Coalition

Monday

James Forsyth

Hardly a model of good government

What is going on with the government’s health reforms is highly unusual. Normally, once a bill has gone through second reading and committee stage in the Commons there are very few changes made to it. But the coalition is considering some fairly significant changes to the Health and Social Care Bill in a bid to make it more politically palatable. It is hardly a model of good government.   This state of affairs provides ample opportunity for Ed Miliband to land some blows on the coalition, as he did in this morning’s speech delivered — symbolically — at the RSA, the new home of Blair’s former policy chief Matthew Taylor.

David Blackburn

Rescuing Lansley’s reforms

The fate of Andrew Lansley’s NHS reforms is attracting apocalyptic headlines. A report in the Times (£) declares that a ‘last-ditch’ salvage is underway; the FT carries an editorial in similar tone, and the Guardian devotes its front page to David Cameron’s attempt to save face. Over at Conservative Home, Jonathan Isaby relates how the strategy will unfold. The principles of the bill will remain intact, but it will be delayed using the ‘natural pause’ in parliamentary procedure. During this time, the details of the bill be scrutinised and the government will also use this time to reiterate its view that these reforms are necessary for the NHS to manage

Sunday

James Forsyth

The coalition is in a mess of its own making over the NHS

The NHS is, as Nigel Lawson once remarked, the new national religion of this country. This makes it difficult to discuss the subject in a rational matter and any attempt to reform it is likely to run into its own Pilgrimage of Grace as Andrew Lansley and the coalition are discovering. The government’s problem is that it can’t do a simple u-turn. As I say in the Mail on Sunday, Cameron can’t shelve this scheme without bringing his own judgement into question. Once Cameron and Clegg signed the introduction to the white paper setting out these reforms, they crossed the Rubicon. So instead the coalition is left trying to tinker and

David Blackburn

Trouble with the big society

A gaggle of academics have written to the Observer to condemn the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) for accepting £100m from the government. The AHRC is conducting research into the big society, and the allegation is that the settlement was conditional, an allegation which is denied.  Doubtless the 69 signatories are dons of the tweedily conservative variety, but their objections perhaps explain why Cameron’s flagship policy is so mistrusted. They write: ‘When academic research is used to promote party political ideologies its quality and value decline. It also threatens democracy and the constitution. While academic work may be partly paid for out of public funds, this ought not to

Saturday

Gordon Hector

Trouble over the NHS reforms – inevitable or not?

Was the stooshie over health reforms inevitable? From much of the coverage, you’d think it was always going to end in tears, as people line up to criticise Lansley and rumours about Number 10’s search for a dignified exit strategy (£) swirl around the Westminster village. But it didn’t have to be like this. For a start, the basic idea is one that should be easy to sell to the public. Matthew Parris has pointed out (£) that people intuitively look to their GP as the route into healthcare. It shouldn’t be hard to convince the public they should lead commissioning. It’s been difficult mainly because the health professionals aren’t on-side.

David Blackburn

Planning to ruin Lansley’s party

How can Nick Clegg recover from defeat in the AV referendum? Andrew Grice considers the question in his column and reveals that Clegg is not too bothered about AV: his sight is trained on a bigger prize. ‘A U-turn in the controversial NHS reforms to hand 80 per cent of the budget to GPs and scrap primary care trusts (PCTs). Mr Clegg is convinced that there must be big symbolic changes to the NHS and Social Care Bill.  That would not be good news for Andrew Lansley…He knows that Mr Cameron will demand some changes and is prepared to see a few technical amendments to the Bill during its passage through

Friday

Fraser Nelson

At last, Grayling takes on the Ancien Regime

To disguise the radical nature of reform, one need only make it boring. And here Chris Grayling has succeeded spectacularly. Today he has announced further details on the ‘Work Programme’ and the ‘Benefit Migration’, which sound like the type of well-intentioned but doomed reforms that ministers tried over the Labour years. The welfare state has incubated the very ‘giant evils’ it was designed to eradicate. There are, scandalously, 2.6 million on incapacity benefit right now – a category which ensures they don’t count in unemployment figures. Brown didn’t care much, but Grayling is taking this head-on. In tests on 1,700 IB claimants in Burnley and Aberdeen, it was found that

David Blackburn

Shaky dealings are damaging the reputation of Britain’s universities

A delegation from Durham University flew to Kuwait in February to build what it termed ‘academic partnerships’. They succeeded. On Monday afternoon, Durham University announced the formation of the ‘Al-Sabah Programme in International Relations, Regional Politics and Security.’ In an internal document sent to academic staff, the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Chris Higgins, revealed that that this seat had been ‘funded personally by Sheikh Nasser Al-Sabah of Kuwait’, the Kuwati Prime Minister, and that the ‘£2.5million endowment will support the Al-Sabah Chair, associated research and two PhD studentships in perpetuity’. Al-Sabah has made what is politely termed a singular contribution to democratic traditions. He was appointed in 2006 by his uncle, the

Thursday

James Forsyth

Welfare to work will be the first big test of the coalition’s new model for public services

Moving people from welfare to work is going to be the first big test of the idea that public services should be paid for by the state but don’t have to be provided by the state. The coalition intends to task private sector and voluntary groups with moving the unemployed back into the labour force and then pay them by results. For every person they move back into stable employment, they will be paid a fee—based on how long the person has been out of the labour market—out of the saved welfare payments. Tomorrow, the government intends to announce the groups that have successfully bid for these contracts. I understand

Peter Hoskin

Ed Balls ties himself in knots

The Most Annoying Figure in British Politics™ is spread absolutely everywhere today: in the newspapers, on Twitter and, most notably, in interview with the New Statesman’s Mehdi Hasan. The interview really is worth reading, not least because it pulls out and probes some of Ball’s arguments, both for himself and for Labour’s fiscal reasoning. Guido has already dwelt on the former — “I’m a very loyal person,” quoth the shadow chancellor — but what about the latter? Three things struck me: 1) Oh, yeah, there was a structural deficit. The Big News here is probably Balls’s admission that Labour did run up a structural deficit (i.e. a deficit that remains

Charles Moore Charles Moore

Exclusive: the man who saved the Zurbarans

The drama over Durham’s Zurbaran paintings has reached an extraordinary conclusion — and one that is revealed exclusively in this week’s Spectator. The protest against the Church of England’s proposed sale had snowballed into a national campaign, with Jeremy Hunt calling for them to be “enjoyed by the public.” Today we can disclose that they have been bought for £15 million — by an investor (and Spectator reader) called Jonathan Ruffer, who has decided to gift them back to the church. Here, for CoffeeHousers, is Charles Moore’s interview with him for the magazine: ‘It’s the pearl of great price,’ says Jonathan Ruffer. Like the merchant in the Gospel, he is

Wednesday

James Forsyth

Things are getting fraught inside the coalition as AV vote looms

Relations between the coalition partners are fraught at present, more of which in the column tomorrow. The main cause of this tension is the AV referendum which is pitting the two sides against each other in an increasingly bitter fight. But even by recent standards, Chris Huhne’s response to the Tory chairman Sayeeda Warsi’s claim that AV would help the BNP is dramatic. As Patrick Wintour reports, Huhne has accussed Warsi and the No campaign of indulging in an ‘increasingly Goebbels-like campaign.’ This latest riposte follows Huhne’s letter at the weekend which made clear that the No campaign’s tactics were threatening the existence of the coalition. The next nine months

Peter Hoskin

PMQs live blog | 30 March 2011

VERDICT: What happened there, then? The Prime Minister often has a confident swagger about him when it comes to PMQs — but today it went into overdrive. He simply couldn’t conceal his glee at taking on Eds Miliband and Balls; the first over his appearance at the anti-cuts demonstration, the second for just being Ed Balls. It was a little bit Flashman from the PM, perhaps. Yet, on this occasion, it also helped him sail through the contest more or less untroubled. Aside from the theatrics, the serious talk was reserved for whether the coalition should help arm the rebels in Libya. The PM’s official position was that we shouldn’t

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Danny Alexander’s duty

In the aftermath of the Budget, the Lib Dems were keen to let it be known that the idea of a windfall tax on North Sea oil companies to pay for ending the fuel duty escalator was Danny Alexander’s idea. But, as Andy Sparrow notes, this claim has ended up causing them some problems. In the chief secretary’s native Scotland, where the Lib Dems are already worrying about a humiliating set of election results on May 5th, the idea has not gone down so well as it has south of the border. The Scotsman reports,  that Lib Dems in Scotland have been scornful of the move. The Lib Dem MP

Peter Hoskin

The yellow bird of liberty stretches its wings

Remember when Nick Clegg said that the coalition was shuffling into a new phase? One where his party would would make their presence, and their differences with the Tories, more acutely felt? Turns out the Lib Dem leader wasn’t kidding. Judging by this report of a press briefing he has given in Mexico, the brave new phase is very much in effect. For starters, Clegg luxuriates in the anti-nuclear hysteria that has arrived in the wake of Fukushima — emphasising not just that our planned nuclear power stations will be more costly and difficult to build now, but also his party’s policy that no public money should be used to

Tuesday

Peter Hoskin

Memo to Johann Hari: this government isn’t planning to “pay off our debt rapidly”

What is the biggest lie in British politics? According to a new post by Johann Hari, it’s that our debt is at dangerously high levels. “As a proportion of GDP,” he writes, “Britain’s national debt has been higher than it is now for 200 of the past 250 years.” He makes some pugnacious points that will have you nodding enthusiastically, or groaning wearily, depending on your political persuasion. But he also undermines his argument right from the off, in his description of the Big Lie itself. Here it is: “Here’s the lie. We are in a debt crisis. Our national debt is dangerously and historically high. We are being threatened

Monday

David Blackburn

Cameron’s Libyan double standard

After the Libyan blood money scandal at the LSE, inquiries were bound to be made about other universities. Robert Halfon, the Conservative MP for Harlow, has exposed how Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU) agreed to contracts with Gaddafi’s Libya worth at least £1,272,000.00. (He has since been threatened with a defamation suit for pointing this out, but that’s for another time.) He raised the issue in parliament and the Prime Minister replied: ‘I think that there are lessons to be learned. As I have said, I think that it was right (of the previous government) to respond to what Libya did in terms of weapons of mass destruction, but I

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Another phase in Gove’s revolution

Michael Gove has just finished announcing to the Commons his proposed replacement for Educational Maintenance Allowance. The new scheme is more targeted than the old one that went to 45 percent of those who stayed in education post-16. Interestingly, it will be administered by the schools and colleges themselves. Gove’s argument is that it is these institutions that are best equipped to know which student needs how much money to support them staying in education. This drew predictable opposition from the Labour benches which wanted a top down, national scheme. On top of this discretionary fund, every student who is receiving income support will receive £1,200 a year. This new

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Clegg’s new direction?

Perhaps the most interesting political story of the weekend was Nick Clegg’s political mentor, Paddy Ashdown rejecting the idea that the Lib Dems should be equidistant between the two main parties in an interview with The Times: ‘I don’t want to go back to using the word ‘equidistant’ because the world has changed.” He predicts that Labour will look increasingly like “a bunch of superannuated students shouting from the sidelines.’ There are two schools of thought in the Lib Dems about their approach to the next election. One has it that the party must appear equally prepared to do a deal with either of the main parties in the event

Peter Hoskin

Clegg weaves more divides between himself and Miliband

“He’s elevated personal abuse into a sort of strategy.” So says Nick Clegg of Ed Miliband in one of the most noteworthy snippets from his laid-back interview with the FT today. Another sign, were it needed, that Labour’s animosity towards the Lib Dem leader is mutual — if they won’t work with him, then he almost certainly won’t work with them. And a sign, perhaps, that the coalition is keen to undermine Miliband’s claim to post-partisanship (or whatever). Labour constantly criticise Cameron for being more Flashman than statesman. Now the same charge is being levelled at their leader too. Elsewhere in the interview — as George Eaton details over at