Coalition

Tuesday

James Forsyth

This is not a 10p tax moment

Last night, one minister came up to me nervously and asked, ‘is this our 10p tax moment?’ He was talking, obviously, about the decision to take child benefit away from households with a higher rate taxpayer in them.   My answer was no. The comparisons with Brown’s removal of the 10p tax rate miss a crucial point: Brown tried to hide what he was doing. In his final Budget statement to the Commons, the abolition of the 10p rate wasn’t even mentioned. Instead Brown boasted about a 2p reduction in the basic rate, to huge cheers from the Labour benches.   By contrast, the Tories have been upfront about the

Peter Hoskin

Cameron tries to defuse the child benefit row

Whether you agree with the plan to restrict child benefit or not – and, broadly speaking, I do – there’s little doubting that it has met with some fiery resistance in the papers today. The Telegraph leads the attack, calling it “a hastily conceived about-turn bundled out on breakfast TV”. The Daily Mail highlights the “blatant anomaly,” currently riling up the Mumsnet crowd, that a single earner family on £44,100 a year might lose the benefit, while a dual earning family on £87,000 can keep it. And the Independent does likewise. It should be said, though, that the Sun, the Times and the Financial Times are considerably more generous about

David Blackburn

Clarke ups the ante

Perceptions count and the coalition are perceived to be vulnerable on crime. Its policy of reducing the number of prisoners on short-term sentences has been caricatured as a reduction in sentencing per se, a liberal assault on the consensus that prison works. I don’t agree with that analysis (which overlooks that excessive sentences in disorganised and overcrowded prison can create habitual criminals, who cost society in perpetuity thereafter) but readily concede that it’s easy to traduce the government as soft on crime, and I was surprised that Ed Miliband didn’t do so last week – as were plenty of Tories. In fact, opposition comes from within the Tory party, even from the

Monday

James Forsyth

Withdrawing child benefit at 16 would be the wrong call

In the last few weeks, there has been much speculation that child benefit would be stopped when a child reaches 16. Today’s announcement suggests that this is not going to happen, although the Tories are refusing to rule it out. If there are to be changes to child benefit — and given the financial situation there need to be — then removing it from households with a higher rate taxpayer is a better move than stopping it at 16. Child benefit ending at 16 would send out a message that at 16 a child should start earning its way in the world. This would, for obvious reasons, have a negative

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The beginning of the end of universal benefits

The most important line in George Osborne’s speech was this one: “It’s very difficult to justify taxing people on low income to pay for the child benefit of those earning so much more than them.” Logically, this argument applies equally to all other universal benefits. Why should someone on £12,000 a year be paying tax to help cover the cost of Ken Clarke’s pension? Personally, I’m quite happy to see universal benefits go. The end of universal benefits would, though, change the nature of the welfare state. Quite rapidly, it would become a safety net not a contributory system. This is why Labour will oppose so vigorously taking child benefit

Peter Hoskin

Boris vs the unions

It was all so Osborne-a-go-go earlier that we didn’t have chance to mention Boris’s speech to the Tory conference. By way of rectifying that oversight, here’s footage of the Mayor of London taking on the trade unionists who have organised a Tube strike today. His proposal that at least half the members of a union should vote in a strike ballot for it to be valid – which drew enthusiastic applause from the crowd – is something that he has discussed with the government before now:

Peter Hoskin

Welfare dominates Osborne’s speech

George Osborne delivered everything we expected, and then some. This was a confident and wide-ranging speech from a Chancellor who has suddenly discovered a central message: what’s right about burning £120 million of taxpayers’ cash in debt interest payments every day? Wouldn’t it be better to get to grips with that waste as soon as possible? And that message percolated down through everything from his attack on Ed Miliband to his case for reforming our public services. “It’s like a credit card,” Osborne growled, “the longer you leave it, the worse it gets.” But if that was the theme of Osborne’s symphony, then the motif was certainly welfare. Huge chunks

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Osborne’s benefit risk

George Osborne’s announcement that child benefit will be taken away from any family with a higher rate taxpayer in it to help fund welfare reform shows how far Cameron and Osborne were prepared to go to keep Iain Duncan-Smith on board. During the campaign and in the Budget, Cameron and Osborne had strongly implied that child benefit would remain universal. The move carries it with considerable political risks. The measure takes effect from 2013, so before the country will have seen the benefits of welfare reform. Also families with one earner on £44,000 a year don’t consider themselves to be rich; there is already considerable irritation at how Gordon Brown’s

Peter Hoskin

Osborne takes to the stage, armed with cuts

Rewind the tape to last year’s Tory conference, and David Cameron was assuring us that, “It will be a steep climb. But the view from the summit will be worth it.” Today, it falls to George Osborne to tell us more about both the arduousness off the ascent and the beauty of that view – although I expect that there will be a heavy empasis on the former. Already, the main passages are spilling into the papers and, as you’d expect, it’s mostly cuts and debt. On that front, the main argument seems to be similar to that made by Nick Clegg in Liverpool: that the longer it takes us

Sunday

Peter Hoskin

OBR Watch

When Sir Alan Budd was head of the Office for Budget Responsibility, there was an insistent argument in opposition circles that the independent body was biased in favour of the coalition. Much of this cented around the OBR’s growth predictions. How on Earth, came the question, can growth hit 2.3 percent next year and 2.8 percent the year after? Isn’t that a bit optimistic in view of all the warnings about a double dip? Won’t the cuts stifle growth? And so on and so on. A few months ago, I produced a graph which showed that, when compared to a range of independent forecasts, the OBR’s growth predictions weren’t really

Peter Hoskin

The Coulson story returns (again)

Call it a professional hunch, but I suspect the Tories won’t be too pleased that this Guardian story has come out on the first day of their conference. It’s about Andy Coulson – and, much like the revelations in the New York Times Magazine last month, features one of his former colleagues alleging that Coulson knew all about the telephonic subterfuge going on at the News of the World. That journalist tells Channel 4’s Dispatches that: “Sometimes, they would say: ‘We’ve got a recording’ and Andy would say: ‘OK, bring it into my office and play it to me’ or ‘Bring me, email me a transcript of it.'” It’s evocative

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Ken Clarke in the firing line

There’s an intriguing pre-conference story in the Mail on Sunday today. The paper reports that: “Ken Clarke faces a whispering campaign by allies of David Cameron and George Osborne to move him from Justice Minister because of his ‘disastrous’ views on law and order, it was claimed last night. Conservative MPs say Mr Cameron and Mr Osborne are ‘ frustrated’ by Mr Clarke’s refusal to take a tougher line on key issues such as prison sentencing.” Clarke’s liberal views on criminal justice certainly are infuriating his colleagues. Allies of Theresa May have been heard to complain that “Ken is going to send the crime rate soaring and we’re going to

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Society 3, The State 0

Cameron and Osborne may just be about to pull off something incredible. This time last year, The Spectator ran a cover story about a new proposal which we could revolutionise welfare: the Universal Credit. It was an IDS idea: he’d sweep away all 50-odd benefits, and replace it with a system that ran on a simple principle – if someone did extra work, they’d get to keep most of the money they earned. It meant a bureaucratic overhaul, of a system that controls the lives of 5.9 million people. The resistance from HM Treasury, the architect of the tax credit system, was as fierce as it was predictable. But Clegg

Saturday

James Forsyth

Lib Dems to the right of their Tory colleagues?

I’ve re-read it several times now and I’m still not sure whether Francis Maude was joking or not when he told The Times that Danny Alexander ‘is obviously a bit to the right of me’. It is the kind of thing that the dry-witted Maude might say as a joke. But equally there’s no signal there that it is. But Mr Alexander occupies an odd place politically at the moment for a Liberal Democrat. He has become an ardent budget-balancer. Indeed, Nick Clegg has been heard to observe recently that his former chief of staff has had his brain captured by Treasury officials.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Cameron, more ideological than he appears

The Tory conference in Birmingham is the last big political event before the cuts come. After the 20th, every time a senior Tory appears in public for the next few years they will be about why this or that is being cut. As the row over defence shows, these questions will come from right across the spectrum. For this reason, Simon Schama’s interview with Cameron in today’s FT is probably one of the last that will start with the assumption that Cameron is genial, non-ideological fellow. Once the cuts are happening, it will be harder to cast Cameron as a consensual figure. His edges will appear harder, more defined.  But

Friday

Tom Clougherty

Reforming the regulators

We all know that the state grew enormously under thirteen years of Labour government. The most obvious manifestation of this was public spending – an increase of 60 percent in real terms took Britain from having one of the lowest levels of government spending in the OECD in 2000 (36.6 percent of GDP) to having one of the highest in 2010 (52.5 percent of GDP). But while reducing spending is clearly the most pressing issue facing the coalition government, we should not overlook another area where the state has grown dramatically: regulation. The British Chambers of Commerce’s ‘Burdens Barometer’ estimates that net cost of major regulations passed since 1998 is

David Blackburn

Many Lib Dems want to be part of the New Generation

Politics tends to ruin an evening in the pub. On Wednesday, I came across a friend who had been a card-carrying Lib Dem prior to the coalition’s formation. He confessed that he’d been impressed by Ed Miliband’s speech and had joined the Labour party. Several other Lib Dem supporters attending agreed that Ed Miliband is a more attractive option than David Cameron and Nick Clegg. Everyone else in this small band (mostly unaffiliated voters with the odd furtive Tory) believed that Labour has probably elected the wrong Miliband, but were antagonistic to Labour in any case. Politics Home has published formal research suggesting that only Lib Dems clearly favour Ed

David Blackburn

From the archives – Tories go to conference in government

Strange though it seems in hindsight, the Tory party was not uniformly enamoured with Mrs Thatcher in 1979. The Tories were in government, but doubts over her ability to confront a resurgent Labour party, her shaky presentational skills and the direction of her policy pervaded the 1979 conference. David Cameron goes to Birmingham this week pursued by reservation’s persistent hum, and he does not have winner’s rights to rely on. Ferdinand Mount recorded that Mrs T’s wooden speech did not allay concern or win gratitude; will Cameron fare any better? But do they really love her? Ferdinand Mount – 20th October 1979 Hmm. Or rather perhaps, to put it more

Thursday

Peter Hoskin

Cameron road tests his anti-Ed message

After Fern Britton’s triumph over Gordon Brown a couple of years ago, we should know that This Morning interviews can have a certain bite to them. But if you needed more convincing, then how about David Cameron’s appearance on the show this morning? Lurking behind all the talk of baby Florence and the Obamas, was a sprightly discussion of both defence cuts and the new Labour leader. Cameron was combative on both. Most noteworthy were Cameron’s attacks on Ed Miliband. I imagine they will set the template for how the anti-Ed operation is conducted in future. The main aim, it seemed, was to defuse Miliband’s talk of an optimistic New

David Blackburn

Forget the culprit, the MoD leak suggests that Fox doesn’t have Cameron’s confidence

Liam Fox is sombre rather than sombrero. A man to reckon with, you’d have thought – determined to fight dangerous cuts to Britain’s over-extended defence budget and an apostle of the Tory right. Which makes yesterday’s leak all the more extraordinary. The question is not who leaked this incendiary letter, but why Fox wrote it. The night before an important National Security Council meeting, and Fox has an important point to convey. Why not ring the Prime Minister? Go round to No.10 for chat? He is the Secretary of State, but he has to communicate matters of confidence and competence between himself and the PM with such formality, and in