Latest from Coffee House

Labour’s simmering resentments and self-doubts have been boiling over recently — and today is no different. Compare and contrast The Sun’s interview with Tony Blair with Andrew Grice’s article on Ed Balls in the Independent. For Blair, Labour ought to be claiming more credit for their preparatory role in some of the coalition’s reforms, such as the Academies programme. For Balls, they ought instead to be dodging blame for the state of the public finances. As Grice reports, “Ed Balls has rejected demands from allies of Ed Miliband that he admit Labour spent too much when they were in power.” From the rest of the piece, the shadow chancellor’s position

Gordon Brown’s friends have launched a shameless effort to compel the government into nominating him for the IMF post. The government would be mad if they did. Mad. This is not about petty score-settling, as yesterday’s Evening Standard would have it. This is about qualifications to lead, and the former Prime Minister, despite his intellect, does not have those skills. He led the country to ruin and remains in denial about it: he saved the world, don’t cha know. The UK should be smarter about using talent from across the House, but there are limits. And it is a bit rich for the ex-PM’s friends to argue that David Cameron

Five years have passed since Alan Greenspan stepped down from the most influential banking job in the world. (Now that’s how to leave at the right time.) Described in books, interviews and profiles too numerous to mention as ‘the most powerful regulator/person on earth’, he served as Chairman of the Federal Reserve for 19 years. For reasons of sheer longevity, perhaps Greenspan deserves to be called the architect of the modern global economy more than any of his elected contemporaries. So it’s not insignificant that, by the accounts of his friends back in 1950s New York, Greenspan was something of a fruit-loop as you will discover tonight if you watch

Robert Peston called it: the Irish banks are mired. The latest round of stress tests has been conducted and the headline figure is that the Irish banks face a shortfall of 24 billion euros. A major recapitalisation will follow and it’s likely that more institutions will be taken under state control. Ireland is also likely to ask for more cash from the EU. These tests were based on conservative criteria, where the Irish economy contracted by 1.6 percent this year, unemployment peaked at 15.8 percent and there was a cumulative collapse in property prices of 62 percent. It’s grim in Ireland, but not that grim: most forecasters are predicting GNP

One thing worth noting before we discuss Balls’ appointment is that the reasons Johnson have resigned are personal. It is not about his competence or otherwise. The Tories are wasting no time in getting stuck into Ed Balls. One just said to me, ‘the man who created this economic mess is back. He designed the fiscal rules that failed, he designed the FSA that failed…’ Certainly, the Tory attempt to make Labour’s economic record the premier political issue has just become a lot easier. Balls will be a more aggressive opponent for Osborne. But I suspect that he will prefer facing Balls to Yvette Cooper. I expect we will hear

The truth, as they say, is out: it doesn’t look as though the coalition will be doing much about bankers’ bonuses after all. According to this morning’s Times (£), it’s a case of the Tories getting one over the Lib Dems – and particularly Vince Cable – by not pushing down with more taxes on the City. But that, I suspect, is only half the story. The other half is that the coalition never had much in their armoury, but harsh rhetoric, in the first place. If they want the banks to start lending to business again, then their most substantial hope has always been a trade-off over bonuses. Which

Ed Miliband has penned a combative but incredible piece in today’s Times (£). He makes two substantial points. First, that the coalition is deceiving people: Labour was not to blame for the deficit. And second, the coalition’s cuts package (in its entirety) is unnecessary. Oh what a tangled web he’s weaved. His argument is a maze of conceits, sleights of hand and subterfuge, and he interchanges between debt and deficit at his convenience. But, occasionally, his position is exposed. As this Coffee House graph recalls, Labour built a substantial structural deficit prior to the economic collapse. Tony Blair acknowledged as much in his memoir: ‘We should also accept that from

The media pack is often blind to an impending political car-crash.  For instance, very few in Westminster, or the media, noticed the scrapping of the 10p tax band until the screech of twisting steel turned heads. The same is happening now in relation to living standards. The media and political establishment are yet to wake up to the fact that working families in Britain are about to become poorer (though hat-tip to Allister Heath for being quick off the mark on this front). The gathering wisdom is that, with the recession now behind us, household budgets will start to recover.  We have just published a new report – Squeezed Britain 

Oh dear. On Wednesday night, we at The Spectator saw David Cameron handing Lord Young his Spectator/Threadneedle Parliamentarian of the Year in the category of Peer of the Year. “Over the decades,” said yours truly, “Prime Ministers have come to value his advice. As Thatcher put it: ‘other people bring me problems, David brings me solutions.’” Not any more – David has brought him a problem, followed by a resignation. Less than 48 hours after picking-up our award, his political career appears to be at an end.   It is true that there are some people who have had a “good recession”. That is: faced no danger of losing their

Admittedly, this is but an item of marginalia in the notebook of British politics – but I’d appreciate CoffeeHousers’ views on it nonetheless. I’m talking about the Tories’ efforts to squeeze an apology out of Labour for the state of the public finances. This is something that they’ve been trying to do since the election, but the strategy has been reheated in the aftermath of Ed Miliband’s election. As Sayeeda Warsi put it on Saturday, “what I noticed in his acceptance speech was that there was … no apology for the role that he had played in the current economic mess.” Other Tory folk have called for that to be

Trust Bob Crow to turn down the charm. Explaining why he was boycotting Mervyn King’s address to the TUC today, the RMT union boss managed to liken the Governor of the Bank of England to both the “devil” and the “Sheriff of Nottingham”. Unsurprising, perhaps – but it’s yet another reminder of why, for the Labour leadership contenders, marching in lockstep with the unions may not be such a good idea. To Harriet Harman, a Labour Party bound to Crow & Co. might be a “progressive coalition”. But to the rest of the country, it will probably look slightly left of sane. Only David Miliband, to his credit, seems to

The Big Tent just got a little bit bigger with the appointment of Stephen Green as trade minister. As most of the papers point out, landing the HSBC boss is something of a coup for the coalition. David Cameron was struggling to fill the role, but he’s ended up with someone who is widely credited with steering his bank through the worst of the financial storm. Even HSBC’s purchase of a dodgy sub-prime company in 2003 has done little to tarnish Green’s reputation. Now that he’s in government, though, it’s worth pointing out that he is yet another minister who has warned of a double-dip recession. Here’s how the FT

As compliments go, there’s something slightly backhanded about Vince Cable’s claim that, “Having worked with [the Tories] at close quarters, I’ve been pleasantly surprised that they’re not as I’d envisaged them.” And that’s just one of the little nuggets embedded within his interview with Decca Aitkenhead this morning. The Business Secretary touches on everything from what he thinks of George Osborne (“he’s clearly able”) to his own ability to craft a joke (“I’m actually quite good at one-liners”). If you want a sense of where Cable is at, then Aitkenhead’s piece is worth a quick read. But if you’re stuck for time, then – as George Eaton notes over the

There has been some speculation, most of it idle, that Boris Johnson will not stand for re-election as London Mayor in 2012. Speaking to the Today programme about the necessity of protecting the Olympics budget, Boris commented on his putative re-election campaign. He said: ‘If things are still going well I would be totally crackers not to have another go at it then. But I’m going to be making an announcement later on.’ Many would describe his tenure so far as a comedy of inertia. I don’t: Johnson battled hard to shield the City from puerile political indignation at the height of the financial crisis. It showed a seriousness and

Asks Iain Martin, and I suspect he’s back in Rentoul territory. It is, nonetheless, a question that merits more than a cursory no in reply. For all his egregiousness, you know where Balls stands: in the crude but distinctive colours of the old left. He is convinced that any approach to spending cuts other than his own will precipitate a double-dip recession. As Iain puts it: ‘Balls is also calculating that the second half of a double-dip recession is on the way and is staking out ground on which he can be the one to proclaim to the country: I told you so.’   In terms of Britain’s economic debate,