Government

Defence geeks are waiting to see how the Conservative Party intends to conduct a Security and Defence Review, if they are elected. By the time a new government comes to power, the Ministry of Defence will in all likelihood have produced a Green Paper, setting out initial thoughts on the future of the military, which is meant to lead on to a more substantive Strategic Defence Review.  But if the Tories want a process (and ultimately plans and ideas) that encompasses not only the MoD, but also the Foreign Office, DfiD, the security services and even parts of the Home Office, then a new kind of institutional vehicle will have

Whether anything comes of it is a different matter altogether, but this insight from the Standard’s Joe Murphy deserves pulling out: “A senior minister is said to be close to quitting in a move to destabilise Mr Brown, the Standard has been told. There is speculation among MPs that a big beast such as Chancellor Alistair Darling, Lord Mandelson or Justice Secretary Jack Straw might be willing to tell Mr Brown to go if the party falls into fresh turmoil.” Paul Waugh and Channel 4’s Gary Gibbon have more on the story, here and here.  As I pointed out at the weekend, it looks as though the rumblings about Brown’s

Labour’s rapid rebuttal service will respond to the Tories’ policy blitz by questioning George Osborne’s spending pledges, of which more later. No objection can be raised against this action except that the government enlisted the Treasury to deliver very detailed costings under the Freedom of Information Act. The Times reports that the Tories are understandably livid: impartiality has been compromised. A spokesman said: “We are concerned at any collusion and abuse of the FOI system which has involved ministers requesting costings of what are complete misrepresentations of Conservative policies, which were subsequently released. We will be asking questions in Parliament about the cost and use of resources involved, not least

Ok, so identifying the heroes of the New Labour era may not sit well with CoffeeHousers – but I’d still recommend you read through the latest Bagehot column in the Economist, which does just that.  It identifies five figures from the past 12 years who have “done the state and country some serious and lasting service,” and whose “virtues [are] not be clouded or cancelled by grave mistakes or misdemeanours”.  They are: Lord Adonis, Donald Dewar, Lord Mandelson, Sir William Macpherson and Robin Cook.  James Purnell, Alistair Darling and, strikingly, Bill Clinton finish in the runners-up list. You can debate the merits and demerits of those names all day long,

One of the Tories’ favoured lines recently has been that they are acting like a responsible government while Labour is behaving like an irresponsible opposition. But I wonder if this attitude is entirely healthy for an opposition, or whether it ends up blunting its campaigning edge. For example, the Tories’ refusal to say for definite that they will repeal Labour’s planned increase in national insurance stems from their view that they aren’t certain where they would find the £8 billion from. But given the number of black holes and blanks in the PBR and that the deficit is over £170 billion this seems slightly absurd. Labour’s plan to make a

There were two possible strategic approaches Labour could have taken to the PBR. One option was to surprise everyone by actually making cuts. They then could have said, “we’ve made all the cuts we can. Anything else would really hurt frontline services”. This would have put them in position to challenge the Tories as to what they would cut to reduce the deficit faster. The other was to be really populist. They could have carried on spending, bashed the bankers, soaked the rich, and hope that they could get away without a crisis in the markets until the election. Instead, they’ve fallen between two stools. They’ve increased public spending, which

Well, it seems like Paul Richards – a former aide to Hazel Blears – wants to corner the market in quietly persuasive demolitions of his own party’s strategy.  If you remember, he wrote a perceptive piece on Labour’s shortcomings in the aftermath of the Norwich North by-election, which we highlighted here on Coffee House.  And, today, he’s at it again, with a very readable article in PR Week on why the class war won’t work.  His three reasons why are worth noting down: “First, it is hypocritical. The Labour Party has a disproportionately far higher number of former public schoolboys and schoolgirls in parliament and in the government than a

I will sign off tonight with this sickening graph from the earlier IFS presentation – showing the extent to which Gordon Brown’s economic incompetence has transformed the public finances for a generation. Servicing this debt will absorb money that would otherwise be spent creating jobs, lifting people out of poverty, advancing education, promoting prosperity. The leading article in the magazine this week finishes with these words, which came to mind when I saw the above graph: “It will be no surprise if UK public debt has been downgraded by the election; if so, a gilt buyers’ strike will become more than a theoretical possibility. The new government will face a