Coalition

Tuesday

Peter Hoskin

Some context for those police cuts

What’s it to be? Take a pay cut, or lose your job? That, as David suggested earlier, is the question being posed by Theresa May to police forces – and it’s a question that they cannot shirk. With the police budget being cut by 4 per cent a year, there have to be reductions of one sort or another. And if they don’t come from pay restraint – along the broad outlines of Tom Winsor’s review today – then there will no doubt have to be extra job losses. This is the argument that George Osborne set out in his 2009 conference speech, only now it’s being deployed from government.

David Blackburn

Theresa May’s unenviable challenge

Many political careers have met a torturous end in the Home Office. And this morning, Theresa May began her struggle. She is taking on the “last great unreformed public service” and the opposition is formidable; so much so that the official opposition barely get a look in. The Peelers are marching on Downing Street. The Police Federation has declared itself ‘fed up’ with cuts – a perfunctory warning to the government. Vice Chairman Simon Reed indicated that the Federation feels the government is abrogating its duty of care to those who serve, a dextrous line forged by those opposed to personnel cuts to the armed forces. Reed told the Today

Martin Bright

The enemies of enterprise

David Cameron’s attack on the “enemies of enterprise”, his version of the “forces of conservatism” shows that he and those around him are still following the Blairite script, at least in terms of rhetoric. But the coalition still needs to decide what it means to be a “friend of enterprise”. There are many in the libertarian ranks of the Conservative Party who believe the state has no business interfering in such matters. The architects of the Big Society remain confused about whether it is possible to encourage a bottom-up approach with a top-down message, or, to put it another way, decentralisation by government diktat. The Big Society, something which I

Monday

James Forsyth

A princely problem

Tonight’s Six o’clock news had a long package on Prince Andrew that ended with Laura Kuenssberg reporting from Downing Street on the government’s attitude to the prince. The fact that the government is now so much part of this story is due to an unforced error on its part.   It was the briefing yesterday about how if more came out then Andrew would have to resign as trade envoy that pushed the government right into the middle of this sorry story. This set journalistic hares running and had everyone demanding to know what the government’s position was. The government, which had got involved in this story more through cock-up

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Hague statement does little to clear up SAS mystery

William Hague’s statement to the Commons this afternoon did little to clear up the mystery behind how a bunch of SAS soldiers ended up being detained by the Libyan opposition. Hague’s explanation was that they were accompanying diplomats trying to make contact with the opposition and it is a dangerous neighbourhood. But if that was the case, then why didn’t they just make contact with the transitional council based at the courthouse and why were the soldiers carrying multiple passports and explosives rather than just normal weapons? As Douglas Alexander rather wittily put it, “the British public are entitled to wonder whether, if some new neighbours moved into the Foreign

James Forsyth James Forsyth

SpAd Wars

Downing Street’s briefing that under-performing special advisors will soon be sacked has created a storm in the Westminster tea-cup. One SpAd pointed out to me the complete hypocrisy of a Number 10 that constantly stresses that briefing against colleagues is a sackable offence doing exactly that. Sacking under-performing SpAds will not be as easy as you’d think it should be. These advisors have, in most cases, been hand-picked by the Secretary of State who will be reluctant to give them up without a fight. SpAds in the rest of Whitehall also argue that the Downing Street operation itself is far from perfect. As Craig Oliver, the PM’s new communications director,

Peter Hoskin

The politics of Prince Andrew

Uh-oh, the Prime Minster has “full confidence” in Prince Andrew as a UK trade envoy – the sort of endorsement that often means the direct opposite. In this case, though, I suspect that the line is more a hasty attempt to defuse some of the tension that has been building on this matter over the past few days. Only this morning, a Downing Street source told the Beeb that the Prince could be ejected from the role should any more revelations surface. Another suggested that “there won’t be many tears shed if he resigns.” And then there’s the senior Tory putting it about that “there appears to be no discernible

Peter Hoskin

Khan comes to Ken Clarke’s support (kinda)

When it comes to the overall sway of British politics, Sadiq Khan’s article for the Guardian is probably the most important of the day. We’ve heard Ed Miliband say before that, “when Ken Clarke says we need to look at short sentences in prison because of high re-offending rates, I’m not going to say he’s soft on crime.” But Khan’s article, a summary of a speech he is giving later today, actually puts that sentiment into practice – and then some. His central argument is straight from the Hush Puppied One’s playbook, particularly in its emphasis on the limitations of New Labour’s policy: “Some claim crime fell because of the

Sunday

Daniel Korski

How to build democracies

Following the events in the Middle East, I have proposed a democracy review of UK bilateral relations and former Europe minister Denis MacShane has suggested that David Cameron set up a Foundation for Democracy Development in the Middle East and North Africa to “provide an all-party source of income, travel grants, and overseas seminars” It would make sense, I think, to do both in succession, starting with the review and then creating a new body that can undertake the work. However, instead of creating a UK-only organisation, the government should build on the links established with Turkey’s government and set up a joint endeavour, chaired by William Hague and Ahmet

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Cameron hugs his party

David Cameron’s speech to the Conservative Spring Forum was one of the most Conservative speeches he has given in a long time. It was an address that was meant to reassure the party during what looks set to to be this government’s most difficult year. The Tory leader opened with a list of policy pledges delivered and they were all distinctively Conservative policies: making work pay, the EU referendum lock, teaching British history in schools, freezing council tax, capping immigration and doubling the operational allowance. There was further crowd pleasing material in a substantial section of the speech which attacked AV. Cameron sought to present the Tories as the moral,

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Why Ed Miliband’s getting it right on the cost of living

George Osborne’s budget, due in two weeks’ time, will be billed as an agenda for growth. This is welcome, but a year late. The burning agenda now is the cost of living. It was our cover story for The Spectator last October: why fret about mild 1 percent-a-year cuts, we asked, when the real killer will be prices? Petrol at 130p a litre is only the most visible sign of this. Other horrors confront shoppers in the supermarket – salmon fillets up by a third, potatoes and butter by a quarter. When Alan Duncan speculated that petrol could hit 200p, he was on the right scent. While the BBC is

Saturday

Daniel Korski

A post-Tunisian Foreign Office

The Foreign Office has come in for a lot of criticism lately, following delays in getting Britons out Libya. Some argue that it is all William Hague’s fault. Others that the department is unfit for purpose. Both of these views seem a bit unfair. The FCO managed to help Britons in Tunisia and Egypt, and only came up short when the company they had used failed to take off for Libya. True, there should have been a better contract in place – which would give the FCO alternatives – but that hardly translates into systemic failure. True, ministerial divisions between Jeremy Browne, in charge of consular affairs, and Alistair Burt,

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Osborne’s political economy

George Osborne’s speech to the Tory spring conference today showed the classic left-right way in which he wants to frame the political debate about the economy ahead of the Budget on the 23rd of March.  In a move straight out of the election-winning centre-right playbook of the 80s, he attacked Balls and Miliband as “Two left-wing politicians who don’t understand anyone who wants to get up and get on, anyone who want a better life for their family, anyone who want to create wealth, and start a business, and create jobs, and leave something to their children.” He tried to portray the Conservatives as the antithesis of this, as the

Alex Morton

The politics of planning

The ruckus over sending a high-speed railway roaring through some of Southern England’s most prized back gardens might be dominating the headlines. But another, separate row over planning is brewing. Behind closed doors, ministers are straining to develop a coherent plan to build the new houses that Britain – especially the South East needs – in a way that is politically feasible. Whitehall is wrestling with how to reform a planning system that has led to more expensive housing and offices, developments that are often ugly and cramped, and soaring costs for everyone – the government included. Housing benefit costs more than the Home Office and Ministry of Justice combined.

Daniel Korski

Obama backs Cameron on no-fly zone

Everyone knows that a media narrative is a difficult thing to change. So No.10 must be annoyed that so many newspapers, from the Telegraph to the Independent, are suggesting that David Cameron’s response to the Libya crisis has been “embarrassing,” and rejected by the US. But the Prime Minister would do well to stay the course and ignore the media for a number of reasons. First, just because US Defence Secretary Robert Gates is sceptical about a policy does not mean it is wrong. Somehow, the US Defence Secretary’s words are now taken as gospel in the British media and the PM is meant to repent immediately. Why? So what

Friday

Daniel Korski

Harriet ‘shambolic’ Harman

I’ve spent ten minutes reading the same passage and still don’t understand what it means. It comes from Harriet Harman, quoted in the Independent, criticising the government’s Libya strategy: “The response to the terrible events in Libya has been a shambles. The key to their shambolic response lies in their ideology. If your perspective is that government is a bad thing and you want less of it, you’re not going to be on the front foot when the power of government is exactly what is needed.” Do you get it? Is the Labour MP saying that her party would have harnessed the power of the state, principally the military, and

Mark Littlewood

Plurality or not?

With all the provisos attached to News Corp’s takeover of BSkyB, opposition to the deal has surely now been diluted. But there are, perhaps, two groups who can still legitimately complain about the outcome.   Firstly, those of us who believe that unrestricted freedom of speech is vital in the TV broadcasting arena. The Murdoch empire has had to surrender its news channel in order to, essentially, buy a profitable platform for broadcasting sport and movies. This is seriously disturbing for anyone who feels that the BBC’s output of ‘neutral news’ needs to be challenged. The only major independent broadcaster – ITV – gave up long ago with their own

James Forsyth James Forsyth

A night that will not be quickly forgotten

Last night’s by-election result in Barnsley is embarrassing for both Clegg and Cameron. For Clegg, it is obviously humiliating to come sixth. Fourth would have been bad enough but sixth is an even worse result than the Lib Dems feared. The fact the Lib Dems also lost their deposit just adds insult to injury. The result will certainly make activists heading to Sheffield next week for their spring conference jumpy. I also suspect that we’ll see some enterprising newspaper doing a poll in Clegg’s Sheffield constituency before next weekend.  On the Conservative side, coming third behind UKIP is going to lend weight to those who argue that the party has

Peter Hoskin

A grim morning for the coalition – as Lib Dems finish sixth in Barnsley

    You may notice that the Liberal Democrats don’t feature in the first two graphs of the by-election result in Barnsley Central last night. Or, rather, they do – they’re just subsumed under the ‘Others’ category, having finished in sixth place. Second in the general election, sixth last night. The 1,012 votes for the Lib Dems put them behind Labour, UKIP, the Tories, the BNP and an independent candidate called Tony Devoy. Their share of the vote has fallen by 13.1 points on last May’s result. This was an unequivocal, almost ritualistic, beating. Blood everywhere. And the other half of the coalition hasn’t escaped unbruised either. The Tories finished

Thursday

James Forsyth

Clegg collides with Cameron over extremism

Nick Clegg’s speech in Luton today on extremism is a challenge to large parts of David Cameron’s remarks on the subject in Munich just last month. Indeed, even the venue of the speech can be seen as a rebuke to Cameron who was attacked for giving a speech on Islamic extremism on the same day that the English Defence League was marching in Luton. Cameron’s speech, which was one of the best of his premiership, argued that ‘the ideology of extremism is the problem’ and that terrorism’s ‘root lies in the existence of this extremist ideology’. In the key section of the speech, Cameron declared: “As evidence emerges about the