Uk politics

Sunday

Peter Hoskin

Fox on a knife edge

Another deluge of awkward news stories for Liam Fox this morning, with almost every paper providing new details for our consideration. The Observer has video footage and emails which suggest that Adam Werritty was indeed a close participant in the Defence Secretary’s meetings with foreign dignitaries and businessmen. The Sunday Telegraph quotes Fox as saying that “I have absolutely no fear of complete transparency in these matters,” but adds a warning from Whitehall sources that he “could be gone within days”. And, perhaps most concerning of all, a senior MoD type tells the Independent on Sunday that “[Werritty] appears to have been involved in arms contracts all over the place”.

Saturday

Daniel Korski

How safe is Fox?

This weekend’s gossip is all about Liam Fox and his ministerial future. Ministers and journalists are calling each other, weighing the evidence, trying to find out the latest gossip. Nobody should underestimate the Defence Secretary’s fight — he is an alumni of the school of hard knocks. But two things go against him. First, having annoyed many colleagues — not least in No 10 — not everyone is rushing to his defence, as they did during the suspicions that dogged William Hague. No.10 has now given him its “full backing,” but, as history shows, that can mean anything from support to sayonara. David Cameron would prefer not to reshuffle his

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Cat-flap, day five

‘Cat-flap’ is the story that just won’t go away. A report in today’s Guardian claims that the whole story may have been lifted from a speech made by Nigel Farage, the leader of the UK Independence Party. One colleague of May’s tells the paper that “Not only has Ms May been caught out making up stories about the Human Rights Act for cheap laughs, she has been plagiarising her clap lines from the UK Independence party.” In the grand scheme of things, this is hardly the most serious charge. There’s just enough truth to the cat anecdote for May to have some ground to stand on and most Tories, understandably,

Daniel Korski

The problem with using soldiers to advance women’s rights

Mariella Frostrup, fresh from interviewing Nick Clegg in Cheltenham, writes about women’s rights in Afghanistan in The Times (£). Her pithily-titled piece — “Women’s rights in, before troops out” — makes the case that British forces cannot withdraw from, and the government should give no development assistance to, a country where the plight of women is so terrible and declining. It is hard not to sympathise with Frostrup’s point. During my own time in Kabul I witnessed plenty of examples of female subjugation, and was glad the West was present to help address some of these problems. Western policymakers were, at the time, eager to portray the entire mission as

Peter Hoskin

Fox hunt

This is one Fox who doesn’t have the benefit of a hole to bolt into. He is on open ground, and exposed even more this morning by fresh revelations surrounding his relationship with Andrew Werritty. A business card and a self-aggradising title, that certainly smelt of impropriety. But now we’re talking about sensitive business meetings arranged by Werritty, and attended by both him and Fox. It’s a whole different level of concern. And it leaves Fox in a most difficult position. The FT has the full story, but basically Werritty arranged for Fox to meet a group of businessmen in Dubai looking to transfer “communications technology” to the Libyan rebels.

Friday

Fraser Nelson

Chris Huhne makes a Tweet of himself

Chris Huhne has fallen into the Twitter direct message trap. I’ve done it myself.* When you think you’re privately messaging someone then — horror! — it is broadcast to the world. In his case “From someone else fine but I do not want my fingerprints on the story C'” He deleted the tweet but — sorry, Chris! — that doesn’t work on Twitter either because you can be retweeted. What’s he up to? As a former Sunday newspaper journalist I have a fair idea. It’s Friday night, 6pm — witching hour for MPs briefing a Sunday hack, with the intention of damaging a colleague or the government. “From someone else,

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Brendan Barber’s champagne habit, and other stories

The Tory conference was so forgettable that it’s hard now to remember it took place earlier in the week. But, for what it’s worth, here are my conclusions from the whole conference season: 1. The search for Osborne’s growth strategy has been called off. This ‘leadership’ theme was short for ‘leadership in the crisis, which we’ve now decided is inevitable’. Printing £75 billion will be  prelude to printing £400 billion, the inflation tax is back. Osborne perhaps thinks this new magic gold will bring economic recovery. So did the Emperor in Faust, when the devil suggested that printing money would avert fiscal crisis. This scheme ended in tears in Goethe’s

Daniel Korski

Commercial quandary

Britain’s diplomacy needs to help British business. The Prime Minister made this clear soon after the coalition was formed and William Hague has followed up, reorganising the Foreign Office and putting commercial diplomacy at the top of the agenda. To some, this risked making diplomats into salesmen and there was even dark talk of “mercantilism”. Both criticisms were far off the mark – there is nothing mercantilist in trying to help British businesses. A year in, however, the policy is facing a number of other, more fundamental challenges. First, the government’s main vehicle for this policy – well-publicised, prime minister-led trade delegations – has faced criticism from a number of

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Miliband tries to re-energise the Opposition

The Labour reshuffle is an attempt to bring more energy and aggression into Ed Miliband’s top team. It is also a recognition that the party has failed to cut through on public service reform, hence new shadows at both health and education. Chuka Umunna’s rapid promotion to shadow Business Secretary will, I suspect, dominate coverage of the reshuffle. Having been an MP for less than 18 months, Umunna now finds himself up against Vince Cable. If he succeeds in this role, he’ll rapidly become the leader in waiting. But there’s also a danger that it might all be too much, too soon for him. Umunna is one of five new

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Fox under pressure

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTOskAPgL9c The Westminster Fox-hounds think they have picked up the scent this morning. Enemies of the Defence Secretary, of whom there are many, are convinced that they’ll be able to bring him to ground over his links to Adam Werrity. Werrity was Fox’s best man and is a good friend of the Defence Secretary. But the problems stem from the fact that Werrity, who holds no official position, was dishing out cards saying he was an “adviser” to Fox, arranging meetings for him and attending diplomatically important events with the Defence Secretary. Fox has tried to kill off this story by asking the permanent secretary to investigate whether he has

James Plunkett

Tories dodge a bullet on childcare

In the past year the government has proven good at cauterising self-inflicted wounds. This morning’s announcement from Iain Duncan Smith on childcare stems another potential bleeder. His department have found an extra £300 million to prevent further cuts to childcare support. It’s a welcome reversal of an ill-advised plan and a narrowly averted political foul-up. The extra money is needed because of IDS’s big welfare reform project, the Universal Credit. One of the big advantages of the UC is that it will smooth out all those ugly ‘cliff-edges’ in the benefit system, particularly rules that say you don’t get help if you work fewer than 16 hours a week. In the

Peter Hoskin

How bad is it, Mervyn?

Remember when Alistair Darling said that we faced the worst financial crisis for sixty years? Now Mervyn King has trumped that piece of doom-mongery by telling Channel 4 last night that “This is undoubtedly the biggest financial crisis the world economy has ever faced” (see video above, three minutes in). The Governor of the Bank of England saying that this is the worst crisis ever? On the day that he rushed another £75 billion into the economy? As mood music goes, it is a particularly dreadful symphony.       It is also the sort of situation that Ed Balls will relish, especially with the Pre-Budget Report approaching. And it is true:

Thursday

James Forsyth

Healey and Denham depart the shadow Cabinet

John Healey and John Denham have resigned from the shadow Cabinet ahead of Ed Miliband’s reshuffle. Healey is, officially, departing for family reasons. But I doubt that many of those closest to Miliband will particularly mind his departure. I expect that Miliband may also take this chance to move Andy Burnham, who knows the health brief from his time in government and is an effective if one dimensional media performer, from education into the health brief. These two resignations free up a couple of the big shadow Cabinet jobs as Miliband prepares to shuffle his pack. It is almost certain that the Labour leader, who has just won himself complete

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The Cabinet cat-flap continues

The Ken Clarke and Theresa May cat-flap has sparked up again this morning, with the Justice Secretary accusing the Home Secretary of using “laughable child-like examples” to attack the Human Right Act. In some ways, it’s hard to take a political row about a cat particularly seriously. But this back and forth between May and Clarke is actually exposing something very important: the Liberal Democrats are not the only brake on Tory radicalism. At the moment, lots of Tory ministers – up to and including the Prime Minister – like to imply that they’d be doing far more on Europe, immigration and the Human Rights Act if it wasn’t for

Clarissa Tan

Another round of Easing

So the Bank of England has pulled the lever on a second round of Quantitative Easing. Apparently sluggish economic growth, plus more ominous signs from the eurozone, have persuaded the central bank it can’t wait any longer to print more money. But given the evidence from QE1 – only a small boost to GDP accompanied by extra inflation – it’s a big gamble. Mervyn King & the rest of the Monetary Policy Committee clearly believe that more money in the system is what’s needed to kick-start growth. But even they admit that QE1 didn’t live up to expectations, so why should QE2? In the meantime, quantitative easing as an instrument

Will Straw

Another voice: Five lessons from Conservative party conference

Here’s the latest in our Another Voice series of posts, which give prominence to viewpoints outside the normal Coffee House fold. This time it’s the IPPR’s Associate Director, Will Straw, with his five-point take on the fringe events of Tory conference, and the lessons that might be learned from them: 1. The Tories know that winning a working majority in 2015 is no easy task. The most popular fringe event according to Fringelist.com was ConservativeHome’s event on ‘How the Conservatives can win the next election.’ Reflecting his remarks from the panel, YouGov’s Stephan Shakespeare wrote yesterday that, “today’s electoral maths makes an overall a majority a mountain to climb”.  

Wednesday

Fraser Nelson

Tory Party Conference, Inc.

The empty chairs for David Cameron’s speech said it all: the party conference is no longer a political event. This was my eleventh Tory conference, and, even in this short time, I’ve noticed a creeping corporate takeover.  The difference struck me yesterday, when I attended a packed fringe meeting in something called the ‘Freedom Zone’. It was set up to discuss banned topics: how to cut taxes, the case for a referendum on EU membership, etc. The crowd was younger, of a libertarian bent — all activists and enthusiasts of some kind, a refreshing change from the sanitised and often lifeless feel of the rest of the official conference. As

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Cameron does enough

There were three big themes to David Cameron’s speech. The first was that decline is not inevitable, an attempt to tackle the mood of pessimism that is gripping the nation. The second was an attempt to reassert the Conservatives’ compassionate credentials, hence the emphasis on how the Liberal Democrats would have cut the NHS and the section explaining why conservatives should support gay marriage. The third was leadership, Cameron’s biggest advantage over the other party leaders. The attack on the idea of Britain’s decline being inevitable was powerful in places. But because Cameron has a non-ideological approach to growth it is hard for him to make a stirring argument about

Daniel Korski

Hague’s European dilemma

William Hague’s conference speech caps a revival in his political fortunes, and it also showed how far the government has come since the pre-election period, when Tory foreign policy was indistinct. After one year in office, the government’s roster of foreign policy achievements is noteworthy. The coalition has overseen institutional innovations in the form of the National Security Council and organisational improvements at the Foreign Office. Embassies are opening, not closing. Diplomats are again being taught traditional skills, not trying to follow the latest foreign policy fad. Cooperation between DfiD and the Foreign Office is also much better than it was under Labour, with Andrew Mitchell and William Hague conferring regularly

Peter Hoskin

Cameron’s leadership pitch

Leadership, leadership, leadership. You couldn’t miss it. Leadership wasn’t just the clearest theme of David Cameron’s speech to the Tory conference just now, but also one of its most common words. By my count, it popped up around 30 times. “I’m proud to lead this party,” he said in the very first paragraph. “It is leadership we need,” he continued. The aim, I’m sure, was to paint an even stronger contrast between David Cameron the Prime Minister and Ed Miliband the Sub-Prime Ministerial. But Cameron wasn’t just talking about his own leadership. As he put it himself, “success will come: with the right ideas, the right approach, the right leadership. Leadership