Uk politics

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

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Brooks charges mean more trouble for Cameron

The news that Rebekah Brooks and Charlie Brooks have been charged with perverting the course of justice means that there’ll be at least one trial involving friends of the Prime Minister before the next election. In cynical political terms, that Charlie has been charged as well as Rebekah creates an additional political problem for David Cameron. Part of Cameron’s explanation for how close he got to Rebekah Brooks has always been that she married an old school friend of his. Undoubtedly, the Charlie Brooks connection added a genuine layer of friendship to relations between Rebekah Brooks and Cameron. I suspect that if it was not for Charlie Brooks there would

Peter Hoskin

Walking beyond parody

As the Times’s Sam Coates suggests, this official Department of Transport video lands right in the middle of The Thick of It territory. Remoding (1:00 in), anyone?

Peter Hoskin

Greece is still the word

Remember when Europe’s leaders were basically saying, ‘Don’t worry, it’s all sorted’? Remember when they were putting out communiqués that started ‘The euro continues to rest on solid fundamentals’? No doubt they’ll do so again, but those past shows of certainty still look kinda funny this morning. Despite some last-minute concessionary efforts by Europe’s beancounters, it still appears that Greece’s main parties will be unable to form a coalition, and are heading for another election. And we know what that could mean: victory for the left-wing Syriza coalition, a severe swing against austerity, Greece’s exit from the euro, etc. etc. Were Greece to leave the currency, two questions would present

Monday

James Forsyth

The battle for the ’22

Elections to the 1922 Committee of Tory backbenchers have always been a test of the relative strengths of the right and left of the party. But this year, the split is between those who are backing the broadly pro-leadership 301 Group slate and those who view the ’22 as more of an alternative voice. The contest has become particularly heated after last week’s fiery meeting of the ’22 Committee. Intriguingly, Stewart Jackson, who was barracked when he tried to defend Nadine Dorries for her ‘posh boys’ attack on Cameron and Osborne, is standing for the executive. Given what he wrote on Sunday and that he resigned as a PPS over

Jonathan Jones

The public doesn’t want the government to drop Lords reform or gay marriage

It’s been a fashionable line on the Tory right of late that if the government pushes ahead with Lords reform and same-sex marriage, it will be out-of-step with public opinion. But we have new evidence — courtesy of YouGov — suggesting that isn’t the case. In their latest poll, YouGov asks whether respondents think ‘the government should or should not go ahead with’ a number of contentious policies, including ‘Reforming the House of Lords to make it mostly elected’ and ‘Allowing same-sex couples to get married’. Note that they’re not just asking whether folk support the policies, but whether they think the government should be going ahead with them now.

Jonathan Jones

Clegg goes mobile

Just as David Cameron is trying to move on from a tough few weeks by returning to themes that worked for him earlier in his leadership, Nick Clegg is also focusing on familiar territory. He’s given a speech this morning on the pupil premium — which he made a key component of his Lib Dem leadership bid back in 2007. And today’s speech marks the start of a two-week push on a key Clegg concern: social mobility. It’s not as if Clegg’s been silent on the topic recently, but this is the first time it’s been at the top of his agenda since he launched the government’s social mobility strategy

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Boris keeps on charming his party

Not since Michael Heseltine has there been a politician who is so adept at finding the g-spot of the Tory faithful as Boris Johnson. His column today in the Telegraph is a classic example of this. There’s some witty and perceptive BBC bashing, mockery of the Lib Dems and their priorities, and a demand that the Tories get what they need out of the coalition. His line ‘If we are really going ahead with Lords reform (why?)’ sums up Tory feelings on the subject far better than more earnest tracts have done. ConservativeHome is certainly impressed, saying that the Mayor of London is ‘real and raw in an age when

Matt Cavanagh

Another voice: How ministers are gaming the net migration target

International students are currently the largest single category of immigrants who count in the net migration figures, which cover all those intending to stay more than a year. In the most recent figures (the year to June 2011) there were 242,000 such students — making up 40 per cent of so-called ‘long term’ immigration. However, as a new report by IPPR sets out, international students are not really ‘long term’ immigrants at all. They are far more likely to return home after a few years than the other main immigration categories of work and family: the evidence suggests only around 15 per cent stay permanently. Clearly, it would be wrong

Sunday

James Forsyth

Cameron looks to his early leadership period for inspiration

David Cameron’s big parenting push this week is a reminder of what the Prime Minister would have liked to have been before the economic crisis intervened. Cameron believes that encouraging stable, loving families is the best way to prevent social failure. Doing that reduces the demand for government and, so the logic goes, shrinking the state then becomes a lot easier.   How the government can try and help people be better parents without falling into the nanny state is undoubtedly tricky. But Cameron’s emphasis so far has, rightly, been on simply giving people more information to help them make their own decisions. Part of this approach is a series

Sebastian Payne

Pickles struggles for an answer on growth

The government is desperate for economic growth but where can it find it? This was the question posed to Eric Pickles on the Sunday Politics today, but sadly he was unable to provide much of an answer. The Communities and Local Government secretary gave a blustering interview, where he reaffirmed William Hague’s view that ‘growth will come from government creating conditions for us to work a little bit harder.’ But when pushed by Andrew Neil on what this (slightly condescending) idea actually means, Pickles jumped on the chance to blame Labour for the ‘something for nothing culture’. Pickles did add that the government’s chosen sources of prosperity are business investment