Uk politics

Saturday

David Blackburn

Cameron for Middle England

David Cameron is a man for all seasons. The Bullingdon Club man told the men’s mag, Shortlist, how he takes a glug of Guinness, steps up to the oche, shoots 180 and then retires to watch the seemingly interminable Lark Rise to Candleford. He also likes pottering around his garden dispensing Miracle Grow with liberal conservative largesse. So it’s only fitting that the Leader of the Opposition will appear on housewives’ favourite, gardener and erotic novelist Alan Titchmarsh’s daytime TV show. This is a PR masterstroke. Brown has benefitted from his interviews with Piers Morgan and Tesco magazine, not in the polls but in terms of perceptions. Cameron will strike at undecided and reluctant

Peter Hoskin

No surprises – and much Tory-bashing – in Brown’s Big Speech

Move along, now – there’s nothing to see here.  Or rather, reading Gordon Brown’s Big Speech, there’s nothing that you hadn’t already seen in the papers, or that you wouldn’t have expected to see anyway.  The four election themes got a mention.  Labour’s record in government was pushed and promoted to the point of absurdity.  Words like “new”, “fair” and “change” were flung around like so much confetti.  And no election date was given.  No alarms, no surprises. More than anything, Brown set about attacking the Tories on every conceivable level.  He caricatured Cameron & Co. as a party of privilege and wealth, who are more concerned about fox-hunting than

Peter Hoskin

Welcome to The Future Fair

So now we know.  Labour’s election slogan is A future fair for all.  And – as various folk, including Alex, have pointed out – it’s kinda screwy.  As in, “we’re all going to The Future Fair” kinda screwy.  So don’t expect it to catch on.  Unless, of course, there really are bright lights, big wheels and rollercoasters on offer. The slogan kickstarts a feverish weekend of activity.  Brown is going to set out the main themes of Labour’s campaign.  The Tories might try to sabotage it all.  And we may, possibly, perhaps, find out what the election date is.  Stay tuned, so to speak. P.S. I wouldn’t be too surprised

Friday

James Forsyth

Brown goes shopping for votes

There’s an interview with Gordon Brown today in the Mirror about his relationship with his mother. As you might expect given the subject, it is hardly an interrogation. Indeed, it manages to make Piers Morgan’s questions to him resemble the final part of the Frost Nixon interview. But what caught my eye was this note at the end, “This article appears in Tesco magazine, published by Cedar Communications Ltd. The magazine is available in store from March 1.” Tesco magazine isn’t small beer. Its circulation is more than five and a half million and data shows that more women read it than any other magazine. To Brown, the attraction of

David Blackburn

How much attention should politicians pay the competing groups of economists?

The recession has been intellectually thrilling, and I write that without a note of sarcasm. First, politicians argued as to whose understanding of Keynes was greatest; and now they’re in Keynes versus Hayek territory, over the timing and depth of cuts. The Chancellor and his Shadow have marshalled the various authorities who support their respective cases. The science of economics, if it is science, is in its adolescence. Should necessarily equivalent government policy be detirmined by pure intellectual opinions and reputations, especially as those are being forged for posterity by current events? Economics is as much history as science – like Coleridge’s lantern on the stern of the ship; it

David Blackburn

Labour’s spin machine needs a service

Has Alastair Campbell lost his touch? In his heyday, Labour’s spin was mesmeric, with the godlike Campbell blowing smoke and manipulating mirrors. Now their tactics are as obvious as Britney Spears. Having prepared the ground with Piers Morgan last weekend, Brown will attempt to divert attention from the dreadful state of the economy; his government’s collusion in torture; the steady increase of casualties in Afghanistan; the Labour party having a slanging match before the Chilcot Inquiry; Argentine posturing; James Purnell’s awkwardly timed resignation; and indeed the spectacle of Brown himself doing a Derek and Clive skit in the nude, which, if you want to make eating Sunday breakfast impossible, will

David Blackburn

Not a leg to stand on

Oh dear. The Evening Standard reports that Harriet Harman trod on Sir Thomas Legg’s toes and forbad him to publish claims that the fees office had turned down. Harman queried the ‘appropriateness’ of extending the enquiry beyond wrongly approved claims. English is a wonderful language and ‘appropriate’ has a number of nuances. The fees office rubber-stamped pornos, so what on earth did it turn down? Membership of Madame Jo Jo’s? A mail order bride as part of the second home allowance? In fact on reflection I don’t want know. Now on the face of it this disclosure is yet more bad news for Britain’s beleaguered political class: it looks shifty

David Blackburn

Purnell leaves parliament but not politics

The news that James Purnell is to stand down is a shock. It is clear that Purnell was disenchanted with Brown’s continued leadership and with the direction in which the Labour party was heading. Purnell was marginalised in parliament and his much vaunted alliance with John Cruddas came to nothing. Plainly, he believes that he can exert more influence outside the parliamentary Labour party than within it. The Tories stole the limelight this week with their commitment to public sector co-operatives; Purnell’s response fell flat, caught in the contradictory statist language that even the most uber-Blairites cannot escape. Purnell’s journey into the wilderness is the firmest evidence that the Conservatives

Daniel Korski

Sunny side up?

Earlier this week I asked what Obama’s experience could teach a Cameron government. At the same time, there has been a well-argued debate in The Times about whether the Tories should go negative or not. There is one point where the two issues converge – and that is in how a newly-elected government should deal with the country’s economic legacy. Once in power, a Tory government will be tempted to be optimistic, to point to the sunny uplands. General Colin Powell said “positive thinking is a force multiplier” and the Cameron team come across as natural adherents to this viewpoint. There is also the fact that the modern Tory agenda

Peter Hoskin

The numbers spoil Labour’s narrative

Labour have certainly come out of the traps snarling and gnashing this morning.  For one, they’re making the most of two letters in the FT, signed by 60 economists, which ostensibly support their position on the public finances.  And then there’s Gordon Brown’s speech to European leaders, in which he implores them to tackle the “hatred” of “the right”.  Naturally, by “the right”, he means “David Cameron”. It’s those letters which really grab the attention, though.  Not really because of what they say, or who has signed them, but because they’re suggestive of how the debate over the public finances is going to go.  Yep, the Tories get 20 economists

Thursday

James Forsyth

Cameron and the power of the bully pulpit

I must be one of the very few people who would genuinely like to see David Cameron give another speech on chocolate oranges. There was much mockery of it but it contained a very important point: there are some things that a business can do that have negative externalities to which the appropriate response is not taxation or regulation but social disapprobation. So, it was good to see Cameron promising both to use the power of his office to call out companies that sell age inappropriate products and to make it easier for people to protest against such behaviour. There are other areas where I expect social pressure could be

David Blackburn

First class chaps

Bravo Sir Nicholas Winterton! It’s pernicious that no one will pay for me to travel First Class. As two separate scions of the same upper crust, it is mine and Sir Nicholas’ birthright. The country is going to the dogs with all this plebeian impertinence. It’s like turning up at the airport and being asked if you’ve packed your own bags, which forces you to admit that the dastardly Social Chapter means you can no longer afford a batman to do it for you. Myself, I commute to and from Sussex on the milk train and the sleeper, rubbing shoulders with hoi polloi – no children thank God, but a

Peter Hoskin

Introducing Dave

Readers of the magazine will be familiar with Michael Heath’s series of ‘Flash Gordon’ cartoons, based on the life and sulks of our glorious Prime Minister.  Well, now it’s got a successor – ‘Dave’ – which, naturally enough, focuses on the Tory leader and would-be PM, Mr Cameron.  Here’s the first of them, from this week’s issue, for the benefit CoffeeHousers.  Just click on the image to make it bigger:

David Blackburn

Can it get much worse than this?

£4.3bn in the red, that is the gruesome fact of the government’s January accounts. Never before has the government borrowed money in January, usually a month of surplus as self-assessed income and corporation tax receipts line government coffers. Analysts forecast a surplus of £2.8bn, denoting just how bad the situation is. This is an exact copy of last July’s accounts, lending weight to the analysis that Britain’s recovery is slow and very precarious, an analysis confirmed by the weakest mortgage lending figures for ten years. Obviously tax revenues have collapsed. Mass redundancy, pay cuts and two years of heavy losses across the economy have decimated real incomes, making creeping inflation

Peter Hoskin

If Brown-Morgan can’t move the polls, what about the TV debates?

Brace yourselves.  There’s going to be poll after poll after poll in the weeks leading to the election.  And the onslaught starts in the Sun today, with the first of their YouGov daily tracker polls.  It is also the first to be conducted in the aftermath of the Brown and Morgan interview. So what’s the story?  Well, Labour’s vote is more or less unmoved – suggesting, in turn, that the public were more or less unmoved by Brown’s interview with Piers Morgan.  They’re on 30 percent (down 1), with the Tories on 39 percent (up 1), and the Lib Dems on 18 (down 1).  That’s a 9 point lead for

Wednesday

James Forsyth

What the markets are banking on

Hamish McRae’s column today contains news of a warning that I had not seen reported elsewhere: ‘The capital markets division of Royal Bank of Canada yesterday put out a ranking of sovereign risk – the risk that a country cannot repay its debts. Ireland and Greece came at the top, as you might expect, followed by Portugal and … yes, the UK. On that ranking we are more of a risk than Italy, France and Spain. That is just the view of one bank but it echoes those of others in the business of advising savers around the world of the risks of investing in different countries.’ My concern is

David Blackburn

Bare Argentine aggression

The Falklands are sovereign British territory and must be defended. The Times reports that Argentina’s President Kirchner has issued a decree (how quaintly autocratic) that all ships sailing in waters claimed by Argentina will require a permit. Presumably, that includes Desire Petroleum’s rig, which is en route to drill for an oil field comparable to the North Sea field. Over at Conservative Home, Daniel Hamilton points out that the decree contravenes international law and that Britain has a right to explore for oil unimpeded. So what are the Argentines up to? Nile Gardner explains: ‘If the floundering, corrupt and increasingly unpopular government in Argentina is foolish enough to choose a

David Blackburn

Vote for the party of Frank Gallagher<br />

Following the success of the ‘I’ve never voted Tory’ spoofs, Tim Montgomerie has launched My Labour Poster and welcomes your contributions. I imagine it’ll receive po-faced censure from CCHQ, but Cameron&Co will be privately thrilled if activists get it up and running.

Henry Featherstone

An early warning system for healthcare

Every few years we unearth another hospital scandal in which we discover, all too late, that many patients have needlessly died.  On the face of it there is no common theme to these failures: the bug clostridium dificille at Stoke Mandeville, possibly similar infections at Maidstone & Tunbridge Wells; emergency admissions at Mid-Staffordshire, and possibly poor hygiene at Basildon & Thurrock. But, as The Sun points out today, it seems that the Department of Health was warned in the strongest terms about flaws in the healthcare oversight mechanism. It is astounding that there is no system of performance improvement in the NHS.  But suppose there was. If we could, say,

David Blackburn

The Tory wobble is over, for the moment

The media are obsessed with a Tory crisis. And why not? It’s a good story. The Telegraph is cheerleading the circus. It gave exhaustive coverage to the absurd hen-fight in Westminster North; on Monday it reported on more ‘rumblings and grumblings’ in the shires; yesterday, their subject was David Cameron’s heavy handed response to the ‘backwoodsmen’; and today Simon Heffer collates these events into the conclusion that ‘even if  Mr Cameron doesn’t see how disenchanted the public is by its lack of lack of choice and his lack of definition, many of his MPs do. The ride is about to get rocky.’ By accident or design, the Telegraph’s analysis is