David cameron

Thursday

James Forsyth

Clarke for the high-jump

Dominic Grieve’s fate as shadow Home Secretary was sealed by a lunch at News International headquarters in Wapping. Grieve went to lunch with various Sun executives and rather than talking tough on crime he laid into the paper for how it covered the issue, claiming that it stoked fear of crime. The word then came back to Tory high command, via Andy Coulson, that the paper would not endorse the Tories as long as Grieve remained in that job. He was duly replaced by Chris Grayling in the ‘pub-ready reshuffle’ of January 2009 after less than a year in the job. So one can only imagine how Downing Street feels

Wednesday

Daniel Korski

Keeping the States interested

David Cameron has a good relationship with Barack Obama, which will be on display when the US president visits Britain shortly. They speak regularly and frankly and their senior advisers are in near-constant contact. The idea that the Lib Dems would foist a more “Love Actually” policy onto the coalition has come to naught. Yet Britain’s influence in Washington has waned. This is no fault of the Prime Minister. In fact, his personal diplomacy has probably slowed-down the process. Instead it has to do with structural changes in the US: the coming to power of a “pacific” President, the importance of US-China ties, the emergence of the Tea Party. As

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Cameroons livid with Ken

It is hard to overstate the fury with Ken Clarke in the Cameroon circle today. One well-informed Tory source just told me, ‘they [Cameron and Osborne] just can’t wait to see the back of him’ before pondering whether Clarke was now just too old for frontline politics. Another bemoaned that Clarke had managed both to deepen the party’s problems with women and further undermine its reputation as the party of law and order. While one more couldn’t believe how on a day when unemployment fell, two men were charged with the murder of Stephen Lawrence and the Queen and PM were marking a new era in Anglo-Irish relations, the coalition

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Cameron faces the barmy army

Ed Miliband came to PMQs hoping to turn the House into a rape crisis centre for the Justice Secretary. Quoting from Ken Clarke’s tricky Radio Five interview earlier he criticised him for distinguishing between ‘serious’ and ‘other categories’ of rape. Would the PM distance himself from his minister? Cameron claimed not to have heard the interview – conveniently enough – and pointed out that the policy is still at the consultation stage. His priority was to correct a system in which all but 6 per cent of reported rapes result in no conviction at all. Miliband plugged away, upping the stakes, widening the issue and claiming to have spotted a

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Is Clarke’s fate sealed?

Ken Clarke is in the middle of a media firestorm following his comments on rape. The remarks were typical of Clarke’s dismissive attitude to the victims of crime and Downing Street is clearly furious about them. It has ruled out sacking him, but I suspect that Clarke’s fate is now sealed come the much expected March 2012 reshuffle. Clarke is of the never explain, never apologise school of politics. But Number 10 clearly want him to ‘clarify’ his remarks. I suspect that Clarke, who has been busily defending his comments, will not want to do that. This could well be the cause of the next row between Clarke and the

Peter Hoskin

PMQs live blog | 18 May 2011

VERDICT: That was probably the most straightforward PMQs that Ed Miliband will ever experience. Thanks to Ken Clarke, the Labour leader had several shots into an open goal — and most were excuted efficiently, if not skilfully. Cameron was left in an unforgiving position, and he just about hung in there, eventually mustering some sort of defence and then turning it around to Labour’s mismanagement of the criminal justice system. It was an intriguing exchange, not least because it presaged what could become a major problem for the Tories — their crime and justice policy — and how Labour might exploit it. And it was all supplemented by a set

Cameron must defeat Clegg and break the NHS’ monopoly

‘NHS good, private health bad’. ‘State good, market bad’. ‘Four legs good, two legs bad’. Whenever political leaders get into a tight corner they have to find allies fast. There is no time for reasoning to work its gentle magic. Basic sentiments need to be stirred and the popular favourite is usually hate. Yesterday Mr Clegg used this classic strategy to rebuild his support base. The cold-hearted Tories were at it again, dismantling that icon of compassion the NHS. In public they were declaring their undying love for it but out of sight they were promising fat profits for ‘health care corporations’ once the new law was passed. Mr Clegg

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Coalition’s NHS battle turns personal

David Cameron’s ‘love for the NHS’ is a critical part of his political persona. It is, his advisers believe, what proves that he is a different kind of Tory. So it is remarkable that Nick Clegg is questioning it in semi-public. In a speech to Lib Dem MPs and peers last night — that Clegg would have known was bound to leak, he criticised politicians — eg, the Prime Minister — who express their love for the NHS but take advice from people who see NHS reform as a chance for private companies to make big profits. What makes this intervention all the more remarkable is that Downing Street has

Tuesday

David Blackburn

Clegg’s great rejuvenator falls a little flat

‘Constitutional reform is a waste of time, pure and simple. It never actually achieves its avowed end of reconnecting the voters with democratic institutions,’ wrote John McTernan, the former advisor to Tony Blair, recently. There are signs that the current government agrees.   Nick Clegg has unveiled the next stage of his constitutional reforms today by revealing draft plans to reform the House of Lords. The coalition speaks in unison in public: the Cabinet discussed reform last and apparently there was “very strong support for the proposals around the table”. But dissenting voices must have sounded in private.   The inestimable Rachel Sylvester reveals (£) that Clegg’s draft is very

Daniel Korski

Fox letter: storm in a fair trade, biodegradable cup

David Cameron probably let out a sigh when he was informed that yet another letter from Liam Fox had been leaked to the press. And when the Defence Secretary called No 10, as he undoubtedly did, to do his now-familiar Captain Renault routine, the Prime Minister can be excused for feeling a little frustrated. For the debates that have occurred in consequence miss a number of key points. The PM believes in overseas development – believes it is right, believes it is useful. No doubt he may find it useful to “decontaminate” the Tories but would not have been willing to spend 0.7 percent of GDP for something he did

Peter Hoskin

Cameron’s personnel issues

The past fortnight has been instructive in just how little control David Cameron has over the make-up of his Cabinet. Every choice he makes, it seems, has to be weighed against the fragile balance of the coalition, as well as against the internal divides of the two coalition parties themselves. I mean, Vince Cable calls the Tories “ruthless, calculating and thoroughly tribal” — only the latest of a series of provocations — and his position doesn’t look precarious in the slightest. Chris Huhne is mired in a scandal that may still terminate his political career, and yet there is little indication that the scythes of Downing Street are moving to

Monday

James Forsyth

Leak shows that Fox objects to plans to spend more on overseas development

A second letter from the Defence Secretary to the Prime Minister has leaked out. Tomorrow’s Times reports on a note that Liam Fox sent to the Prime Minister opposing the government’s plan to legislate for Britain to spend 0.7 percent of gross national income on overseas development aid. It won’t come as a huge surprise to anyone that Dr Fox is sceptical of aid spending. But for another letter from him to the PM to reach the press will further strain relations between the MoD and Downing Street. There will be those in the Cameron circle who think that it is not a coincidence that both of the missives that have leaked out have

Peter Hoskin

Huhne digs his feet in

Chris Huhne has, at last, responded to the allegations set against him — and he has done so with some defiance. In a statement this afternoon, the Energy Secretary said that the claims made by his former wife are “simply incorrect,” and that he welcomes the police looking into them. Here’s a more complete transcript, courtesy of Andrew Sparrow: “All I want to say is simply that these allegations are simply incorrect. They have been made before and they have been shown to be untrue. And I very much welcome the referral to the police as it will draw a line under the matter. I don’t want to say any

Daniel Korski

Could a Briton run the IMF?

With Dominique Strauss-Kahn, known as DSK, undertaking scientific and forensic tests to determine if he sexually assaulted a hotel maid, the International Monetary Fund will be run by its No. 2 official, John Lipsky. A former banker, Lipsky was appointed “first” deputy managing director in 2006, and was expected to step down later in the year. But the change at the top will bring the former Permanent Secretary of the Department for International Development, Minouche Shafik, into the limelight. She recently left London to take up a post as deputy managing director at the IMF; she will now take Strauss-Kahn’s place at a meeting with Europe’s finance ministers in Brussels

Sunday

Peter Hoskin

Lansley stands up for his reforms

If there’s anything that stands out from Andrew Lansley’s interview with the Sunday Times (£) it is his air of quiet defiance. Of course, the Health Secretary sounds some of the conciliatory notes that have crept in to the government’s rhetoric since they decided to pause, listen and engage on NHS reform. But he also stands up for the original reforms as he conceived them. “From my point of view,” he says, “the White Paper was setting out what sensible, intelligent people inside the NHS were saying.” For him, the concerns that remain are not with the general thrust of his reforms, but with “implementation, the nuts and bolts of

Matt Cavanagh

How to fix the National Security Council

The National Security Council was a sound idea. But it has disappointed, both inside and outside Whitehall. The Ministry of Defence has complained that it “failed to give strategic direction”. Among previous supporters in the media, Con Coughlin has commented sourly that “all it has achieved so far is the replacement of Blair’s much-derided ‘sofa government’ with a new, back-of-the-envelope approach”. James Kirkup was even driven to ask “What exactly is the point of it?” Where did things go wrong? First, it seems that more effort went into spinning it to the media — it was a ‘War Cabinet’ to Sun readers, an end to ‘sofa government’ to those disaffected

Saturday

James Forsyth

Another blow to the Lansley plan

Number 10 has now taken charge of coalition health policy to such an extent that the Department of Health press office was caught unawares by the news that the Prime Minister was to deliver a major speech on health next week. David Cameron is determined to present the coming substantial changes to the Lansley reform plan as the changes he wants, not the ones forced on him by the Lib Dems. To that end, the head of the NHS future forum, a body Cameron has set up to oversee the NHS listening exercise, Steve Field telling The Guardian that he thinks all competition should be removed from the bill is

Peter Hoskin

Cable talks similarities, not differences

Vince Cable, it seems, has notched his Tory-baiting down from 11 to about 8. Last weekend, in the bitter wake of the local elections, the Business Secretary labelled his coalition partners as “ruthless, calculating and thoroughly tribal”. Today, in an address to the Fabians, he would only argue that the Tories will benefit most from tribalism in politics — and it was an argument delivered soberly and without obvious malice. He even praised David Cameron (along with Tony Blair) as someone who has tried to suck the poisonous partisanship from Westminster’s bloodstream. Sunder Katwala has quoted the speech extensively here, so I won’t dwell for too long on what was

Peter Hoskin

Back to the start on a military covenant

I suppose you could call it an O-turn. First, the Prime Minister declared, in a speech aboard HMS Ark Royal last year, that a new military covenant would be enshrined “into the law of our land.” Then, there seemed to be a U-turn, with the government committing only to review the covenant annually, not to lend it legal force. Yet, now, a U-turn on the U-turn, with the news that it will be etched into the staute books after all. The defence minister Andrew Robathan tells today’s Telegraph that, “we are putting the military covenant on a statutory basis for the first time.” The formal announcement is expected in the

Friday

David Blackburn

Eh?

This photograph adorns the homepage of the Labour Party’s website. It’s rather odd to show the PM and his deputy looking quite so soigné as the starting point for a critique. The New Statesman’s Dan Hodges descibes it as ‘insanity’.