Uk politics

Saturday

James Forsyth

There’ll be no u-turn on planning

This government has developed rather a reputation for u-turning. But I would be extremely surprised if it did one over its planning reforms. When you talk to ministers and advisers one is struck by how up for this fight they are. They’re convinced that it is only by taking on these vested interests that they’ll get their message across to the public. And unlike on forests or the NHS, Number 10 and the Treasury are fully on board. There are those who claim that these reforms are profoundly un-conservative. But, in fact, the opposite is the case as Charles Moore argues with his typical eloquence in today’s Telegraph. As Charles

Untangling the 50p knot

The 50p tax rate is seen by some as a way of tackling the “undeserving rich” discussed in this week’s Spectator. For others, it is a counterproductive imposition driven by envy. The primary practical justification for allowing wealthy people to retain their earnings is that it empowers them to invest in productive enterprises. Over 80 per cent of the funding for business start-ups comes from personal savings or loans from family and friends. And just now we need to give the maximum encouragement to people with the determination to start new businesses. Opponents of a tax cut will no doubt say that wealthy people will not invest in enterprise but

Friday

David Blackburn

EU bans Syrian oil imports

The EU has banned imports of crude oil from Syria. This is being touted as a major success for the EU, displaying the ability of governments to act collectively. Oil sanctions on Syria should, theoretically, impede President Assad: 95 per cent of Syria’s oil is exported to Europe, worth roughly £3bn a year. Germany and Italy are the premier destinations. This is a welcome move against a brutal tyranny, but the embargo is not the total success that it might have been. Italy was stalling earlier in the week, trying to defer the deal’s implementation until 30th November 2011, when existing contracts expired. Other European countries were pushing for a more

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The Swedish case for school profits

Should state schools be able to make a profit? We asked this of you on our Coffee House poll this week. 71 per cent of you said yes, and with good reason. Profit-seeking companies expand when demand is strong: that’s what you want good schools to do. But successful schools not seeking profit have no incentive to expand: it’s an easier life just to let the waiting list grow and jack up the fees. This month, 24 new ‘free schools’ will open – eventually able to educate 10,000 pupils. But to keep pace with the boom in primary school pupils, we’d need an extra 400 primaries alone. Will the ‘free

David Blackburn

From the archives: “The bugger’s bugle”

Today marks 50 years since the release of Victim, a ground-breaking film about homosexuality that was granted an X-certificate. Writing in the latest issue of the Spectator (subscribers click here), John Coldstream explains the significance of this frank and truthful film and its contribution to the national debate about decriminalising homosexuality. It was made four years after the publication of Sir John Wolfenden’s report into ‘Homosexual Offences and Prostitution’, which recommended that homosexual acts between consenting adults in private should be decriminalised. This contentious reform was not secured until 1967. When Wolfenden’s views were first unveiled, the Spectator defied the prevailing consensus in Fleet Street by arguing that homosexuality should

David Blackburn

More banking worries

George Osborne wrote a strident article for the Observer last weekend, in which he called rich tax evaders “leeches”. As James Forsyth reveals in the cover story of this week’s magazine, Osborne is not alone among Tories in hounding the ‘undeserving rich’ at present. James goes on to argue that the Tories are ‘becoming particularly worried’ about the callous rich because the Vickers commission is poised to bring the emotive issue of banks back to the ‘political frontline’. The Vickers report has already irritated the coalition’s sore points, with disagreement allegedly rife between George Osborne and Vince Cable. Today’s FT offers a fresh angle. Osborne and Cable are in fact remarkably close

David Blackburn

Cameron: I’m a common sense Conservative

David Cameron weathered an awkward interview on the Today programme earlier this morning, in which the Strategic Defence Review was savaged and the recent riots were compared to the Bullingdon Club, of which Cameron was once a member. He stood by the defence review, with reference to the successful British contribution to the Libyan intervention, and he blithely ignored the Bullingdon Club question. He reiterated his belief that parts of society have undergone ‘a slow motion moral collapse’.  His gruff tone might have surprised some listeners. The interviewer, Evan Davis, offered Cameron the chance to retreat from the firm, almost draconian line he took at the height of the riots. But Cameron refused, comfortable to risk appearing ‘morally

Thursday

James Forsyth

Getting tough on discipline

A fortnight ago, The Spectator asked if Cameron was fit to fight? We wondered if he had the gumption to use the political moment created by the riots to push through the radical reforms the country needs.  So, it’s only fair to note that the government has today actually done something—as opposed to just talking about—the excesses of the human rights culture. The Department for Education has stopped the implementation of new regulations that would require teachers to log every incident in which they ‘use force’ with children. These new rules would have made teachers record every time they had pulled apart two kids in a corridor or intervened to

Jonathan Portes

Right to reply: The impact of immigration on the labour market

Yesterday, we introduced our new “Right to reply” series, where outside writers take on some of the ideas and arguments raised on Coffee House. In that case, it was the IPPR’s Matt Cavanagh replying to Fraser’s recent post on immigration and the labour market. Here’s another reply to the same post, this time by Jonathan Portes of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research: Myths abound when it comes to the effect of immigration on the labour market — and the most damaging of these is that most or all “new jobs” go to migrants. Although I agree with Fraser Nelson’s general views on immigration, he is misleading on this one point.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The undeserving rich

Ever since the Elizabethan poor laws — if not before — society has tended to divide the poor into the deserving and the undeserving. But, as I write in this week’s magazine, our politicians are now taking aim at a new category, the undeserving rich. Who you consider to be the undeserving rich depends on your ideological leanings. Russian oligarchs or the families of Middle Eastern despots are, perhaps, the most obvious examples. They have acquired huge wealth but often by illegitimate means. Then come those who evade, to use a favourite phrase of both David Cameron and Ed Miliband, “their responsibilities”. This includes those who dodge their taxes or

Daniel Korski

Duncan of Benghazi

Junior ministers rarely get to influence high-level policy or be seen publicly to have done so. So Development Minister Alan Duncan must feel particularly pleased that his brainchild, the so-called “Libya oil cell”, was set up to block fuel supplies to Tripoli; and that its work – as well as the Tory MP’s role – has now become public. On the day that David Cameron jets off to the Paris Conference no less. The BBC reports that a six person team was set, taking in people from the Cabinet Office and the MoD, but working out of the Foreign Office. The team focused on depriving Gaddafi’s regime of oil by

Dennis Sewell

Punish the rich, hurt everybody | 1 September 2011

This week’s issue of The Spectator, out today (and available for only £1 an issue here), dwells on the new anti-rich mood in Westminster. James will have more on his cover piece later, but here’s the accompanying article by Dennis Sewell to get the debate flowing: The Bible tells us that the poor will always be with us, but there is no good reason, and certainly no scriptural authority, to support the widespread belief that the rich will be too. As capital has become more mobile, slipping across fiscal boundaries at the snap of an enter-key, so too have its owners, who are today only a Gulfstream ride away from

Wednesday

James Forsyth

Cameron and Osborne wary of Vickers’ banking reforms

Banking reform has always been one of those issues that was going to test the unity of the coalition. Indeed, it was the subject of the very first inter-coalition wrangle when back in May 2010 George Osborne and Vince Cable tussled over who would chair the Cabinet committee on banking reform.   To date, these differences have been held in check by the fact that the coalition is waiting for the recommendations of the John Vickers-led Independent Commission on Banking. But with the final draft of the Vickers Report being published on 12 September, these splits are starting to open up again.   Cable and the Liberal Democrats would like,

Peter Hoskin

The quiet man barks

Almost exactly a year ago, Tony Blair’s memoirs wafted into bookshops to cause a stir ahead of conference season. Now it it seems that Alistair Darling’s, due out next Wednesday, will do exactly the same. Judging by the extracts published over at Labour Uncut, the quiet man of the last Labour government will splash his simmering frustrations and enmities right across the page. Gordon Brown, he will say, became increasingly “brutal and volcanic”. Mervyn King was “amazingly stubborn and exasperating”. And Ed Balls and Shriti Vadhera will be accused of “running what amounted to a shadow treasury operation within government”. But the most eyecatching revelation, and perhaps the one with

Peter Hoskin

Vince being Vince

A sweeping and utterly typical performance from Vince Cable in his interview with the Times (£) today. Not only does he plunge his teeth into the exposed flesh of the bankers (criticising them for their “special pleading” over banking reforms), but he also offers another overarching diagnosis of the British economy (there won’t be a repeat of 2008’s financial crisis, he says, in case you were wondering, but slow growth could be a problem). I feel like a spoilsport for pointing out that, only four months ago, the Business Secretary was actually warning that “you can see” another financial crash happening. But aside from Cable’s fiery rhetoric, it’s worth noting

Tuesday

David Blackburn

Miliband re-opens campaign with same old weapons

Party politics is back from the summer and the summer’s events are defining the strategic dividing lines. Ed Miliband reopened hostilities by threatening to force a vote on police cuts. The Standard reports: ‘The Labour leader said ministers were being “reckless” in refusing to rethink planned 20 per cent savings following the worst rioting in living memory. Launching a new campaign during a visit to Lewisham, Mr Miliband claimed the cuts, reducing officer numbers by 16,000, would “weaken the forces of law and order on our streets”.’ Policing Minister Nick Herbert, one of the coalition’s stars outside the cabinet, described Miliband’s claims as ‘hypocrisy’, pointing out that Labour did not

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Coalition prepares for bank bust-up

There’s a big coalition split coming down the road. Next month the Vickers’ review into banking reform, which is going to suggest a ring-fencing of the investment and retail arms of banks, will come out. The Liberal Democrats — led by Vince Cable — will push for the instant implementation of the report’s recommendations. The Treasury will argue that banks need to be given time to introduce these new rules. The result will be, as one senior Lib Dem source tells this morning’s FT, ‘a big fight’.   The tricky question for Cameron and Osborne is how do they win this argument when there’s a visceral desire for tough measures

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The dangers of home ownership

The slump in home ownership is reported today as a bad thing. Many Conservatives, who believe that home ownership releases what the late Shirley Letwin called “vigorous virtues“, may agree. So might Labour, which came to regret its opposition to the Thatcher policy of allowing council tenants to buy their home. Like inflation targeting, home ownership was a solution that worked so well in the 1990s that it was vigorously pursued in the next decade. But here’s the rub: it had disastrous effects. In this case, the disaster was governments pursuing greater home ownership as a policy goal. This meant cheap loans, which meant subprime mortgages, which meant a credit

David Blackburn

Housing crisis on the horizon

There is grim news on the housing front this morning: the National Housing Federation (NHF) reports that the housing market will descend into “crisis” unless the supply of houses is dramatically increased. It points out that only 105,000 new homes were built last year, the smallest amount since the 1920s. This is a long-term trend, as demand has consistently outstripped supply.  The NHF thinks that those facts will not change and predicts homeownership will fall to the level of the mid-1980s, when Margaret Thatcher announced that her goal was to help “more and more people to own property.” The conclusion is obvious if those are the premises: average property prices will

Monday

Fraser Nelson

Exclusive: Osborne’s jobless recovery

George Osborne was right to boast in the Commons that Britain has the “second highest rate of net job creation in the G7”. Coffee House recently pointed out that all of the increase is accounted for by foreign-born workers. But what if you narrow the definition to foreign nationals? We put in an information request to the Office for National Statistics and the below information came back. It is quite striking. Over the 12-month period to which Osborne refers, 90.1 per cent of the extra employment amongst the working-age population can be accounted for by an increase in foreign nationals working in the UK. Here are the figures. The phenomenon of pensioners returning to