Uk politics

Thursday

8 Apr 2010

Woolas on the rack

Phil Woolas has just been confronted on Daily Politics about immigration figures which we uncovered on Coffee House yesterday, showing 99 percent of new jobs since 1997 are accounted for by immigration. His response is (unintentionally) hilarious. He is immigration minister, yet appears not to know what immigration figures mean. Here’s the transcript: Phil Woolas: I think that the Spectator’s analysis, perhaps not surprisingly, is confusing two completely separate things Andrew Neil: These are Office of National Statistics figures.which we checked this morning. Do you accept that there are 1.7 million new jobs for people of working age between 16 and 64, correct? PW: Yes AN: And according to the

Daniel Korski

The hyperbole of Westminster

Campaigns are conducted in poetry, former New York mayor Mario Cuomo once said. This one seems to be conducted in hyperbole. Every party is doing their level best to show that there is a difference, and a big one, between them and their opponents. That’s normal. But to do so, they are stretching good arguments beyond what is sustainable. “Brownies” may be a particular mendacious form of hyporbolic campaigning (and governing), but there are bound to be a few Tory and Lib Dem exaggerations on display during the campaign. Exhibit A. The Tories say a hung parliament will doom Britain as the markets will react badly to a potentially unstable

James Forsyth

Civil service discussing Tory efficiency savings

Laura Kuenssberg of the BBC is reporting that senior civil servants met this morning to discuss how they would implement the Tory plans for efficiency savings. Now, it is not surprising that the civil service is discussing how to implement the opposition’s plans. But what is intriguing is who told the BBC about the meeting. If it was the Tories, then no surprise. But if it was the civil service who told the BBC about it, then that would indicate that they want it to be known that they think these efficiencies are possible. My hunch, and it is no more than that, is that it was civil servants who

David Blackburn

The strange case of Charlie Whelan’s Commons pass

Well, now we know. Charlie Whelan enjoys the liberty of Westminster at the invitation of the parliamentary Labour party. Guido points out that it’s highly unlikely Whelan isn’t officially connected to Labour’s campaign. Labour tried to keep all this quiet, attempting to avert an ‘affluence for influence’ story that might undermine Brown’s attempt to turn the election into a referendum on Lord Ashcroft. However, though this should prove bad news for Labour, these stories have little impact outside Westminster. Neither the Ashcroft scandal nor previous Whelan sagas moved the polls.

Peter Hoskin

Labour firing blanks

Labour’s press conference this morning was a classic example of a party struggling to both have its cake and eat it. Not only did we get Gordon Brown, as expected – but he was introduced, and joined, by Alistair Darling and Peter Mandelson. Three heavy hitters to bash out one message: that the Tories’ national insurance plans are a “threat to the recovery”. Or make that one-and-a-half messages, if you include the claim that the Tories couldn’t realistically expect to make the efficiency savings to fund their NI cut this year. There is, claimed the Labour triumverate, a “black hole” where the Tories’ tax and spending proposals should be.

Peter Hoskin

What a difference the start of a campaign makes

In last week’s Chancellor’s debate, Vince Cable refused to rule out raising VAT to help fix the public finances. Now, only a few days later, the Lib Dems are pledging not to do that. What’s more, they’re saying that the Tories’ plans require a raise in VAT. And they’ve even got a ‘VAT bombshell‘ poster to drive the message home. There’s more than a dash of Brownite politics about this – the same seasoning I detected in the Tories’ Death Tax poster. Sure, there have been rumblings that the Tories will raise VAT. But Osborne & Co. have denied that this is necessarily the case in recent days, and it’s

Peter Hoskin

Brown comes under heavy fire on Today

Woah. I doubt Brown will endure many tougher twenty-minute spells during this election campaign than his interview with on the Today Programme this morning. You could practically hear the crunching of his teeth, as John Humphrys took him on over Labour’s economic record; practically smell the sweat and fear dripping down his brow. It was compulsive, and compelling, stuff. Humphrys started by putting a grim story to Brown: that his “handling of the economy was not prudent … your record suggests that the economy is not safe in your hands.” The PM’s mission was to deny all this, and he did so with his usual stubborness and disingenuity. His pitch

Fraser Nelson

Where the Mail’s cover story came from

It’s always gratifying to see Coffee House posts followed up in the newspapers, and I almost admire the way the Daily Mail has just splashed the newspaper on one of our posts without mentioning the source. CoffeeHousers will recognise the story on the Mail’s front page (left) – some 99 percent of jobs created since 1997 are accounted for by immigration. But the reader is left wondering where this figure came from. Was it released by the ONS? Erm, no. The only source for these figures is an email I was kindly sent by the ONS after specifically requesting the data. I used it in a line from The Spectator’s

Wednesday

7 Apr 2010

Peter Hoskin

A heckle which might reverberate across the campaign

Mark the date: the first major heckle of the election campaign happened today, and Gordon Brown was the victim. The perp was one Ben Butterworth, and he was angry at how his children can’t get into their choice of state school – a frustration which will be shared by thousands of parents across the country. I wonder what they’ll think when they see that Brown ignored the man. The Tories will seize on this with considerable joy. Their plans for widening school choice are – as the leader says in tomorrow’s magazine – the best reason for voting Conservative. Mr Butterworth might just have made himself the poster boy for

Peter Hoskin

Is this how Brown hopes to defuse the Tories’ national insurance cut?

Well, the manifesto pledges sure are spilling out of Brown today. After his proposals for cleaning up politics earlier, he’s now told Channel 4’s Gary Gibbon that Labour will pledge to keep the main rate of income tax at 20 pence in the forthcoming Parliament. Whether that will satisfy those who would see their national insurance contributions rise over the same period, or placate those who were moved from a 10p tax rate to the 20p rate as a result of Brown’s politicking a few years ago, remains to be seen. Here’s the video:

David Blackburn

Bolton’s nobody’s backyard

Fresh from a turbulent plane journey, David Cameron is stalking around Bolton. As Pete notes, Warburtons is Bolton’s family owned bakery and its endorsement may prove significant in a region of marginals. The party that wins Bolton North East wins the election – that has been the case in every election since 1950 except in 1979. Ruth Kelly’s old haunt, Bolton West, is no Labour stronghold either: her replacement, Julie Hilling, is defending a nominal majority of 2,064. These two seats come 115 and 114 respectively on the Tories’ target list. To the north lies Rossendale and Darwen, where boundary changes have benefitted the Tories for once; it is 77th

Peter Hoskin

How the Tories are decontaminating their associations with Big Business

Over the past couple of years, Big Business (as in, “being in hock with…”) has been deployed almost as an insult against the Tories. But they’ve now used their campaign on national insurance to turn their business associations into an advantage. Exhibit A: the above picture (via PoliticsHome) of Cameron’s visit to the Warbutons HQ in Bolton, where the company owner has come out in support of Tory proposals. It sends the message that Big Business doesn’t just mean the financial services, and a lot of people, in a lot of regions, rely heavily upon it for their livelihoods. And too right, too. Expect plenty more like this from the

Peter Hoskin

A picture of innocence?

Gordon Brown’s visit to the Innocent smoothie HQ in London today is the subject of a great post from Paul Waugh, who reveals how close the PM came to a photo-opp nightmare. But it also reminded me of this insight from Jonathan Freedland a few months ago, which I blogged at the time: “[The Labour campaign team have] taken a look at the branding of Innocent smoothies, hoping the authentic, unspun look might fit their own ‘unairbrushable’ product, G Brown.” I wonder whether Innocent picked up any branding tips from Brown earlier, in return…

Peter Hoskin

The context defeats Brown

So, mending our broken politics has been shoved to the forefront of the election campaign – at least for the time being. Brown has just given a speech on the issue, which – if you divorce it from all context – was actually fairly effective. Sure, things like reducing the voting age to 16, or a referendum on the alternative voting system, may not be your – or many people’s – cup of chai. But there were several proposals which, taken in isolation, will probably be as popular as they are sensible: banning MPs from working for lobbying comapanies, for instance. Or giving the voters the ability to recall MPs

Lloyd Evans

Last orders | 7 April 2010

The choppers, and the whoppers, were flying at Westminster today. David Cameron invited the prime minister to try a spot of accountability at PMQs. Would he admit that he scrimped on transport aircraft in Helmand? Brown, with breathtaking cheek and not a little rhetorical dexterity, flipped the question upside down. ‘I do not accept that our commanding officers gave the wrong advice,’ he said and insisted that he never sent underequipped troops into battle. He clarified this with a smokescreen. ‘I take full responsibilitiy but I also take the advice of our commanding officers.’ Here was the morality of the restaurant freeloader, accepting the food but passing the bill down

Peter Hoskin

Europe as a campaign message … for Labour

As I said earlier, today’s PMQs was all about giving the various parties’ campaign messages a walk around the block. Cameron’s questions reduced down to “They’ve failed – give us a go”. Clegg pushed the Lib Dem’s Labservative prospectus. And Brown droned on about “£6bn being taken out of the economy,” as well as about Lord Ashcroft and “securing the recovery”. In which case, it’s striking that Denis MacShane used a question to denounce the Tories’ alliances in Europe. Indeed, Peter Mandelson did exactly the same in a speech this morning. Here’s how he put it: “David Cameron chooses to sit alongside the xenophobes and homophobes in the European Parliament.

James Forsyth

Straight out of the Brown textbook

What was probably Brown’s last PMQs performance as Prime Minister was classic Brown. He answered questions that hadn’t been asked, dodged ones that had, rattled off list after list of tractor production figures and mentioned Lord Ashcroft at every opportunity. But, as he has in recent months, he had some one liners to get off including the jab that Cameron ‘was the future once’, an echo of Cameron’s put down of Blair. But that line couldn’t disguise the fact that Cameron got the better of Brown. Cameron’s speed on his feet just makes him better in this setting. His response to the heckle that the business leader he was

Peter Hoskin

PMQs live blog | 7 April 2010

Stay tuned for live coverage of PMQs. 1200: We’re about to start. Brown is flanked by Harriet Harman and Jim Murphy. Douglas Alexander, Alistair Darling and Alan Johnson are also on the front bench. The heavy hitters are out in force… 1201: And here we go, for what could be Brown’s last ever PMQs as Prime Minister. He starts, as usual, with condolences for fallen soldiers. 1202: The first question is as plantlike as they come: will Brown take £6 billion “out of the economy”? Brown spins the usual dividing line about investing in frontline services, adding that the Tories would risk a “double dip” recession. Hm. 1204: Massive cheer

James Forsyth

The scene is set for a bust-up

PMQs today is going to be the last time that Gordon Brown and David Cameron face-off against each other before the debates. Both men will be keen to score pyschological points against the other and to send their troops off in good heart. This means that PMQs will be an even noisier affair than usual. But both leaders will have to remember that if they behave in the debates as they do in PMQs it would be a disaster for them. The aggressive, shouty nature of PMQs would not translate well to the debates. One thing to watch today is what Nick Clegg does. He’s racheting up the rhetoric again,

Fraser Nelson

British jobs for British workers…

Did you know that there are fewer British-born workers in the private sector than there were in 1997? I’d be surprised if so: these official figures are not released. The Spectator managed to get them, on request from the Office of National Statistics. We use the figures in tomorrow’s magazine, but I thought they deserves a little more prominence here. See the graph above, which shines a new light on the boasts Gordon Brown has been making. He said his Glasgow speech last month that: “If we had said twelve years ago there would be, even after a global recession, 2.5 million more jobs than in 1997 nobody would have