Uk politics

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman

Cameron faces Tory fury on Lib Dem ministerial rebellion

Last week when it first transpired that David Cameron had given up on Lords reform, Conservative backbenchers were thrilled. Conor Burns, who resigned as a PPS to vote against the legislation at second reading, told Coffee House that this was a ‘symbol of [Cameron’s] determination to try to foster improved and friendly relations within the Conservative party’. Rebel leader Jesse Norman was similarly cheery. It suggested that the Prime Minister had a chance to rebuild fractured relations with his party. Not any more. Backbenchers are now livid that Nick Clegg has announced that he will be instructing his party to vote against the boundary review. I’ve just spoken again to

Jonathan Jones

The Bank of England: no Paul the Octopus

When challenged on the Bank of England’s poor record of economic forecasting by Ed Conway of Sky News this morning, Mervyn King said: ‘This isn’t a spot the ball contest where you’re trying to hit one point on the picture. This is a question of assessing the balance of risks…  We don’t pretend to have a crystal ball to see the future. All we can do is assess the balance of risks. I think this is a reasonable judgment about the balance of risks. It doesn’t say that there will be a recovery. It says that in our central view there will be a recovery, and there are risks on

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Economy ‘close to zero’

Sir Mervyn King’s sporting jokes are almost as bad as the Bank of England’s ability to publish accurate economic forecasts. As he unveiled the August Inflation Report this morning, the Governor said: ‘Unlike the Olympians who have thrilled us over the past fortnight, our economy has not yet reached full fitness, but it is slowly healing. Many of the conditions necessary for a recovery are in place, and the MPC will continue to do all it can to bring about that recovery. As I have said many times, the recovery and rebalancing of our economy will be a long, slow process. It is to our Olympic team that we should

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Cameron’s big sporting society

David Cameron made a spirited defence of school sport this morning when he appeared on LBC radio. Waving a sheet of paper triumphantly, the Prime Minister argued that the 20 school playing field sales that Michael Gove had signed off were actually schools that had closed, surplus fields and ‘surplus marginal school land’. He also defended the decision to remove a compulsory target for all children to take part in two hours of sport a week: Well, look, we haven’t done that, you know, sport is part of the national curriculum and we want schools to deliver sport and I think that’s very important, but frankly, and we’re putting a

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Lower inflation eases the squeeze, for now at least

George Osborne might not be feeling particularly comfortable with today’s August Inflation Report from the Bank of England, as Sir Mervyn King is expected to slash the Bank’s growth forecast for the British economy in 2012 from the 0.8 per cent it predicted in May to close to zero. This morning’s announcement will also include some mildly good news for households, with the Bank due to predict a 2.1 per cent fall in inflation by the end of the year. This will bring inflation down below the two per cent target, which, as the CBI’s Richard Lambert pointed out on the Today programme, will mean ‘families starting to feel a

Tuesday

James Forsyth

Miliband wins the boundaries battle

The biggest winner of the coalition spat over Lords reform and boundaries is, undoubtedly, Ed Miliband. The electoral hill he has to climb to be Prime Minister has just been reduced in size significantly by the fact that the next election is likely to be fought on the existing boundaries. A lead over the Tories of just three per cent would deliver him a majority. In quite a turn-around from last year, Miliband will go to his party conference as the most secure of the three leaders. But Miliband will soon face a problem, albeit a high quality one. At some point in the not too distant future, the media

Nick Faith

Forget the boundaries and focus on urban voters

Has Nick Clegg handed Ed Miliband the keys to Downing Street? Most political commentators believe that killing off the proposed boundary changes, which would have handed the Conservatives anywhere between five and seven additional seats at the next election, will result in David Cameron being a one-term Prime Minister. One of the reasons the Tories were so keen on changing the make-up of the electoral map was to counter the rise in the number of people living in urban areas across the country. In order for the Conservatives to stand any chance of winning a majority at the next election they have to target approximately 32 marginal seats (defined as

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Cameron confirms boundary vote

David Cameron has confirmed this lunchtime that the boundary reforms will be pressed to a vote. Describing the plans that the Lib Dems are now set to reject as ‘sensible’, he said that they would be ‘put forward’ to MPs. As James reported yesterday, Conservative sources are not yet conceding defeat on this, hoping that something might turn up to ensure their passage through parliament. But the vote will lead to the extraordinary spectacle of Lib Dem ministers walking through the ‘no’ lobbies with Labour and then, according to party sources, resuming their positions on the front bench without any censure because these are exceptional circumstances. The Prime Minister gave

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Cesspits and the City

It’s becoming difficult to predict just when the period of remorse and apology for bankers really will be over. Bob Diamond claimed that it had finished in January 2011, and found to his cost this summer that this was not true. The Libor scandal that cost the Barclays boss his job wasn’t the only unpleasant thing to crawl out of what Vince Cable described as the ‘cesspit’ in the City of London, though. Today Standard Chartered’s shares fell by 16 per cent following allegations from US regulators that the bank had covered up £160bn worth of transactions with the Iranian government. And at Southwark Crown Court this morning, Jessica Harper,

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Multicultural Britain, Olympic Games, Danny Boyle – Spectator Blogs

Back from holiday and it seems just about the only “controversy” at these splendid* Olympic Games lies in Danny Boyle’s exhuberant opening ceremony. According to its critics it was multi-cultural crap or pap or something. And, of course, in one sense it was a hymn to multi-cultural Britain. Why else would Boyle have begun with choirs in Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales and England (spliced with rugby footage) if not to remind the audience (in London and further afield) that the United Kingdom is not quite the same thing as England. Of course, that’s not what the critics of multi-culturalism really mean when they sneer at “multi-culti” tripe and political correctness

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

How the Lib Dems could be truly mature in government

Nick Clegg’s decision to scupper boundary reviews in retaliation for the failure of his Lords reform programme is the very opposite of ‘mature’ government. It is the politics of the sand pit: you have annoyed me, so I’m going to kick your sandcastle down. It’s his way of putting a horse’s head in Cameron’s bed, and the public will be appalled. The coalition has entered a new, destructive phase where Lib Dems will now pride themselves on what Tory measures they can frustrate or destroy (O Levels, profitmaking schools etc). I’ve just been on the Today programme with David Hall Matthews of the Social Liberal Forum, who claimed that Clegg’s

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Boundaries and Lords reform: what the two parties said

The Liberal Democrats have spent the past few months building up to yesterday’s announcement that they would trash the boundary reforms following the failure of the House of Lords Reform Bill. As so much of the arguments this morning focus on whether the party is justified in voting down the changes to constituencies, I’ve taken a trip down memory lane to review the key statements from both parties from before the 2010 general election right up to this morning’s Today programme interview with Jeremy Browne. Coffee Housers can judge for themselves whether or not Lords and boundaries are linked. The Liberal Democrat manifesto: Change politics and abolish safe seats by

Monday

James Forsyth

Cameron continues to stick to boundary reforms

Perhaps the most intriguing part of Nick Clegg’s decision not to support the 2015 boundary changes as a ‘penalty’  for Lords reform not happening is that Downing Street is insisting on pushing on with the matter. I’m told that Number 10 will ‘do everything we can to persuade everyone we can to vote for them.’ When I put it to this senior Cameroon that this was futile given that with Lib Dem ministers and MPs voting against, there was no chance of getting it through the Commons, the source said ‘is it feasible [to get the boundary changes through], yes’. There are two possibilities here. One is that Cameron is

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Victory for ministers on ‘slave labour’ schemes

Ministers were relieved today when the High Court ruled that the Work and Pensions Department’s back-to-work schemes are not ‘forced labour’ and do not breach human rights. The case had been brought by two people: Cait Reilly and Jamieson Wilson, who argued that the unpaid schemes they had been put on violated article four of the European Convention on Human Rights. Ms Reilly, 23, was given ‘unpaid menial work’ at Poundland, while Mr Wilson, 40, was told that he would be required to undertake 30 hours’ unpaid work each week cleaning furniture. Both had been subjected to sanctions for refusing to take part in the schemes, and were facing losing

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

The Lib Dem penalty for a ‘breach of contract’ on the Lords

In his statement to the press this afternoon in which he confirmed that the Liberal Democrats were throwing the towel in over reform of the House of Lords, Nick Clegg tried to paint his party as the ‘mature one’. He said the coalition agreement was ‘a contract that keeps the coalition parties working together in the national interest’, and added: ‘My party has held to that contract even when it meant voting for things that we found difficult. The Liberal Democrats are proving themselves to be a mature and competent party of government and I am proud that we have met our obligations.’ Later he pointed out that it was

Sebastian Payne

What is in Nick Clegg’s shopping basket for the Lib Dem conference?

Now that Lords reform is entirely off the agenda, Nick Clegg faces the complicated task of negotiating a policy battle to keep his party happy. Pursuing AV and an elected House of Lords were core to Clegg’s justification to his party for power, so he now has to find something significant to avoid ‘going naked’ to his conference in September. We’ll find out more in the next hour about what the Lib Dems’ intentions are for the boundary reforms, which they have linked with Lords reform, but Clegg will want other policy victories, not just battles, to show he is delivering. These are some of the likely policies the Lib Dems may

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Killing the boundaries but not the coalition

Nick Clegg will give a statement this afternoon on the House of Lords Reform Bill, and what will happen next. Number 10 was understandably cagey at this morning’s lobby briefing about stealing the Deputy Prime Minister’s thunder before he speaks, but the Prime Minister’s official spokesman gave some answers to questions about the boundary reforms that were still quite telling. Asked about the threats that Liberal Democrats have been making to scupper the reforms as revenge for the failure of the Lords legislation, the spokesman said: ‘It’s something the Commons has already taken a view on, and the process is that it will come back later this year.’ Asked whether

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Boris’ political haymaking abilities

What really excites Tory donors and MPs about Boris isn’t the antics on a zip wire but his ability to make Conservative arguments in an appealing and commonsensical way. The latter is the quality that Boris himself values most in politicians: it was the reason he gave for backing Ken Clarke for the leadership in 2001 despite their differences on Europe. On the Today programme this morning, Boris managed to make Conservative political hay out of the Olympics without sounding like a crass partisan. In a jolly manner, he argued that the Olympics were profoundly Conservative in that you saw that competition drives up standards and that there’s a ‘direct

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Louise Mensch resigns

Louise Mensch’s local paper reports this morning that the Conservative MP will this morning announce that she is resigning her seat after struggling to balance family life with the demands of parliament. The Northamptonshire Telegraph reports Mensch saying: ‘I am completely devastated. It’s been unbelievably difficult to manage family life. We have been trying to find a way forward with the Prime Minister’s office but I just can’t spend as much time with my children as I want to.’ Mensch had told the Guardian last September about the pressures she was experiencing on her family life, and she left a select committee hearing with James Murdoch early to collect her

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Danny Alexander: Triple A rating isn’t the be-all and end-all

‘I am proud to be part of a UK government that has re-established our country’s financial credibility. And the credit rating agencies rate the UK as triple A. The low interest rates today of 1.8 per cent are a consequence of this.’ Those were the words of Danny Alexander, chief secretary to the Treasury, back in June. He was echoing what his colleagues in the Treasury have been saying throughout this Parliament: that the UK’s credit rating is a testament to the successful economic policies of the coalition. George Osborne was quick to capitalise on the announcement by Standard & Poor’s at the end of July that the UK would