Coalition

Wednesday

James Forsyth

Cameron’s u-turns come at a price

David Cameron hasn’t wasted much time since his return from holiday in dealing with the government’s two biggest political vulnerabilities: its policies on the NHS and criminals. The u-turns have got Cameron into a better place politically but they come at a cost. On the NHS, Cameron has had to water down the Lansley reforms and accept the temporary creation of a two-tier NHS and a highly bureaucratic structure. While on sentencing, Cameron has removed one of the ways that Ken Clarke was trying to save money. But, perhaps, the biggest problem with these u-turns is that they add to the impression that he’s not prepared to stand and fight,

Blair Gibbs

Policing the local and the national

Today’s announcement on a proposed new National Crime Agency (NCA) is a key element in the government’s ambitious police reform agenda.  Recent political attention has focused on changes to police pay and conditions and budget reductions, but the structural reforms that Theresa May and Nick Herbert are pursuing matter more in the long-term.  And before it is dismissed as another attempt to create a “British FBI”, the background and rationale for the NCA is worth exploring. The NCA is much more than a rebranding of the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) – the troubled organisation set up by Charles Clarke.  Instead it is one part of a major recalibration of

David Blackburn

Cameron stamps on Clarke

Ken Clarke was summoned to Downing Street yesterday, the BBC reports. He spoke to David Cameron for half an hour, after which the controversial sentencing review was dropped: there will not be a per cent fifty discount in plea bargaining and Clarke will have to find £130m of savings from elsewhere in his department. Clarke has paid for last month’s rape victim fiasco, which so incensed the party leadership. The government is adamant that this is not a u-turn; rather, it argues, it has consulted on extending plea bargaining from the current level of 30 per cent and decided against such a move. It points to a report issued by

Tuesday

James Forsyth

Paxman trips up Balls

Ed Balls walked into two traps on Newsnight yesterday evening. First, he seemed stumped when Jeremy Paxman asked him if he was praying that George Osborne was right. Paxman’s ‘gotcha point’ was that if Osborne isn’t right the country is in deep trouble and Balls wouldn’t want that. But Balls’ more serious slip was to say, “My view, though, is that the central outcome isn’t that we see a resumption of growth.” This, as coalition sources have been pointing out today, allows them to present any growth as a vindication of their strategy. For all the talk about the NHS today, the economy still remains the central battleground in politics.

Richard Benyon-Mp

Valuing the natural world

Today, the government launched its Natural Environment White Paper. This document is a vision for how we value and use nature, now and in the future. The public was heavily involved in the White Paper’s creation. Thousands of suggestions came from individuals and small local naturalist groups, right up to large national NGOs and bodies like the National Trust. This shows that concern for nature is alive and well in Britain. The paper was launched by Caroline Spelman; but, crucially, it received input from Greg Clark from Communities and Local Government and Norman Baker from Transport. The Treasury have also been close partners. The proposals seek to reconnect people with

David Blackburn

Cameron on a charm defensive

David Cameron is at his best when his back is to the wall. His speech on the NHS was largely as expected – a charm offensive designed to appease his warring coalition and reassure a fevered public. I’ll wager that he has succeeded; but reservations and pitfalls remain. Cameron recognises that competition is the stiking point for most Liberal Democrats, while the Tories insist on it. Competition will stay. He said, “New providers, more choice and competition raises standards and delivers value for money.” However, competition will not be unbridled. Cameron reassured doubters, “But let me clear, no: we will not be selling off the NHS, we will not be

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The need for a strong man to strong-arm the new counter-terror policy

If the counter-terrorism strategy the government is announcing today is to succeed, it will have to overcome bureaucratic opposition and institutional inertia. As Dean Godson writes in The Times today (£), senior civil servants in the Office of Security and Counter-Terrorism are highly reluctant to accept the government’s new, more muscular approach to this issue and will go back to the old, failed way of doing things if given the chance. If the Prime Minister’s writ is going to run across government on this issue, he is going to need someone working from the centre with Cameron’s explicit backing whose sole role is to supervise the implementation of the policy

Monday

Ed Holmes

Vince Cable dances with the unions

The Business Secretary’s words to the GMB union today about the government’s reluctance to reform Britain’s antiquated trade unions laws could hardly have been more modest. He called for a ‘mature and productive relationship’ with the trade union movement. Given the reception he received, this seems like wishful thinking (we at Policy Exchange had a dose of the GMB’s approach when it described our recent report on public sector pay as ‘propoganda [sic] in the tradition of reports by Joseph Goebbels’). Despite the heckles, Vince Cable was keen to emphasise that the government has no plans to reform strike laws and that it would only do so if pushed. It

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The IMF delivers its verdict

While Dominque Strauss-Kahn was in a New York court room, pleading not guilty to charges of sexual assault, his former IMF colleagues were delivering their verdict on the UK economy at the Treasury. The IMF are very polite guests and their report has provided some timely support for the coalition’s fiscal approach by declaring that there is currently no need for a Plan B. The Osborne operation has been quick to point out that even in various alternative scenarios the IMF set out in their report, they don’t call for more spending or smaller cuts. But there are things which the IMF says that won’t be music to Osborne’s ears.

David Blackburn

Cameron’s health worries

David Cameron has made the NHS his political mission. “I can do it (explain his priorities) in three letters: NHS,” he once said. It was a reassurance that the NHS was safe in his hands. His conviction doubled as a vital tactical stance to prove that the Tories were ‘nasty’ no more. So, the news that he is re-affirming his faith with an NHS pledge card is telling – a response to the fact that the public do not trust the Conservatives with the health service. It’s back to square one. According to Benedict Brogan, the pledges simply reiterate that the Tories can be trusted with the NHS. There is

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Counter-terrorism means stopping dealings with extremists

The coalition’s counter-terrorism strategy will be published tomorrow. This rather delayed review has been the subject of some semi-public wrangling, Cameron and Clegg have given speeches setting out very different visions for it. But one thing to remember is that the test of the review’s robustness isn’t just whether it stops government money going to extremists groups. It also has to lead to government, at all levels, stopping dealings with these groups, denying them the oxygen of recognition. Today’s Telegraph notes that 20 groups will lose their funding because the views they espouse are antithetical to British values. This is to be welcomed. But it won’t have much of an

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Osborne’s “flexibility” explained

So what does George Osborne mean by “flexibility“? Do we hear the quiet sound of a gear change, prior to a u-turn? No, I’m told, it’s Plan A all the way. And here are the details. The government’s five-year departmental budgets (the so-called DEL limits) are set in stone. They won’t change (in cash terms) until April 15, after which no figures have been set. If inflation continues to be high, then this will exacerbate the real effect of the cuts (Osborne has already seen trouble caused by with this as inflation has turned the tiny NHS budget increase into a tiny NHS budget decrease). The OBR reckons it may

Peter Hoskin

Cable tries to keep everyone happy – apart from the unions

When the GMB union invited Vince Cable to address their conference today, I doubt they wanted this: a warning that the government could legislate if the brothers decide to militate. The Business Secretary does add that “the case for changing strike law is not compelling,” so long as industrial action remains limited. But, on the surface, this is still the firmest coalition attack on the unions since David Cameron and Boris wrote that angry article for the Sun in January. And it comes from the side of the coalition, the Lib Dems, who were thought to be opposed to taking on the unions in the first place. Perhaps Cable really

Sunday

James Forsyth

Helping the kids be all right

Tomorrow sees the publication of the report David Cameron commissioned on how to address the commercialisation and sexualisation of childhood. Thanks to a leak we already know most of what’s in the report. It proposes, among other things, that sexualized advertisement shouldn’t be displayed in places near where children go, that the watershed should be more strictly enforced, that lads mags shouldn’t be displayed at eye level and that it should be easier for parents to block access from home computers to certain internet sites. There’ll be those that dismiss these proposals as gimmicks or as too small to make a difference. But making the public square more family friendly

Peter Hoskin

The return of the signature parade

Oh dear, we’re back to letter-writing again. 52 academic sorts — including the Labour advisor Richard Grayson and Blue Labour proponent Stuart White — have a letter in today’s Observer urging George Osborne towards a ‘Plan B’ for the economy. They even sketch out, in less than 150 words, what that Plan B might look like. And, strangely enough, it has more than a tinge of Ed Miliband about it, including — and I quote — a green new deal; a focus on targeted industrial policy; the empowerment of workers; “unsqueezing” the incomes of the majority, and so on. I say we’re back to letter-writing again, because it’s all so

Saturday

David Blackburn

Ed Balls opens a new front in the same old way

There are plenty of pressing issues at the moment, but two in particular stand out: the cost of living and youth unemployment. Ed Balls lost no time in latching onto the first issue. On becoming shadow chancellor, he immediately attacked the government’s VAT rise and benefits changes, which he judged to be the main contributors to rising inflation. It has been a  successful tactic, sustained by rising inflation and determined political pressure. Now Balls seems to be turning his full gaze at youth unemployment. In article for the News of the World, Balls launches his campaign to save “Britain Lost Talent”. At the root of this is a plan to

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Charles Moore warns that the Downing Street machine isn’t working

Charles Moore, Margaret Thatcher’s biographer, is one of the columnists most sympathetic to and best informed about what David Cameron is trying to do. So when Charles warns that the current set-up of Downing Street isn’t working for the Prime Minister, Number 10 should take notice. Charles’ worry is that the new Downing Street set up is insufficiently political, that policy and politics are being kept too far apart. I think Charles is right about this. The Number 10 policy unit is now made up mostly of civil servants or former management consultants who, by their very nature, aren’t intellectually or ideologically committed to the Cameron public service reform agenda.

Friday

David Blackburn

The green consensus in action

A couple of days ago, I wrote about the deleterious effects of political consensus on energy policy. A good example of this has emerged today. According to Politics Home, Luciana Berger and Caroline Lucas are seeking an amendment to the Green Deal to impose a target for domestic carbon reduction. A number of salient points emerge from this. First, it’s a fine instance of the obsession with targets; itself an indication that this area of policy is largely a top down initiative – driven by targets, taxes and penalties. The Green Deal, as it currently stands, is one of the few areas that put incentive before directive. The idea was

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Cameron’s European opportunity

Jean-Claude Trichet’s speech yesterday proposing a ministry of finance for the eurozone (£) can be taken as setting out how the European Central Bank wants to resolve the eurozone’s problems. It is yet another example of how the European elite use crises to advance integration.   But just as important from a British point of view is Trichet’s admission that the overall package of changes he is talking about “naturally demand a change of the [EU] treaty”. This, as Fraser has written previously, presents David Cameron with a glorious opportunity to take advantage of this moment to redefine Britain’s relationship with the European Union. There are those who say that

David Blackburn

Not just a wily Fox, but a watchful hawk with time on his side

Liam Fox is fond of reminding us that he didn’t come into politics to cut the armed forces. A wistful look falls across his face when he says it – an indication of frustration as much as sincerity, a sense deepened by his letter of concern about the government spending so much more on international development. Opponents of Fox might characterise this as hypocrisy: he would reduce the size of the state without touching the armed forces, they say. His enemies in the Conservative party say that it’s typical of this “clever fool’s” intellectual indiscipline. Fox the military and fiscal hawk wants to “have it both ways”. The Economist has