Uk politics

The Christmas Special of The Spectator is out today, and George Osborne kindly agreed to an interview. We have printed 1,500 words in the magazine, but James and I thought CoffeeHousers may like a fuller version, where he has more space to speak for himself.  We have gone into way more detail on tax policy here than in the magazine, for example, as Osborne is seldom pressed on this point and his thoughts are very interesting. We have divided it up by subject headings, so CoffeeHousers can skip the chunks they’re not interested in.   Liberty, paternity and Treasury It is an exciting day for Liberty Osborne, the Chancellor’s daughter,

Political Betting carries this table on the breakdown of the tuition fees vote. English Lib Dems were noticeably more loyal than their Celtic counter-parts (only 16 of 43 voted against the bill), which reflects the left-wing political focus in those regions and perhaps the divide in the Liberal Democrat party itself. But, clearly, the West Lothian question is at issue here. Personally, I’m swayed by the argument that the new fees arrangement will affect applications to Scottish universities and therefore it is the business of Scottish MPs. That higher education was devolved in the first place is another, more interesting debating point. The comments section is yours…

Each time politicians fight regulation, regulation normally wins. So far it seems like this coalition government is no different. John Redwood has been busy tabling parliamentary questions asking each department how many regulations have been introduced, and how many repealed. Rather than “one in, one out” in turns out that two regulations have been introduced for every one revoked. Eric Pickles emerges as the star, having revoked twice as many as he introduced. But the rest? Here’s the league table: I don’t think that the “guilty” ministers have been lax. It’s just that the system is out of control. Three years ago, John Hutton renamed his department “Business, Enterprise and

By way of an addendum to Fraser’s post, it’s worth reading Melissa Kite’s account of internal Tory strife for the Sunday Telegraph (it doesn’t seem to be in the paper, but is available online here). The piece records what sounds like a tumultuous week for the Tory whips, as they struggled to keep a group of disgruntled MPs on side. There are plenty of little insights, of which this is just a selection: 1) The 1922 Committee gets angry. “The ceding of a series of major powers to Europe, the increasing of international aid, the decision to have a referendum on voting reform, the redrawing of constituency boundaries – all

As with so many things, the coalition’s great strength is also its great weakness. On the one hand, it is two parties working together, politicians putting aside their differences to cooperate in the national interest. This is something that, broadly speaking, the electorate likes. On the other, it is a government that nobody voted for. There’s a danger that the public come to see coalition as an arrangement that just allows both parties to worm out of their manifesto commitments on the grounds that they didn’t win the election.  The coalition’s national interest case is a strong one. But it needs to be made with greater frequency. It cannot be

One of the things I heard yesterday when I strolled around the edges of the protests, particularly from older people, was how the coalition’s policies had politicised Britain’s young. “It has really made my children wake up”, said an elderly bystander with a wistful look in his eyes.  Student leaders say they now hope to punish Lib Dems who voted for the tuition fees, targeting MPs in seats such as Bath, Burnley, Bradford East, Bristol West and Brent Central.   The sense of rage directed against the Liberal Democrats comes, I suspect, from a deeper sense of betrayal – and not simply student dissatisfaction over today’s issue. In politics time