Uk politics

Thursday

James Forsyth

Clegg collides with Cameron over extremism

Nick Clegg’s speech in Luton today on extremism is a challenge to large parts of David Cameron’s remarks on the subject in Munich just last month. Indeed, even the venue of the speech can be seen as a rebuke to Cameron who was attacked for giving a speech on Islamic extremism on the same day that the English Defence League was marching in Luton. Cameron’s speech, which was one of the best of his premiership, argued that ‘the ideology of extremism is the problem’ and that terrorism’s ‘root lies in the existence of this extremist ideology’. In the key section of the speech, Cameron declared: “As evidence emerges about the

David Blackburn

A rotten basket of apples in Nottingham

The Nottingham Post has a great scoop about Labour-led Nottingham City Council’s abuse of taxpayer funds. The story can be distilled into one sentence: ‘City council leader Jon Collins has used a consultant paid £870-a-day by the taxpayer for advice on Labour’s campaign in the run-up to the May election.’ Nottingham is one of England’s most profligate and rapacious councils. Examples of its needless largesse include stripping conkers from trees and spending £185,000 on signs to improve local morale. One probable reason for the residents’ black mood is the steep rate of council tax. In 2010-11, occupants of band A properties paid £1041.39; whilst those in Wandsworth attracted a maximum

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Hunt’s rising star

The decision on News Corp’s take-over of BSkyB has thrust Jeremy Hunt into the spotlight. The culture secretary is many Tories’ bet to be the next leader of the party. Hunt is ambitious even by political standards: during the Brown bounce he canvassed opinion as to whether he should stand in the Tory leadership contest that would follow an election defeat, and has a John Major like ability to make factions in the party feel like he is one of them. Add to this, a good television manner and one can see why people think he’ll go far. One of the odd things about politics is that there is no

Daniel Korski

Labour shuns aid choices

Government is about choices. In opposition you can like anything, support any measure, back any proposal. But when in office you either make choices or invite dismissal. So when International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell looked at Britain’s development spending he was determined to make choices. Now that he has, some people don’t like it. Not one bit. They like choices in general, much as they accept a theoretical form of cuts; but they recoil from real ones. Former Europe Minister Denis MacShane is one of the choice-avoiders. Writing in the New Statesman, he rails about cutting funds to the International Labour Organisation, seeing a Tory plot to undermine trade unionism.

Matthew Sinclair

The case for abandoning HS2 restated

The government release a claim that HS2 will bring 40,000 new jobs. They are so desperate to let the public know that figure they breach proper practice by briefing it ahead of the publication of the consultation document. When the consultation document comes out, I will look at whether creating that number of jobs is actually impressive, for an investment of £17 billion. The wider economy produces four times as many jobs per pound of capital, so it actually doesn’t look very impressive at all. Professor David Begg, eminent representative of an endangered quango, is furious though. He attacks me for making an unfair comparison. The 40,000 figure might be

Daniel Korski

Lessons from wars gone by

As the situation deteriorates in Libya and the international community begins to look at various options, including military ones, policymakers would do well to remember a number of key lessons from the last 15 years of warfare. Like all history, they don’t provide a guide to the future, but can be a warning nonetheless. The Bosnian experience of the mid ’90s contains four key lessons. The first is that international handwringing costs lives. Many lives. (The same lesson emerges from the post-Gulf War I slaughter of the Kurds and Shia by Saddam Hussein). Wait, and the situation usually gets worse not better. The second lesson is that however great the

Wednesday

Blair Gibbs

Tackling the last great unreformed public service

The Home Office has an ambitious police reform agenda and is overseeing challenging budget reductions, but they are also forging ahead with plans to introduce real workforce modernisation.  The serious and credible reviewer, Tom Winsor, will publish his independent report next Tuesday.   Winsor’s review will cover pay, conditions and other aspects of employment that will set the framework for a new settlement when the current 3-year pay deal expires. Expect police overtime and shift patterns to be another major focus of the review.   David Cameron himself, who once boldly described the police as “the last great unreformed public service” is firmly committed to this agenda. As a special

David Blackburn

Government to appeal on prisoner votes

PoliticsHome reports that the government is to ask the ECHR to reconsider its verdict in the prisoner voting rights case. The website says: ‘In a response to a parliamentary question from Labour MP Gordon Marsden, Cabinet Office Under-Secretary Mark Harper said: “We believe that the court should look again at the principles in “Hirst” which outlaws a blanket ban on prisoners voting, particularly given the recent debate in the House of Commons.”’ This is unsurprising. Last month, the government asked its lawyers to advise on the ramifications of noncompliance. The lawyers were unequivocal: the repercussions of such defiance was diplomatically impossible and extremely expensive. As non-compliance is foolhardy and acquiescence

Oliver Lewis

Blame Twitter for the increased oil prices

The BBC are reporting that unleaded petrol has now reached 130p per litre and are blaming Libya. I¹m not convinced. Libya only accounts for about 2.3 percent of global oil production and even now the Arabian Gulf Oil Co¹s production in east Libya is around a third of normal levels. The real cause of the current price increase seems to be Twitter and Facebook. The social networking sites are allowing protestors to organise uprisings with a sophistication and speed which have taken analysts completely by surprise. Increased oil prices are the market¹s response to all this uncertainty and the possibility of this revolutionary fervour spreading. It’s not unreasonable: after all,

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Dave ‘n’ Ed’s Flying Circus

It was Monty Python without the jokes. The focus of PMQs today veered surreally between crisis in north Africa and early swimming pool closures in Leeds. The session opened in Security Council mode with Ed Miliband politely asking the PM to brief us on the humanitarian disaster evolving in Libya’s border-zone. Cameron went into his statesman-of-the-year routine and announced that HMS York had docked in Benghazi with medical supplies.   At such moments the imperial ghosts of the Commons seem momentarily reawakened. Ed Miliband sounds like some Victorian stooge asking the Foreign Secretary to reassure the nation that an uprising in a far-flung oriental possession is being energetically suppressed. Having

David Begg

The strong business case for HS2

Matthew Sinclair argues that the government’s plans for high-speed rail would not create enough jobs to justify the government spending money on the project. But his argument is disingenuous as he is not comparing like for like. He is comparing predictions about jobs created directly by high-speed rail with predictions about jobs created indirectly by investment in the wider economy. The 40,000 jobs created directly by high-speed rail are simply the tip of the iceberg – tens of thousands more will be created by the investment boom in the cities the new line will link up. These are the jobs being created by the “wider economy” that he mentions, but

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Promoting Cameron from a party leader to a national leader

Danny Finkelstein’s paean of praise (£) to Andrew Cooper, the PM’s new director of political strategy, contains several interesting lines.  Finkelstein says that his former flat mate’s biggest challenge is, ‘Devising a strategy for changes in the NHS so that a critical political battle isn’t lost disastrously’. This is yet another indication of how nervous Osborne and co are about Lansley’s reforms and reopening the NHS as a political issue. The second is him reporting that Cooper will tell ‘Cameron to be a national leader, rather than a party politician. Especially in the Commons.’ To date, Cameron has been — with some notable exceptions such as his statement on Bloody

David Blackburn

May’s change of emphasis

Theresa May has a new soundbite: police pay or police jobs. May has been asked to find cuts of 20 percent in the police budget. May insists that the frontline must and will be protected and that therefore these ‘extraordinary circumstances’ mean that the government will have to rewrite the terms and conditions of police employment. The former rail regulator, Tim Windsor, is already conducting a review into police pay and working conditions. In addition to his recommendations, May is scrutinising overtime payments, housing and travel allowances and so forth. Estimates vary but these perks are thought to cost the taxpayer more than £500million a year. She is also overseeing

Matthew Sinclair

The failing business case for HS2

Under a week ago, when James Forsyth wrote about how the government was successfully mobilising third party groups to support high-speed rail, it looked like Philip Hammond was going to get the neat debate he wanted. The script was simple: the new high speed line was urgently needed and in the national interest, a small number of people ardently opposed it because it would spoil their views. Since then that message has come unstuck. I think it is understandable that some people are very upset at the aesthetic disruption that could come with HS2.  But that isn’t the only objection. Plenty of people who have no particular attachment to Wendover,

Tuesday

David Blackburn

Of course Pickles is ambitious. He needs to be

No one, most of all the normally genial Eric Pickles, said that reforming local government would be easy or quick. The New Local Government Network reports that the government’s plan to encourage councils to share back office functions is ‘hugely ambitious’. It says that considerable savings can be made, but it doubts that councils will meet the 40 percent target for backroom efficiencies. Savings of 20 percent are more likely, the NLGN argues. On the face of it, the NLGN is correct. Eric Pickles’s demand that councils share their functions and facilities is ambitious. At the moment, councils are struggling to meet the upfront costs of uniting geographically diverse buildings

Peter Hoskin

Brits want to give money abroad – but not necessarily via the government

“A well-targeted aid budget is essential if Britain is to punch above its weight on the world stage.” That’s how Tim Montgomerie finishes his neat defence (£) of British aid policy for the Times today. But, putting aside the matter of whether it’s wise to give aid to, say, India at a time of spending restraint back home, Tim’s claim rather inspires a question: is our aid budget well-targeted? And the answer, it seems to me, is encoded in Ian Birrell’s punchy piece for the Evening Standard. Ian’s overall point is similar to that made by economists such as Dambisa Moyo, whose work we have mentioned on Coffee House before

Daniel Korski

British foreign policy needs to promote democracy

After a week of hesitation and well-publicised problems evacuating British citizens from Libya, the government has led the international community’s response to the crisis. The decision to move HMS Cumberland into position was astute, as was the authorisation to rescue the people stranded in the dessert. At the UN, British diplomats have been drafting most of the key resolutions and now David Cameron has out-hawked everyone by saying he’d be willing to contemplate a no-fly zone. US lawmakers have asked the Obama administration why they have not been as swift as the UK. As a Bosnian-born friend of mine said last night: “If only David Cameron and William Hague were

David Blackburn

Clarke in the Sun’s harsh light

The Sun has launched another sortie against Ken Clarke’s restorative justice programme. The paper reports: ‘SHOPLIFTERS could escape prison by just paying for what they pinch and saying “sorry”. Jail sentences and tough fines will be SCRAPPED as the default punishment for nicking from stores under controversial plans soon to be unveiled by Justice Secretary Kenneth Clarke. Instead he wants thieves to make face-to-face apologies to victims and pay compensation.’ The Ministry of Justice has responded by saying that it ‘strongly believe[s] offenders should make more financial and other amends to victims and are in the process of consulting on plans for this.’ The substance of that statement contrasts with

Peter Hoskin

Osborne goes on the offensive

Attack, attack, attack. That’s the temper of George Osborne’s article for the Guardian this morning, which sets about Labour’s economic credibility with a ferocious sort of glee. Perhaps the best passage is where he asks how many times Labour can spend their ubiquitous “bank tax,” but this is more pertinent to the recent debate: “Where does all this leave Ed Miliband’s newfound enthusiasm for the “squeezed middle”? Let’s pass over his failure in every interview to define it – his last effort included around 90% of taxpayers. Where we can all agree is that these are difficult times for family incomes. There are two root causes. One is global: rises

Monday

David Blackburn

The Tories take the train to war

Philip Hammond should be wary of the ladies of Cranford. The advent of the railways was met with considerable disquiet in rural England, depicted by Elizabeth Gaskell in both Cranford and North and South. High-speed rail has inspired another wave of determined conservatism in the shires. It’s a proper grassroots movement. For months now, Tory-controlled Buckinghamshire has warned the government that its councils and associations would oppose the development. Cabinet Ministers whose seats are local have supported their constituents, but the resentment is unchecked and it will damage the Conservatives to an extent. Last week, I met two lifelong Buckingham Conservatives who had torn-up their membership cards in protest at