David cameron

Friday

Fraser Nelson

The coming schools crisis

Michael Gove’s school reform is being overwhelmed by the surging demand for school places, I argue in my Telegraph column today. When the Education Secretary first draw up his ‘free school’ programme, he said in a Spectator interview that his aim — while radical — was simple.  ‘In your neighbourhood, there will be a new school going out of its way to persuade you to send your children there. It will market itself on being able to generate better results, and it won’t cost you an extra penny’ Choice is only possible when supply outstrips demand. But the latter is growing faster than anyone envisaged a few years ago. The

Thursday

James Forsyth

ECHR reform won’t happen

In Westminster, the debate about the European Convention on Human Rights and the European Court of Human Rights is all being seen through the prism of the Abu Qatada case. Undoubtedly, the whole debate over how many days had elapsed is something Theresa May and the Home Office would have liked to avoid. It has also come at a particularly unfortunate time for the government when people are prepared to believe it has been incompetent even when it hasn’t been. But what, I expect, is more significant in the long term than Abu Qatada is the fact that the Brighton conference on the ECHR is not going to deliver the

Sebastian Payne

Cameron approaches Lib Dems’ chief tormenter

News is breaking at the Telegraph that Matthew Elliott — head of the TaxPayers’ Alliance — is being considered for an adviser role in Downing Street. It would be strategic move by Cameron, and a bold one given Elliot’s effective work on the Alternative Vote referendum. That campaign, which focused on Nick Clegg’s shortcomings, is the greatest sore between the Prime Minister and his deputy, raising the question of how Lib Dems react to the news that their prime taunter has been being brought into the love nest of No.10. Many Conservatives will be heartened by the news, especially at a time when there is a brain drain sweeping across the

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Cameron and the civil service coup

We thought CoffeeHousers might care to read James’s political column from this week’s magazine (on sale today), so here it is: There is a split in the Cameron circle. The divide is between those who think that the problems of the past few weeks have been a blip, one that will end when Boris Johnson wins in London, and those — including some of the Prime Minister’s closest friends — who fear the problems are symptoms of a disease that could cripple the government. At stake in this debate is the future strategic direction, and the potential success, of the Cameron project. The Prime Minister, ever the optimist, is in

Sebastian Payne

The View from 22 — 19 April 2012

For your listening pleasure, here is the second episode of The View from 22 podcast. Thanks for all the feedback on our first attempt, we’ve tried to take as much as possible into account this time. In this episode, Fraser and I speak to the Labour MP and historian Tristram Hunt about the teaching of history in schools. Freddy Gray discusses this week’s cover on the runners and riders in the French presidential election. And James Forsyth reports on a deficit of politicians inside Downing Street . You can listen below with the embedded player or — best of all — subscribe through iTunes. As before, we’d love to hear

Wednesday

Lloyd Evans

A taxing PMQs for Cameron

And on it rumbles. Last month’s budget seems to have created more niche-losers than any tax settlement in history. Those who feel deprived are still squealing about it. At PMQs today Ed Miliband took a swipe at the Prime Minister on their behalf. Billionaires get bungs, grannies get mugged. That’s the headline Miliband was aiming for but didn’t quite find. He adopted his best silent-assassin mode and politely asked the PM to confirm whether or not a bonus of £40k was winging its way into the wallets of Britain’s top earners. Cameron couldn’t switch subject fast enough. The Budget, he claimed, was all about cutting taxes for 24 million workers

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Unemployment is down but are prospects up?

The government has fallen on today’s numbers showing employment up by 53,000 and youth unemployment down by 9,000. This is the first quarterly fall in unemployment for over a year. One coalition source describes the news as a ‘good reminder of what really matters, both economically and politically.’ Certainly, these figures will provide David Cameron with some protection in his first post-Budget PMQs. Ed Miliband won’t be able to make his usual jobs attack. But politically one of the key questions will be who is getting these jobs. One of the worries for the coalition is that a huge amount of the new jobs that are being created are going

Tuesday

Peter Hoskin

After Abu Qatada

It has been a mixed news day so far as Britain’s relationship with the ECHR is concerned. There’s been the good stuff: Abu Qatada has been arrested and is set to be deported, with the government now confident that he can be shipped to Jordan without provoking the ire of Europe’s legal class. And then there has been the less than good stuff: according to the Times, which has a leaked document in its possession, Britain’s official proposals for reforming the ECHR have been diluted ahead of the Council of Europe meeting in Brighton this week. This outcome, as I suggested back in February, is hardly surprising — but it

Jonathan Jones

No ‘poll shock’, but some interesting findings nonetheless

Despite the Times’s headline (‘Poll shock as new U-turn looms’), there’s nothing particularly surprising in the toplines of today’s Populus poll. It merely confirms the trends already exposed by other pollsters: a widening Labour lead (Populus has it at nine points, up from four last month) and increasing discontent with the coalition (Populus has the government’s net approval rating at minus 24, down from minus 3 in September). Beneath the toplines though, there are some interesting details. As well as asking respondents how well they think the government’s doing overall, Populus asked how well they think it’s doing on various issues: So, it seems the public thinks the coalition is

Sunday

James Forsyth

The ‘22 equation

Next month’s elections to the 1922 Committee of Tory backbenchers have taken on particular importance in the current circumstances. The fact that a couple of the officer positions are held by Cameron’s harshest critics, and that some MPs broadly supportive of the leadership have decided to take on the ‘wreckers’, means that the results will be seen as a sign of where backbench opinion in the party really is. As I write in the Mail On Sunday today, three of the 2010 intake — Charlie Elphicke, George Hollingbery and Priti Patel — have decided to endorse a joint candidate for secretary of the committee. This candidate will stand seeking a

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The trade mission delusion

David Cameron has returned from what was a bit of a war-and-peace tour of East Asia. Taking arms dealers to Indonesia one day, posing with Aung San Suu Kyi the next. In today’s Sunday Telegraph he writes an almost-defensive piece about it all: ‘With the eurozone producing sluggish growth, we simply can’t rely on trade with Europe to generate the jobs and growth we need. We need to look south and east and do a much better job of winning business in places such as China, India, the Gulf, Africa and South America. That’s why I have been leading trade missions to some of the fastest growing parts of the world, including

David Blackburn

The charity row intensifies

David Cameron finds himself in the midst of a blue-on-blue barney over the charity tax, which has prompted rumours that ministers may dilute the current proposals by adopting an American-style legacy deal. Tory party treasurer Lord Fink has said that the proposed changes would ‘put people off giving’, and some boisterous Conservative MPs are openly challenging the leadership. Zac Goldsmith has penned a diatribe in the Mail on Sunday in which he says: ‘I am ashamed that a Conservative Chancellor has not only announced measures that will undoubtedly depress giving in this country; he has spun a narrative in which philanthropists are now the enemy.’ Meanwhile, David Davis told the

Friday

Fraser Nelson

How Mitt Romney inspired the British charity tax debacle

How is Mitt Romney linked to the charity tax debacle? I thought I’d pass on to CoffeeHousers an explanation which passed on to me about the origins of this latest mess. It dates back to the point in the Budget negotiations where Nick Clegg had finally persuaded Osborne to introduce a Mansion Tax. A major coup for his party — but Cameron vetoed, thinking it’d hurt Boris in London. Clegg is annoyed, tells Osborne he can’t have his 40p tax, but he still has a problem. A Lib Dem spring conference is coming up — so what will he announce? He hunts for a new idea. The Thursday before the

Jonathan Jones

Cameron meets Aung San Suu Kyi

There aren’t many countries where meeting the leader of the opposition would rank above meeting the head of government — certainly this country isn’t one of them. But Burma is, because the leader of the opposition is pro-democracy campaigner and Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, who spent 15 years under house arrest between 1989 and November 2010. And Suu Kyi’s stature is now higher than ever, with her National League of Democracy party having won 43 of the 44 seats they contested in the by-elections a fortnight ago. As Clarissa reported then, there’s even speculation that she may be offered a position in President Thein Sein’s new

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Another case of Big Government trumping the Big Society

Exactly two years ago today, David Cameron launched the Conservative Manifesto — one of those rare moments in the Tory campaign where it all seemed to make sense. Cameron begged for a hearing: he was serious, he said, about changing government. It was about realizing that ‘Big Government isn’t the answer to the problems’ and that people outside government — like charities — were. This is why the charities debacle today is not just another Budget blunder. As I say in my Telegraph column, if Cameron tolerates the taxman’s proposed assault on philanthropy, he’ll be admitting defeat on what he described that day as his ‘fundamental tenet’. The best-paid 1

Thursday

Jonathan Jones

Hints of a U-turn on the ‘charity tax’

The pressure is ramping up on the government to reverse its decision to cap tax reliefs on charitable donations. The Times is against it — their leader this morning calls the move a ‘blunder’. And the Telegraph doesn’t like it either, saying that ‘Even from a distance of 8,000 miles, it must be apparent to David Cameron that the Government made a mistake in the Budget by capping tax relief on charitable giving’. Even Tory MPs are speaking out against the measure, including Mark Pritchard, Conor Burns and, in a piece on ConservativeHome, Chris White. And Number 10 does seem to be preparing the ground for a U-turn — or

Wednesday

James Forsyth

Where will the disenchantment with mainstream politics lead?

The big question in British politics right now is what happens when the voters are dissatisfied with all the three main parties and their leaders. According to a recent opinion poll, David Cameron’s approval rating is now down to minus 27. According to the invaluable Anthony Wells, this is the lowest it has been since Cameron became Tory leader. But the PM’s numbers look positively healthy compared to Miliband’s (minus 41) and Clegg’s (minus 53). Dissatisfaction with political leaders isn’t the only indicator that people aren’t happy. As I report in the column this week, senior Downing Street aides have been much struck by polling showing that more than 40

Sebastian Payne

The rise of UKIP

Who represents the biggest obstacle to a Tory majority in 2015? The natural assumption is Labour, but it’s looking more and more likely that the party David Cameron should be most worried about is UKIP. Tim Montgomerie has written in the Times this morning (£) about the reason behind this, the ‘split of the right-wing vote’: ‘Team Cameron has always believed that the Tories’ right-wing voters could pretty much be taken for granted. The theory was that they had nowhere else to go and that Mr Cameron had to devote all his energy to winning swing voters. This gamble worked as long as Tory-inclined voters were primarily motivated by a

Tuesday

Jonathan Jones

What today’s Abu Hamza ruling means

The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that five terror suspects, including notorious Islamist cleric Abu Hamza, can be deported to the United States — a decision welcomed by both David Cameron and Theresa May. Last year, Hamza and three of the other men appealed to the ECtHR against extradition to the US on a whole host of grounds — including that they might face the death penalty and that their trials would be prejudiced. The Court found almost of all their grounds inadmissible, but allowed the appeal to proceed on two grounds: that they would be held in the ADX Florence ‘super-max’ prison and would face extremely long