uk politics Archives

Monday

3 Dec 2012

Does the South East need its own party?

Kelvin MacKenzie wants a British version of the Italy’s Northern League. His aim is to have a Southern Party that would push for home rule for London and the South East and oppose fiscal transfers from the South East to the rest of the country. The piece is classic MacKenzie polemic. But it does speak to the growing regionalisation of British politics, a subject that Neil O’Brien addressed for us in his final piece before becoming an adviser to George Osborne. Outside of London, Labour only have four MPs in the South East and in the European elections, Labour came fifth in the region — behind even the Greens. For

Alex Massie

Ed Miliband’s Leveson response shows his weakness: he’s a follower, not a leader. – Spectator Blogs

The biggest risk in punditry is the determination to see what you want to see. Confirmation bias is an ever-present clear and present danger to solid thinking. Nevertheless, though keeping this in mind, I wonder if Ed Miliband’s reaction to the Leveson Report has been wise, far less a response that will help him win the next election. By “wise” I mean wise in a purely political sense, not “wise” as in appropriate, sensible or well-judged. The Labour leader’s demand that Leveson’s recommendations be implemented is, in its way, remarkable. This, after all, is a 2,000 page report published in four volumes. And yet within this mountain of ponderous, muddle-headed

Isabel Hardman

Aide to Europe minister calls for Parliament to beef up its engagement with EU

Another day, another paper by a Tory MP about Britain’s relationship with Europe. Except the latest paper, by Tobias Ellwood for think tank Open Europe, is actually not so much about what’s wrong with Europe, but about what’s wrong with how our Parliament in Westminster deals with the whole issue. Ellwood, who is PPS to Europe Minister David Lidington, doesn’t believe Westminster politicians are actually very good at engaging with European Union policymaking, preferring instead a ‘complain-but-don’t-change’ approach. He paints a discomfiting picture of the way MPs relate to Brussels, describing an alienation which leads to ‘little appetite amongst MPs to understand fully how the EU actually works – and

Isabel Hardman

Pressure on the editors as Labour threatens own Leveson bill

One of the foundations on which David Cameron based his decision to reject statutory underpinning of press regulation was that editors would set up a new system based on Lord Justice Leveson’s recommendations which would prove far tougher than the Press Complaints Commission. The failure of the industry to reach consensus on a new body – and this is a real risk given the refusal of some publications to join the PCC – would pull the rug from under the Prime Minister’s feet as he fights critics pushing for statute. Cameron is also facing claims that he is bowing to bullies in the press, and it is for these two

Isabel Hardman

MPs criticise ‘voluntary’ tax arrangements for Starbucks and other big companies

Danny Alexander might be glad that a PR panic before the Public Accounts Committee published its report into HMRC and the ability of multinational companies to avoid paying their share of corporation tax means he could be able to visit a Starbucks again in the near future. But his remarks on Radio 4 this morning show what a mess our tax system has got into. As PAC chair Margaret Hodge observed on Radio 5Live, there is now ‘a danger that corporation tax is becoming a voluntary tax’, and the Chief Secretary to the Treasury’s remarks did little to diminish that impression. Alexander said: ‘I think what I’d say is, look,

Sunday

2 Dec 2012

James Forsyth

The prisoner voting farce makes the case for Britain leaving the jurisdiction of the Strasbourg Court

It is hard to watch Chris Grayling’s interview with Andrew Neil on BBC1’s Sunday Politics and not conclude that Britain’s relationship with the European Court of Human Rights needs changing. The Justice Secretary effectively concedes that he can’t, as Lord Chancellor, vote to maintain the ban on prisoners voting. But ‘Parliament has the right to overrule the European Court of Human Rights.’ So we’re not stuck, Britain can do what it likes. Or, more accurately, what Parliament votes for. It looks likely that we’ll end up with Parliament resolving to uphold the ban on prisoner voting, but with the Secretary of State – as Lord Chancellor – obliged to sit

Fraser Nelson

What shall we do with the drunken British?

Being in government has forced the Liberal Democrats to decide whether they are liberal in the British sense of the word, or in the American, statist sense. Nick Clegg leans towards the latter, which is why he wants the state to regulate of the press. But Jeremy Browne, the Home Office minister, is emerging as a genuine Manchester-style liberal. In the Mail on Sunday today, he has come out against the illiberal strategy for the minimum pricing of alcohol. He can’t speak himself, but ‘friends of Mr Browne’ have this to say: ‘Jeremy’s view is that the thug who has downed nine cans of lager is hardly going to think,

The Spectator

Should we treat phone hacking victims as experts on press regulation?

Much of the response to the Leveson Inquiry has focused on the disappointment of the victims of phone hacking and other intrusions by the press that David Cameron is opposed to introducing statutory underpinning for a new system of newspaper regulation. But how much can victims tell us about how to change a system? In an article for the Spectator in May, Carol Sarler argued that it was unwise to treat victims of tragedy as universal sages. Sarler pointed to the way Sara Payne and Denise Fergus were often called to back certain laws in an ‘automatic elevation of “victim” to “expert”‘. She wrote: It really is no surprise to

Saturday

1 Dec 2012

Isabel Hardman

Nick Clegg is changing the way the government works

Say what you will about Nick Clegg’s decision to take a different stance from the Prime Minister on Leveson, but the Deputy Prime Minister has this week effected another big change to the way Westminster government works. He has sent party members an email today explaining why he felt it was necessary to make a separate statement to David Cameron in the Commons on Thursday. The Lib Dem leader writes: As you may have picked up, the Prime Minister and I disagreed; there is not yet an agreed ‘government line’. That’s in part why we had to make separate statements – a major departure from Parliamentary protocol, apparently. I’m often

James Forsyth

What would Thatcher do if she was in power now?

It is testament to Margaret Thatcher’s remarkable influence on British politics that 33 years after she won her first general election victory she still has such a hold on our political discourse. One of the things that the Tory party needs to do is understand both why Thatcher was so successful and how she changed Britain. In an interview with The Spectator this week, Elizabeth Truss, the new education minister who proudly describes herself as a ‘bit of a Thatcherite’, offers an interesting take on the question. Truss argues that ‘what Mrs Thatcher did in the 80s was unleash a lot of forces by things like freeing up credit; getting

Friday

30 Nov 2012

Isabel Hardman

Tory MP attacks Cameron for allowing party to become ’emaciated’

Brian Binley is fond of giving journalists new ideas for illustrations featuring David Cameron’s head superimposed onto a new and unusual get-up: his ‘chambermaid‘ allusion caused quite a stir back in August. Today he’s written another one of his angry blog posts, which takes his criticism of the Prime Minister on a little further. Today the Prime Minister is a caretaker, apparently, and one who isn’t taking great care of his party. Binley describes the Conservative party as being ‘in a very sorry state’, and launches an attack on Cameron for setting his face against his own party. He writes: Having been our leader for the last seven years, David

The Spectator

Inside the mind of George Osborne’s newest adviser

Neil O’Brien’s appointment as a new special adviser for George Osborne has gone down very well in the Westminster bubble, partly because of the Policy Exchange director’s ability to look beyond that bubble. He has written a number of times for the Spectator, and as an insight into the man who will be advising the Chancellor, here are some of his key pieces: In this week’s magazine, O’Brien points to the North’s growing detachment from Westminster, with ‘an almighty 83 per cent of northern voters’ believing that politicians do not understand the real world. He writes: ‘Westminster politicians have repeatedly promised to close the North-South gap, but failed because they

Isabel Hardman

Labour source tells Coffee House: govt could deliberately overcomplicate Leveson bill

Labour sources are not happy with the Prime Minister’s decision to draft legislation for statutory underpinning of press regulation. I’ve just spoken to one party source, who told me the worry is not that the legislation is being put together quickly, but that the government will draw up a bill that deliberately complicates the issue and undermines Lord Justice Leveson’s call for regulation backed by statute. The source says: ‘The issue with the draft bill is not the speed: we want speed. The issue is that there is a possibility that what they are going to do is overcomplicate and deliberately overload this draft in a bid to stop them doing

James Forsyth

George Osborne hires head of leading centre-right think tank to push through new Tory agenda

George Osborne has recruited Neil O’Brien, the director of the leading centre-right think tank Policy Exchange, as an adviser. O’Brien will start work in the New Year with a particular focus on the next phase of coalition policy development. I also suspect that O’Brien will have a major influence on Tory thinking heading to 2015 and beyond. The Northern Lights report he commissioned at Policy Exchange is regarded in Tory circles as one of the most important assessments of the challenge facing the party in trying to win a majority. I understand that Osborne has been impressed by the work that O’Brien has produced at Policy Exchange. At Policy Exchange,

Isabel Hardman

Government to draft legislation on Leveson recommendations

The first of many cross-party discussions on the response to the Leveson Inquiry lasted 30 minutes last night. The ‘frank’ meeting resulted in David Cameron agreeing to draft bill to see if the proposals in Lord Justice Leveson’s report were workable. The idea is that the legislation will prove that the statutory underpinning of the new independent press regulator is unworkable, while Number 10 sources are briefing that the Prime Minister has ‘not shifted one inch’ on his position on the report. But agreeing to draft legislation, if only to prove those deep misgivings that Cameron retains, is a canny way of approaching the divide in Parliament over the response

Fraser Nelson

Press freedom has just acquired its most important defender: David Cameron

For precisely 99 minutes yesterday, it looked like press freedom in Britain was doomed. At 1.30pm Lord Leveson announced his plans for statutory regulation of the press – with his bizarre instruction that we were not to call it statutory regulation. Worse, respectable commentators seemed to buy it. A very clever compromise, it was being argued. Self regulation really was being given another chance, albeit with a device which puts a legislative gun to the head of the press. If they obeyed his demands, he would not apply the force of the state. But at 3.09pm, the Prime Minister rejected all this outright. The existence of such a device, he

Thursday

29 Nov 2012

David Blackburn

Leveson Report – your guide to the regulatory recommendations

Here is a six-point guide to the regulatory system proposed by Lord Justice Leveson: 1) The creation of a genuinely independent regulator Leveson agrees with the view, expressed by Baroness O’Neill and others, that ‘independent regulation’ does not mean ‘self-regulation’. The existing system of self-regulation should be wound up. In its place should emerge a regulator that is both independent of the government, parliament and the industry. It should be ‘established and organised by the industry’ in order to provide ‘effective regulation of its members’. Leveson does not rule out the emergence of multiple regulatory bodies, and indeed allows for it, but he does not advocate such an outcome. 2)

James Forsyth

Leveson report: David Cameron left in a minority over press regulation

Following this afternoon’s statements I am certain that David Cameron is in a minority in the House of Commons in not wanting to create a statutory back-stop for a press regulator. But, so far, no one can explain how even an alliance of Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Eustice Tories can force the Prime Minister to provide parliamentary time for a bill that he doesn’t want. Cameron got the tone and content of his statement right. I’m reassured that Cameron appreciates that while he set up an inquiry, he didn’t outsource his judgment to Lord Justice Leveson. He is also surely correct that a press law, however brief, would have worrying

Isabel Hardman

Leveson report: Nick Clegg backs statutory underpinning

As trailed on Coffee House over the past few days, Nick Clegg used his own separate Commons statement to declare his support for the statutory underpinning of the new independent press regulator. He said that nothing in the debate that he had heard so far suggested to him that there was a better system of regulation than the one before MPs today. ‘The long grass is the last place that this problem should end up in,’ he said, adding: ‘I am convinced that he has made a case for legislation.’ The Deputy Prime Minister said he acknowledged that ‘we now need to show how that can be done in a

Lloyd Evans

Leveson press conference sketch: the supreme authority of the Lord

The conference platform was surrounded by screens tinted a deep and easeful blue. At just after 1.30 pm, Lord Leveson ambled forth, sporting a white shirt, a grey suit and a slight stoop. He peered out at the assembled pack of journalists from beneath his curmudgeonly black eyebrows. Then he sat at his desk. Microphones at either end bowed towards him like praying mantises. He began to speak. His quiet voice and his dense, circuitous prose suggest that he’s used to being listened to in awed silence. So he was. Occasionally he slowed the pace and upped the volume suddenly. A court-room device, perhaps, to jog a dozy juror awake. ‘The