Uk politics

Monday

David Blackburn

Lansley needs to get his quiet friends talking

Is Andrew Lansley hearing rather than listening? Dame Barbara Hakin, one of the Department of Health’s national managing directors, has written a letter to some GPs that suggests the pace of health reform will not be affected by the ‘legislative pause’. Hakin writes: ‘Everyone within the Department of Health is very aware of the support shown by the GP community to date and we have been struck by the energy and enthusiasm demonstrated in pathfinders across the country. Therefore, although the Government has taken the opportunity of a natural break in the passage of the Health and Social Care Bill, we are very keen that the momentum we have built

David Blackburn

Support for AV collapsing

An ICM/Guardian poll suggests that 58 percent of those likely to vote will back the No campaign. The Guardian reports: ‘Three-quarters of Conservatives are planning to vote will vote against, as will a small majority of Labour supporters. Only Lib Dem voters are firmly in favour, with more than two-thirds saying they will vote for the change. The Yes camp could still turn things around by winning over the 23% who say they do not know how they will vote, but this includes many people who say they may not turn out at all. Young people are more than twice as likely to favour AV as pensioners, but pensioners are

David Blackburn

Cameron: Gordon Brown could have remained as PM under AV

Here is David Cameron at this morning’s event, arguing that FPTP produces decisive results, even in the event of a hung parliament. He argues that Gordon Brown’s denuded Labour Party could have remained in office after the last election had AV had been used. Perhaps, but I’d point out that Brown could easily have remained as PM had Clegg and Cameron not reached an agreement last May.

David Blackburn

The Odd Couples

It must be Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau season at the Commons’ film club. A string of odd political couples has stalked stages across the land this morning, supposedly pronouncing the merits or demerits of the alternative vote. David Cameron and John Reid were the oddest: the Prime Minister’s well-heeled insouciance contrasting with his lordship’s winking Glaswegian charm. It’s good fun, without being hugely constructive. Cameron and Reid joked that they agreed on nothing beyond FPTP, before embarking on a distended muse about party politics and that old canard ‘Britishness’. Things were little better for Ed Miliband, who spent a large portion of his conference listening to Vince Cable explain

James Forsyth James Forsyth

How the coalition plans to recover

This morning’s battle of the political odd couples shows the dangerous direction in which the AV referendum is going for the coalition. The Yes campaign are becoming ever closer to making explicit the argument that a yes vote is the best way to keep the Tories out. For their part, the No side are continuing to hammer the compromises of coalition and the unfairness of the party in third place determining the result. In other words, no more Lib Dems in government. These campaign strategies mean that the result of the referendum will be seen as a decisive rejection of one side or other of the coalition. This is precisely

Sunday

James Forsyth

Why Vince Cable can’t keep his peace on immigration

The row sparked by Vince Cable’s attack on David Cameron’s speech on immigration is still rumbling on. The Sunday Times reports that Cable’s opposition to the coalition’s immigration policies has even extended to advising a college to take out an injunction against the government’s policies limiting non-EU student numbers. Cable’s actions are undoubtedly straining the coalition; Nick Clegg was visibly uncomfortable on the politics show as he attempted to square Cable’s actions with Cabinet collective responsibility. So, why is Cable doing this? I don’t think the reasons are particularly Machiavellian. Months ago, one Lib Dem Cabinet minister said to me that ‘Vince comes from the place and generation where any criticism of

David Blackburn

Pickles wins

Eric Pickles has been fighting councils who publish newspapers to celebrate their exploits. The government has used a combination of political pressure and legislation to curtail these ‘Pravdas’. Most offending councils have maintained their resistance, but Lambeth has relented. Its freesheet, Lambeth Life, cost £500,000 to produce last year. The Spectator submitted freedom of information requests to examine the paper’s accounts and a list of staff. Lambeth’s FoI officers replied: ‘4 people used to work on the Lambeth Life newspaper, an editor, journalist, sales manager and a designer. Although due to changes in the publicity code for local Government, the paper is ceased to print in March.’ It’s a small

David Blackburn

Cameron: we’re looking at doing more for the Libyan rebels

As James Kirkup says, David Cameron’s appearance on Sky News this morning was intriguing. In addition to trying to reassure the massing media doubters that the coalition “remains strong” despite its differences, the PM was keen to discuss the military mission in Libya. The letter that he authored with Sarkozy and Obama on Friday asserted that regime change was a necessity for peace. Since then, both Whitehall and the Elysee have insisted that Gaddafi cannot remain. How then might he go? Plainly, Gaddafi will not abdicate of his own volition. On the other hand, Cameron is adamant that there can be no ‘invasion or occupation’, and he reiterated the point

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The heir and the spare

Nick Clegg has announced a review into male primogeniture, but subscribers to The Spectator will – as so often – be already well-briefed on the subject. We ran a piece on this in Thursday’s magazine by Rachel Ward, the firstborn of the younger brother of an earl. This in itself will be enough to earn her a ribbing from some commentators on this blog, I imagine, but her thoughts on the subject are fascinating. Here’s a sample: “At the reading of the will after my father’s recent death, I was firmly reminded of my place by certain clauses bestowing his ‘residuary estate’ ‘upon trust for my first son “A” during his

Saturday

Fraser Nelson

The threat to Christianity

Is secularism now a greater threat to Christianity than Islam? This is the title of our next Spectator debate, to be held at 29 June, and it grows more topical by the week. In tomorrow’s Mail on Sunday, we learn that a Christian electrician could be sacked after displaying a crucifix in his white van. His name is Colin Atkinson, and he works for Wakefield and District Housing Association who ordered him to remove the cross because it may offend non-Christians. They picked the wrong guy. Mr Atkinson is a former soldier and thinks this is a battle worth fighting for. He tells the newspaper, “The treatment of Christians in

David Blackburn

Clegg breaks the mould

For weeks now, the genteel coalition has been getting grubbier. Today the Deputy Prime Minister cut loose and went into campaign mode as the leader of the Liberal Democrats. With both eyes on preserving his party’s loosening roots in local government, he assaulted (£) Conservative and Labour councils for cutting services. Clegg was not assisted by the more prominent Lib Dems in local government: the ubiquitous councillor Richard Kemp, the Lib Dems’ chief at the Local Government Association, asserted, almost with a note of relish, that the party is going to get a ‘kicking’. It probably will. But, as James argues, Clegg’s immediate concern after 5 May will be to

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Will the coalition go nuclear on the enemies of enterprise?

Iain Martin has a great story in his column today about how the coalition is so frustrated with the civil service that it is considering sacking a bunch of permanent secretaries and replacing them with outsiders. This move would take the coalition’s battles with the civil service onto a whole new plane. Talking to ministers both in this government and the last one and many civil servants, there’s no doubt that large chunks of the civil service are no longer fit for purpose.  But I’d be surprised, and impressed, if the coalition did follow through with this plan. Open warfare with the people who know where all the secrets are

David Blackburn

Cheap slogans and funding scandals

This week, Bagehot has devoted his column in the Economist to a popular theme: the ‘shockingly low quality of the national campaigns’ in the AV referendum, typified perhaps by the Yes campaign’s latest funding scandal and the No poster pictured above. Bagehot writes: ‘I came away from a whistle-stop tour of the country pretty impressed by the diligence of local activists, as they try to explain the intricacies of the alternative vote (AV) to members of the public. The national Yes and No campaigns are a different matter, I argue: they have blown a chance to have a proper debate about the nature of British democracy. Judging by my anecdotal crop

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Andrew Sentance: interest rates must rise

Inflation – the cost of living – is the number one issue in Britain today. It is under-discussed in the House of Commons as MPs have no say in it: the task of controlling inflation lies with Mervyn King and his nine-strong Monetary Policy Committee, and its members are rarely interviewed. Little wonder, as a lot of them should be feeling fairly sheepish. But not Andrew Sentance. He’s been arguing for a rate rise for months, and doesn’t have long left to serve on the MPC, so he can speak quite freely. Inflation has been above target almost all the time he’s been on the MPC, he says, so in

David Blackburn

Soft on crime, me?

The name ‘Ken Clarke’ and the word ‘sacking’ are inseparable to the chattering classes at the moment, but so was it ever thus. There are signs though that the normally insouciant Clarke has been shaken on this occasion. He has given an interview in defence of his contentious prison reforms to the Times this morning (£). In a clear message to concerned voters, Tory backbenchers and sceptical government colleagues, he denies that he is ‘soft on crime’. For example, he will tighten community sentences: “I want them to be more punitive, effective and organised. Unpaid work should require offenders to work at a proper pace in a disciplined manner rather

Friday

James Forsyth

Balls in fiscal isolation

Ed Balls has long said that America is the right comparison for Britain when it comes to how to deal with the deficit, contrasting the Obama administration’s fiscally loose policies with Osborne’s plan for fiscal tightening. This comparison has always been flawed; the dollar is the world’s reverse currency which gives Washington far more fiscal flexibility than HMG. But, even leaving that aside, the Obama administration is now — albeit under Congressional pressure — about to start cutting.   By 2015, Obama’s plan will have reduced the US deficit by 8 percent of GDP. Osborne’s plan sees Britain reduces its deficit by 8.4 percent by 2015. Indeed, from next year

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

How the banks were framed

A week that started with the Vickers review on banking has closed without another national explosion of banker-bashing. Thank God. Beating up on the banks has lasted almost three years now, and it’s blinding us to the real causes of the financial crisis. The banks are the perfect alibi: blaming them gets everyone off the hook. How, asks Gordon Brown, was a mere Prime Minister to know that banks were doing such fiendishly complicated things? How, asks George Osborne, was an opposition expected to detect what the government could not? How, asks Mervyn King, was the Bank of England governor supposed to know that these bankers had been so wicked?

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The government should recall parliament

Today’s declaration (£) by Barack Obama, David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy that Nato’s operation in Libya will continue until Gaddafi leaves power marks a shift in their rhetoric and makes explicit that regime change is the war aim. This has led to calls to recall parliament, most notably from David Davis on the World at One, to debate this change. Parliament merely voted to enforce the UN resolution which was not a mandate for regime change. The government would be well advised to heed these requests. It would be the best way of maintaining the necessary political support for the mission. Now that regime change is the explicit war aim,

David Blackburn

Charting Labour’s future

The Labour Party is still ambling in the wilderness – sure of its destination, but uncertain of the route. Its response to last year’s general election defeat has been silence, publicly at least. In the privacy of debating chambers however, the party is charting its potential renewal. These circles murmur that ‘the state has reached its limits’; or, in other words, that Fabianism, the dominant force in the post-war Labour movement, has been tested to destruction. Philip Collins touches on this in his must-read column for the Times today (£): ‘Since the general election defeat, the only intellectual life in the party has come from blue Labour, an intriguing set

David Blackburn

Oh what a lovely war

The triumvirate of Obama, Cameron and Sarkozy have presented a united front to NATO and the Arab League and said there will be no respite in Libya. Writing to the Times (£), they say: ‘Britain, France and the United States will not rest until the United Nations Security Council resolutions have been implemented and the Libyan people can choose their own future.’ They also add that to leave Gaddafi in power would be an ‘unconscionable betrayal’, a marked shift in emphasis. It’s rousing stuff, designed to twist reluctant arms at the NATO summit in Berlin. However, as former ambassador to Tripoli Oliver Miles suggests, this letter is unlikely to be