Coalition

Sunday

James Forsyth

The big-society counter-offensive

Last week Steve Hilton set up a war room in Downing Street. In daily meetings, Hilton plotted the ‘big society’ fight-back that started today with Cameron’s op-ed in The Observer. Hilton, who is predominant in Downing Street at the moment, knows that Cameron will never u-turn on the big society. It is what the Prime Minister thinks defines him as a politician. Cameron is desperate to be seen as more than a deficit hawk and the big society is what he wants to be his legacy. The big society is sailing into quite a headwind. Francis Maude’s unintentionally comic comment today that the big society has been a massive ‘communications

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The coming coalition compromise on the banks

One of the questions that most fascinates Westminster is what would make Vince Cable walk out of the coalition Cabinet. Cable might be a diminished figure and have lost standing on the Lib Dem left by pushing through the tuition fees hike, but his departure would still shift the tectonic plates of politics. As James Kirkup blogs today, banking reform, or the lack thereof, is the most likely cause of Cable going nuclear. Cable is a firm believer that retail and investment banking need to be separated, a view that he pretty much reiterated on Marr this morning. Osborne and the Treasury are far more cautious on this front. Everyone

David Blackburn

Cameron downgrades the Big Society

It’s written in print: the Big Society has become the “big society”. David Cameron has responded to criticism of his flagship agenda by downgrading it from a proper noun to a compound adjective. He makes no attempt to define “big society”; rather, Cameron suggests that the term is descriptive of the impulses he hopes to encourage. He writes in today’s Observer: ‘Take a trip with me to Balsall Heath in Birmingham and I’ll show you a place once depressingly known as a sink estate but now a genuinely desirable place to live. Why the transformation? Because even in a tough neighbourhood, the seeds of a stronger society were there and residents boldly decided they’d

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Britain’s coming crunch with Europe

It did not take David Cameron long to realise that there were three parties in his coalition. A few months into government, the Prime Minister worked out that only half of the policies he was enacting came from the shared agenda drawn up when the Tories and LibDems got together. The other half comes from the EU. Or, more specifically, the Civil Service machine, which is busy implementing various EU Directives, often passed many years ago. Cameron is trying to put the brakes on this process. As I say in my News of the World column, this has led to much frustration in Whitehall. And dismay: the Civil Service remembers

Saturday

James Forsyth

A clue to how Cameron really thinks things are going

The most interesting question in politics right now is, to my mind, what does David Cameron really think about how his premiership is going? Does he subscribe to the view that the coalition is getting the big things right and that the numerous u-turns that Fraser referred to in his post really don’t matter that much. Or does he worry that the government is failing to communicate a message and that his defining political project—the big society—is coming under rapidly increasing fire. My own view is that the truth rests somewhere between these two statements. But my feeling has been that Cameron is too blasé about how Downing Street is

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

A massive failure of communication

I have farmer friends in the Highlands who are forbidden from felling trees in their own backgarden – and, ergo, can’t extent their house. The poor souls have to wait until there’s a windstorm and head out with their chainsaws at 3am to fake the death of trees – and, even then, it’s touch-and-go if they are later caught by the tree coroners. The regulation of privately-owned trees is extraordinary, which is why the fuss about forests – and yesterday’s climbdown – is such a farce. The government’s decision to postpone the selloff of the treeland estate that it proposed fits a pattern of u-Turns that I wrote about last

David Blackburn

Clarke: Middle England hasn’t got a clue

Ken Clarke’s political career has had the resilience of a cockroach, but even he now seems to be cracking. Tim Montgomerie has shot a vicious broadside at Clarke’s dated politics in today’s Mail. And Clarke, for his part, has given an interview to the Telegraph, where he gives a convincing impression of a man completely out of touch. Clarke concedes (just) that the ECHR needs reform, but he defends its supreme jurisdiction: ‘Some people are very angry [about prisoner voting], but we should be able to resolve that. The jurisdiction of the [European] court remains the fraught issue. I don’t see how we can say that we don’t obey courts if we don’t want to.

Friday

David Blackburn

Clegg for freedom

Restoring individual liberty has long been a Liberal Democrat aspiration. Nick Clegg has pursued the cause in government; with mixed results it must be said, particularly on control orders. But Clegg is unperturbed and today he is introducing the Freedom Bill. He previews its contents with a typically clear piece in today’s Telegraph. The measures are extensive. Pervasive CCTV is to be curbed; ContactPoint, the database containing the personal details of every child in England, is to be switched off. These liberal measures accompany those that have already been taken, such as scrapping the ID cards. Essentially, his argument is distilled into this neat paragraph: ‘We are looking at liberty

David Blackburn

Spelman’s a-turning

The BBC reports that the government has dropped some of its plans to privatise forestry. The general scheme will proceed, but the sale of 15 percent of publicly owned forests will be stalled while the government re-examines the criteria for sale. Obviously this is a set back, but far from a terminal one. The forestry consultation document contains some very sensible ideas. There is no reason for commercial forestry to remain in public ownership. The Forestry Commission loses money and its predominantly coniferous crop and wasting agricultural land wrecks the environment and damages wildlife habitats. Privatisation would not lead to the spoliation of the shires. The document promised to increase

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Overall, a win for Gove

Michael Gove has won on the substance in the judicial reviews of his decisions on Building Schools for the Future. The judge has rejected the claim that Gove acted irrationally and found that he has the authority to make the decisions he did. There will have to be reviews of six of the decisions because of a failure to consult fully and a full equalities assessment will have to be done – yet another example of one of the traps that Labour has left behind and that the coalition needs to scrap as soon as possible. But this is hardly the victory that it is being portrayed as by some.

David Blackburn

Cameron’s Eric Morecambe problem calls for the wisdom of Corporal Jones

It looks like the most almighty mess. The government’s communications are tongued-tied, the Big Society is flightless and the reform agenda is being neutered by inertia. The political will has been met by the administrative won’t. But, despite the gloom, the government should pay heed to Corporal Jones: don’t panic. The slow progress of public service reform is a positive. Haunted by the memory of Blair’s paralysis, the government embarked on its programme in fevered delirium. Its ambitions were much too great. It is now time to halt and concentrate on delivering cuts. Rome was not built in a day and it certainly cost more than Britain can currently spare.

Thursday

James Forsyth

The Commons rejects prisoner voting rights

The Davis Straw motion on keeping the ban on prisoner votes has just passed by 234 votes to 22. It is a crushing victory on what was a very good turnout given that both front benches were not voting. The 22 against the motion were a bunch of Liberal Democrats plus the Ulster MP Lady Hermon, the Plaid MPs Jonathan Edwards, Elfyn Llwyd and Hywel Williams, the Green Caroline Lucas,   Labour MPs Barry Gardiner, Kate Green, Glenda Jackson, Andy Love, Kerry McCarthy, John McDonnell, Yasmin Quereshi  and  one Tory Peter Bottomely, David Cameron now finds himself between a rock and a hard place. His MPs hate the idea of giving

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Unpicking Oakeshott’s exit

The resignation last night of Lord Oakeshott, the Liberal Democrat’s Treasury spokesmen in the Lords, over his criticisms of Project Merlin is more important than it might appear. Despite not being a coalition minister, Oakeshott is one of the bigger figures in the Liberal Democrats and is extremely close to Vince Cable, who skis with him. There is a certain nervousness in coalition circles that Oakeshott’s departure over Project Merlin could be a forerunner of Vince quitting over the government’s response to the Vickers’ review on banking. But it should be said that these fears are based more on hunches and suspicions than anything else. Oakeshott has been irritating Clegg

Eamonn Butler

Lost in the woods

The government’s plans for state forestry are so weak and feeble that it is hard to understand why there is so much fuss about them. Maybe people do not realise that three-quarters of the English woodland that they love so much is already privately owned. And those private owners face strict standards on public access and recreation, environmental quality, and conservation. So why is there so much fuss about selling the rest? People forget that broadleaf woodlands comprise just 8 percent of the Forestry Commission’s estate. The other 92 percent is farmland and conifer plantations, and it is hard to get worked up about who owns either of those. But

David Blackburn

Lib Dem grassroots turn on the government

More so than other parties, the Liberal Democrats depend on their grassroots’ presence in local government. The foot soldiers’ importance has increased as the party’s polling strength wanes. So, Nick Clegg will be aghast that 88 leading Liberal Democrats have written to the Times (£) to castigate the government’s ‘front-loaded’ cuts to local government. Tuition fees were thought to be the toughest possible battle for Clegg, but this will run them close. Government MPs have been cast into a black mood. The coalition’s unity has been rocked; its long-term prospects weakened. Now Clegg and Cameron face a tactical dilemma: do they conciliate or do they fight? The indications tend to

David Blackburn

In their own words…

Parliament will debate a prisoner’s right to vote tonight, to satisfy the ECHR’s now infamous judgement. Jack Straw and David Davis, the progenitors of tonight’s discussion, have taken time to explain why they believe the ECHR does not have the right to dictate to sovereign states on such matters. Writing for Con Home, Davis has constructed an impassioned polemic, decrying the British government’s ‘pusillanimous culture of concession’. Essentially, Jack Straw is making the same argument, albeit with precise procedural insight. He writes (£): ‘But is there some contradiction between my support for the HRA and my criticism of the Strasbourg court’s judgment in this case? Not at all. The reason

Wednesday

James Forsyth

Burnham’s slide to the left

One of the more depressing sights in politics at the moment is how Andy Burnham is leading the Labour party back to its comfort zone on education. Burnham, who The Spectator once named minister to watch, seems to have jettisoned all of his Blairite reforming instincts. He now wants to draw as many dividing lines as possible and side with the vested interests and the status quo at every turn. In last night’s education debate, Barry Sheerman, who chaired the education select committee during the Labour years, pointed out that Gove’s education plans are building on the last government’s incomplete reforms. As Sheerman put it, “I am going to be

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Today’s battlefield

Today’s PMQs threatens to be overshadowed by the statement on Project Merlin, the government’s deal with the banks, expected at one o’clock. I suspect that Cameron will try and push away any questions on banks with the line that Miliband should wait for the Chancellor’s statement. But PMQs will still be a far livelier affair than last week’s one. Watch to see whether Miliband tries to attack Cameron for hurting the Big Society. Miliband has moved Labour away from ridiculing the idea to embracing it and saying that ‘Tory cuts’ are the threat to it. This is all part of Labour’s strategy to try and ‘recontaminate’ the Tory brand. But

David Blackburn

More bad economic news for the government

Presently, the waves of bad news are as relentless as biblical plagues. The latest trade figures show that Britain’s trade gap opened in December; the seasonally adjusted deficit stood at £9.2bn, a rise from £8.5bn in November. There are plenty of explanations as to why the export-led recovery failed to jump customs, despite the comparatively weak pound. The various acts of God couldn’t have helped and the continuing financial crisis on the continent will have further eroded demand.   However, the government will realise that these figures indict its growth strategy. As the ONS graph below indicates, the trade deficit is a persistent problem and one feared by the British

Daniel Korski

A legion of attacks

Some attacks hurt more than others. And the attack launched by Chris Simpkins, the director-general of the Royal British Legion, on the government’s approach to the military covenant will be particularly painful. For it comes after a Defence Review that left few happy, and when the nation is engaged in a war from which many feel the Prime Minister is a bit too keen to withdraw. Speaking to The Times, the Royal Legion chief said plans set out in the Armed Forces Bill requiring the Ministry of Defence to publish an annual report on the unwritten pact between society and the military were not the same as writing it into