Uk politics

Monday

Eamonn Butler

Going for broke

It won’t be for a while yet, but the UK seems headed for another financial crisis. And this time, the government won’t be able to blame the banks. The blame will lie squarely on our own determination to vote ourselves generous healthcare, welfare and pension benefits in the hope that our children will calmly pick up the bill. This giant welfare-state Ponzi scheme is bound to collapse sometime – though you can be pretty sure that the politicians running it won’t end up in the slammer alongside Bernie Madoff. An ageing population means that all those benefits we vote ourselves today will be simply unaffordable tomorrow. You believe the national

Daniel Korski

Julian Assange: the new face of anti-Americanism

Like everyone else, I have poured over the latest cache of Wikileaks – the publication of which I find irresponsible and destructive. There are several pieces of information now in the public domain that will cause the US diplomatic embarrassment or worse may even help the regimes in Tehran, Pyongyang and Moscow. Just ask yourself a few questions. Will the West be safer if the Saudi leader cannot trust that a conversation he has with a US envoy will remain secret? Will that help or hinder Iran’s nuclear prpgramme? Will US-German links be improved by the knowledge that US diplomats are sceptical of Angela Merkel’s policies? Will that aid G20

Sunday

Daniel Korski

Are they the children of the revolution?

The student protests are an important short-term development, which will undoubtedly worry the coalition. But are they also, as the Met Commissioner noted, a harbinger of something else: namely, a return to a late 1960s, Continental-style protest, which will encourage other groups – from Tube drivers to Tamils – to use sit-ins, strikes and ultimately street-based violence as a political tool. The NUS rejects that their tactics are associated with violence, knowing it will turn the majority of English people against them. Blame is heaped on small groups of agitators. Anthony Barnett argues that unlike in the 1960s, “the relationship to violence is also much better, as shown by the

David Blackburn

Lansley’s NHS revolution

Round n in the transparency revolution: Andrew Lansley has welcomed the publication of the latest Dr Foster hospital list, detailing post-operative failures in NHS care. The Observer reports: 1) Almost 10,000 patients suffered an accidental puncture or laceration. 2) More than 2,000 had post-operative intestinal bleeding. 3) More than 13,000 mothers suffered an obstetric tear while giving birth. 4) Some 30,500 patients developed a blood clot. 5) 1,300 patients contracted blood poisoning after surgery. Despite record investment and targets for standards, the NHS still suffers setbacks in the mundane that have severe consequences – according to the report, several hospitals have ‘dangerously high death rates’. A defender of the NHS’

Daniel Korski

A degree of truth

Tuition fees work. By the standards that any progressive is supposed to hold dear – higher overall participation rates in universities and higher participation rates among low income groups – experience from other countries shows that fees work. As the think tank Centreforum showed four years ago in an in-depth study, fees have long been the norm in Australia, New Zealand and the United States and these countries have seen “their universities’ reputations grow and their higher education participation rates rise across the social spectrum.” Meanwhile, the UK has been sliding backwards. In 2000, the UK had the third-highest graduation rate among OECD countries, with 37 percent of young people

David Blackburn

Some early statistical vindication for IDS

The Observer has news that will warm the government’s hearts. Ernst and Young have conducted a report that suggests 100,000 public sector jobs will be saved thanks to the savings made by welfare reform. The report’s other finding, a crucial one, is that the Treasury will be raking in £11bn by 2014-15. So then, a statistical vindication for IDS’ reforms, the economic side of them at least. It also gives the government some defensive hardware ahead of tomorrow’s Chancellor’s autumn statement. Not that it really needs it. On the back of Britain’s strong economic performance in the third quarter, the Office for Budget Responsibility is expected to raise its 2010

Saturday

James Forsyth

ANTI politics

Tim Montgomerie has a thoughtful essay in the Daily Mail about the ANTIs, those who feel so let down by the political status quo that they have given up voting for any of the mainstream parties. These five million people, according to a recent set of research, feel angry at the political class, neglected financially, that their traditional values are being trampled on and worried about large-scale immigration. Obviously, politics can’t just be about these voters. But there’s clearly something substantially wrong when such a large chunk of the country feel so alienated from mainstream politics. One thing that worries me is that I don’t see many political figures who

Daniel Korski

A more German Europe?

Timothy Garton Ash asked an important question in the Guardian recenty – is Europe becoming more German? Or, to put it more accurately, does the EU have to become more German to survive? “If the eurozone falls apart, it will be because Germany did not do enough to save it. If the eurozone is saved, it will be thanks to Germany. This is the greatest challenge to German statecraft since the country was peacefully united 20 years ago.” “Yet here is another horn of Germany’s dilemma. For half a century, German politicians have repeated, like a mantra, Thomas Mann’s call for “a European Germany, not a German Europe”. It was in

David Blackburn

Too clever by half, Miliband pitches for the squeezed middle with the vacuous promise of change

Ed Miliband has made an inauspicious start to his second political relaunch of the week. The Sun has dubbed him Buzz Lightweight, after he adopted the Pixar-inspired catchphrase ‘Beyond New Labour’ to describe his vision for the party. Miliband’s media presence is already wooden; migrating to plastic is hardly a promotion. Miliband and his elders have arrived at Labour’s national policy forum. In so far as it’s possible to determine what he stands for, Miliband is not aiming for the middle ground of British politics, as David Cameron and Tony Blair did. But he is courting the ‘squeezed middle’ with the promise of change. So far, that promise is more vacuous than profound

Friday

Gavin Kelly

The Big Squeeze

The media pack is often blind to an impending political car-crash.  For instance, very few in Westminster, or the media, noticed the scrapping of the 10p tax band until the screech of twisting steel turned heads. The same is happening now in relation to living standards. The media and political establishment are yet to wake up to the fact that working families in Britain are about to become poorer (though hat-tip to Allister Heath for being quick off the mark on this front). The gathering wisdom is that, with the recession now behind us, household budgets will start to recover.  We have just published a new report – Squeezed Britain 

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Solutions to the Mili-woe

Ed Miliband’s day today rather sums up his problems. His morning media round has all been seen through a negative prism. Nick Robinson mocks the new leader’s attempt to talk about the squeezed middle by calling it the squeezed muddle. While Ed Miliband’s declaration that he is a socialist, something he has said many times before, is not being treated as a refreshing dose of intellectual honesty but as evidence that he’s just too left-wing. A lot of Ed Miliabnd’s problems come from the fact that the media is in hunting mode. The media, as a rule, don’t like being surprised and Ed Miliband’s victory was not what it expected.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The search for peace leads Britain to pay a Taliban impostor

That the British government paid a substantial sums of money and attention to someone who they thought was Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour, a Taliban leader who was the civil aviation minister in the Taliban government, but who turned out to be a shopkeeper from Pakistan shows just how eager Britain is for some kind of political deal that would make it possible for British troops to leave by 2015, the deadline that David Cameron has set. The Washington Post’s piece on the matter, has the Afghan government blaming the mistake on British ‘haste’ for a political settlement.  In The Times the recently retired US representative in Kandahar, reflects that “senior

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Ed Miliband: “Yes, I am a socialist”

Ed Miliband was doing the interview rounds today, and CoffeeHouses may be interested in the below – an edited version of his exchange with Nicky Campbell on Five Live. NC: Is the problem union power?  MPs and the constituencies clearly voted for your brother, Alan Johnson’s favourite candidate.  He was a clear winner in those two parts of the party, and many people say union influence has to be limited.  Now this is a real test of your guts, isn’t it?  Is it the right thing to do? EM: I see it a different way, Nicky, to be honest.  I see that politics as a whole, in every party, is

David Blackburn

From the archives: The Royal Marriage Question

Like father, like son. Prince William took his time to propose to Kate Middleton, almost as long as his father took to take the plunge in 1981. The press brayed on both occasions. Here’s what Auberon Waugh made of the Prince of Wales’ dithering over Diana. It was tragically prescient. The Royal marriage question, The Spectator, 10 January 1981. In the death of Princess Alice of Athlone at 97 last Saturday the Queen lost not only first cousin twice removed but also a great aunt by marriage. Under the circumstances, it might seem humane to allow a period of time to elapse for her to get over this double shock

David Martin

Abolish National Insurance Contributions

Government plans for a universal state pension of £140 per week were reported in the media in late October. We should be getting more information in a Green Paper soon. While this announcement was most welcome, it raises two important questions which go to the heart of our tax and benefit system: what should happen to National Insurance Contributions (NICs)? And should we now recognise that the contributory principle behind benefit payments is effectively redundant? NICs are an important source of government revenue. The total paid in 2009/10 was £97bn, significantly more than VAT (£84bn), and over 20 percent of government receipts for that year. Yet how the NIC system

David Blackburn

Tory and Labour grandees unite against AV

The NOtoAV campaign has unveiled its patrons. It’s an impressive list. Margaret Beckett is the President, supported by Blunkett, Falconer, Prescott, Reid and Emily Thornberry on one side and Ken Clarke, Micheal Gove, William Hague, Steve Norris and Baroness Warsi on the other. The squeeze is on. The YEStoAV campaign has Labour supporters, but they aren’t quite so august. Iain Martin reckons that the YES team are faced with a cross-party opposition that can get these diverse big beasts working together. Iain calls it a pincer movement on the Lib Dems. The strategy is to characterise electoral reform as aan exclusively sectional interest: Clegg’s fixation. With his singular brand of native wit, John

Thursday

James Forsyth

Why Spain matters to Britain

So far Ireland and Greece have been bailed out with relative ease. If Portugal required external assistance, Europe could run to that too. But bailing out Spain would be another matter entirely. As The New York Times points out today, the Spanish economy is twice as big as the Irish, Greek and Portuguese ones combined. Spain’s situation is not yet critical. But as the NYT piece sets out very clearly, there are some extremely worrying signs. The gap between Spanish and German gilt yields is now at the biggest point it has been since the introduction of the euro. Spanish banks are also heavily exposed to Portuguese debt. Compounding these

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Flight’s loose tongue

Has Howard Flight just done a Keith Joseph? The latter’s run for Tory leader ended when he made a speech about poor people breeding.  As David said earlier, plain speaking can have its problems. But Flight’s danger is in being mistranslated. He sought to make a simple point: that many working families can’t afford to expand their families, while the state provides a substantial cash incentive for those on benefits to do so. But his use of the word “breeding” sounds like he’s into eugenics, and the language – talking about the poor – sounds dodgier still. Given his struggle with foot-in-mouth disease, it’s surprising that Cameron ennobled him.  But

Paul Richards

How to pay for the Royal wedding? Simple: public subscription

Now that we have a date in the diary, we can begin the traditional rites and customs on the path to the Royal Wedding. These traditions stretch back to Queen Victoria – street parties, pageants, commemorative china, bunting and flags, and an almighty row about how much it’s all costing. The cost of the monarchy is a perpetual controversy, given new impetus by any major monarchical occasion. Already, David Cameron’s decree that the date will be a public holiday is causing disquiet among some business leaders, who will lose a day’s trade. As Guido Fawkes points out, the additional day-off, coupled with Good Friday and Easter Monday, will make for

David Blackburn

Oh dear | 25 November 2010

Howard Flight has always been an outspoken man. The new Conservative peer is reported to have said: ‘We’re going to have a system where the middle classes are discouraged from breeding because it’s jolly expensive. But for those on benefits, there is every incentive. Well, that’s not very sensible.’ He may well be proved correct. But, plain-speaking and politics have never mixed, and especially not now. Following the Lord Young debacle, Downing Street has moved quickly to distance itself from Lord Flight’s comments. A grovelling apology won’t be far away. UPDATE: The IFS did some very interesting work on the rising birthrate (15 percent) among what it termed ‘low income