David cameron

Friday

James Forsyth

Cameron’s ECHR problems won’t end with a Qatada deal

The news that Theresa May will fly to Jordan to continue talks about Abu Qatada shows how close the government thinks it is to a deal with the Jordanians that might satisfy the European Court of Human Rights and allow his deportation. One government source explained to me earlier that the problem is the Jordanians are offended by being asked to provide these guarantees about a fair trial and no evidence being obtained by torture. For this reason, there needs to be a fair amount of diplomatic stroking. A deal with Jordan on Abu Qatada is becoming increasingly necessary if Cameron is get out of this bind on the ECHR,

Peter Hoskin

L’entente nucléaire

There’s no wound that a press conference won’t heal, or at least that’s the impression that David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy created earlier. The pair played down the tensions and grudging handshakes of the past few months to talk up Britain and France’s ‘incredibly strong relationship based on shared interests’. And there was more than just talk too: they announced a £500 million deal between French and British companies for nuclear power plants. And they hailed progress towards the creation of a joint ‘command and control centre’ for military operations. Perhaps this mutual bonhomie explains why Downing Street isn’t taking the opportunity to meet with the man who may soon

Peter Hoskin

Miliband’s NHS pledge

Ah, there he is! With the coalition — and David Cameron — dominating the political news on every day of this half-term week, Ed Miliband has finally caused a ripple in the national consciousness. He’s appearing before nurses in Bolton today to make a pledge: ‘Before he became Prime Minister, David Cameron concealed his plans for creeping privatisation of our National Health Service. So people didn’t get a vote on these plans at the last election. But I give you my word that if he goes ahead, they will be a defining issue at the next.’ Put aside the rhetoric about ‘creeping privatisation’ (which would surely make Tony Blair shudder),

Peter Hoskin

Cameron’s new offer for Scotland could mean a new offer for England

The consensus opinion across most of today’s papers appears to be that Dave done good in Scotland yesterday. And now the Prime Minister’s cause has been helped that little bit more by the Lords Constitution Committee. ‘We are firmly of the view that any referendum that is held must be a straight choice between full independence or the status-quo,’ says the committee’s chairman Baroness Jay. ‘A third “devolution-max” option is clearly something every part of the UK must have a say in as it has the potential to create different and competing tax regimes within the UK.’ The strange thing is, a UK-wide referendum on ‘devo max’ could actually produce

Thursday

Hamish Macdonell

Cameron’s risky move could play into Salmond’s hands

Not many politicians would conjure up the spectre of Alec Douglas-Home to scare the Prime Minister, but that is exactly what Alex Salmond did today — to some effect. The Scottish First Minister was responding to David Cameron’s ‘jam tomorrow’ offer to the Scottish people. ‘Vote “no” in the independence referendum,’ Mr Cameron effectively told Scots today in his latest attempt to make some progress in the independence debate, ‘And I’ll see that you get major new powers for the Scottish Parliament.’ It was one part bribery, one part political strategy and Mr Salmond was on to it quicker than the average Scot can order a haggis supper. ‘We’ve been

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Cameron’s plan to protect the Union

‘When the referendum on independence is over, I am open to looking at how the devolved settlement can be improved further. And yes, that means considering what further powers could be devolved.’ These words in David Cameron’s speech today, which follow on from what the Scottish Secretary Michael Moore said at the weekend, make clear what the Unionist campaign’s message will be. They’ll say to the Scottish electorate ‘Vote no to independence and then we can talk about devo-max’. This strategy will probably ensure victory in the referendum. But there are risks to it. First, more constitutional debate will create more uncertainty. Second, any changes to the devolution settlement which

Wednesday

Matt Cavanagh

How to implement a minimum price for alcohol

Pete posted earlier on the Prime Minister’s latest intervention on the issue of problem drinking. The new proposals — like a greater police presence in A&Es, and ‘drunk tanks’, special units where drunks are taken to sober up — are sensible enough, but seem small relative to the scale of the supposed problem, and focus on peripheral (though important) side-effects, rather than the core of the issue. The ‘big idea’ seems to be missing, even though the Conservatives have been flirting with it for some years, is a minimum unit price (MUP) for alcohol: far more controversial, but potentially far more effective. The last Labour government, in which I was an adviser, looked at this

Peter Hoskin

Minimum pricing, maximum controversy

Just because there’s no PMQs today, it doesn’t mean you won’t hear from David Cameron. The Prime Minister is readying his anti-booze cruise once again, and taking it on tour to a hospital in the North East. Once there, he will rail against ‘alcohol abuse’ and its consequences, which include, he will say, a £2.7 billion a year bill for the NHS. And he will preview some of the solutions that may make it into the government’s ‘alcohol strategy’ next month: ‘drunk tank’ cells where binge drinkers can be dumped overnight; ‘booze buses’ to deliver people to these cells; police heavies in A&E wards; and, possibly, minimum pricing for alcohol.

Sunday

Fraser Nelson

Nassim Taleb: Ban Tesco bonuses

There have been precious few people able to make sense of the crash. The main commentators didn’t see it coming — and so have focused their energies stressing how no man born of woman could have predicted it. But Nassim Taleb did. He has been a voice of sense, originality and common sense throughout, and David Cameron has been listening. The respect is mutual: Taleb even described Cameron as ‘the best hope we have left on this planet’ because he understood the dangers of deficits. If CoffeeHousers haven’t come across Taleb’s books, such as Fooled by Randomness and Black Swan, I can’t recommend them enough. I met him recently, and

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Warming up for the Budget

The Budget negotiations within government are now underway. The quad of Cameron, Clegg, Osborne and Alexander held a meeting last week to discuss their priorities for the Budget on March 21st. They’ll continue this conversation over a working dinner tomorrow night. Already, we know that the Liberal Democrats main priority will be to get the personal allowance as close to £10,000 as possible. As The Sunday Times reports, they’re suggesting paying for this by taking away various reliefs for higher-rate taxpayers and closing some of the loopholes in the tax system. I also understand from Liberal Democrats close to Clegg that they’re also interested in some new green taxes. For

Peter Hoskin

Lansley’s holding on — for now

After originally deploying Sayeeda Warsi against ConservativeHome’s anti-Health Bill sentiment, David Cameron is now doing his fighting for himself. He has an article in today’s Sunday Times (£) that says, with no equivocation, ‘I am at one with Andrew Lansley, the reform programme and the legislation going through parliament’. And, aside from that, it’s also an unusually spirited explanation of just what the government plans to achieve by these reforms. Much better than Cameron’s wavering performance in PMQs on Wednesday. For all its spirit, though, this article doesn’t come across as angry. There is a mention for ‘today’s opponents of reform,’ but nothing that could really be interpreted as a

Saturday

James Forsyth

Westminster’s attention heads north again

The debate over the referendum on Scottish independence will take centre stage next week. Michael Moore, the Scottish Secretary, will see Alex Salmond in Edinburgh on Monday and then Cameron will head north a few days later. It appears that the coalition is ready to give way to Salmond on the date of the referendum but not on the fact that it must be a straight yes or no vote. Moore tells The Times (£) that ‘There absolutely must only be one question.’ Quite what the coalition will do if Salmond goes ahead with his own refrendum on devo max remains to be seen. I suspect that Salmond’s ideal result

Friday

Fraser Nelson

Lansley’s battle should’ve never been fought

A small war has broken out over Lansley’s NHS Bill — ConservativeHome has three Cabinet members attacking it. I find that shocking. At least a dozen want the Bill killed, and why ConHome found just three is beyond me. Politically, it’s probably impossible for Cameron to drop it. But if it was torn up, I for one would shed no tears. For what it’s worth, here’s my take. It’s depressing to think that Alan Milburn’s NHS Plan of 2000 was both more radical and more sensible than what Andrew Lansley is serving up now. The whole debacle has shown politics at its most petty, partisan and pointless — a complete

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

Cameron should leave this terrible ‘tax breaks for cleaners’ idea in Sweden

There are times when you think, really, the Prime Minister should get out less. The good ideas he comes back with when he goes abroad are fine and dandy — of which, more later — but the bad ones are very bad indeed. One notion he is considering just now after attending a Nordic-Baltic summit is the Swedish/Finnish one of giving people who employ domestic help tax relief on half of the cost. On the plus side, you get more women in the workplace, by allowing them to subcontract the domestic drudgery, and you shift thousands of workers, mostly female, from the black economy to the respectable economy. For the

Peter Hoskin

Lansley’s health problems are starting to look terminal

The discontent with Andrew Lansley’s health reforms has been rising since the New Year. But, one or two threatening quotations aside, most of this has come from the government’s natural opponents: Labour and the unions. That changes today. Over at ConservativeHome, Tim Montgomerie has written a post calling for the Health Bill to be dropped. It is, Tim says, ‘not just a distraction… but potentially fatal to the Conservative Party’s electoral prospects.’ And he finishes: ‘It must be stopped before it’s too late.’ This would be striking enough by itself, but its impact is doubled by a single sentence: ‘Speaking to ConservativeHome, three Tory Cabinet ministers have now also rung

Thursday

James Forsyth

One for the Tories’ manifesto in 2015

David Cameron’s comments today that he finds a Swedish-scheme that offers tax breaks for employing domestic workers ‘very interesting’ and would ‘want to look at further’ are, predictably, being attacked by Labour. They are claiming that they are proof that he is ‘out of touch’. But it is, actually, a thoroughly sensible idea.   As I wrote back in October, the Cameroons have long been interested in the idea of trying to make childcare tax deductible. The appeal of this policy is that it would make it far more attractive for many highly-skilled — and high-earning — people to return to the workforce. It would also move many child-minders who

Peter Hoskin

Cameron’s quotas: a policy or a threat?

We’ve heard enough about David Cameron’s woman troubles to regard anything he says about the fairer sex as a naked pitch for votes. But I reckon his comments today, about getting more women into boardrooms, are just as much motivated by concerns about the economy. ‘The drive for more women in business is not simply about equal opportunity, it’s about effectiveness,’ is how he put it earlier, ‘It’s about quality, not just equality.’ It’s a claim that reflects both the thinking of Masters of Nothing — a book by two highly-regarded members of the 2010 intake, Matthew Hancock and Nadhim Zahawi — and its continuing influence in Cameroonian circles. Part

Daniel Korski

Making a call on Qatada

The Prime Minister, we are told, has been trying to reach the King of Jordan to see if some kind of arrangement can be made so that Abu Qatada can be deported legally and that no forms of torture-gained evidence will used against him in a Jordanian court. This seems like a sensible thing to do. But it is important that the government balances its counter-terrorism policy with its foreign policy.   Here is what I mean. Jordan is a friend of Britain, but the King is under tremendous pressure to reform. There are daily demonstrations against his rule and the protests are gathering pace. His reforms, meanwhile, have been

Wednesday

James Forsyth

The BIS select committee makes its presence felt

We will soon find out whether the coalition meant what it said about empowering parliament. The BIS select committee has rejected the government’s preferred candidate for the post of the head of the Office of Fair Access. The committee concluded that it was ‘unable to endorse the appointment of Professor Ebdon as the Director of OFFA and we recommend that the Department conduct a new recruitment exercise.’ But Vince Cable, the business secretary, is said to be keen to override the committee’s verdict. Number 10, which has never been keen on Ebdon, is opposed. As I said on Sunday, the circumstances behind Ebdon’s name going forward are straight from The

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Passed over

The thirty ministers of state in this coalition could be forgiven for feeling a bit unloved. They are notionally the most senior members of the government after the Cabinet. But every time there has been a Cabinet vacancy, they have been passed over. The three Cabinet positions that have become available have gone to a backbencher and two parliamentary under secretaries respectively. Judging from the talk around Westminster, Cameron and Clegg’s respective decisions to bypass the ministers of state has left them feeling a bit sore and rather nervous about the reshuffle, currently expected post-Olympics. Many ministers of state regard this reshuffle as their last chance to make Cabinet. One