pointed out that since the public sector workforce accounts for around a third of the total government deficit, it should contribute a third of the reduction in the structural deficit. That
The Spectator’s Global Warming special is only in the shops for a couple more days. If you’ve missed it – or if you still need convincing to buy it – here’s an extended version of the article by Amanda Baillieu from within its pages: When a work colleague sent a tweet to his 2000 followers
Moody’s AAA sovereign monitor was published today, and whilst the UK’s AAA status remains ‘resilient’ the situation is far from rosy. The report states: ‘The UK economy entered the crisis in a vulnerable position, owing to the (overly) large size of its banking sector and the high level of household indebtedness. Both continue to weigh
The number of polls showing the Tories below forty percent are causing some heartburn for the Tory leadership. When the first poll came out showing the Tory lead down, there was a feeling that this wasn’t all bad, that it would help remind the party that the election isn’t in the bag. But there is
Nevermind the bankers, the UK Border Agency should have been awarded £295,000 in performance bonuses. Phil Woolas’s defence that “brave” border workers deserved remuneration beyond their basic salaries is imaginative, though unremittingly egregious. The agency is plainly maladroit. Keith Vaz’s Home Affairs Select Committee has found: ‘There is still a huge backlog of unresolved cases
Bernard Gray, a member of the Tories’ Public Service Productivity Advisory Committee, explains why he has joined forces with the Tories. He writes in today’s Times: ‘From my experience of working in and with the Ministry of Defence over the past decade I know how strong such vested interests are and how much commitment is
It seems absurd to describe our dour and jowly Prime Minister as an eternal optimist, but he is. Rachel Sylvester’s column contains this delicious snippet of gossip: ‘When Mr Darling said that Britain was facing the worst recession for 60 years, Mr Brown telephoned him to tell him the downturn would be over in six
Ok, so tomorrow’s Pre-Budget Report is shaping up to be a horrendously political affair. But, rest assured, it could have been so much worse. In what is, by now, a familiar Budget-time story, Alistair Darling is fighting the good fight against some of Brown’s most inharmonious fiscal brainwaves. According to Rachel Sylvester’s column today, here
There are a couple of noteworthy snippets in today’s FT interview with George Osborne: the claim that the Tories may not take corporation tax as low as it is in Ireland; the outline of a “five-year road map” on business tax policy, etc. But, I must admit, it’s this passage which jumped out at me:
Both parties want to be seen as the party of public sector efficiency. The Tories want to be able to show that they can do more with less and that cuts therefore need not mean worse services. While Labour wants to contrast their supposedly ‘smart cuts’ with the Tories’ ‘hatchet approach.’ So, this morning
As Anthony Wells says over at his UK Polling Report, there are plenty of reasons to doubt whether Labour could convert a third of Lib Dem voters over to their cause. But the article in today’s Times on Labour’s new strategy will still give Team Clegg pause for thought. The problem for the Lib Dems
Ok, so all Brown Budgets are political – but signs are that this week’s PBR could be his most blatantly partisan yet. I mean, just look at his speech this morning on improving efficiency in the public sector. Some of its measures are welcome – for instance, pledging to cut the pay of senior servants,
I’ve remarked before that Barack Obama is, in many ways, American liberalism’s long-delayed response to Ronald Reagan. This chart, found via Andrew Sullivan, comparing their Gallup approval ratings, is uncanny: Clearly, none of this is predictive, far-less guaranteeing that Obama will recover and romp to a second term as Reagan did. But what it does
If everyone concentrates on the actual numbers in the PBR then it will be a disaster for Labour. So, instead Labour will try and distract us all with small but eye-catching measures — a new rate of inheritance tax for estates worth more than £5 million, that kind of thing. The aim will be to
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
…here are some of the posts made at Spectator.co.uk Fraser Nelson relates what happened when he tried to debate climate change with an expert, and says that Brown is ready to strike. James Forsyth argues that the Tories musn’t allow Labour to define their tax policy, and finds a quote from the NUT that epitomises
David Cameron’s ‘nothing to do with me guv’ response to the Ashcroft tax question on yesterday’s Politics Show has not put the issue to bed. In fact, his obfuscation has the reverse effect. The Independent runs an article today describing how little is known about individuals and authorities. ‘The House of Lords Appointments Commission says
My posh Tory friends get really irritated when I talk about class. Almost as annoyed as my posh Labour friends. The idea that class was somehow excised from the political discourse by New Labour is absurd. We live in a country where the two dominant political parties are essentially representative of their class. And why not?
A pleasure to welcome Diane Abbott to the debate, despite the defamations. There is nothing remotely racist in my blog about the attempted murder of a fifteen year old girl. My argument is much as it has always been; that the creed of multiculturalism is largely to blame, the notion that cultures, no matter how
The rumour mill is pulling 24/7 shifts. In recent days, newspapers and newswires have turned into gossip columns devoted exclusively to Alistair Darling’s Pre-Budget Report. If the rumours are true, which is a huge assumption, Darling will not offer the taxpayer a pre-election lolly-pop besides deferring the Age of Austerity until 2011, by which time
Watching George Osborne and Alistair Darling on Marr this morning, one couldn’t help but be struck by how Labour is defining the Tories on tax. Darling kept stressing that it tells you everything you need to know about the Tories that the main tax cut they are offering at this time is to inheritance tax.
Fort William beat Strathspey Thistle 2-1 in the Highland League on Saturday and if I know the manager, Cal McLean, they’ll still be out celebrating now. All the goals came in the final ten minutes of play; Fort took the lead with a lob from their, uh, ginger wizard, Sean Ellis, before Thistle pulled level
Things are shaping up nicely for Gordon Brown ahead of the Pre-Budget Report next week. The Tories were 17 points ahead on ICM in October – now it’s 11. Cameron would have a narrow majority on this basis but, given the margin of error, we’re back into hung parliament territory. And this has a self-reinforcing
So, yes, we all know that Rod Liddle’s shtick is to try and be as offensive as possible so that he can chuckle at those po-faced ninnies who dare to be offended by his courageous insistence to tell it like it really is. But like his comrades Clarkson and Littlejohn Liddle confuses being offensive with
On Thursday night Michael Gove announced that a Conservative government would pay off the student loans of those with good science degrees from quality universities. The move, paid for by cutting out a level of bureaucracy in teacher development, would help address the shortage of science and maths specialist in state schools. It was a
I make my second foray into the climate debate with trepidation. But visiting Denmark a few days before COP 15, it is impossible to escape the subject. Whether I speak to friends, family or strangers on the bus, everyone has a view and wants to share it. TV coverage of the forthcoming climate talks is
The Telegraph reports that Alistair Darling will allow married couples to continue to pool their inheritance tax allowances. Downing Street has pressed the Treasury to abolish pooled allowances in order to demarcate between Labour, the party that promotes fairness, and the Tories, the party that entrenches privilege. For all the recent polls and bravado,
Anyone interested in climate change should buy The Spectator today. We don’t normally make such naked plugs here on Coffee House, but our global warming special has a line-up of the variety and quality which I guarantee you will find in no other British magazine or newspaper. As the FT’s Samuel Brittan says: we dare