Uk politics

Saturday

James Forsyth

The Boris bandwagon poses little threat to David Cameron, for now

One of the criticisms of the idea of Boris Johnson as a potential Prime Minister is that he doesn’t look the part and isn’t serious enough. The argument goes that it is all very well for the Mayor of London to jape around, but quite another thing for the Prime Minister to (Phil Collins produced a very punchy version of this point of view (£) in The Times this week). But as Charles Moore argues in his column, this argument misses that ‘conventional politics is now failing more comprehensively than at any time since the 1930s, and that Boris Johnson is the only unconventional politician in the field.’ It is precisely

Friday

James Forsyth

No sweeteners for Clegg on Lords reform

In recent weeks, Downing Street has been repeatedly told by Tory MPs that if proposals for an elected element in the House of Lords were brought back to the Commons, the next rebellion would be even bigger than the 91 who voted against second reading. Downing Street, as the Telegraph reported this morning, has now accepted that Lords reform will have to be dropped and there is talk of a formal announcement to this effect as early as Monday. But, intriguingly, I understand that David Cameron does not intend to abandon efforts to get the boundary reforms through. This, as Isabel noted this morning, has the potential to cause a

David Skelton

How state schools can boost their Olympic chances

Lord Moynihan’s comments about the dominance of private school athletes in Team GB have caused a stir.  He suggests that  the fact that half of our medals in Beijing were won by athletes who attended fee paying schools is ‘one of the worst statistics in sport’. He’s right and it’s worrying.  But rather than hand-wringing and suggesting the imposition of quotas, we should be asking what independent schools are doing well and what state schools aren’t.  We should be celebrating our medallist and their incredible achievements, whilst also asking what state schools can do to improve the statistics that Lord Moynihan found so shocking. If you analyse the statistics in

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Tory backbench beats Lib Dems in battle of PM’s priorities

Let’s forget for a minute about the Lib Dems and their dire threats of ‘consequences’ for the failure of the Lords Reform Bill and focus on the Conservative party. David Cameron has failed to convince his party to support the legislation. He said he needed the summer to try to win the rebels round before he tabled a new programme motion for the Bill, and before the summer is even out, he has decided that he can’t do it. This isn’t just about a hardcore of Conservative MPs who are viscerally opposed to Lords reform, though. There are those who would always have opposed it, but many others who might

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Cameron to shelve Lords reform

When the coalition returns from the summer recess, don’t expect a relaxed, post-holiday spirit. David Cameron has failed to convince his backbenchers to support the House of Lords Reform Bill and The Telegraph reports that the Prime Minister will announce that these reforms are to be shelved in the coming days. This triggers that new phase of coalition that Nick Clegg and his colleagues have been warning about: the era of ‘consequences’. Although Conservative ministers have been considering other policies that they could hand to their coalition partners, these will not be enough to appease them: it’s Lords reform or nothing. How this will play out is fascinating: the main

Thursday

Clarissa Tan

The Robin Hood tax, unlike Olympic archery, won’t hit its target

The Robin Hood tax has galloped into France, and once again Britain is being pressured to introduce the same thing in its financial sector. It’s a thankless job defending the City at the moment, what with UK banks mired in one scandal after another and Libor-gate still unresolved, but the UK must stand firm in rejecting a tax that, in the words of George Osborne, would be ‘economic suicide for Britain’. François Hollande has slapped a 0.2 per cent levy on share trading in France, a precursor to a wider European law. Technically a financial transactions tax, ‘Robin Hood’ taxes are so-called because they aim to redistribute wealth from the

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Reshuffle bingo

It’s a strange old world when a Prime Minister backing his own Chancellor is worth reporting. But this afternoon the Prime Minister was asked by Sky News whether he was going to reshuffle George Osborne. Naturally, he answered: ‘George Osborne is doing an excellent job in very difficult circumstances and he has my full support in going on and doing that job. He’s not going anywhere.’ Kay Burley then pressed Cameron on whether this meant Osborne would still be Chancellor at the next election. He replied: ‘Yes.’ Now, this was quite obvious anyway. Osborne’s stock is certainly down amongst Tory MPs, many of whom are still smarting after watching the

Julian Huppert Mp

The government needs to make cycling safer, and so do we all

In the last week alone by winning Olympic gold and through his victory in the Tour de France, Bradley Wiggins has single-handedly raised the profile of cycling in this country. Now our government needs to get further behind cycling and pump more money into our infrastructure and make safety improvements to promote our most efficient form of transport. Cycling is a relatively safe, environmentally-friendly activity for all ages and thankfully serious accidents are low in relation to the millions of journeys taken by cyclists. But there is more we can do to give cyclists greater protection on our roads. Liberal Democrat Transport Minister Norman Baker has announced millions of pounds

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The restless Tory family

Today’s YouGov poll is the latest Boris talking point. For what it is worth, it shows that the idea of Boris as leader reduces the Labour lead from six points to one. It is the first polling evidence we’ve seen that suggests the Tories would do better nationally under Boris. The Boris speculation has now reached such a level that nervous Liberal Democrats are calling up asking whether they should start taking it seriously and sotto voce inquiring as to how the Tories replace their leaders. All of this is, in many ways, hugely premature. Boris isn’t even an MP and there’s a massive difference between Tory backbenchers wondering after

Anthony Seldon

Training does not make the best teachers

None of us would accept being treated by a doctor or by a nurse who hadn’t had extensive training, nor would we want legal advice from someone who hadn’t been through law school. Nor would we be comfortable with our company accounts being managed or audited by anyone not trained to a high level in accountancy. So why should we accept teachers coming into our schools who haven’t been properly professionally taught how to teach in a college or university? Schooling is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and poor teachers, as research shows, destroy life chances. How can we play dice with our children’s lives? Well, as someone who has been head

Wednesday

James Forsyth

Boris puts the bubbles back into his campaign champagne

After Boris’s re-election as London mayor, his departing aide Guto Harri complained that the dry but effective campaign had rather taken the ‘bubbles out of the champagne’. Well, the Olympics is certainly putting them back in. Boris keeps taking opportunities that no other politician would dare to—the zip wire ride today being the latest, and most dramatic, example. The question is where does all this end, is it all just Olympics hi-jinks that will be forgotten when the flame leaves Stratford or is it just the next stage of the Boris for PM campaign? In my column in the magazine tomorrow, I say that it does seem to be more

Jonathan Jones

Salmond’s stock is falling

‘Poll shows support for UK split has dropped,’ proclaims the Scotsman today . Looking at the actual poll , the headline may be over-reaching slightly: YouGov’s latest figures are within the margin of error of the ones from January, and anyway the question is worded differently. But it should certainly be worrying for Alex Salmond and the Yes campaign that they don’t appear to have made any headway at all. Indeed, as Marcus Roberts of the Fabian Society (who commissioned the poll) says, Salmond’s halo seems to have slipped a little this year. The Spectator’s Politician of the Year in 2011 has struggled to shrug off the critics who say

Sebastian Payne

The house price slide continues

Hidden behind today’s gushing Olympic headlines lies more disappointing economic news. Nationwide’s latest House Price Index release today shows that house prices are continuing to fall, with a 0.7 per cent decline in July. As the graph below shows, the fall in prices is a continuation of a trend that began when the country re-entered recession earlier this year: The latest figures put prices down 13 per cent on their 2007 peak and 2.6 per cent lower than this time last year. Last year the average house price was £168,731: now it is £164,389. But if you look at these trends in an international context, Britain’s prices appear relatively resilient.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Cameron’s reshuffle quandary

One can see why the idea of Iain Duncan Smith as Justice Secretary appeals to some in Tory high command, as the Daily Mail reveals this morning. The former leader is one of the few people who could square the party to a policy that treated rehabilitation as the main aim of the penal system. I expect, though, that IDS himself would not be keen on the move. But this story does illustrate one of the biggest problems that Cameron will face with his reshuffle, how to make room at the top. Among Tory ministers, there promises to be very little movement in the higher echelons of government. The Chancellor,

Matt Cavanagh

ONS blunder lets ministers blame falling real incomes on immigration

Yesterday the ONS published a report showing average disposable incomes at their lowest level since 2003. This is difficult news for ministers: as Isabel pointed out, concerns about the cost of living – stagnant wages and rising prices – are one of the main reasons given by voters in recent polls for turning away from the Conservatives. Imagine, then, how pleased ministers must have been when they saw that the ONS had thrown them a lifeline: the chance to blame it all on immigration. The ONS report discusses the effects of wages and prices, and then adds that ‘finally, sustained population growth led to incomes being spread across a greater

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Osborne’s policy gymnastics

It’s been a few weeks at least since George Osborne’s last U-turn, so it must be time for another one, mustn’t it? Today’s launch of the Funding for Lending Scheme is being hailed as another change of course from the Chancellor as it signals the slow death of the National Loan Guarantee Scheme. The Sun’s editorial this morning compared George Osborne to a gymnast, and said he was the ‘master of the U-turn’. The NLGS has only lent £2.5bn of the £20bn that it was allocated so far for small and medium businesses, and the FLS, which allows banks and other financial institutions to borrow at below market rates, is

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman

Immigration and the cost of living

The average disposable income is at its lowest point since 2003, according to figures released this afternoon by the Office for National Statistics. The statistics for the first quarter of this year show that take home income was an average of £273 a week, while real incomes per head fell by 0.6 per cent to £4,444 in Q1, which is the lowest since 2005. The ONS points to rising prices as the primary cause of these falls, and there are obvious points to be made here about the cost of living. It’s currently one of the major reasons voters are giving for turning away from the Conservative party, and Labour’s

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

‘Tough love’ and fitness to work

By some quirk of planning, Channel 4 and BBC Two ended up showing two very similar programmes last night about the mess of the assessments that determine whether a sick or disabled person is able to work. The most haunting of the stories told last night was Panorama’s case study of a man who had died of heart failure while contesting a decision declaring him fit to work. The assessor who had initially referred Stephen Hill to a doctor for urgent medical attention was the same person who paradoxically declared him fit to work. A potted history of incapacity benefit is not kind to either Labour or the Conservative party.

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Court rejects Qatada’s bid for freedom

Abu Qatada has just lost his bid in the High Court to be released from prison immediately. He had tried to argue that it was a breach of his human rights to be held in prison ahead of the court hearing in October which will decide whether he should be deported to Jordan to face terror charges. But at today’s hearing, Lord Justice Hughes and Mr Justice Silber dismissed the radical cleric’s application for a judicial review. This is obviously a relief for the government right now as Qatada was pressing for release with immediate effect, which would have meant he was a free man during the Olympics when security

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

A not-entirely-comprehensive spending review

There are more rumblings this morning on the shape of the next comprehensive spending review, this time at grassroots level within the Liberal Democrats. The Times reports threats from former Lib Dem MP Evan Harris that any attempt to sign up to a traditional spending review will trigger an emergency motion at the party’s autumn conference. The leadership is already well aware of this issue: I blogged last week that a senior party figure had told me that the £10 billion of welfare cuts that George Osborne has predicted are necessary over the next spending review period are ‘just not going to happen’. Clegg and co know that the Lib