Uk politics

Wednesday

Jonathan Jones

Britain’s euroscepticism hardens

With the European financial crisis rumbling on, anti-EU sentiment in Britain is deepening. Two polls — one by YouGov for PoliticsHome and the other by Angus Reid — show that 50 per cent of the public would vote for Britain to leave the EU if there was a referendum.   Of course, this is nothing new. Brits have long been the most eurosceptic of Europeans, as Fraser noted a couple of months ago. In fact, we’re the only country where more people think our membership of the EU is bad than think it’s good: The hardening of eurosceptic sentiment does seem to be due to current events: 34 per cent

Daniel Korski

Will the defence budget rise, fall or stay constant post-2015?

As British helicopters pound away at Libyan targets, another battle is being waged inside the Ministry of Defence’s fortress-like building. The fight is over the post-2015 budget, and it is an arduous one. After the uniform-creasing settlement the MoD got in the Spending Review last year, the Prime Minister said in the House of Commons on 19th Oct 2010 that while the precise budgets beyond 2015 would be agreed in future reviews, his “own strong view” was that the MoD would see “year-on-year real-term growth in the defence budget in the years beyond 2015.” So far so good — the MoD budget may have to fall now, in line with

Peter Hoskin

The OBR warns of a fiscal storm

The Office for Budget Responsibility’s 126-page Fiscal Sustainability Report really oughtn’t make for electrifying reading. But it does. What Robert Chote and his gang of number-crunchers have done is to gaze into our fiscal abyss, and summon up forecasts so that the abyss can gaze back into us. I mean, look at the graph above. On the OBR’s account, our country’s debt burden could well rise from around 70 per cent of GDP now to over 100 per cent in 50 years time. It is a perturbing trajectory, to say the least. But, before we go any further, we should slap all kinds of health warnings across this. Long-term forecasting

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

A day like no other

Was there ever a PMQs like this? The mood was like a revolutionary court. On the central issue – the judge-led inquiry into the hacking affair – there was general agreement. But the doors of justice have been flung open at last and hosts of other crimes are rushing in to receive an airing. Ed Miliband arrived convinced that he had a killer question for Cameron. Assuming his favourite expression of indignant piety he asked about a specific warning given to Cameron’s chief of staff last February that Andy Coulson, when News of the World editor, had hired an ex-convict to bribe the cops. The effect was feeble rather than

James Forsyth James Forsyth

News Corp withdraws its bid for BSkyB

Two things struck me about PMQs today and the Prime Minister’s statement on the forthcoming public inquiry. First, the Prime Minister took a very different approach to Andy Coulson than he did at his press conference last Friday. Today, all the emphasis was on how angry Cameron would be if the assurances given to him turned out to be false.   The second was that Cameron rowed away from suggesting statutory regulation of the press. He stressed that he favoured ‘independent’ not ‘statutory regulation’. This should be more acceptable to the press.   But, as so often in this scandal, these events have now been overtaken by the dramatic news

Peter Hoskin

PMQs live | 13 July 2011

A change from the Coffee House norm for this last PMQs before the summer recess. Instead of the usual live-blog, we’ll be live-tweeting the session, and our tweets will appear in the special window below (you may be familiar with it from Guido’s PMQs coverage). Tweets from other political types may also appear. And you can add your own remarks to the live-stream not in the comments section, but in the space below the window. Anyway, it should all be fairly self-explanatory. It might work, it might not. In either case, do let us know what you think. End of term PMQS

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Cameron on the back foot

This has been another difficult morning for David Cameron. He’s now taking flak for having said he would take part in the BSkyB debate this afternoon and then deciding not to. But what should, perhaps, worry the Prime Minister more than this criticism is the evidence that the Liberal Democrats are siding with Labour to portray Cameron as being behind the curve on this issue. The FT, the Lib Dems’ paper of choice, reports that Clegg and Miliband pushed Cameron for a wide-ranging public inquiry. The paper details how Clegg is demanding an end to the practice of politicians, and particularly Prime Ministers, meeting newspaper proprietors but keeping the meeting

David Blackburn

Might Gaddafi shunt Murdoch from the front pages?

Loyal Tories and government types are hoping that the media will soon move on from Murdoch. And the unusually heavy briefings emanating from George Osborne’s office last night were perhaps an attempt to shift the spotlight. But it will take a very gripping story to displace the phone hacking saga, especially if yet more has-been politicians shuffle back into public life to settle old scores with Murdoch. With the British press immersed in this tempestuous revenge drama and the whirl of hypocrisy that surrounds it, you wouldn’t guess that the euro has embarked on a 72 hour ordeal that may decide its future.   But, Rupert Murdoch’s mugshots could yet

Peter Hoskin

Parliament prepares to take on Murdoch

Politicians are swarming all over the phone hacking scandal today, in even greater number than during the past week. If it isn’t the main topic at PMQs at noon, then it certainly will be immediately afterwards; when David Cameron delivers his statement on an inquiry into the whole mess. And then there’s Labour’s Opposition Day motion, urging Rupert Murdoch to withdraw his bid for BSkyB. By the end of the day, our parliamentarians will surely have delivered an official reprimand to the News Corp boss and his ambitions. The news that the government will vote in favour of Ed Miliband’s motion has sucked some of the vicious factionalism out of

Tuesday

James Forsyth

Osborne warns Eurozone that decisive action must be taken now

The UK government is becoming increasingly concerned about the situation in the eurozone and the fact that there does not appear to be the political will to address it. One government source complained to me earlier today that “unless they get their act together the eurozone are in danger of fiddling while Rome burns.” Tonight, in a major departure from Britain’s previous softly-softly approach to the issue, George Osborne is issuing a statement calling on the eurozone countries to take “decisive action” to “prevent market uncertainty doing real damage to the world economy.” The Chancellor calls on eurozone countries to: “…now set out in detail how they plan to expand

Peter Hoskin

The war between Brown and Murdoch heats up

Gordon may have come carrying dynamite, but News International has some explosives of its own. In a pair of statements this afternoon, the Sun and the Sunday Times have set about undermining, or just plain denying, our former Prime Minister’s testimony. By the Sun’s account, not only did they get the story about his son’s medical condition from a “member of the public [who] came to The Sun with this information voluntarily because he wanted to highlight the cause of those afflicted by [cystic fibrosis],” but Brown’s colleagues also “provided quotes” to be used in the final article. By the Sunday Times’s, their investigation into Brown’s property transactions was pursued

Daniel Korski

The euro’s death rattle

The end might be nigh for the euro. The currency has hit an all-time low against the Swiss franc, as individual eurozone government bond yields vaulted higher due to mounting concerns about the region’s debt crisis. To spell out what this means: in Spain, 12 billion euros of interest payments will accrue for every 100 point bond rise in Germany. That is more than Spain’s annual public investment in infrastructure (8.6 billion) and its entire defence budget (7.6 billion). At the same time, Greece is heading towards disorderly default or some form of devaluation. Or both. And now Italy looks vulnerable. Well, I say that the end is nigh but,

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Attention turns to the police

Today, the spotlight in the phone hacking scandal is shifting onto the police — who have an awful lot of questions to answer. Indeed, I suspect at the end of this the reputation of the police will have been hugely damaged. The evidence from senior Met officials — some retired, some serving — has not convinced the Home Affairs committee today. It is a sign of how poor relations are between the police and MPs that a Tory MP has asked the current and former assistant commissioners of the Met if he they have ever taken a bribe from a journalist. Both John Yates and Andy Hayman reacted indignantly to

Peter Hoskin

Brown speaks out

We’ll try to post the video of Gordon Brown’s interview with the Beeb soon. But, for now, here’s the transcript of his remarks about News International and his son’s medical records: Gordon Brown: [The Sun] told me they had this story about Fraser’s medical condition, and that they  were going to run this story. Interviewer: How did that affect you, as a father? GB: In tears. Your son is now going to be broadcast across the media. Sarah and I are incredibly upset about it. We’re thinking about his long-term future. We’re thinking about our family. But there’s nothing that you can do about it. You’re in public life, and

David Blackburn

Livingstone’s double standard over Murdoch

As soon as the recent phone hacking scandals broke, Ken Livingstone lost no time in castigating Boris Johnson’s ‘dire judgement’ in dismissing the original claims as ‘codswallop cooked up by Labour’. Livingstone also said that Boris ‘had at least two meals with Rebekah Brooks, one dinner and one lunch with James Murdoch, and one dinner with Rupert Murdoch [when he was] trying to keep the lid on this story.’ Livingstone was at it again on the Today programme this morning, saying the ‘scandal goes right to the heart of the establishment’. Certainly, it was rash to describe the claims as ‘codswallop’, but is dinner such a crime? I ask because,

Monday

Peter Hoskin

What didn’t make it into today’s reform paper?

“It’s like Blair and Brown — but without the acrimony.” So sayeth one Cabinet Office source, describing the prolonged build-up to today’s public services White Paper to me a couple of months ago. His point was that, although the yellow and blue halves of the Downing Street operation are genuinely chummy with one another, their differences can still put a block on reform. In his story, the Tories are like Blair, striving to go further, faster, stronger. Whereas the Lib Dems can occasionally stand in the way. So what has been blocked from the White Paper? Listening to David Cameron today, you wouldn’t guess that anything has been. “Let me

Peter Hoskin

Enter Gordon Brown, with dynamite

The clunking fist is descending on Rupert Murdoch. After rumours all afternoon about Gordon Brown giving a statement on phone hacking to the Commons, the Guardian has come up with specifics: News International, they allege, used private investigators to target our Prime Minister’s phone, his bank account and his family’s medical records. You should be able to watch it all go down in the Commons, very soon. As Guido has said, there is more than a hint of cold, cold revenge about this. For all his overtures to the Murdoch press, Brown never wound his way into their affections as Tony Blair did. The Sun’s decision to shift over to

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Where we are on phone hacking

David Cameron’s speech on public service reform is being crowded out today by all the other news about hacking. First, there was there were the emails News International has allegedly passed to the police, which apparently contain information about payments to Royal protection officers. This was followed by an angry statement from Scotland Yard claiming that there is a ‘deliberate campaign to undermine the investigation into the alleged payments by corrupt journalists to corrupt police officers and divert attention from elsewhere.’ The police statement goes on to say, ‘At various meetings over the last few weeks information was shared with us by News International and their legal representatives and it

Jonathan Jones

A victory for common sense

For years, teachers have been increasingly reluctant to restrain unruly pupils — for fear of being slapped with a lawsuit. But now, it seems, the government is trying to ease those concerns. Its guidance today may not change any laws, but it does encourage schools to change their approach. Among the directions is that “schools should not have a ‘no touch’ policy”: teachers can use reasonable force to restrain pupils, remove disruptive children from the classroom or prevent them from leaving the classroom when they shouldn’t. However, the guidance does stress that there are limits on the use of force, making it clear that “it is always unlawful to use