Coalition

Tuesday

Peter Hoskin

Cameron announces that Parliament will be recalled

So far as its tone went, David Cameron’s statement just now was firm and unyielding. He did express his sympathy for the victims of the riots; the emergency services, the shopkeepers, the fearful. But the major emphasis was on bringing the culprits to book. His “clear message” for the perpetrators of this destruction was that “you will feel the full force of the law”. He preceded that by describing their actions as “criminality, pure and simple — and it has to be confronted and defeated”. There were no excuses nor prevarications, and rightly so. As for the content, it seems that the government is eager to keep this a police

Monday

Peter Hoskin

Osborne’s debt dilemma

If there’s one sentiment that defines George Osborne’s article for the Telegraph today, it’s that there is no need for us Brits to panic. The economic convulsions of the past few days, contends the Chancellor, serve to prove that the coalition was right to approach deficit reduction as it has. “The alternative of more spending and yet more borrowing is now frankly ludicrous,” he says, “and places those who advocate it on the outer fringes of the international debate.” He has a point. As I blogged on Saturday, there are reasons to believe that we’d be hurtling towards a credit downgrade and higher borrowing costs were it not for the

Peter Hoskin

The politics of our discontent

Even by the normal standards of Monday mornings, this one reeks. Just sniff around you. That burning smell, it’s either coming from the global stock markets as they strain against the US downgrade, or from those places in London where the rioting spread last night. Although the destruction in Brixton, Enfield, Walthamstow and Waltham Forest didn’t match up to that on Saturday in Tottenham, it still involved fires, missiles and clashes between rioters and the police. Reading the reports and watching the footage online, looting appears to have been one of the most popular sports of the evening. In terms of the short-term politics — as opposed to the slightly

Friday

Fraser Nelson

Brown still hovers over the 50p tax debate

A number of papers report today that George Osborne is minded to replace the 50p tax with Gordon Brown’s original proposal: a 45p tax. How the ex-PM will be laughing. As he knows, even the 45p tax will lose money — that’s why Labour didn’t raise the top rate until the final four weeks of its 13 years. But the Tories haven’t worked that out yet, and the Treasury is still working on the false assumptions he programmed into it. In short, the amount of money that either tax rate will raise depends on what’s called the “taxable income elasticity,” or TIE — a figure suggesting how responsive various taxpayers

Thursday

David Blackburn

Cable accentuates the coalition’s differences, but not without risk

The Liberal Democrats are in something of a purple patch at the moment, dominating aspects of government policy in the media. Last weekend, Danny Alexander broke his usually modest mould to stand square behind the 50p rate, in contrast to Boris Johnson and George Osborne. The debate encapsulates the current vogue for the coalition partners to accentuate their differences. Today, enter Vince Cable pursued by a mansion tax. In an interview with the Telegraph, the Business Secretary concedes that the 50p rate is not a permanent fiscal instrument, but its removal (after 2015 when the income tax threshold has been raised to £10,000) will require a concession from the Conservatives.

Wednesday

David Blackburn

Government split over policing the internet

Business Secretary Vince Cable was on strident form this morning, pledging to drop controversial web-blocking from the government’s plan to tackle internet piracy. But his Conservative colleagues at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), Ed Vaizey and Jeremy Hunt, disagree. Ed Vaizey, the minister responsible for the creative industries, is to chair a meeting on 20th September with internet service providers, copyright holders and other stakeholders, and web-blocking is on the agenda. Originally, the government proposed blocking broadband access at addresses (both real and virtual) where illegal downloads took place. The prevailing consensus suggested that such a practice is unworkable and potentially unfair: why, for instance, should a café be barred just

David Blackburn

Moving slowly towards the future

Yesterday’s leak of Vince Cable’s response to the Hargreaves report into the Digital Economy Act (DEA) set tongues wagging. The headline was as expected: ‘web-blocking’, the practice whereby copyright infringers are barred from internet access, will be dropped because it is unworkable. In line with Hargreaves’ recommendations, Cable also plans to remove restrictions on using copyright material to create parodies, which is excellent news for Downfall enthusiasts. And he will rationalise copyright law to legalise supposedly forbidden practices like copying CDs onto an i-Pod. Finally, Cable has permitted an exception from copyright for data mining for research purposes. The Business Department and the Treasury believe that these reforms will net the economy an extra

Matt Cavanagh

Decisions that may come to determine the Coalition’s stewardship of defence

The House of Commons Defence Committee moves at a stately pace. Two weeks back, it gave us its considered view on the British military campaign in southern Afghanistan – a report which might have been quite useful a couple of years ago. Today it has published its verdict on October’s National Security Strategy and Strategic Defence and Security Review – nine months after their launch, with many of the decisions now irreversible, and with MPs and much of the media on holiday. The headline findings are not surprising, but make for bracing reading nonetheless. They are summarised on the front page of the Telegraph: the SDSR was a rushed exercise,

Tuesday

Jonathan Jones

An open letter to Will Straw about deficit reduction…

…or why the US cuts are actually faster than, and just as deep as, ours. Dear Will, We hope you don’t mind us writing a letter-form response to your latest post on Left Foot Forward, which argues that the “coalition government’s cuts are deeper and faster than the Tea Party’s”. But, as we see it, there are several problems with your figures which are easier to explain in a conversational format. Here they are, as best as we can express them: i) The first obvious problem comes when you say that Obama set out $83 billion of deficit reduction for 2012 in his March Budget. Actually, he didn’t. The Congressional

Peter Hoskin

The IMF manages to please everyone

A bet-hedging sort of report into the UK’s economy from the IMF today, which largely supports George Osborne’s deficit reduction plan, but will also give some encouragement to his detractors. By way of a summary, here are the parts that might satisfy Osborne himself, as well as Vince Cable, Ed Balls and Mervyn King: The passage that the Chancellor will flash around Westminster comes on the very second page of the IMF document. “Strong fiscal consolidation is under way,” it reads, “and remains essential to achieve a more sustainable budgetary position, thus reducing fiscal risks.” And the endorsements for the Chancellor’s deficit reduction plan continue inside, not least in the

Peter Hoskin

Which department could be replaced with a mathematical equation?

I answer the question in an article for the Times (£) today, in response to Francis Maude’s announcement yesterday. But for those CoffeeHousers who can’t vault the paywall, here’s the relevant passage: “I have been told of an internal report that makes the argument sublimely well. Before last year’s spending review, the Treasury asked a group of outside experts whether plans for a 40 per cent headcount reduction at the Department for Communities and Local Government were too ambitious. Their response? It wasn’t nearly ambitious enough. The staff cut ought to be at least 90 per cent. Responsibilities for fire prevention could be transferred to the Home Office; responsibilities for

Monday

David Blackburn

Pickles lands a small blow for growth

Eric Pickles’ decentralisation revolution continues, with the announcement that Whitehall is relinquishing control over car parking restrictions in town centres. From now on, town halls will decide how much space will be devoted to parking and at what price. It is hoped that this will stimulate commerce in the localities by improving the experience of high street shoppers.      This, I concede, is not the most thrilling news ever to have graced these pages. But it is quite significant nonetheless. It was understood that Pickles was unlikely to achieve this objective, due to Whitehall’s intransigence. So, this is another indication of Pickles’ ability to overcome the antediluvian forces arraigned against him and

Sunday

Peter Hoskin

Balls has the public on his side when it comes to a VAT cut

There are few more useful addendums to Danny Alexander’s comments earlier than YouGov’s poll for the Sunday Times today. It asks people about individual policies for growth, and the results will be disheartening for the Tory leadership and encouraging for Ed Balls. An overwhelming majority supports Balls’s call for a cut in VAT, while few back a reduction in the 50p rate: There’s an almost identical picture when it comes to which polices people think would support growth: Perhaps most tellingly, even Tory supporters are against cutting the 50p rate: And, again, a similar picture emerges with respect to growth: Of course, none of this means that Labour has won

Peter Hoskin

Alexander rallies behind the 50p rate

Danny Alexander is usually the very model of collective responsibility: sober, unfussy and diligent, he sets about the coalition’s work without ever causing a scene. Which is what makes his televised comments about the 50p tax rate earlier all the more striking. When pressed on the subject by interviewer Sophie Rayworth, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury was forceful in response. The government doesn’t necessarily want to cut the rate, he suggested, and those who thought it would are inhabitants of “cloud cuckoo land”. He went on: “We set out in the Coalition agreement, and it’s something that we as Liberal Democrats pushed very hard for, that the Government’s first

Thursday

Peter Hoskin

The shifting sands of public opinion on Libya

All of the buccaneering rhetoric has been sucked from the Libyan conflict this week, replaced with words of concession, compromise and caution. A few days ago, it was the news that — contrary to what they might previously have said — the government is prepared to let Gaddafi remain in the country after all. Today, William Hague deploys the same line in an interview with the Times (£), in which he also warns that there are “a lot of problems and even convulsions” to come in northern Africa. As it happens, the depressed mood of our foreign-policymakers reflects the tide of public opinion. Here, for CoffeeHousers’ benefit, are a couple

Peter Hoskin

The romance isn’t dead on Downing Street

Westminster, today, is all a-titter about an anecdote contained within this FT article about Steve Hilton. It is, it must be said, a good ‘un: “Mr Hilton’s crusade against employment legislation also saw him suggest that Mr Cameron just ignore European labour regulations on temporary workers, prompting an exasperated exchange with Jeremy Heywood, Downing Street’s permanent secretary. ‘Steve asked why the PM had to obey the law,’ said one Whitehall insider of a meeting in March to discuss the government’s growth strategy. ‘Jeremy had to explain that if David Cameron breaks the law he could be put in prison.'” From there on in, the article rattles through some of Hilton’s

Peter Hoskin

Alexander’s balancing act

Remember that merry dance between the government and the unions over public sector pensions, a few weeks ago? Expect a minor reprise today, and much more over the summer. The government today announces how much extra public sector workers will have to pay to maintain their pension levels, and already the Telegraph has the numbers. When it comes to the 40,000 best-paid public sectorees — all on considerably over £100,000 — their contributions will rise by around £3,000 a year. And then it’s a sliding scale all the way down to the 750,000 least well-paid workers, who will face no increase at all. The unions, who will rejoin the government

Wednesday

Peter Hoskin

The scramble away from cosiness

Aside from Boris’s exhortations to George Osborne, one of the most ear-catching lines of the day has been uttered by Jeremy Hunt. “I think the relationships between politicians and the media got too cosy,” said the culture secretary on Radio 5 this morning. He’s certainly not the first to make the point, but he is one of the most prominent Conservatives to do so. The words, I suspect, were chosen to cool the heat rising from yesterday’s lists of meetings between ministers and media organisations. Hunt himself, it was revealed, has met seven times with News Corp types since the general election. Hunt’s admission also opens the prospect of a

Peter Hoskin

Universally speaking

As Paul Waugh notes, James Purnell’s article for the Times today (£) is striking for its attack on universal benefits. “I have never bought the argument,” writes the former welfare secretary, “that universal benefits bind the middle classes in. It feels too much like taxing with one hand to give back with another.” Although this is, in truth, a point that he has been making for some time. He said something similar in a speech back in April. The question, really, is how much Purnell’s viewpoint will percolate down through Labour circles. During last year’s leadership election, it seemed as though universal benefits were to become one of the defining

Tuesday

Peter Hoskin

Cameron compromises, but Gaddafi might not

What a difference four months of air sorties make. Back in the early days of the Libya intervention, David Cameron was unequivocal when it came to Muammar Gaddafi remaining in the country: there was “no future” for the dictator within its borders, he said. But now, on top of comments by William Hague yesterday, the Prime Minister is thought to be softening his stance. As the Independent says today, he has decided that “the time has come to find a way out of the conflict and back a French proposal to allow Gaddafi to stay in the country as part of a negotiated settlement with rebel forces.” So, from no