Uk politics

Wednesday

Fraser Nelson

The OBR is relaxed about Brexit – contrary to what Osborne suggested

In his Budget speech today, George Osborne made out as if the Office for Budget Responsibility was worried about Britain leaving the EU and quoted it saying “a vote to leave in the forthcoming referendum could usher in an extended period of uncertainty”. Listening, I was amazed: how could he enlist the independent OBR on either side of the UK referendum debate? But the document itself (Box 3.4, pdf) tells a very different story. Rather than take sides the OBR explicitly says “it is not for us to judge”  – and quotes a study by Open Europe, a think tank, which… … modelled a scenario in which the UK leaves the

The Spectator

Full text of Jeremy Corbyn’s Budget speech

[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/spectatorpolitics/georgeosbornesbudget-2016/media.mp3″ title=”Fraser Nelson, Isabel Hardman and James Forsyth discuss the Budget”] Listen [/audioplayer]Thank you Mr Deputy Speaker. The Budget the Chancellor has just delivered is actually a culmination of six years of failure. This is a recovery built on sand and a Budget built on failure. The Chancellor has failed on the budget deficit failed on debt, failed on investment, failed on productivity, failed on the trade deficit, failed on his own welfare cap and failed to tackle inequality in this country. And today Mr Deputy Speaker, he’s announced growth is revised down. Last year, this year, every year they forecast business investment revised down, government investment revised down. It’s a very

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Budget Sketch: George Osborne finally dropped the conservative pretence

[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/spectatorpolitics/georgeosbornesbudget-2016/media.mp3″ title=”Fraser Nelson, Isabel Hardman and James Forsyth discuss the Budget”] Listen [/audioplayer]If George Osborne was ever a conservative he dropped the pretence today. The chancellor sounded risibly pompous as he declared his plan to impose a slimming regime on Britain’s heaving population of wobble-bottoms. A levy on fizzy pop will arrive in 2018. Even before he’d explained the rationale behind his Weightwatcher’s initiative he’d sabotaged it by exempting ‘milk-based drinks’. But a tax on pop already carries innumerable loop-holes in the form of doughnuts, choccie bicccies, Jammy Dodgers and cream puffs. The intellectual basis of this self-congratulatory exercise is the assumption that Britain’s much-maligned chubsters are a) too

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

George Osborne’s cautious, strikingly moral Budget

[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/spectatorpolitics/georgeosbornesbudget-2016/media.mp3″ title=”Fraser Nelson, Isabel Hardman and James Forsyth discuss today’s Budget”] Listen [/audioplayer]There were two striking things about George Osborne’s Budget today. The first was that having made sure that the weekend papers carried reports of all the pain that he was going to have to inflict on the nation to help it weather the economic storm that is coming, the Chancellor then barely mentioned what that pain would entail. He built up the start of his speech by lecturing the Commons on the necessity of the pain, warning that ‘we have a choice: we can choose to add to the risk and uncertainty, or we can be a

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Collapse in North Sea revenues destroys the SNP’s economic argument

[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/spectatorpolitics/georgeosbornesbudget-2016/media.mp3″ title=”Fraser Nelson, Isabel Hardman and James Forsyth discuss today’s Budget”] Listen [/audioplayer]Alex Salmond had planned 24 March 2016 as his independence day and the budget he published during the Scottish independence referendum envisaged it having up to £7.5 billion of oil to spend. Today’s Budget shows that the figure will, instead be zero: precisely 100 per cent less than what the SNP had told Scots. Without it, the Scottish budget simply would not stand up. The basic point – ‘it’s Scotland’s oil!’ – has been the SNP refrain for years. There’s still oil in the North Sea but there’s no profit. The above graph shows how North Sea revenues – seen by the

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Budget 2016: The biggest problem with Jeremy Corbyn’s response was that it was delivered by Jeremy Corbyn

[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/spectatorpolitics/georgeosbornesbudget-2016/media.mp3″ title=”Fraser Nelson, James Forsyth and Isabel Hardman discuss today’s budget”] Listen [/audioplayer]Jeremy Corbyn’s response to today’s Budget was fine on paper. It included a proper response to the policies that were announced, rather than the Labour leader merely ranting about what he had thought might be in the Budget when he wrote the draft a few hours earlier. He did include the sorts of lines that every Budget response from an Opposition leader and campaigning organisation must include, such as ‘it doesn’t go far enough’. But he did also welcome policies such as the sugar tax, and managed a couple of decent jokes. His opening line was that

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

PMQs: A session soon to be lost in the Budget smog

Normally when a Leader of the Opposition prepares for the Prime Minister’s Questions before a Budget, it comes second to the prep for the difficult Budget response and focuses on a slightly random topic. The difference between this session and a normal PMQs is usually rather marked. But when Jeremy Corbyn rose today to ask his questions, his chosen topic of air pollution wasn’t all that more eccentric than his usual range of subjects.  David Cameron’s team does have to prepare a wider range of topics – albeit in less detail – for PMQs now that Corbyn is Labour leader. But even they hadn’t thought of air pollution: Cameron had

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

What to expect from today’s Budget

The art of delivering a good Budget – in a political sense at least – is to give everyone the impression that while you’ve had to do some really difficult things, you’ve miraculously managed to find some nice things to do too that will distract people for at least one round of newspaper front pages. George Osborne did manage that for his summer Budget after the election – only for the row about cuts to tax credits to blow up later. So we might expect a range of measures that generally make for good headlines, such as: Raising the threshold for higher-rate tax payers to help the 1.6 million people

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Budget 2016: Osborne the weatherman to warn of storm clouds over the economy

A year ago, George Osborne was giving voters a glimpse of the sunny uplands that they could expect from life under a Tory government. At the time, few believed that there would be a Tory majority after the election, but here we are at the 2016 Budget with the Chancellor still in weatherman mode, but now warning that the ‘storm clouds are gathering again’ over the economy. Osborne will say today that ‘in this Budget we choose the long term’ and that this government will ‘put the next generation first’. The Chancellor would have had to change his weather metaphors in post-election economic statements anyway, because every Budget right before

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman

Burnham makes the case for Labour not supporting the Investigatory Powers Bill

The saying ‘the House of Commons at its best’ is normally a pompous description of parliamentarians agreeing with one another on something it is impossible to disagree on. However, when MPs come together to scrutinise legislation involving the security services, they do come rather close to being at their best, as they grow rather anxious about whether the legislation will actually work. So far the debate on the Investigatory Powers Bill has largely been detailed and thoughtful and without much silly knockabout. But the closest the second reading session has come to knockabout was when Andy Burnham was offering Labour’s response. The Shadow Home Secretary had the difficult job of

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Meet Labour’s alternative shadow Treasury team

Jeremy Corbyn is preparing for his first response to a Budget since becoming Labour leader. The last time he spoke in a debate following an economic statement from the Chancellor was in 2012, when he complained about the ‘granny tax’, the benefit cap, proposals for regional pay, transport spending and Heathrow and housing. The MP for Islington North concluded: ‘I want a Budget that helps the poorest in this country, that creates jobs, that encourages local authorities to build council housing, and that shows that there is a sense of the reality experienced by those living in inner urban areas. If we do not provide jobs for young people, we

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Barack Obama is right to offer his government’s view on the EU referendum

My word, what a disgrace! What an outrage! Isn’t it deplorable that the President of the United States has the gall to offer an opinion on the merits of an argument that will have some significant impact on the future of one of the United States’ closest allies? The arrogance and sheer effrontery of the man! Sheer piffle, of course, but it seems to be the case that those people who think the United Kingdom should leave the European Union are the tenderest, most easily-bruised, people in the realm. So it is unacceptable that Barack Obama should poke his nose into someone else’s business and suggest, in temperate terms, his country’s

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Labour unease over Investigatory Powers Bill

The Investigatory Powers Bill has its second reading in the Commons this afternoon, with Labour planning to abstain and make its support for the timing of the legislation conditional on the Home Secretary satisfying a number of concerns that the party has. Separately, I understand that Tory MPs such as Liam Fox are pushing for a generous timetable for the legislation, including committee stage taking place on the floor of the Commons. Fox points out that ‘there’s not much other legislation about’, though this has never stopped ministers giving controversial pieces of legislation very tight timetables for debate. So far, though, Theresa May has been in a very consensual mood

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Chuka Umunna: Labour MPs represent more people than the Corbynistas

It’s the Ides of March today, and there are pitifully few signs of a Labour plot. I was on ITV’s The Agenda last night with Chuka Umunna, one of the putative successors to Jeremy Corbyn, who was teased by Tom Bradby about his ambitions. He came out with the usual hedged denials (“there’s not a vacancy.,, I’ve said I would never say never”) but then came out with the rationale for ousting Corbyn. The problem: most Labour members were not members this time last year. The party has been taken over by Corbynistas and while Labour MPs could technically change the leadership it’s harder to change the membership. Chuka agreed- but then gave the

Monday

Isabel Hardman

Pollster finds Labour level-pegging with the Tories. Pollster panics.

Look! All this sniping at Jeremy Corbyn is wrong and now we have proof. The Labour leader is not in fact trashing his party’s brand. Today a poll from ICM puts the Conservatives and Labour level on 36 per cent, a jump of four points for the opposition and a drop of three for the governing party. But before Corbynistas have had a chance to gather up their red flags and take to the sunny streets to celebrate, ICM has already issued a clarification which, in essence, trashes the poll’s finding. You can read the full list of caveats to the poll here, but the key lines are that ‘the

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Iain Duncan Smith given pointless grilling on how he sleeps and jobs fairs

Labour had an aggressive session at Work and Pensions Questions today, attacking the Conservatives on disability benefit cuts, and on whether they had any morals. Normally questions in the Commons are supposed to be about the design of policies, but today Owen Smith appeared to be taking a leaf out of Jeremy Corbyn’s book, asking a question he had crowdsourced: ‘Before I came here this afternoon, Mr Speaker, I asked disabled people what question they would like to put to the Secretary of State and one answer stood out and it was quite simply: how does he sleep at night?’ Funnily enough, Iain Duncan Smith didn’t supply any details of

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Boris vs Barack in the EU referendum campaign

As the EU referendum campaign wears on, the rules of engagement from both sides are becoming clearer – or at least the rules that both sides would like to use for engagement. The Inners are in favour, unsurprisingly, of throwing everything they can at the campaign to keep Britain in the EU. The Outers are annoyed that the Inners are doing this, though their surprise often seems exaggerated: they cannot really be shocked that a government would try to do everything to stop a change that it thinks is a bad thing for the country. Today Boris Johnson sets out one of the rules of engagement that Brexit campaigners would

Sunday

Isabel Hardman

George Osborne heads into Budget week in defiant mood

Based on the tone that he took on the Andrew Marr Show this morning, we can expect George Osborne to take a rather defiant tone as he unveils this week’s Budget. The Chancellor has had a difficult few weeks, not least because of the retreat on pension reforms and defeat on Sunday trading, but he tried to turn this into a virtue, saying: ‘The big picture is people look at Britain and they see a country getting its act together and putting its house in order. And if you look at what we do as a government, I think we take big, radical, reforming steps. Yeah, we have got a

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The old case for Scottish independence is dead; long live the new case for Scottish independence

Who knew Nicola Sturgeon was a devotee of Saint Augustine? Her message to the SNP conference yesterday was simple: Lord, grant me independence but not yet. And how the people cheered! The mere mention of independence was enough to send the nationalists into a state of millenarian rapture as they imagined the ecstasy to come. Nothing else – not even the ritual pillorying of the hated Tories nor the now equally traditional concern trolling of Scottish Labour – excited Ms Sturgeon’s audience. Only the thought and prospect of independence brought them to their feet, a-whoopin’ and a-hollerin’ like the Highland Light Infantry on a payday night out. But it will not be

Saturday

James Forsyth

Don’t expect Budget fireworks from George Osborne

Don’t expect ‘fireworks’ from the Budget one of Osborne’s closest political allies told me this week. Ahead of the Budget on Wednesday the Chancellor finds himself hemmed in by the EU referendum, fraying Tory discipline and the worsening global economic situation, I say in my Sun column this week. A Budget four years out from a general election is normally when a government takes some risks. But I doubt Osborne will be doing much of that on Wednesday. First, he doesn’t want to do anything to make the EU referendum more difficult for the government to win—the intensity with which David Cameron is campaigning reveals how worried he is about