Uk politics

Thursday

James Forsyth

Labour aims to change political dynamic around benefits uprating

It now looks almost certain that Labour will vote against the 1 per cent uprating for most working age benefits. Labour is pointing out that because this also includes tax credits, most of the people hit by this will actually be in work. The party hopes that this changes the political dynamic around this subject. But, as a Liberal Democrat minister pointed out to me last night, the coalition can portray any attempt to uprate by more than 1 per cent as special treatment for those on benefits. The minister stressed that public sector pay was only going up by 1 per cent and the threshold for the 40p rate

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

If Britain loses its AAA rating, Osborne will lose one of his key attack lines

George Osborne’s admission that he will not meet his target to have debt as a percentage of GDP falling by 2015/16 has serious consequences for one of his central messages. The Autumn Statement has led credit ratings agency Fitch to warn of a possible downgrade. The agency said: ‘Missing the target weakens the credibility of the fiscal framework, which is one of the factors supporting the rating.’ Ratings agencies aren’t the be-all-and-end-all by any means, and Osborne could quite easily point to just how wrong they were before the crash, giving collateralised debt obligations high ratings. But the problem is that the Chancellor tends to wheel out their approval to

Wednesday

Steve Baker

Autumn Statement: How long can we keep skating on thin bond market ice?

In today’s Autumn Statement there was some great news on jobs and fuel duty, but it’s surrounded by a surreal atmosphere. We must still beware the bond market. Employment is at a high with 1.2 million private sector jobs created since early 2010. Youth unemployment is falling – we’re doing much better than our neighbours. Government is living beyond its means to the tune of £108 billion, down from £159 billion in 2009-10. Fuel duty has been frozen at merely eye-watering levels: those of us who campaigned for it will now have to defend the consequences. Billions will have to be found from somewhere else. We’re told the Government still

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Autumn Statement sketch: Sub-arctic Chancellor warms up the Commons

From our sub-arctic chancellor this was a rip-roaring performance. Using all the arts perfected by Gordon Brown, he dazzled the house with his Autumn Statement. A chancellor should never be entirely candid. His job is to blame others for failure, to take credit for all successes, (no matter what their true origin), to engender confidence in the future and to attract cautious applause. George Osborne did all this. The bad news came out first. There were sharp intakes of breath as he revealed that the economy had shrunk by 6.9 per cent during the credit crunch. And he offered a personal confession which, in accordance with tradition, was masked in

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Autumn Statement: Lord Oakeshott claims George Osborne dances to donors’ tune

The Liberal Democrats are keen to use today to show that Coalition works, but Lord Oakeshott is in a less charitable mood. I’ve just had a chat with him about George Osborne’s explicit rejection of the mansion tax in his statement today as ‘intrusive’. The former Lib Dem Treasury spokesman in the House of Lords says: ‘I’m not withdrawing anything I have said about the Tories and the mansion tax. Intrusive is exactly what taxes on high-end tax dodgers have to be. George Osborne has performed a screeching handbrake turn on Tory donors’ orders.’ Nick Clegg’s aides have been trying to labour the proalition point in their briefings , though. A

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Autumn Statement: George Osborne moves into a stronger position

There’s a sense of satisfaction among Tories, and Osborne allies in particular, this afternoon. First, the Autumn Statement didn’t all leak out in advance. Instead, the Chancellor had some news to make on the day—notably the cancelling of the 3p fuel duty rise and a further increase in the personal allowance. Second, it has drawn political battle-lines that they believe favour them. Labour now has to decide whether to accept the coalition decision to up-rate most working age benefits by only 1 per cent for the next three years. This saves more than two billion pounds by 2015-16 and will, judging from previous polling on welfare, be popular. But Labour

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Leaked Autumn Statement briefing for Tory MPs focuses on ‘global race’ and spending switch

I’ve been passed the Tory ‘lines to take’ for MPs to use in media interviews for the Autumn Statement today. As I blogged a little earlier, the words ‘global race’ will be cropping up a lot over the next couple of years as a key Conservative phrase, and it looks as though today will be no exception, with the Chancellor using the image in his autumn statement. I note that MPs will also be expected to use it. The lines also focus on the decision to switch revenue to capital spending: ‘Today the Chancellor and Chief Secretary have told Cabinet that they will announce at the Autumn Statement over £5

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

George Osborne’s race to persuade voters and colleagues to back his plan

George Osborne has managed, so far, to manage the run-up to the Autumn Statement far better than he did the Budget. There have been no cat fights across the pages of the newspapers, and the briefing over the past few days has been disciplined. After being told about the £5bn of Whitehall spending cuts to fund ‘shovel-ready’ projects including new schools and investment in skills, science and transport yesterday, one hack jokingly asked whether ‘this means that tomorrow’s statement is going to be horrendous’ given the news so far had been relatively positive. Osborne’s stock is up in Westminster at the moment – something James detailed in the magazine last

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman

Airports review is doomed to gather dust, British Airways chief warns MPs

The government’s airports review will simply end up on a shelf, and major airlines will still be operating from a two-runway airport at Heathrow in 2050. That was the stark warning delivered by the chief executive of British Airways’ parent company IAG Willie Walsh this afternoon as he gave evidence to the Transport Select Committee. Walsh told the MPs on the committee: ‘I think the decision of the government to establish the Davies commission has been seen by some as a step in the right direction. I think personally I’m not optimistic… My own view is that the issue is too difficult for politicians and governments to deal with and I’m

Jonathan Jones

Autumn Statement: What Osborne will say

Lower growth, bigger deficits, targets missed — that’ll be the backdrop to George Osborne’s Autumn Statement tomorrow. So what medicine will he prescribe to make it all better? As usual, many of the policies have been leaked already: More capital spending, paid for by extra cuts elsewhere This was announced by Number 10 this morning: £5 billion extra spending on schools, science and transport over the next three years. That’ll include an extra £1 billion for Michael Gove’s academies and free schools programmes, to provide 50,000 new school places. It’ll all be paid for by extra cuts in departments’ resource budgets: 1 per cent more than planned next year and 2

Nick Pickles

Theresa May makes a weak argument on the Communications Data Bill

Despite a committee of both Houses of Parliament having yet to report after several months of inquiry, the Home Secretary took to the pages of the Sun yesterday to blast anyone who disagrees with her draft Communications Data Bill as a criminal, a terrorist or a paedophile. Hours later David Davis spoke in Parliament to ask why Theresa May had seen fit to traduce a large number of MPs. Aside from the Home Office panic the article revealed, the Blair-esque rhetoric of division was surpassed by the poor examples used by the minister in her interview. She cited two cases. One did not concern terrorism, paedophilia or a serious crime.

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Exclusive: Senior Lib Dems push for changes to secret courts bill

Senior Lib Dem MPs are deeply concerned about the government’s plans for secret courts, and will urge the government to accept changes made to the legislation in the House of Lords, I understand. The Justice and Security Bill will have its second reading in the House of Commons in the next few weeks, fresh from a series of embarrassing defeats on the secret courts measures in the House of Lords. Ken Clarke has said that some of the amendments brought in the upper chamber will need modifying at the very least. But the Liberal Democrat grassroots have been lobbying their parliamentarians to drop the Bill entirely ever since their conference

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Autumn Statement: Michael Gove becomes the poster boy for Whitehall cuts

George Osborne briefed the Cabinet this morning on tomorrow’s Autumn Statement, giving ministers some good news and some bad news. The good news is that he is launching £5 billion of extra capital spending spread over three years as part of the fiscally neutral package tomorrow. That package will fund new schools, science and transport schemes, the Prime Minister’s official spokesman said this morning. He told journalists: ‘The Chancellor and the Chief Secretary have told Cabinet that they will announce at Autumn Statement over £5bn of capital investment to invest in the economy and equip Britain for the global race.’ But the bad news is that this money has to

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Nicola Sturgeon is ready for her close-up – Spectator Blogs

In the rabid hamster-eating-hamster world of Scottish politics Nicola Sturgeon is a rarity: a politician of obvious competence who’s respected by her peers regardless of their own political allegiances. There are not so many folk at Holyrood of whom that could be said. The Deputy First Minister is not a flashy politician but she’s quietly become almost as important to the SNP as Alex Salmond. This, according to one sagacious owl, makes her one of the ten most interesting politicians in Britain. Hard though it is to imagine this, there are voters immune to the First Minister’s charms. Part of Nicola’s remit is to reach those parts of Scotland that

David Skelton

Don’t set different parts of the UK against each other

Kelvin MacKenzie made what I assume is a tongue-in-cheek plea for the formation of a ‘Southern party’ in the Telegraph yesterday. In the piece, he consistently resorts to crude caricature about anybody from North of the Watford Gap. According to MacKenzie, only people in the South East are ‘hard-working clever and creative, Glasgow has ‘unhealthy habits’, which are subsidised by the ‘people of Guildford’ and if you took the South East out of the economy, ‘it would be called Ethiopia’. MacKenzie’s article is divisive, simplistic and wrong – ignoring the economic dynamism on display in many parts of the North and the fact that narrowing the North-South divide is necessary

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Osborne to back fracking and 30 new gas power stations

Coalition tensions over energy won’t relax with George Osborne’s gas strategy, which he will launch alongside the Autumn Statement tomorrow. The Financial Times reports that the Chancellor’s strategy will approve as many as 30 gas-fired power stations and – in a move that will delight those in his own party – a regulatory regime for shale gas exploitation. Fraser extolled the virtues of shale gas in his Telegraph column in September, describing it as ‘the greatest single opportunity’ facing the government, with the potential to transform energy supply. But Energy Secretary Ed Davey is less enthusiastic, arguing in May that Tory support for shale gas exploitation – known as fracking

Sebastian Payne

Who do you think you are kidding mister computer hacker?

The Big Society struggles on, making its mark yesterday in the unexpected realm of cyber security. In a written ministerial statement on the nation’s efforts to tackle cyber crime, Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude announced plans to get the public involved in tackling (online) crime: ‘We are constantly examining new ways to harness and attract the talents of the cyber security specialists that are needed for critical areas of work. To this end, the MOD is taking forward the development of a ‘Cyber Reserve’, allowing the Services to draw on the wider talent and skills of the nation in the cyber field. The exact composition is currently in development and a detailed

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Cut housing benefit for under-25s? Yes, but be careful, say Tory members

George Osborne might have failed to get his housing benefit cut for the under-25s past the Lib Dems in time for the Autumn Statement, but, as James reported in his Mail on Sunday column this week, the Tories will be keen to put it in their 2015 manifesto, partly to show voters what a majority Conservative government could achieve without the shackles of coalition. I understand the party has been consulting members on its welfare policy in the past few weeks, and unsurprisingly, the response has been enormous. In fact, the policy forum hasn’t seen such interest from members since it asked them what they wanted to see in terms

Monday

Isabel Hardman

Theresa May upsets the Lib Dems and David Davis in one fell swoop

Theresa May has upset quite a few people from across the political spectrum with her comments in the Sun today about the Communications Data Bill. The Home Secretary told the newspaper: ‘The people who say they’re against this bill need to look victims of serious crime, terrorism and child sex offences in the eye and tell them why they’re not prepared to give police the powers they need to protect the public. Anybody who is against this bill is putting politics before people’s lives.’ This irritated David Davis sufficiently for the Tory backbencher to raise May’s comments as a point of order in the House of Commons this afternoon. Davis,

James Forsyth James Forsyth

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