Uk politics

Friday

Peter Hoskin

The unions versus the Department for Education — continued

Oh dear, seems that the one of the union officials behind that presentation I posted earlier isn’t happy that it made its way on to Coffee House. Here’s an email exchange — leaked to me by a different Department for Education source — that starts off with one from that union official, Brian Lightman, to various union and departmental types. Names and email addresses have been omitted to protect the innocent: From: Brian Lightman Sent: 18 May 2012 15:40 To: Numerous union officials and Department for Education staff Subject: RE: Education forum Sorry – the first half of this message was sent before it was complete.   To all members

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

No time to tinker

Next week, the Institute of Directors and the Taxpayers’ Alliance will release what I humbly suggest will be the most powerful summary of the case for radical supply-side reform in a generation. The report of the 2020 Tax Commission runs to 417 pages, choc full of academic literature showing how big government chokes growth, and looking at what the optimal size of the state is. Broadly speaking, government spending is about half the size of economic output now and the optimal size is about a third. The recommendations are not being released until Monday, but it opens a very timely debate, which I preview in my Telegraph column. Here are

Jonathan Jones

Another Mayor Johnson?

The 2012 London mayoral election may barely have finished, but already there’s speculation as to who might run — and win — in 2016. The current favourite is Boris — despite suggestions that he’ll be back in Parliament with his sights set on the Tory leadership by then. And the second favourite? It was David Lammy, the Labour MP for Tottenham who was tipped as a potential 2012 candidate and has hinted that he might be interested next time. But today he’s been overtaken — in the eyes of bookies Paddy Power at least — by another Johnson who’s hosted Have I Got News for You: Labour’s Alan Johnson. This

Peter Hoskin

The unions’ lazy opposition to schools reform

ATL ASCL Presentation to Edu Forum 16May12 Now here’s a peek behind the Westminster curtain that you’ll find either amusing or dispiriting, depending on your mood. It’s a presentation delivered by a union delegation at the Department for Education this week, which Coffee House has got its hands on. You can read the whole thing above. We’ll get onto why it’s amusing (or dispiriting) shortly, but first a bit of background. Various school unions are invited into the DfE each month to meet with a minister or two, as well as with their advisers and civil servants. The idea is that they’ll talk policy; presenting problems and solutions in a

Jonathan Jones

Cameron offers parenting advice

The Prime Minister will be jetting off to Camp David today for the G8 summit — and his first meeting with new French President Francois Hollande. But before going, he’s been popping up on the morning show sofas to promote the government’s new initiatives to help parents. A new digital service will allow parents to sign up to receive tips on looking after their baby via emails and text messages. The government will also offer vouchers for £100-worth of parenting classes to all parents of under-fives, although at first this will just be in trial form. Announcing the schemes in Manchester yesterday, David Cameron pre-empted the attack that these are

Thursday

James Forsyth

Cameron can no longer laugh off Ed

The Cameroons have long taken comfort in their belief that Ed Miliband will never be Prime Minister. They have seen him as a firebreak between them and electoral defeat. Three things have driven their conviction that the Labour leader will never make it to Number 10. First, their belief that he fails the blink test: can you see him standing outside Number 10? Second, the next election will almost certainly be fought on the economy, Labour’s weakest area. Their final reason was a sense that he would never get the full support of those on the Labour side who know how to win elections. But recent events suggest that this

Jonathan Jones

Regional pay: a new coalition divide

As if Lords reform, communications surveillance powers and same-sex marriage weren’t enough, it looks like there’s another issue that’ll cause a good deal of friction between Liberal Democrat and Conservative MPs: plans for regional public sector pay bargaining. It’s something George Osborne is understandably keen on — James laid out the political and economic reasons behind it just before the Budget — but now the Lib Dems are making clear that they don’t share the Chancellor’s enthusiasm. In the Q&A after his pupil premium speech on Monday, Nick Clegg said: ‘Nothing has been decided. I feel very, very strongly, as an MP from South Yorkshire with a lot of people in

Tim Morgan

Cuts or spin?

Writing here on Tuesday, I made two accusations regarding the government’s deficit reduction plan. First, I said that cuts so far had been minimal. Second, I argued that higher taxation, rather than cuts in spending, was being used to reduce the deficit. On this basis, I said, government and opposition alike are being mendacious when they speak of ‘savage cuts’ in public spending. In reply, Matthew Hancock said that I was using the wrong periods for comparison. The government, which took office in May 2010, could not be held responsible for spending in 2010-11, so it was misleading for me to use Labour’s last year in office (2009-10) as my

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Cameron vents his euro frustration

David Cameron’s speech today is a sign of his frustration with the eurozone. Numbers 10 and 11 are increasingly irritated by how eurozone leaders are refusing to accept the logic of their project. What Downing Street is keen to avoid is another wasted year as Angela Merkel gears up for her reelection campaign. So, intriguingly, we see Britain throwing her weight behind Hollande’s support for project bonds. Cameron also uses the speech to again back eurobonds, which Merkel is firmly opposed to as she knows that this would mean Germany effectively standing behind everyone else’s debt. I can’t see a resolution to this crisis coming anytime soon, though. The economics

Sebastian Payne

The View from 22: Greece is burning

The upcoming Greek elections will push the nation into a confrontation with the European authorities, reports Faisal Islam, the economics editor of Channel 4 News, in his cover feature for the latest issue of The Spectator. And in this week’s episode of The View from 22 podcast he provides an insight into the changing attitudes he witnessed during his most recent visit to Athens last week: ‘Six months back, there was certainly a high stakes game of poker. But to me, it was pretty clear 6 months ago that the Greek people would do what was necessary to stay in the Euro. When you asked people on the streets, politicians,

Wednesday

James Forsyth

The 301 Group purge the 1922 committee

The 1922 elections were not a clean sweep for the loyalist 301 Group slate, they missed out on one of the secretary position. But they have pretty much succeeded in purging the ’22 and the Backbench Business Committee of the so-called ‘wreckers’. Indeed, the only ‘wrecker’ who has survived is Bernard Jenkin who remains on the ’22 executive. But, significantly, I understand that Stewart Jackson, who spoke up in defence of Nadine Dorries at ’22 last week and was very critical of David Cameron at the weekend, came — in the words of one who has seen the actual voting numbers — ‘within a whisker’ of being elected to the

Clarissa Tan

Metaphorical Merv

Mervyn King unfurled a mast of metaphors this morning. ‘We are navigating through turbulent waters, with the risk of a storm heading our way from the continent,’ he said. ‘We don’t know when the storm clouds will move away.’ The eurozone, he said, is ‘tearing itself apart’.   So poetic was his language — a rare gift in a central banker — that it almost made one forget the painfully prosaic nature of his facts and figures. Inflation, already at target-busting levels, will be much stronger than the Bank initially envisaged, remaining above 2.5 per cent for the rest of the year. That’s almost a whole percentage point higher than

Jonathan Jones

A part-time recovery

Today’s jobs figures show a 105,000 rise in employment and a 45,000 fall in unemployment, from the final quarter of 2011 to the first quarter of 2012. Welcome news, although both figures are within the margin of error, meaning we can’t say with confidence that employment is indeed higher or that unemployment is lower. But even taking the figures at face value, there’s another cause for concern: the rise in employment is coming in part-time, rather than full-time, jobs. First, let’s take a look at that total employment figure, which has risen 105,000 since the last quarter and 219,000 since the general election: Second, the number of full-time workers: As

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Cameron injects some anger into a playful PMQs

Strange mood at PMQs today. Rather good-natured. Like a staff awayday with both sides joshing each other for fun. A Tory from the shires, Pauline Latham (Con, Mid-Derbyshire), stood up in her best garden-party dress and made this lament: ‘My constituents are having a very difficult time at the moment.’ Labour MPs cheered like mad. They wouldn’t have done that before the local elections. Cameron and Miliband were in a similarly playful mood. After an enforced separation of two weeks they seemed almost glad to see one other. Ed Miliband charmingly conceded that today’s drop in unemployment was welcome. And Cameron welcomed this welcome from his opponent. Miliband then teased

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Cameron gets tough with the eurozone

Today’s PMQs will be remembered for one thing, Cameron saying that the eurozone had to ‘make up or it is looking at a potential break-up’. This is a distinct hardening of the government’s line on the single currency. Cameron’s comment was particularly striking coming just days after George Osborne said that ‘open speculation’ about whether or not Greece would leave the euro was ‘doing real damage across the whole European economy’. However those close to Cameron are not resiling from the remark. Instead, I understand that we can expect more from the Prime Minister on this subject when he makes a speech on the economy tomorrow. The break-up of the

Matthew Hancock-Mp

Let’s get real about the fiscal situation

Recently on Coffee House, and elsewhere, some people have been arguing that the deficit reduction isn’t happening fast enough. The latest, a paper from Tullet Prebon, argues that it’s wrong to say there are cuts. Its author, Dr Tim Morgan, reiterated its points on the Today Programme this morning. But it isn’t true — and the analysis itself proves it.   When this Government entered office, there was no credible plan to convince the bond markets that Britain was serious about dealing with its debts. So the new Coalition accelerated the pace at which the structural deficit was to be eliminated.   Some on the right and left disagree with

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Miliband’s reshuffle isn’t necessarily to the left

Ed Miliband’s reshuffle turned out to be a rather small affair. The news out of it is that control over the policy review passes from Liam Byrne to Jon Cruddas, although Byrne continues to shadow Iain Duncan Smith. Given that Byrne is a Blairite who has been pushing for a tougher line on welfare, and that Cruddas rebelled to vote against the second reading of the welfare reform bill, some will see this as a shift to the left. But Cruddas is a more interesting thinker than that. The Blue Labour philosophy that he is an advocate of is, in many ways, a rather socially conservative view of the world.

Tuesday

Clarissa Tan

Basel III and the EU’s strange desire not to compete

Greece is the centre of European attention, but as George Osborne met with other EU finance ministers today there was another issue bubbling in the background — Basel III. This had been brewing for a while and is yet one of those matters that threatened to isolate Britain from the rest of the EU (though some would argue this is a good place to be). The Chancellor this morning appears to have agreed to the Basel III accord, which stipulates the amount and quality of capital that banks are required to keep. But this was after much haggling — and an Osborne outburst where he said signing on to the

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Choice matters more than tuck shops

Does it matter that academy schools are defying Jamie Oliver’s fatwa against sweets? An organisation called the School Food Trust has found 89 of 100 academies guilty of harbouring tuck shops. Selling crisps, chocolate and even cereal bars. The Guardian is shocked and has made the story its page two lead. Schools with tuck shops, says the Trust’s director, ‘should be named and shamed for profiteering at the expense of pupils’ health… Mr Gove is putting ideology above children’s wellbeing’.   I plead guilty to having once been behind the counter at the tuck shop of Rosebank Primary in Nairn, blissfully unaware that I was poisoning Highland children with this

Tim Morgan

How Britain is using spin to con the bond markets

Austerity, austerity, austerity. The A-word is cropping up everywhere at the moment, whether in France or Greece or Germany. And the UK isn’t immune from it either. If there is anything on which Britain’s political factions agree, it is the reality of fiscal austerity. Whether it’s Ed Balls banging on about ‘too far and too fast’, or the coalition saying that their programme of painful austerity is essential if the UK is to defend its triple-A ‘safe haven’ status, this is something on which our political class has reached consensus.   But, as we at Tullett Prebon argued in a briefing paper yesterday (available here as a pdf), the tale