Uk politics

Wednesday

David Blackburn

Darling pulls a fast one

Alistair Darling has just forced George Osborne to the dispatch box to explain the regulatory measures that he will announce at Mansion House later today. Osborne confirms that some powers will return to the Bank of England and that an independent commission, under Sir John Vickers, will take into account competing views on capital, leverage and liquidity requirements. Retail and investment banking will be split under the new arrangements. This is effectively the end of the tri-partite system. Alistair Darling defends the tri-partite system in its entirety, arguing that no one will understand from ‘this dog’s breakfast’ who now regulates the banks – talk about undermining confidence, which the opposition

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Why the Bloody Sunday soldiers must not be brought to trial

In The Times today, Danny Finkelstein eloquently sums up why it would be so wrong for any of the soldiers involved in Bloody Sunday to be prosecuted given all that has happened in the peace process: “To stop the killing, we sacrificed principles that should stand above everything. We sacrificed the rule of law and the principle of one law for everybody. We sacrificed justice and accountability to the courts. We bought peace but there is a bill to pay. And today we must pay it.” I must admit to sometimes wondering if the price we have paid for peace in Northern Ireland is too high: that too many victims

Patrick Nolan

Spending cuts must start with welfare

The new and independent Office for Budget Responsibility estimated that interest payments on public debt are set to rise to £67 billion a year by 2014-15. The hole in the public finances is so deep that every cut in spending that can be made should be made. Few commentators have grasped that tinkering around the edges, such as with “efficiency gains,” will not be enough. The only way to eliminate the deficit and to begin the task of repaying public debt is through making deep cuts in spending and for people to take more responsibility for themselves.   Cuts must start with welfare. The UK government spends more on welfare

Tuesday

David Blackburn

The Labour leadership contest waltzes onto Newsnight

With ill-repressed horror, James Macintyre reports that the remnants of New Labour fear that Diane Abbott might win the Labour leadership, courtesy of the preferential vote. Mildly amusing I suppose. If Ed Balls would be a catastrophe of Footian proportions as leader what would Abbott be? There are no historical parallels.   I can’t see this latter day Rosa Luxemburg enticing Labour members. But if she does, then David Miliband, that auteur of absurdity, is to blame. Abbott’s weapon is communication. Unlike her four opponents, she doesn’t sound like an under-manager at Furniture Village. She is accessible, particularly on television – and the hopefuls will be up before Paxman tonight.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Cameron is dignified in trying circumstances

As David says, the conclusions of the Saville Inquiry make for grim reading. One person with close links to the services who served in Northern Ireland just told me, ‘it is far worse than we expected.’ In the House, David Cameron’s statement on it was heard in subdued silence. It would be remiss not to say that David Cameron dealt with this situation as well as anyone could. There was no equivalent to Jonathan Powell’s disgraceful statement that ‘the war against Irish terrorism was not our war’. He pointed out the context of the event and the fact that it was very much the exception rather than the rule of

David Blackburn

Lord Saville eviscerates the British army

David Cameron has just told the House of Commons: ‘There is no doubt, there is no equivalence. The events of the 20th January were in no way justified…You do not honour the British army by excusing the unjustifiable.’ He apologised for the atrocity and the Wigery report. According to Lord Saville, there was no conspiracy or pre-meditation, but soldiers of Support Company 1 Para entered Bogside in Derry and opened fire without provocation from the victims or nationalist paramilitaries – though Martin McGuiness ‘was present, probably armed with a Thompson sub-machine gun’. Lord Saville concludes that the testimony of many soldiers was false. Cameron did not rule out independent criminal

David Blackburn

How Hughes will play the coalition

Simon Hughes is an experienced campaigner, whose reputation is deservedly blemished by a handful of duplicities – Peter Tatchell, denying a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty and the like. Hughes has just appeared on the Daily Politics and, very subtly, split the Lib Dems from the Tories. It was very simple: the Tories are responsible for all that’s bad and the Liberal Democrats are benevolent. First, Hughes dissociated the Liberals from tax rises: “I hope that the chancellor’s hearing the voices that says VAT is not the right tax to change in the budget next week.” Those voices are, of course, his ‘colleagues in the Treasury’ – an enlightened check

James Forsyth James Forsyth

McGuiness, culpability and atonement

I wish that every time Martin McGuinness offered commentary on the Saville Inquiry, it was pointed out that he admitted to the inquiry that he was the IRA’s second in command in Derry. We should never forget that the IRA has more to apologise and atone for than any other group that played a role in the Troubles. The idea that the RUC or the British military and the IRA are all equally guilty is the worst kind of simplistic moral relativism. McGuinness is now deputy first minister of Northern Ireland and drawing a handsome salary as part of the peace process. If he expects his—far more morally dubious—past to

David Blackburn

Sacking the nanny

Theresa May has halted the national database of adults who come into contact with children. The innocent and law abiding majority can now volunteer without having to complete an extensive anti-pervert course – a heavy-handed and expensive bureaucratic requirement, typical of New Labour’s ‘nannying’ days. May acknowledges that acquiring the ‘Not A Known Pervert Badge’ discouraged vital volunteer work, which could effect social dislocation. May pledges to remodel the scheme, which is presumably why the Independent Safeguarding Scheme remains in place. Writing for ConHome, Alex Deane calls for the abolition of this scheme. I’ll wait for May’s recommendations, but bald reform is needed to ensure children are safe and receive

David Blackburn

A day that re-opens old wounds

Building on a peace process of compromises, Tony Blair called the Bloody Sunday inquiry to placate nationalists in Northern Ireland. But I wonder if he ever intended its findings to be published? The Saville Report was only ever going to re-open old wounds. With the greatest respect to Lord Saville, who is a distinguished lawyer, this report cannot dispense justice. Establishing the facts is impossible 30 years after the tragedy, and the punishment can only be collective. Yet the political dictates of peace mean that the British army must be blackened. The soldiers who beat both sets of paramilitaries to the negotiating table will be branded as criminals. Whatever their impulse,

Monday

James Forsyth

Trimble frozen out of government

The announcement that Lord Trimble will join the Israeli review into the flotilla incident is a reminder that he has no role in the current government. Trimble takes the Tory whip and given that the party is not overly supplied with Nobel Prize winners, it is a bit of a surprise that no role has been found for him. In opposition, the word was always that relations between him and the new leadership of the Ulster Unionists, the Tories’ electoral allies in Northern Ireland, were not great. But the UUP leader has resigned since the election. Now, it may well be that Trimble himself is the obstacle. Even his admirers

David Blackburn

Seeing it through

David Cameron’s address to the House contained no surprises. NATO and its allies are 6 months into a strategy to stabilise Afghanistan. All sides of the House were agreed that Britain should fulfil its commitments, but remain in Afghanistan not a day longer than necessary. That date is unknown. Like Blair and Brown before him, Cameron aspires to ‘improve Afghan security’. ‘Stability’ surely means the expulsion of al Qaeda from Afghanistan. How likely is that without the complete co-operation of the Taliban? (At what cost would that be secured?) And, as Julian Lewis MP pointed out, is al Qaeda more dangerous in Afghanistan than it is The Yemen, Somalia or

David Blackburn

Naughty Nokes

Life has imitated art – or Jilly Cooper in this case. The former chief executive of the National Pony Club, Caroline Nokes MP, 37, has been having a three year affair with a Tory toy boy, Councillor James Dinsdale, 27. Theirs was an affair of hotel-room assignations and steamy conference meetings – Bournemouth has little else to commend it. They were outed by the Sunday Mirror. Mrs Nokes, a married mother of one, was photographed entering the Kensington Close Hotel last Monday night. Minutes later, Mr Dinsdale arrived, casually dressed in a blue hoodie. Taking a ‘Hug a Hoodie’ to extremes, Mrs Nokes checked out at 8:30 the following morning.

David Blackburn

Defence matters

Sir Jock Stirrup’s early departure was one of the worst kept secrets in Westminster. But the ‘resignation’ could have been better handled. The coalition has created a lame duck in Stirrup. And, rightly, Con Coughlin asks why Stirrup is overseeing the strategic defence review if he was sufficiently inept as CDS? It makes no sense, as removing Stirrup and Sir Bill Jeffrey (the MoD’s permanent secretary) is clearly about preparing the way for spending cuts and a new model of UK military intervention. Liam Fox gave a speech this morning promising a ‘clean break with the Cold War mindset’. He emphasised the importance of maintaining counter-insurgency spending and training; presumably,

David Blackburn

The debate opens as Darling is vindicated and condemned

As Fraser observed at the weekend, Alistair Darling has a point: it is not as bad as was feared. The new Office for Budget Responsibility agrees, reducing estimated public borrowing to £155bn 2010/11. Still, it’s hardly a picnic is it? And I wonder what response Darling will get if he presses Cameron and Osborne for an apology. His growth forecasts have been downgraded to 2.6 percent and the structural deficit is greater than he admitted to – Paul Mason reckons it’s about £5bn more than was forecast. Osborne’s hands are tied by these figures; his calculations will be based on them. There is, of course, the possibility that the OBR’s

Saturday

Fraser Nelson

Darling has a point

I had expected Alistair Darling to have slumped off to spend more time with his memoirs after the election, but here he is, fists aloft, fighting the government. About the only member of the Labour front bench effectively doing so. He has a point. The economy is looking better than expected, not worse – as David Cameron has been pretending. Each new forecast for the deficit seems to give a less ghastly picture. British house prices are on the rebound. And when the Office of Budget Responsibility announces its forecasts on Monday, it is likely to give a better picture than that in Darling’s budget. Already Darling is telling the

David Blackburn

Should Cameron mention McKinnon?

Lord Tebbit poses the question on his latest blog, pointing out that Nick Clegg campaigned against Gary McKinnon’s extradition, and urged the government ‘to do the right thing’.   Well, now he can and it would be a popular decision in the current circumstances. The US-UK extradition treaty should be unacceptable to any government that considers itself sovereign, but this is no time for bluster and confrontation. Barack Obama has leapt about with shrill adolescent abandon; it would be hypocritical for Cameron to return fire in kind. Despite what Obama protests, BP is not solely liable (Halliburton and TransOcean have a case to answer). And Obama’s naked political desperation and

David Blackburn

Darling: it’s not as bad as all that

Alistair Darling is about to retire to the backbenches, though he stresses (and hopes) that it’s a brief stint in obscurity. ‘I get bored,’ he tells the Guardian in an interview today. Darling is remarkable. He emerged from 13 years in cabinet and a hellish tenure as Chancellor with his reputation enhanced. There were rumours of a leadership bid, but those were fanciful. Darling was not an architect of New Labour, but he certainly laid the odd brick. Darling could not break the legacy of Blair and Brown, and reveals as much in his Guardian interview. As Shadow Chancellor, he has to defend his record as Chancellor and argue that

Friday

David Blackburn

Ed Balls and the art of campaigning

I thought that Ed Balls would be a natural for opposition politics. But I’ve been struck by the naivety of some of his recent interventions – notably the Duffy-wooing immigration proposal. As James has argued, Balls’ plan to limit freedom of movement within the EU ia classic opposition politics. They are eye-catching, populist and but completely unworkable in practice. But Balls isn’t really in opposition yet: the Labour party is caught in a kind of limbo whilst it determines its future, a future that Balls wants to control. Advocating the unimplementable looks conniving rather than statesmanlike, naïve rather than astute. It provided an opportunity for his opponents, and Peter Hain,

David Blackburn

Hain: the Liberals demanded that we cut now

Andrew Neil interviews Peter Hain for this week’s BBC Straight Talk. Mastering the obvious, Hain argues that Duffygate cost Labour dear: ‘PH:  The damaging incident of course was the Duffygate incident. AN:  In Rochdale, the old aged pensioner? PH:  In Rochdale, and that had a palpable effect.  I think we were just beginning to get a bit of traction – not necessarily to win but possibly to be the biggest party in the election – and that was a real hammer blow, and everybody knew it. AN:  You really think that affected the public’s perception of the then Prime Minister? PH:  I do, because I think people had started, not