Uk politics

Tuesday

Alex Massie

Max Hastings, Mind-Reader

Max Hastings is one of the foremost military historians in the English-speaking world. His multi-volume history of the Second World War is magnificent. Until recently, however, I had not known that he counted soothsaying among his many accomplishments. How else, however, to explain his article in today’s Daily Mail in which the old boy outs himself as a first-class mind-reader. Hastings is responding to a presentation Alastair Campbell gave to an audience of PR types in Australia in which Mr Blair’s communications wizard, perhaps rather too glibly, noted that Winston Churchill frequently and deliberately peddled untruths during the Second World War. And yet his reputation remains higher than that of poor old

Adam Afriyie

IPSA brings MPs into disrepute once again, without saving a penny or solving the problem

IPSA’s proposed increase in MPs’ salary is another example of how it continues to undermine the standing of parliament whilst haemorrhaging taxpayers’ money on unnecessary backroom bureaucracy. The weekend newspapers reported that the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA) is thinking about raising MPs’ salaries. Whatever your view on the right level of pay for MPs, IPSA has not only failed to tackle the long-term problems of cost and reputation, but has failed to remove the issue from the province of political parties and leaders, as intended. The evidence is clear.  IPSA has created a system where more than 90 per cent of MPs are subsidising the work they do by

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Alex Salmond Drives into a Muirfield Bunker

Unlike some politicians who profess an interest in sporting matters, Alex Salmond’s enthusiasm for golf, tennis and horse racing is genuine. He even supports the right football team. Nevertheless, the First Minister has bunkered himself this week. This is the subject of my latest Think Scotland column: Which brings me to the summer stramash of Alex Salmond and the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers. The First Minister has let it be known – nay, has trumpeted – the fact that he will not attend this year’s Open Championship because it is being held at Muirfield and Mr Salmond will not break bread with an organisation that excludes the good women

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

‘Who governs Labour?’ is perfect new Tory attack line on Miliband’s weakness

A row in Labour over union influence that doesn’t benefit the Tories in some way is as rare as hen’s teeth. But the latest revelations about Unite’s attempt at ‘transforming Labour’ (as reported by Rachel Sylvester in her explosive Times column) are even more of a gift to the Conservative party than usual because they feed perfectly into the line of attack the party has chosen. As Coffee House reported recently, Lynton Crosby told Tory MPs that he wanted to focus on Miliband’s weaknesses as leader, identifying clear weak spots rather than the ‘he makes the coffee’ line. That the unions are enjoying such success in stitching up the selection

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Pro-referendum MPs to plot for Labour and Lib Dem manifesto commitment

MPs from all parties who want a referendum are meeting this week to discuss how to get a pledge into the Labour and Lib Dem manifestos, I hear. The All-Party Parliamentary Group for an EU referendum will meet tomorrow, partly to look ahead to James Wharton’s Private Member’s Bill on Friday, but also to draw up a strategy for a referendum commitment from the other two parties. Speaking alongside Wharton at the meeting will be Labour’s Kate Hoey and Lib Dem John Hemming, who backed John Baron’s Queen’s Speech amendment. Labour donor John Mills, who the Times reports this morning as warning that his party could lose the next election

Monday

Alex Brummer

What can we expect from Mark Carney?

What the Mark Carney era may offer is a little bit more predictability on monetary policy. Under Mervyn King the main guidance came from the Bank’s quarterly Inflation Report press conferences, MPC minutes, and speeches by committee members. Under the Bank’s new remit, set by the Chancellor in the March budget, it’s likely that Carney, like Bernanke, will seek to link interest rates and monetary policy directly to growth and jobs targets There will be subtle changes but no one, as economists at HSBC have noted, is expecting ‘shock and awe’. The big question for Carney is which indicators to use as targets. The runners are unemployment (as in the US), real

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Do pay rises really lead to better MPs?

It was entirely predictable that any MP who opposes a pay rise or wants to show how in touch they are with the public would seize the opportunity to say so today. Nick Clegg said he wouldn’t take the raise himself at his new monthly press conference this morning, followed by Vince Cable, who told Sky News that ‘I think everybody will understand the wider context and the attitude of the public, which I think will be very hostile if the political class decides to put its own interests first’. Former minister Tim Loughton, while suggesting he might withdraw his amendment to the Finance Bill calling for tax breaks for

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Why Nick Clegg is so keen to talk to the media

Liberal Democrat leaders are used to having to do more to get noticed than the other party leaders. But it is still striking just how much the Deputy Prime Minister is doing to try and inject himself into the national conversation. Joining Nick Clegg’s weekly phone-in on LBC is a monthly press conference. One of the reasons Clegg is doing all this is to try and drain away the anger created by the compromises of coalition and, specifically, the broken promise on student fees. After 23 press conferences, even the lobby will tire — or so the Lib Dems hope – of asking Clegg about the U-turn on tuition fees,

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Cross-party EU referendum campaign aims to counter partisan problems

The Tory campaign on James Wharton’s EU referendum bill has been very slick but very partisan – I examined some of the problems with this last week when eurosceptic Labour MP John Cryer announced he had been put off by the Let Britain Decide campaign and would abstain on the bill. So today campaigners in favour of a vote launched a cross-party campaign called I Support a Referendum. They hope that their emphasis on the referendum itself rather than the party politics will help bring MPs from other parties into the fold where previously they felt excluded. Wharton was present at the launch, and he insisted that he was keen

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Will Tory party calm survive MP pay row?

Coffee House readers will be unsurprised by the interest taken by the newspapers and the Today programme in MPs’ pay: this blog predicted that it could be the next big row in the Conservative party at the start of June. It is politically sensible for the Prime Minister to say that he disagrees with a pay rise recommended by Ipsa if it raises overall costs, even if he has no formal veto over a raise. All he can do is send a formal response to the pay consultation. But he will need to work hard to keep his party behind him, and so will the other party leaders. This is not

Sunday

James Forsyth

The Gove guide to composition

Michael Gove is not the only minister to be frustrated by the poor quality of letters drafted for his signature. One minister was horrified to find his reply to the Prime Minister starting ‘Good to here from you’. Another complains that his name is still spelt wrong, three years after he started in the job. But Gove is, probably, the only one who would send a memo to his ministers and civil servants urging them to read ‘George Orwell and Evelyn Waugh, Jane Austen and George Eliot, Matthew Parris and Christopher Hitchens’ to improve their prose.’ The memo contains, what he dubs, Gove’s Golden Rules for writing a letter which

James Forsyth James Forsyth

‘What’s more important obeying a Brussels directive or keeping the lights on?’

Andrew Neil’s interview of Michael Fallon on The Sunday Politics was a reminder of just how much of UK energy policy is determined by EU rules. When pressed on why there’s such a capacity crunch that there’s a risk of blackouts in the winter of 2015-16, Fallon explained that this was because a whole series of ‘dirtier’ plants are coming off-stream because of EU rules. If this wasn’t happening, there wouldn’t be a problem. Intriguingly, when asked ‘what’s more important obeying a Brussels directive or keeping the lights on?’ Fallon responded that ‘Keeping the lights on is the job of the government’. But he stressed that the government was ‘not

Saturday

James Forsyth

Miliband’s EU referendum dilemma

Friday’s vote on James Wharton’s EU referendum bill is going to push the whole Europe question right back up the political agenda. The Tories will try and use it to highlight their support for a vote and the opposition of the other major parliamentary parties. It will be very hard for Ed Miliband to go into the next election opposed to a referendum. It would look like he was opposed to giving the public a say. I also suspect that it will become almost politically impossible to oppose a referendum after the European Elections in 2014. Patrick Wintour reports today that Labour is toying with the idea of either amending

Friday

Alex Massie

The greatest scandal in Britain is the failure to give poor children a proper education.

Earlier this week, I was part of a panel on Newsnight Scotland discussing the latest – some would say, belated – efforts designed to improve Glasgow’s dismally underachieving state schools. That they need improvement is beyond doubt. In Scotland’s largest city, only 7% of state-educated pupils leave school with five good Higher passes. In Scotland as a whole a mere 220 children from the poorest 20% of neighbourhoods achieved three As at Higher (the minimum grades required for admission to leading universities such as St Andrews). As I said on the programme, this should be considered a national scandal. More than that, a disgrace. (Like Fraser, I wish more people

Thursday

Alex Massie

Denial is a River in Scotland

Aye, the old ones are the best. You might think that George Osborne’s decision to  leave the Scottish block grant more-or-less untouched in yesterday’s spending review would be a cause for chuffedness north of the border. You’d think wrong. Osborne announced a 1.9% reduction in real-terms funds made available to the Scottish government. Alex Salmond’s ministry will have to make do with £25.7 billion. All hail the Barnett formula since Mr Osborne’s decision to protect health spending ensures that the funds available to Scotland are similarly guaranteed, minimising the ability to cut the block grant even if that were deemed economically – or, rather, politically – wise. Since many English

Charles Moore Charles Moore

If they want another woman to depict on bank notes, how about Margaret Thatcher?

Jane Austen is a ‘contingency character’, we have just learnt. In his last appearance as Governor of the Bank of England before the Treasury Select Committee of the House of Commons, Sir Mervyn King explained that the great novelist rather slightingly so described stands in reserve to feature on any of our bank notes if too many people succeed in counterfeiting the current occupants. She is also in the running for the ten-pound note when Charles Darwin relinquishes it. This is a hot issue, because the notes do not feature enough women, we are told — despite the fact that since 1952, 100 per cent of them have featured a woman

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Food banks and political failure

Are food banks a scandal? For this week’s Spectator, I visited the Salisbury food bank, set up in 2000, to find out what causes families to turn to these charities. I must admit that when I arrived at the headquarters of the Trussell Trust, which runs many of the food banks in this country, I was expecting to meet more angry people, spitting fire about the cruel government. Instead I interviewed Chris Mould, the Trust’s chief executive, who was so unremittingly positive about the work that food banks do that I ended up writing a rather different piece than the one I set out to do. True, Mould was unimpressed with

Wednesday

Sebastian Payne

Spending review 2013: Crossrail 2 is a clear win for Boris Johnson

Boris Johnson’s powers of persuasion have once again wooed George Osborne. In today’s spending review, the Chancellor has put aside £2 million to investigate Crossrail 2 — a new underground line for London. The fact the Mayor was able to bag another win from Osborne — Crossrail 1 was protected from funding cuts in 2010 — is testament to the political power of both the Mayor and the capital. Boris doesn’t even have re-election to think about this time. Crossrail 2 is key to Boris’ London legacy. His grand 2020 vision is peppered with references to the new line, which he claims is vital to London’s future and work could even begin

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

PMQs sketch: Tasered choirboys and hilarious failings

listen to ‘Spending review 2013: the Coffee House analysis’ on Audioboo Shock news at PMQs. Miliband scored a hit. He succeeded in making Cameron look silly. True, he enjoyed his triumph a little too much, but his performance will have cheered his party enormously. For weeks they’ve had to watch their leader bungling at the despatch-box like an octopus trying to make a pancake. Miliband’s weapon of choice: statistics. It’s hard to use mere mathematics to hurt a politician but Miliband handled his materials with deadly aplomb. He uncovered woeful failures in government programmes. And the revelations weren’t just bad. They were hilariously bad. He kicked off with a statement

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Ed Balls’ shouty spending review response avoids difficult dividing lines

listen to ‘Spending review 2013: the Coffee House analysis’ on Audioboo Ed Balls had a rather shouty time in the Commons this afternoon when he responded to George Osborne’s spending review statement. It was a shame, because his lack of variation in tone and pace from ‘angry bellow’ level made what wasn’t a bad response a little difficult to follow. These responses to budgets, autumn statements and spending reviews are very difficult for any shadow chancellor or opposition leader to carry off well: you have no warning of what the Chancellor will say, and just the length of the speech itself to re-shape your pre-crafted speech and collect your thoughts.