Uk politics

Saturday

David Blackburn

Waiting for welfare reform

After a summer of sporadic announcements, IDS’ welfare reforms will be published in a white paper next week. As in 1997, when Tony Blair urged Frank Field to think the unthinkable, there is consensus on the need for radical welfare change. IDS has earned respect as a moral and pragmatic reformer, and he attracts goodwill from across the House. The Liberal Democrats, Nick Clegg and Steve Webb particularly, were ‘vital’ in securing a spending concession from George Osborne, whilst Douglas Alexander has described IDS’ plans and ‘noble’ and pledges to support principle that welfare should be a safety net, not a vocation. He warms to the theme in today’s Guardian.

Friday

David Blackburn

Transparency: the government’s self-protection aid

Monday is eagle day for the overhaul of government machinery. Ben Brogan explains how the publication of 20 departmental business plans will enable the public to chart the progress of government reform – inaugurating a revolution is transparency, that meme of the moment. I’ve always wondered why the Tories are so keen on touting ‘transparency’. One answer, it seems, is to expose those ministers and departments who are dragging their feet. This instrument of New Politics doubles as a self-protection mechanism, which is especially useful with those dastardly Lib Dems and the odd pugilistic right winger scurrying about. Brogan writes: ‘The plans will spell out the timetables for implementing every

David Blackburn

Toughening up on Home Affairs

An intriguing argument from the Economist’s Bagehot this week: the government’s liberal prisons policy will force Coalition 2.0 to tack to the right on Home Affairs. ‘If the Lib Dems’ sway on these issues was foreseeable, so are its political dangers. One is Tory anger. Even some of the Conservative MPs who agree with the Lib Dems on control orders worry about their liberal line on crime. Behind the scenes, figures from both parties are coming together to plan “coalition 2.0”—a policy programme for the second half of the parliament. Among the rumoured Tory representatives are confirmed hawks such as Michael Gove, the education secretary, Owen Paterson, the Northern Ireland

David Blackburn

From the archives – striking matters

This week, there have been calls for certain public sector strikes to be made unlawful, Tube strikes and, today, the firemen have called off their strike having ‘listened to the concerns of the public’. It is all so 2002. Go To Blazes, The Spectator, 26 October 2002 Any public sector union contemplating a strike is best advised to start by targeting children’s bookshops. It is remarkable how groups of workers who first impinge on the consciousness through the pages of nursery books manage to command greater public affection and higher wage settlements than those who do not. Nurses and train-drivers have done particularly well out of recent pay disputes. Municipal

David Blackburn

Miliband’s colossal misjudgement

The question at the bottom of this shoddy leaflet must surely join John Rentoul’s famous list. Who on earth will stand by the egregious Phil Woolas now? As with the Tower Hamlets debacle, Ed Miliband is taking eons to make a straight forward statement: the Labour leadership condemns the actions of Phil Woolas and hopes that he will not be selected to stand again. George Eaton gives a reason for Miliband’s reticence: in a colossal error of judgement, Miliband selected Woolas as a shadow Home Office minister, reward no doubt for his deft expertise in race relations. The Oldham East by-election is a test for the coalition, but it is

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The coalition faces a by-election test

The court’s decision that the Oldham East and Saddleworth election must be re-run because Phil Woolas was guilty of illegal practices under election law presents the coalition with a dilemma. Do both parties campaign fully in this three-way marginal? Oldham East and Saddleworth is number 83 on the Tory target seats list, it would require just over a five percent swing for them to win. But the Lib Dems are even closer, only a hundred odd votes behind Labour. If both of the coalition parties went all out for it, Labour would have a much better chance of holding on and winning the seat would be a welcome morale boost

Daniel Korski

Junior Games

Government allows some top-tier politicians to shine, while others lose the sheen they once had in opposition. So it has been with this Government. It has mostly been Lib Dems who have gleamed. Much can be said of Nick Clegg, Vince Cable, and Chris Huhne, but nobody will ever question the party’s ability to govern, or dismiss its front-line politicians as back-bench critics. In fact, if the Coalition lasts until 2015, the Lib Dems will have more Cabinet-level experience than the majority of the Shadow Cabinet, most of whom entered Cabinet under Gordon Brown in 2007. That will be quite a turnaround. The bigger problem will be for those Tories

Peter Hoskin

Strike out

Spark up those Roman candles, the firefighters have called off their strike for today and tomorrow. According to the general secretary of the Fire Brigades Union (FBU), it’s all because “we’ve listened to the concerns about public safety and we were extremely concerned about the capabilities of the private contractors being brought in to cover our strike” – which is awfully thoughtful of them, considering that they previously stoked those “concerns about public safety” by threatening to strike over Bonfire Night. Oh, and they appear to have won some concessions too: the London Fire Brigade will no longer sack any firefighters who refuse to accept contracts that include the disputed

Thursday

Daniel Korski

In defence of UK-French defence cooperation

The Entente Cordial Redux has generated a lot of commentary, most of it ill-informed, some of it ridiculous. Tory MP Bernard Jenkin, in particular, has singled himself out to be a perpetuator of stereotypes with his reference to the duplicitous nature of the French. But many historians, like the otherwise brilliant Orlando Figes, have not fared much better, talking about the Crimea War as if it had any relevance at all for modern warfare. It’s good fun to tease the French. That is what boozy lunches ought to be about. But it should not pass for serious commentary by MPs. Since the 1990s the French have worked very closely with

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Europe hasn’t gone away

The Tory party’s acceptance of a 2.9 percent increase in the EU budget has persuaded Steve Richards that ‘Europe has ceased to be a toxic issue in British politics.’ As Steve acknowledges, this is in part because the Euro-sceptics have won the argument over the single currency. But it is also because the Tory parliamentary party has accepted that the coalition means nothing positive is happening on the Europe front for the next few years. One thing, though, needs to be borne in mind: the Tory party is more Euro-sceptic than it has been in living memory. Talk to new Tory MPs, who are mostly hardcore sceptics, about Europe and

Matthew Elliott

Lessons from the midterms for the AV referendum

Amid all the excitement of the US midterms, a small, local ballot took place which has important lessons for the UK’s referendum on the Alternative Vote – due to take place six months on Friday. Like us, America uses the straightforward first-past-the-post voting system for its thousands of elected offices – from local school boards and sheriffs to races for governors’ mansions and the White House itself. Their well-established primary system also gives voters a direct say in who the candidates should be – taking power away from the parties and making politicians more responsive to the demands of their local electorate. Because US politics is dominated by two parties,

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

In this week’s Spectator

The latest edition of The Spectator is now out on iPad (click here for more info) and the newsagents (or £2, posted direct today). I thought CoffeeHousers may be interested in a small selection of the goodies we have in store.   1.  Andrew Neil on the conservative comeback in America. He spent the summer shadowing the Tea Party, and gives the best analysis you’ll read on what just happened – and what lies ahead. (You can read it here.) The Sunday Times’ Christina Lamb travelled across Nevada and California with the Tea Partiers, and tells tales from the campaign bus (one being that they only serve coffee). And Daniel

Peter Hoskin

Alan Johnson: this time it’s personal

Alan Johnson has been more comic than cutting during his spell as shadow chancellor. It’s not so much that he’s doing a bad job, but rather that he’s taken a singular approach to the biggest political issue of the day. Where Labour MPs have wanted moral outrage, he has delivered easy quips. Where the public might expect self-confidence, he has chosen self-deprecation. It may be charming, but the question is: does it win votes? Which is why it’s intriguing to see Johnson change course today, via a surprisingly spiky article in the New Statesman. There is, so far as I can tell, not one intentional gag in the entire piece

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The growing case for libel reform

Policy Exchange’s work on Islamism has been some of the most important undertaken by a think-tank in recent years. It has influenced and bolstered the thinking of brave politicians in both the last government and the current one. That’s why it is so important that Policy Exchange came off best in the libel case brought against it by North London Central mosque. The case is now over and the mosque has made, what Policy Exchange calls, ‘a substantial contribution’ towards the think tank’s costs. Policy Exchange has stated that it never meant to suggest that extremist literature was sold or distributed on the mosque’s grounds with the consent of the

Wednesday

James Forsyth

A model for coalition policy-making

David Willetts and Vince Cable deserve huge credit for coming up with an impressive agreement on higher education funding that both the Tory and Liberal Democrat leaderships can live with. They have taken the coalition beyond the coalition agreement and shown that it can make sound policy on even the thorniest of political issues. But as important as the agreement is the way that it was hammered out. The discussions were civilised and empirical. There was—in stark contrast to the ‘blue on blue’ debates over defence and welfare—no negative briefings or anything like that. My main quibble with it is whether the £9,000 cap on fees is set too low

Ed Howker

EXCLUSIVE: What about those who aren’t pulling a housing benefit scam?

Most sensible taxpayers think Britain’s current housing benefit costs to be a terrific scam. In the last five years the bill has risen by 25 percent. We now pay £21billion each year, a good chunk of which flows private landlords turning a healthy profit from the state’s responsibility to the poor. We all know by now that a slew of reforms designed to cut the bill by at least £2bn will stop the indefensible abuses of taxpayers’ money like this and this. That’s why Danny Alexander, among others, claims that the coalition must be ‘brave’ on housing benefit. But cast aside the most extreme exploiters of the system and ask

Peter Hoskin

Why Ed Miliband was being deceptive over debt

“Remember, our government paid down the debt before the crisis hit.” That’s what Ed Miliband said in a speech last Friday, and I took exception to it at the time. My point was, admittedly, quite blunt: how could the Labour leader make such a claim when debt was around £500 billion in 2006, and rising? So I’m glad that the excellent Full Fact blog has since looked into the matter, and come down broadly on my side – giving Miliband a 2-out-of-5 rating on their truth scale. But some of their wider points are worth developing, which is why I’m returning to the topic now. First, though, the observation that

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Music hall act fails to cut it next to suave Etonian

Miliband’s in a mess. He makes it far too easy for Cameron to portray him as a hypocritical opportunist who sidles up to PMQs every week with lame soundbites and incoherent policies. How come? Perhaps because he sidles up to PMQs every week with lame soundbites and incoherent policies. Today he tried to unsettle the PM with the news that ‘members of his government’ (ie LibDems) ‘have given cast-iron guarantees that they would vote against a rise in tuition fees.’ This isn’t a Cameron problem. It’s a Clegg problem. Right issue, wrong tactics. Cameron had no difficulty adopting a noble but weary expression and praising his coalition partners for taking

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Hardly vintage stuff from Ed and Dave

Neither Ed Miliband nor David Cameron had a good PMQs. Cameron let his irritation at questions about the appointment of his campaign photographer to a civil service post show. It was also a bit rich for him to criticise a Labour MP for asking a question scripted by the whips when Tory MPs ask patsy questions with monotonous regularity, I counted at least four in this session alone. But the regular shouts of ‘cheese, cheese’ from the Labour benches were clearly riling the Prime Minister. But it wasn’t a good session for Ed Miliband either. His delivery was rather halting and he stumbled on his words far more than he

Peter Hoskin

The tuition fees compromise

Away from the mid-terms, we have the little issue of tuition fees. David Willetts will today set out the government’s response to the Browne Review, and it’s expected to look something like this: a £9,000 cap on fees, but universities will have to show that they are making extra provisions for poorer students if they charge over £6,000. Students would effectively be loaned the money by the state, and would start paying it back once they earn £21,000 after graduation. It’s certainly a compromise arrangement, constructed with one eye on the Lib Dems and another on the universities. For Clegg’s backbenchers, there’s a rejection of the unlimited fees advocated by