Uk politics

Friday

Isabel Hardman

Labour revisits old welfare ghosts with its jobs guarantee

Dig out the bunting, fly the red flags in celebration, for finally we have a policy from the Labour party. Ed Miliband promised that 2013 would be the year he’d set out some ‘concrete steps‘ on key policy areas, and to that end he’s announced a jobs guarantee for the long-term unemployed. Coffee House readers will already be familiar with this scheme, as Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Liam Byrne discussed it in his interview on this site in December. But Miliband and Ed Balls have given the details today, with Balls writing an op-ed for PoliticsHome that says: A One Nation approach to welfare reform means government has a

Thursday

James Forsyth

The Tory message in 2015: Vote Cameron for PM

One thing is already apparent about the Tories’ 2015 campaign, it will be even more dependent on David Cameron than the 2010 one was. Why, because as Anthony Wells points out again today, Cameron polls ahead of his party. There’ll be those who criticise this decision. They’ll point out that the big billboard posters of him in 2010 backfired badly. Others will wonder what more juice can be squeezed out of Cameron, given that by the next election he’ll have been leading the party for nigh-on ten years. But to the Tory leadership, the Cameron lead on the best Prime Minister question is one of their trump cards. It is

The Spectator

What’s wrong with foreign aid?

Justine Greening is a robust politician and bean counter who reportedly used extremely fruity language when told she was being reshuffled to the International Development Department. Even though the new Secretary of State has made a strong start in her role, announcing the end of Britain’s aid programme to India by 2015 and suspending bilateral aid to Rwanda, she remains in a difficult position. In this week’s Spectator aid special, two writers examine the problems with Britain’s international development policy, from its target to spend 0.7 per cent of Gross National Income to politicians’ underlying assumptions about aid. Jonathan Foreman asks why politicians continue to throw money at aid projects

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

The horror of the ‘fake’ independent coffee shop

It’s official: this country is going to the dogs. The proof? Tesco has been insidiously infiltrating the coffee shop market with a chain of shops that look independent. The Guardian reports outrage in Crouch End, where customers were ‘duped’ by ‘independent-looking, stripped back coffee shops’. The greatest crime of Harris + Hoole – which has its majority stake owned by the family that founded it – is that Tesco has a 49 per cent stake in the business, but doesn’t plaster its own logo above the shops, preferring instead to fill them with nice furniture and pretty decor. Here’s one quote from the piece: “I avoid Starbucks because it’s a

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Cristina Kirchner forgets the most important people in the Falklands row: the Islanders

The British government has been gently rattling the bars in its stand-off with Argentina over the Falklands of late: giving the Queen a stretch of land in Antarctica which Cristina Kirchner’s government disputes the ownership of is one example. But today, ahead of a referendum in March for Islanders to decide whether they want the Falklands to remain under British sovereignty, Kirchner has upped the tension. In a letter published as an advert in today’s papers, the Argentine President demands that the UK ‘abide by the resolutions of the United Nations’ to end colonialism and negotiate a solution to the sovereignty dispute over the Islands. There’s a question about why

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman

Teachers are demoralised, but parents are protesting

The school holidays are nearly over, so here’s a cheery tale for those returning to the classroom next week. Teachers are demoralised, says a poll [PDF] for the NUT which found 55 per cent of those in the profession described themselves as having low or very low morale. Out of the 804 surveyed by YouGov, 71 per cent said they didn’t think the government trusted them to get on with their jobs. Michael Gove has made it pretty clear that there is indeed one group of teachers that he doesn’t trust to get on with their jobs: ‘militant’ trade union members who initiate industrial action such as ‘work-to-rule’ measures. But

Shiraz Maher

New terrorism control measures under the spotlight

It has not been a very happy start to the new year for Theresa May, who will have to answer difficult questions in the Commons about the disappearance of a terrorism suspect. Ibrahim Magog has been on the run since Christmas eve when police first realised he had failed to meet the conditions of his overnight residence requirements. Magog has been under investigation for two years and is believed to have trained with al-Shabaab, a Somali terrorist group linked to al-Qaeda. The group has waged a violent campaign in East Africa and has long threatened attacks against the West (although none have actually materialised). What will trouble the Home Secretary

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Now Nick Clegg turns on Labour ahead of mid-term review

Nick Clegg is in a pugnacious mood at the moment. First there was the very conveniently leaked memo in which Lib Dem strategists urged MPs to criticise their Tory Coalition partners publicly. Now he’s gone on the attack against Labour’s spending plans, or lack thereof. The Deputy Prime Minister writes in The Times: ‘The Labour leadership continue to complain about the coalition’s approach, but without providing any credible alternative. They’re learning the tricks of opposition and finding their rhetorical refrains. But where are the numbers? Where are their sums? The country has undergone the biggest economic crisis in living memory, yet they offer no explanation of how they’d get us

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman

Society is forgetting its elderly

During the 2010 general election, two grand politicians came to visit the teaching hospital where a doctor friend of mine worked. He had finished a 13 hour night shift, and, at a loose end, decided to track those two grand politicians’ journey around the hospital. They visited the impressively equipped cardiology wards, stopped by at a premature baby unit (if you can’t have a photo of you kissing a baby, you can at least get one next to an expensive incubator with an even tinier baby inside it), and moved on to the oncology wards to talk to patients battling cancer. My friend went home feeling rather disconsolate. It wasn’t

Monday

Isabel Hardman

A new EU membership for Britain: second-class or sensible?

Becoming a ‘second-class’ member of the European Union doesn’t sound awfully appealing on first glance at today’s Times story. But the ‘associate membership’ being considered by the Union of European Federalists would see Britain remain in the single market but lose its commissioner in Brussels and eventually its MEPs, too. Those drawing up this version of the new treaty also envisage that there would continue to be a seat at the Court of Justice for Britain. The big question for the eurosceptics I’ve spoken to this morning is whether Britain could have what one Tory MP described as a common market, rather than single market agreement, whereby it abides by

Sunday

Isabel Hardman

Realism and optimism: David Cameron’s New Year message

David Cameron’s New Year message is a rather sober one, but it’s not downbeat. The theme is ‘realism and optimism’ and the Tory leader’s aim is to demonstrate to voters that his policies are putting the country on the right track, and to that end he makes some strong points on deficit reduction, unemployment, education, welfare, tax and pensions. Encouraging optimism about Britain’s trajectory is important because 2013 is going to be a difficult year, not just for the Conservative party internally on issues such as Europe and gay marriage, but for the Coalition, as new cuts come in and critics call on the government to change tack. Ed Miliband’s

Saturday

The Spectator

Why should MPs stay put in the Palace of Westminster?

Tristram Hunt paints a bleak picture of the state the Palace of Westminster is in for Spectator readers this week as he draws parallels between the crumbling parliament building in New Delhi and plans to renovate the Mother of Parliaments in London. The Labour MP and historian writes: In SW1, the situation is critical. Forget the obvious signs of decay — the mice; the leaking roofs; the wafts of sewage. Deep in the belly of Charles Barry’s 1830s Gothic wonderland, the infrastructure is in meltdown. The steam and condensate systems are beyond life expectancy. Explosions from the boilers risk the cabling and water pipes. The vertical risers are ridden with

Friday

James Forsyth

When will we able to have a mature conversation about the health service?

Nigel Lawson described the NHS as the closest thing to a national religion that this country has. The NHS is certainly like a national religion to the extent that it is pretty much impossible to have a rational debate about it. There is often a choice posited between the NHS and no healthcare at all. One can see this mindset in today’s Guardian article on the news that the Thatcher government in 1982 held Cabinet discussions about fundamental rethinking the size and shape of the state. Here is the section on the health service: ‘But the earlier version’s most controversial privatisation proposal concerned the health service: “It is therefore worth

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg make their new year pitch to voters

According to a spuriously scientific study, today is the day when festive excess gets the better of us, with one in two Brits opting to stay on the sofa with the curtains closed fretting about bills and weight gain. So how fortunate it is that Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband have chosen to rouse a hungover nation today with their stirring new year messages. Ed Miliband promises that he will be setting out ‘concrete steps’ on how One Nation Labour will work, citing business, education and welfare as examples. He does add that he doesn’t ‘offer easy answers and I’m not going to offer false promises either’. But it’s difficult

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Gove to Treasury: let schools borrow!

For all the good intention of Michael Gove’s school reforms, there have been only a few dozen new schools so far. When I interviewed him for The Spectator earlier this month, I asked if there was much point to all this if the successful schools could not expand (and, ergo, add capacity to the system). Crucially, Academies cannot borrow because the Treasury doesn’t allow it – a relic from the Gordon Brown control freak days. How much of an impediment is this? I didn’t run his answer in the magazine version of the interview as this is a fairly technical point. But as Brown knew, it’s on seemingly dull issues

Sebastian Payne

Austerity hits home in the North East of England

Have you personally suffered from George Osborne’s spending cuts? Your answer depends largely on where you live. I’ve witnessed both over the past few days. This Christmas, I’m enjoying my first prolonged stay away from London in some time and the impact of austerity in the North East has really struck me. First to note is spending cuts in local government. In this part of the world, the public sector is a vast beast. The Guardian reported in 2010 34 per cent of the total employment in Newcastle upon Tyne is in the public sector, one of the top 15 councils in the country. The authorities of Sunderland, Northumberland, North Tyneside and Darlington all have above-national average

Thursday

Isabel Hardman

The winter fuel payment silliness continues

On the subject of welfare, while the Lords debates whether a disabled person who can walk further than the length of a cricket pitch is allowed help with their transport costs, a minister has rather neatly highlighted the mess another part of the welfare state has ended up in. Nick Hurd told the Telegraph that he would ‘congratulate’ pensioners who donated their winter fuel payment to charity. He said: ‘The government is going to stick to its commitments. But if people take their own decisions that they want to use [the money] for good, of course, as minister for charity, I would support, congratulate and encourage them.’ When I last

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Government could face another welfare rebellion in the Lords

Remember those rebellions in the Lords on welfare earlier this year? Well, the fight hasn’t disappeared entirely from the Upper Chamber. Secondary legislation filling in the detail of the Welfare Reform Act is the new battleground, and I understand another uprising could be on the cards over regulations affecting disabled people. Baroness Thomas of Winchester, who regularly cropped up on the Naughty List last year when peers revolted on the welfare reform primary legislation, is calling on the Government to think again about its regulations for the mobility component of the Personal Independence Payment, the benefit replacing the Disability Living Allowance. A last minute change to the regulations means that only

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

David Cameron needn’t fear renegotiating Britain’s relationship with the EU

Nick Clegg has made a not-so-startling intervention in the debate about Britain’s relationship with Europe today, warning that Britain must avoid selling itself short in a renegotiation. His interview with the Guardian is a necessary piece of positioning ahead of David Cameron’s Big Europe Speech in mid-January, and this kind of differentiation is something the Tories are more than happy for the Lib Dem leader to continue doing. So in some ways, Clegg warning Cameron not to overdo it on Europe isn’t at all significant. But the Deputy Prime Minister makes an important observation in his interview about Britain’s bargaining power. Describing the creation of the single market and the

Wednesday

Shiraz Maher

‘One Pound Fish’ singer deported

Everything you need to know about the fallen state of our political and cultural capital is captured by the story of Muhammad Nazir. A Pakistani immigrant who came here to study at a now defunct college, he took part-time work in Queen’s Market, East London, and was filmed singing a bizarre yet inexplicably catchy song about ‘One Pound Fish.’ Nazir’s innocence, rubbery grin, and fluvial Bollywood cadences made the experience all the more endearing. The video went viral; Nazir went on X Factor; and he was signed by Atlantic Records. Nazir eventually ranked 29th in the Christmas charts, a formidable accomplishment considering he was just five spots behind the chicly