Uk politics

Monday

Isabel Hardman

Webb vs Byrne on the ‘bedroom tax’

One of the most frustrating things about being a policymaker must surely be when something that sounds so very sensible and straightforward in your ivory tower ends up being a bit messy in practice. Take the ‘bedroom tax’: it’s not actually a tax, but Labour enjoy calling anything they don’t like a ‘tax’ (odd, given their own penchant for taxation). This is a housing benefit cut for social tenants living in homes with more bedrooms than they need. It was announced in the 2010 emergency budget and comes into effect from April. Very sensible, you might think, especially when private tenants don’t get extra housing benefit for spare rooms. The

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Are High Speed Railways for the North or for London?

I used to think High Speed Rail was an excellent idea. Now I’m not so sure. I suspect the economic case for the proposals is weaker than its proponents allow. More importantly, I’m not at all sure the government’s plans for fast trains linking London and Birmingham are the right or most useful possible idea for high-speed rail. Knocking ten minutes off the London to Birmingham route seems like relatively little gain that comes at quite a price. Eventually, of course, the plan is to extend high-speed rail to Lancashire and, perhaps, Yorkshire too. Sometime, one would guess, towards the middle of this century. You can’t accuse modern Britain of

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Senior Tory mulls changes to secret courts bill

After publishing a paper highly critical of the Justice and Security Bill this morning, Andrew Tyrie is now considering making amendments to the legislation, I understand. MPs in a Bill committee will scrutinise the legislation line by line this week, and are expected to report to the House of Commons by mid-February. Tyrie, who also chairs the influential Treasury Select Committee, is considering tabling amendments to the Bill to be debated at that report stage. The Centre for Policy Studies paper which Tyrie has co-authored with Anthony Peto QC says that ‘part 2 of the Bill should, preferably, be withdrawn, at least until the government can come back with more

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Grey launch day for Green Deal

The Tories in opposition were very keen on their ‘Green Deal’ for making existing housing stock energy efficient. It formed the cornerstone of their pledge when the Coalition formed to be the ‘greenest government ever’. It had its big full launch today, with new loans available for homeowners to insulate their properties and pay back the money through their energy bills. The only problem is that the Green Deal isn’t quite the big all-singing all-dancing deal the government envisaged. The idea was that big businesses would lead the way in providing the scheme, but one of the leading retailers who expressed initial interest in the scheme, Marks and Spencer, isn’t

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The government’s attitude to Romania and Bulgaria is contemptible – Spectator Blogs

Pity the staff at the British embassy in Bucharest. Only last month they were cheerfully banging the drum for Great Britain, telling Romanians what a swell country this rain-soaked archipelago is. You see: The GREAT campaign invites the world to take a fresh look at the UK, and is designed to promote Britain as one of the very best places to visit, live, work, study, invest and do business. Oh dear. Time to reverse ferret. Brother Forsyth reports that the government is so spooked by the appalling thought that plucky Romanians and enterprising Bulgars might think the United Kingdom a land of opportunity that they are considering a new advertising

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Why is Adam Afriyie being touted for leader? Expenses.

The Adam Afriyie leadership stories this Sunday confirmed several things. First, there’ll be no shortage of candidates when David Cameron goes. A large tranche of backbenchers have become increasingly irritated at what they view as a magic circle of ministers, special advisers and journalists who, they claim, are deciding who is and isn’t considered a serious player in Westminster. A result of this will be a determined effort to bust this alleged cartel come the next leadership contest. The second, and more important, thing is that the whole issue of pay and rations for MPs is still shaping our politics. Many of those most hostile to Cameron are those who

Tim Knox

The secret courts bill won’t enhance justice or make us more secure

‘That Britain allowed itself to be dragged into complicity in extraordinary rendition – the kidnap and torture of individuals by the state – is a disgrace. That, nearly a decade later, the extent and limits of Britain’s involvement are still unknown is almost as shocking.’ So opens  a new report, Neither Just nor Secure, by Andrew Tyrie MP and Anthony Peto QC which shreds the Coalition’s Justice and Security Bill, a Bill which this week to go into Committee Stage in the House of Commons. The Bill has already had a rough ride through Parliament. Deservedly so, for it is damaging legislation that will neither enhance justice nor make us

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

HS2 announcement ignores airport problem

George Osborne, Patrick McLoughlin and Simon Burns have been flying the flag for the second phase of High Speed Rail 2 this morning. Politically, Osborne and Co see rewards in a project aimed at closing the North/South divide, rewards clearly so great that the Chancellor doesn’t mind the second half of the route zipping through his own constituency and irritating local councillors and campaigners. Osborne was careful to underline this when he appeared on breakfast television this morning, saying: ‘Our country has become so unbalanced and for the last 15 years as a country we gambled on the City of London and its prosperity and look where that got us.

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

See no crime, hear no crime and speak no crime

In the current issue of The Spectator, we put on the cover four words that sum up the coalition government’s approach to crime: pretend not to notice. Today’s Birmingham Mail offers a snapshot of what we mean: ‘The data, released under the Freedom of Information Act, showed the crimes were committed by 11,422 lawbreakers – meaning on average each carried out three offences within 12 months of being released on licence or receiving a community sentence.’ That’s an astonishing 33,000 offences in West Midlands committed over two years by those on the alternatives to jail: suspended sentences or community sentences. Or by those released from jail early, in what’s supposed

Sunday

James Forsyth

Europe Minister won’t give renegotiation specifics

There’s ‘no secret plot to get Britain out of the EU’ declared David Lidington on the Sunday Politics. In an interview with Andrew Neil, the Europe Minister was determinedly vague on the issue of what powers the next Conservative manifesto will seek a mandate to repatriate. But he made clear that the free movement of people is not going to be part of the renegotiation nor will Britain seek the right to strike its own trade deals with other countries. Having given the speech, David Cameron and his team don’t want to give a running commentary on what they might or might not seek to change about Britain’s terms of

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Nick Clegg leaves door open to Lib-Lab coalition

Nick Clegg was careful in his interview on the Marr show today to leave the door open to a Lib-Lab coalition – which bookmakers regard as more likely (4-1) than another Con-Lab coalition (6-1). It was interesting that so much of his description of coalition referred to himself: He told Sophie Raworth: ‘I’ve never, ever seen any of this as an issue about what one individual thinks of another individual. It is really all about what the British people think about the parties who are asking for their votes. David Cameron and I said lots of disobliging things before the last general election, disagreeing with things you’ve just highlighted. We

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Adam Afriyie ‘coup’: a false start for the stalking horse

The camp supporting backbench Tory MP Adam Afriyie in a possible leadership bid have been busy, managing to get whispers of their planned coup into three Sunday newspapers (the Sun on Sunday, The Sunday Times, and the Mail on Sunday). Whether or not Afriyie is a popular backbencher who managed to soothe colleagues over toasted teacakes in the Pugin room, and whether or not he’s the ideal person to lead the Tory party after Cameron, the timing for the Windsor MP of the plot appearing in print couldn’t be worse. This time last week, it wasn’t difficult to find a clutch of MPs who would gloomily mourn the direction their

Saturday

Carole Stone

The view from Davos: Boris Johnson’s economic adviser on infrastructure

As the speaker for yesterday’s Davos British business leaders’ lunch, Boris Johnson had the audience in his hand in his usual colourful way. I grabbed his very new Chief Economic Adviser, Dr Gerard Lyons, former Chief Economist at Standard Chartered, on the way out. How did he think we are doing economically? He told me the last big economic gathering was the IMF last October in Tokyo.  There, he said, the mood about the global economy was pessimistic, but now, three months later, the mood had improved, if only slightly.  There was more confidence about China and the US but still a lot of caution about Europe. Many continental economies, he

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The Unbearable Self-Pity of Britain’s Rich and Privileged – Spectator Blogs

Is there anything more pathetic, more risible than rich and privileged Britons whining that their cadre fails to receive a fair shake in the matter of admissions to this country’s most prestigious universities? Oh, sure, I suppose there must be but the smugness and evident sense of entitlement on display in these matters remains enraging. Today, for example, Anthony Seldon, headmaster of Wellington College, complains that his pupils are suffering unreasonable discrimination. Worse still, apparently, a presumed “bias” against public school pupils is a “hatred that dare not speak its name”. As the Americans say, cry me a river. The evidence for this notional bias is, needless to say, emaciated.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The Americans accuse the French of being too ambitious in Mali as British involvement grows

It might have been pushed down the news agenda this week by David Cameron’s Europe speech and the bad economic news, but the situation in Mali is offering us a preview of the next decade in international relations. This decade will, William Hague warns in The Times today, be far more dangerous than what we have seen so far this century. This is a sobering statement when you consider that in the last 13 years we have had 9/11, 7/7, Iraq and Afghanistan. One of the striking things about the Mali mission is it shows how the US is far less interested in playing the role if global policemen these

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Why The Guardian has got it wrong – on cuts and on Boris.

‘George Osborne is under pressure to tear up his austerity programme after Boris Johnson called on the government to drop its ‘hair-shirt, Stafford Cripps agenda,’ reports the delighted Guardian today. Even Boris is against it! Even he can see that the obvious solution to our debt crisis is even more debt! Except, as you’d expect, it’s all nonsense. Kamal Ahmed at the Telegraph got it right: Boris’s problem is with Osborne’s language: talking about pain, rather than recovery. He quotes Boris: ‘We need to junk the rhetoric of austerity and be confident. I will be unveiling a seven point economic plan to drive jobs and growth in London which drives the

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Scottish Tories: It’s Time To Man Up – Spectator Blogs

Ruth Davidson became leader of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party in large part because she was the candidate favoured by the party establishment. Where Murdo Fraser suggested – rather too boldly as it turned out – the party should fold its tent and start again under a new banner, Davidson preferred a more cautious approach. Moreover, she said it was time to “draw a line in the sand” on the matter of transferring further powers to the Scottish parliament. A little more than a year later it seems as though that line has been washed away by the tide. Perhaps it was a mistake to draw it in the

Friday

Carole Stone

The view from Davos: Cameron’s mad to talk about leaving the EU

‘Cameron’s speech on Europe is badly timed; we must stop this endless European bickering when facing such huge worldwide political challenges’.  That’s the view of Neil Selby, the London-based Director of Executive Education for the Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business but who at the moment is, like me, here in Davos. ‘Let’s think instead of the links we can make with East Asia’, he tells me. It’s very disconcerting: while in Britain most columnists and commentators seem to be congratulating Cameron on his big Europe speech, here at Davos there’s no enthusiasm. Most of the people around me think the emphasis was all wrong. At a lunch on East

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Claire Perry interview: Leaving internet on at night is as reckless as leaving the front door unlocked

Claire Perry, the determined MP for Devizes, is very, very determined not to be set up as a 21st century Mary Whitehouse. Her job title, as the Prime Minister’s adviser on preventing the sexualisation and commercialisation of childhood, might suggest the Tory MP is yearning for a more innocent bygone era. But she’s insistent that she isn’t anti-porn, or even a mother who snoops on her children: ‘I’m in no way the Mary Whitehouse of this,’ she tells me as she sits under a washing line in her office decorated with children’s artwork. ‘I am in no way old-fashioned, this is not some kind of anti-porn crusade. Amongst consenting adults,

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

If Nick Clegg doesn’t think his local schools are much cop, then he should say so

Normally, it is really rather tiresome when a politician is pilloried in the media for choosing to send their children to a private school above the local state schools. There’s even an argument that if you can afford to send your kid to a fee-paying school, then at least it is one less pressure in the great London school places crush. But one thing worth mulling over about Nick Clegg’s admission on LBC yesterday that he might send his eldest son to an independent school if the school lottery doesn’t go his way is that the Deputy Prime Minister has tried very, very hard since coming into office not to