Uk politics

Tuesday

Alex Massie

Scotland’s position in europe is weaker than the SNP would have you believe

Nicola Sturgeon, arguably the SNP’s most effective asset at present, went to Brussels today to deliver a speech about Scotland’s future relationship with the EU. Most of it was as bland and unobjectionable as you might expect. Move along, not very much to see here. And with some reason. I think it is all but inconceivable that the EU would make it difficult for an independent Scotland to join the club. I also think Spanish (and perhaps Belgian) fears that letting Scotland join would set a dangerous precedent are, for the most part, exaggerated. At the very least I doubt that the threat of a Spanish veto is a good

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

In praise of self-appointed detectives

So Nick Clegg is annoyed with those ‘self-appointed detectives’ who are ‘trying to piece together events that happened many years ago’ on the Lord Rennard allegations. It’s not a surprise, really, that the Lib Dem leader is annoyed with journalists at the moment: after all, if it hadn’t been for Cathy Newman’s report last week, the Lib Dems wouldn’t be in this awkward position of having to piece the allegations together themselves through an inquiry. Which says something interesting about the party’s attitude towards the allegations themselves, does it not, given the women involved, irritated by the party’s response to the complaints they say they tried to make, decided that

Eamonn Butler

The government must cut or even scrap capital gains tax

When economists get things wrong– something rather easy, given the nature of their subject – they should admit that they got them wrong. Well, the Adam Smith Institute got it wrong. Two years ago we predicted that, if Vince Cable got his way and capital gains tax rates were increased to match income tax rates – up from 18 per cent to 40 per cent or even 50 per cent – the Treasury would not make anything out of it, and would actually lose £2.48bn in revenue. In the event, CGT was not raised to 40 per cent or 50 per cent. But it was raised to 28 per cent

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Small By-Election in Hampshire; Not Many Dead

By-elections are catnip for the media. But they are also, almost invariably, subject to greater scrutiny than they can reasonably bear. Only occasionally do they herald a new era or political realignment. Eastleigh is unlikely to prove an exception to that general rule. True, as Brother Payne suggests, Labour’s likely dismal showing may demonstrate that Ed Miliband’s still struggling to “connect” with southern voters but – though as a Miliband Sceptic it pains me to say so –  I’m not sure we should make too much of this. Similarly, UKIP’s good showing is likely to be over-interpreted too. So, for that matter, will the Conservatives’ (predicted) failure to win the

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

Keith O’Brien’s resignation is no good thing. But it might be good for the Catholic church

The downfall of Cardinal Keith O’Brien could not have been more complete if it had been orchestrated by Stonewall, which, if you recall, awarded him Bigot of the Year for his opposition to gay marriage. Actually, the one surprise is that it wasn’t Stonewall that brought him down, but three Scottish priests, and one ex-priest, courtesy of The Observer.  The most senior Catholic cleric in Britain, the most forthright opponent of gay marriage; quite a scalp for secularists, gay rights activists and indeed for some Catholics of a liberal persuasion. One Catholic academic, when he heard the news, observed that this marked the end of the Church’s authority on matters

Tom Maddocks

Crisis handling the Lib Dem way

For the Liberal Democrats, the Rennard affair was bad enough, particularly blowing up in the middle of the Eastleigh by-election; the way it has so far been handled from a crisis management point of view has made it a lot worse. The problem for the party is that prevarication, twisting in the wind and changes of mind seem to have been far more in evidence than specific, decisive action. First, the line seemed to be that Mr Clegg did not know about the allegations, so presumably he couldn’t have been expected to have taken action, then it seemed he did know but only about ‘general concerns’, now it is alleged

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Are British Doctors Paid Too Much?

I knew that British doctors are well-paid but unti I saw, via Kevin Drum, this chart I had no idea they were so much better-paid than most of their peers in the western world.  This is culled from a 2004 OECD report (Pdf) and all figures are in PPP-adjusted dollars. Of course, doctors received significant pay increases during the Blair years. Specialists were not treated as kindly as (well-trained) GPs but even their wages increased by more than 30% in real terms. Which is fine. The constituency demanding pay cuts for doctors is very small. Nevertheless, these charts (which are not, I think, outdated in any significant sense) are worth

Sebastian Payne

Labour are the real losers in Eastleigh

The Lib Dems are still on course to hold Eastleigh. Despite the loss of Britain’s AAA credit rating and the unfurling Rennard scandal, Lord Ashcroft’s latest poll today puts their candidate Mike Thornton on 33 per cent. Tory candidate Maria Hutchings is lagging five points behind on 28 per cent while Ukip are a little further behind with 21 per cent. Disappointingly for Ed Miliband, the Labour party’s celebrity candidate John O’Farrell is coming in with just 12 per cent. This confirms two things. Firstly, the by-election is only about local politics. As we discussed on last week’s View from 22 podcast, Chris Huhne has barely been mentioned on the doorstep. From the start,

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Weary Italian voters can teach UK politicians lessons

Italian voters are clearly cheesed off: with the Establishment, and with the country’s austerity programme. The explosion onto the scene of Beppe Grillo – which Freddy examined in his post from Rome on Sunday – shows quite how cheesed off they are, and it also has wider lessons for the eurozone and for UK politics, too. The first is that voters clearly do not share eurozone leaders’ unswerving commitment to the euro project: Grillo made much of his party’s eurosceptic credentials and won 54 seats in the upper house, with Berlusconi’s centre-right on 116, while Mario Monti, the conduit for the EU’s austerity measures, won only 18. No alliance gained

Monday

Isabel Hardman

AAA credit rating: George Osborne gives Labour a (revisionist) history lesson

George Osborne was playing historian today as he responded to Ed Balls’ urgent question on the credit rating downgrade, charting Labour’s role in the UK’s loss of the AAA rating; particularly the deficit it bequeathed the Coalition. But he was in revisionist mood when it came to his own stance. As Ed Balls repeatedly leant across the despatch box and tried to hand the Chancellor a copy of the Tory 2010 manifesto in which the party lists ‘we will safeguard Britain’s credit rating’ as the first of its eight benchmarks, George Osborne told MPs that what he had always said was important was the confidence of the markets. MPs were

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Could Eastleigh go the way of Cleggmania?

The Liberal Democrats have a different relationship to the popular press than the other two main parties, both more afraid and more contemptuous. This I suspect contributed to the slightly unwise tone of Nick Clegg’s statement last night. His declaration that ‘I will not stand by and allow my party to be subject to a show trial of innuendo, half-truths and slurs’ was hardly what you would expect from a party leader trying to show humility. One of the reasons that the Liberal Democrats are particularly sensitive to press coverage is the party’s memory of the unraveling of the Cleggmania. Until then, the Liberal Democrats had simply not been covered

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Will the UK keep its AA1 rating until 2015?

Labour has been granted an urgent question in the Commons on the loss of the AAA credit rating this afternoon, and we can expect George Osborne to reiterate his comments over the weekend that this downgrade was a ‘clear message that Britain cannot let up in dealing with its debts’. But will he suggest that the UK can hold onto the AA1 status that it now holds with Moody’s until the end of this Parliament? Announcing the downgrade, the agency said it didn’t expect any changes in the rating over the next 12-18 months. But it added: ‘However, downward pressure on the rating could arise if government policies were unable

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Brave, the Oscars and the Scottish Cringe.

Hurrah for Brave, the little movie that could! And did! All Scotland salutes her Oscar for Best Animated Feature. Another triumph for the plucky underdogs at Disney-Pixar. That, at any rate, is the Scottish government’s view. This “Scottish film” (according to the SNP’s official twitter feed) is another example of Caledonian excellence. Only pedants and churls – of which the country possesses no shortage – can fail to be stirred by the movie’s victory in a minor Oscar category. Well, of course, there’s nothing wrong with liking Brave – a perfectly decent movie – and nothing wrong with preferring it to animated movies you most probably have not seen. But, really,

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

How will the Rennard allegations affect the Eastleigh by-election?

What effect will the Rennard allegations have on the Eastleigh by-election? Channel 4 has been working on the story for months, but it is obviously taking off at an inconvenient time for the Liberal Democrats. There is also – for both Coalition parties, although particularly for the Tories because this was a key pledge for George Osborne – the problem of the AAA credit rating loss. But don’t forget that the by-election was triggered by Chris Huhne’s ‘guilty’ plea for perverting the course of justice, and in spite of repeated references in Conservative campaign material to ‘trust’, Huhne appears to have had little effect on the by-election. One Conservative MP

Jonathan Jones

Markets shrug off Britain’s downgrade

It seems that Moody’s downgrade of UK government bonds on Friday night has — so far — had more effect on the headlines than the markets. After the news on Friday night, the pound fell by about a cent against the dollar, from $1.525 to $1.515. And against the euro it fell from €1.157 to €1.147 (it’s fallen a little further this morning, to €1.144). But that’s no bigger than the drop on Wednesday on the news that Mervyn King and two other members of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee had voted in favour of more quantitative easing. And it doesn’t seem to have raised the cost of

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Lord Rennard: The key questions

As James observed last night, Nick Clegg’s statement on the Rennard allegations raised more questions than it answered. Lord Rennard continues to strenuously deny the claims of sexual harassment made on Channel 4 News last week and in other reports since. But the problem is that when allegations were being made and rumours were circulating, nothing was done, regardless of whether those claims would have been proven or not. And as Nick Clegg hasn’t closed down the row, here are five questions that the party and those examining it will want to answer: 1. There are discrepancies between the different accounts of when the Lib Dem leadership received the specific

Sunday

James Forsyth

Danny Alexander on why he couldn’t do more about Lord Rennard allegations

Danny Alexander has now issued a statement of his own on the Lord Rennard and the allegations against him. This follows Nick Clegg revealing that it was Alexander, then his chief of staff, who was responsible for dealing with general concerns about Lord Rennard in 2008. Alexander says that there was a limit to how far he could take these concerns following Rennard’s denial, a denial that Rennard stands behind, given that the ‘concerns were received indirectly and anonymously’. There is though, an issue, of how proactive Alexander was in attempting to find out what was really going on. Alexander’s statement also doesn’t address the question of the setting in

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Danny Alexander statement on Lord Rennard allegations

Below is a statement from Danny Alexander on his role in attempting to deal with allegations made against Lord Rennard: ‘As I said yesterday, I did not know about these specific allegations until the Channel 4 broadcast. When indirect and anonymous concerns about Chris Rennard’s conduct came to the attention of Nick Clegg’s office, in late 2008, we acted immediately. As Nick’s Chief of Staff, I put these concerns to Chris Rennard in strong terms and warned him that any such behaviour was wholly unacceptable. Chris Rennard categorically denied that he had behaved inappropriately as he continues to do. Chris Rennard subsequently resigned as Chief Executive on health grounds. As

Steerpike Steerpike

Lembit twists the Clegg knife

The Lord Rennard scandal is spreading, not least because of Nick Clegg’s willingness to bring in other characters. He even directly named Danny Alexander as central to the disastrous investigation five years ago. Clegg’s statement says they didn’t know the specifics involved or the names of the women. A line that does not hold much weight when one of the victims was his own Special Advisor. As many Liberal Democrats lie low, it would not be a ‘show trial’ without everyone’s favourite yellow clown. Enter stage left Lembit Opik who popped on Sky News. The last person that the party leadership would want to see, and he did not upset the punters:

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Nick Clegg’s statement on Lord Rennard raises as many questions as it answers

Nick Clegg’s statement this evening concedes that he was aware of general concerns about Lord Rennard’s alleged behaviour. He says that he asked his then chief of staff Danny Alexander to confront Rennard about these concerns in 2008. Rennard told Alexander, Clegg says, that there was no truth to the allegations. Again, it is worth stressing that Rennard denies all the complaints made against him. Clegg, though, angrily refutes suggestions that he was aware of any specific allegations. He complains about a ‘show trial of innuendo, half-truths and slurs’ against the Liberal Democrats. Following Clegg’s statement, most attention now will focus on the Alexander Rennard meeting in 2008. Was it