Uk politics

Monday

Isabel Hardman

Nick Clegg wants gory government: so should the Tories

There’s nothing wrong with Nick Clegg putting some distance between his party and the Conservatives. Today the Liberal Democrat leader is going to open up about the gory details of government, explaining where his party has held the Tories back, and heralding a new era where he and colleagues are honest about what they actually think of policies. On Friday, I argued that this sort of honesty about the workings of coalition government was a good thing. But there is one caveat to this. Conservative MPs are pretty unhappy at present, and it’s not just that they are overtired before the Christmas break. Their unhappiness stems partly from the splits

Sunday

James Mumford

A blank cheque to the baby boomers

After more than a decade of wrangling, it seems that a deal is finally about to be struck on long-term care of the elderly, by adopting the package proposed by economist Andrew Dilnot.  George Osborne has apparently agreed to a proposal, to be announced as early as next month, to make sure no one pays more than £75,000 towards their care costs however wealthy they are. The threshold below which their equity is exempt will also be jacked up. The estimated cost of all this is £700 million – money that this government simply does not have. To offer this at a time of cuts to further education, aircraft carriers,

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Shapps’ campaign skirmish

There’s long been a sense on the Tory side that the party’s campaigning isn’t as sharp as it should be, that CCHQ isn’t up to the job. The Ashcroft target seats campaign was so valued not just because of the money but because of the organisational and management muscle behind it. The new Tory Chairman Grant Shapps was sent to CCHQ in the reshuffle with instructions to address the place’s institutionalised incompetence. The early signs are encouraging. When Labour announced that it was launching a campaign in the 60 seats where the number of people on working tax credits, which are only going up by 1%, was larger than the

Saturday

Isabel Hardman

Tensions in the tearoom on gay marriage

This week’s developments over gay marriage have left a febrile atmosphere in the Conservative party. As Fraser wrote yesterday, David Cameron seems to have driven his party ‘quite mad’ by pursuing the policy, and the mood in the tearoom after Maria Miller’s statement on Tuesday certainly seems to have underlined that. I understand from a number of MPs that there was an ‘excitable’ confrontation between a member of the 2010 intake and one of the members of the Freedom to Marry group. The new MP was irritated by the position that his colleague had taken and was jabbing his finger angrily as he spoke. One of the names on the

Friday

Jonathan Jones

Ed Miliband vs the working class

Who’s on the side of the strivers? Is it George Osborne, who’s cutting benefits in real terms for the next three years, which he defends as ‘being fair to the person who leaves home every morning to go out to work and sees their neighbour still asleep, living a life on benefits’? Or is it Ed Balls, who’s opposing the move as Osborne ‘making striving working families pay the price for his economic failure’? Both men are convinced that their stance will help win the votes of low- and middle-income workers. At least one of them is wrong. Isabel has explained the sources of Labour’s confidence. One is a YouGov

Sebastian Payne

Michael Gove’s schools ultimatum pushes up standards

Michael Gove’s reformation of the education system from top to bottom has so far been unstoppable. Often though, the Education Secretary’s detractors bellow there is a lack of proof that his reforms are doing any good. Today’s news (£) that hundreds of primary schools have benefited from Gove’s tougher approach to internal management adds credence to the view that his freeing up of our education system is working. This year, the number of schools below the government’s baseline target dropped by more than half: ‘League tables of this year’s primary school test results showed that 521 were beneath his minimum threshold. Of these, 37 have since been replaced by academies with new sponsors

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

The political impact of immigration

It won’t actually come as a surprise to anyone living in London that the census results from the Office of National Statistics this week showed that ‘white British’ are down to 45 per cent in the capital. There are bits of the capital whose look and feel suggests that the percentage is much higher – well, the figures are from people who filled in the census forms, which isn’t quite the same thing as the actual population. Remember that cover story in The Spectator a couple of months back, based on the premise that London was practically a city-state, radically different from most other parts of the UK? Well, this

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Why Ed Balls is so confident about benefit wars

The debate over benefit uprating will run and run because both sides think they are winning. George Osborne thinks the public resent generous benefits rises. Liam Byrne and Ed Balls want to call this a ‘strivers tax’ and think blue collar workers will fall into their arms. Byrne told Coffee House yesterday that Labour will be hurt opposing to the Welfare Uprating Bill. I understand that the Shadow Cabinet reached its decision after YouGov’s polling showing C2DE  voters  – the three lowest socio-economic groups – saying benefits should have been increased in line with inflation. Osborne’s Bill would increase welfare by 1pc, behind expected inflation. Some 42 per cent of C2DE respondents said it was

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

The easy language of opposition

Isabel makes an excellent point about Ed Miliband’s One Nation spiel. It soothes political minds to talk about society rather than economics, people rather than the state, the common good rather individual utility. Voters like it, too, because globalisation and technology make many of us feel lost and alone. But it is, as Isabel says, an easy language of opposition, even a facile one. In office, reality tends to preclude such grand posturing, particularly in an economic crisis. As it happens, last night I went to an interesting Centre for Social Justice lecture by Jon Cruddas, Labour’s policy review chief, on the role of the state in the Good Society.

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

How a properly ‘proalition’ coalition should work

Have you noticed, recently, that the Coalition has changed the way it behaves in public? Two years ago, had Nick Clegg dropped his support for major Home Office legislation, spoken out about his own opinion on drugs policy and taken such a different position on a proposed dramatic change to the way newspapers are regulated within the space of a month, journalists would have gone into meltdown. Remember that in the early days of the Coalition, Simon Hughes saying he wasn’t sure about something the Prime Minister had announced was enough to hold the front page. Now we’re seeing differentiation on policies every day. Today Nick Clegg said he wasn’t convinced that

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Gay marriage: no culture wars, please, we’re British

Ever since the issue of gay marriage returned to British politics, we have seen the debate become crazier and crazier.  When Tony Blair handled this with his Civil Partnerships Act 2004, he did so with care and discretion, mindful of deeply-held opinions on either side of the debate. David Cameron seems to pursue gay marriage as some kind of defining mission statement, and seems to have driven his party quite mad. Nick Clegg released a speech drawing a distinction between the supporters of gay marriage and ‘bigots’. He revoked the b-word, but his tactic was clear. We are witnessing an attempt to bring American-style culture war to a country that

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

One Nation Labour can’t just be about reassuring voters

Ed Miliband is giving another one of his repositioning speeches today: this time about immigration and integration. We’re going back to the Labour leader’s school and his family again, as well as reminiscing about Olympics: none of which are exactly groundbreaking territory, given Ed explored the first two at length in his conference speech, has explored his family history at length in many speeches since becoming leader, and that all three party leaders used the Olympics for their own purposes in their autumn conference speeches. Mo Farah and Jessica Ennis should start charging politicians royalties for using their names in speeches about culture: they appear, alongside Zara Philips, in Miliband’s

Thursday

Isabel Hardman

George Osborne isn’t clashing with Vince Cable: he’s starting to agree with him

By this stage in the Coalition, everyone would have expected at least one major bust-up between George Osborne and Vince Cable. But his evidence to today’s Treasury Select Committee suggested that the Chancellor isn’t so much involved in a stand-off with the Business Secretary as he is taking on his point of view. It was significant how many times Osborne had to explain a softening in what were previously hard-and-fast economic rules, and hard-and-fast policies. His refusal to rule out replacing the Bank of England’s inflation target with a growth target is the most significant sign of a coalescing between the two men. Osborne told the committee that the current

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Downing Street’s Maria Miller dilemma

There was a time during the Leveson Inquiry when Jeremy Hunt’s departure from the government was treated as almost inevitable by the media, including yours truly. But Number 10 backed him. He survived and was then promoted in the reshuffle. When it eventually came out, the Leveson Report made only minor criticisms of him and cleared him of the most serious charges against him. This has confirmed Number 10 in its view that most media squalls blow themselves out in time. But the Cameroons have always accepted that MPs’ expenses is a toxic subject with the public. Cameron made a fair number of enemies on the backbenches, with the hard-line

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The History Kids

Martin Kettle has a column in today’s Guardian lamenting the inadequacy of the teaching of English history in schools today. He suggests that “the English people are increasingly cut off from their own history.” Is this so? Possibly! But then he makes the mistake of presuming the English are unusually unfortunate in this respect. To wit: It is a fair bet that today’s young Scots know more about Scotland’s history, today’s young Welsh more about Wales, and today’s young Irish more about Ireland than today’s young English know about England. In fact the nature of their own historical experiences may mean that the Scots, the Welsh and the Irish also

Oliver Duggan

Nick Boles attempts to soothe planning critics

Planning Minister Nick Boles admitted yesterday that he did not believe his controversial suggestion for Britain to build homes on two million acres of countryside should be put into practice. The new minister caused a storm last month when he supported a 3 per cent increase in UK-wide development to alleviate the housing shortages caused by high immigration. The plan was to build homes on green-field land, increasing development from 9 per cent to 12 per cent nationwide. But yesterday, Boles denied the claims, arguing that they were meant to illustrate a wider point about under-development rather than create a particular policy or target. His admission came after the Prime

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Liam Byrne interview: The welfare system is ‘completely out of whack’

Liam Byrne is a modernising, Blairite Labour MP, and in case you were in any doubt about that, he conducts his interview with Coffee House sitting next to a framed photograph of him with Tony Blair. The party’s Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary is well known for his modernising zeal, which has sometimes led him onto a collision course with his party grassroots and other MPs on the left. This week, though, he’s on a collision course with the Conservatives, who hope they’ve managed to corner Labour into admitting it hasn’t quite modernised its welfare policy enough to win voters back. The Welfare Uprating Bill, launched in last week’s Autumn

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

BBC vs Fracking

There was something odd about George Osborne offering tax breaks for fracking when it was still banned by another part of his government. The ban has been lifted and exploration can begin again in Lancashire, in what could be the most important piece of economic good news since the discovery of North Sea oil. But listening to the BBC reports this morning, it’s striking how the corporation already seems to be against it. Fracking has begun, it says. And the two things is listeners need to know about fracking? That it has been accused of polluting water in America and causing earth tremors. The upside, especially for Blackpool and its

Wednesday

Lloyd Evans

PMQs sketch: Ed Miliband, the political vulture

PMQs today revealed just how dependent Ed Miliband is on Britain’s future performance. The public finances have shaped his entire career. In government, he watched Gordon Brown screw the economy. Then he watched the economy return the compliment. Now he hopes the economy will wreck the Coalition and propel him into Downing Street. But there’s a snag. The economy has to tank, and to carry on tanking, for Miliband’s Mission Zero to succeed. And today, in defiance of all the soothsayers, the economic news is good. Employment figures are rising. Nearly 30 million Britons are in work. And those tricky youth unemployment totals are moving into sunny territory too. Ed

Oliver Duggan

Top civil service appointments in desperate need of reform, says former Environment Secretary

Civil Service Commission chief Sir David Normington this week rejected plans to allow ministers to pick their own permanent secretaries. It will be a great disappointment to Francis Maude, who argued involving ministers in the appointment process would increase the accountability of the most senior civil servants in a department. I’ve had a chat with one former Secretary of State who agrees with Maude that the selection process is in desperate need of an overhaul: Caroline Spelman. The former Environment Secretary has kept her head down since she lost her job in September’s reshuffle, but she’s emerged to speak to Coffee House on this key issue of civil service reform.