Uk politics

Monday

Daniel Korski

Who will be Cathy Ashton’s Sir Humphrey?

The fight for the most powerful job you’ve never heard of is being fought by people who you’ve probably also never heard of. For EU foreign policy “czar” Cathy Ashton has published her plans for Europe’s diplomatic service, which is meant to oversee the EU’s multibillion-pound annual development budget and have a diplomatic staff of about 7,000 people. Her proposals can be found here. The proposals have commentators are split. Dan Smith and Mark Leonard are in favour, but a couple of MEPs have called me expressing their frustration with the plans. European legislators are particularly concerned about the powers given to the Permanent Under-Secretary type figure, the Secretary-General of

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Back to his Tory best

George Osborne has just set the scene for tonight’s Chancellors’ debate by announcing something neither Darling or Cable will be able to match: a tax cut. It’s a real one, it will benefit some 20m workers and (best of all) it will be paid for by spending cuts. While the amount is not huge – everyone on under £43,000 will be £150 better off – it indicates the route the Conservatives would go down in government.   Trusting people with their own money, and stoking the recovery by cutting the tax on jobs. Here are the main points: 1) Osborne would raise National Insurance threshold in Apr11. One of the

Peter Hoskin

A smart move by Osborne – but he needs to ready himself for his opponents’ attacks

There’s little doubting it: the Tory plan to (at least partially) reverse Labour’s national insurance hike has handed George Osborne a high-calibre weapon for tonight’s TV debate.  It is, I suspect, an attractive and attention-grapping policy in itself.  But it also helps the shadow Chancellor paint the Tories as the party of aspiration.  Or, as Tim Montgomerie has put it: “Seven out of ten working people will be better off if Cameron becomes Prime Minister.” But announcing the policy this morning has also given Alistair Darling and Vince Cable a chance to very publicly denounce it later today.  We’ve already had a preview of what’s likely to form the central

Sunday

Peter Hoskin

Confirmed: Tories to “block” Labour’s planned national insurance hike 

We’ll have more details tomorrow but, for now, Tim Montgomerie has the lowdown.  As I said a few days ago, this is a smart move from the Tories, and gives them a good message to deploy on the doorsteps.  Indeed, Tim has already drafted it for them: “Seven out of ten working people will be better off if Cameron becomes Prime Minister.” UPDATE: The Telegraph has more information here.  Looks as though the Tories might keep the rise for those above a certain income (the Telegraph speculates £37,400).  Either way, we’ll know for sure tomorrow morning.

Peter Hoskin

Osborne must ask: why trust the party which ran up the credit card bill in the first place?

Public sector net borrowing, public sector net debt, total managed expenditure, departmental expenditure limits … zzzzz.  One of the main reasons why Labour has been able to fashion an economic narrative, against all odds, is because they can rely on some pretty esoteric language.  Thus debt becomes interchangeable with deficit, and cuts can be hidden under layers and layers of different spending metrics.  Perhaps more than anything, this almost-casual deception is Brown’s greatest skill. Which is why it’s encouraging that the Tories have tried to demystify some of the fiscal debate, putting it into language that everyone can follow.  They’ve set out their “more for less” argument by referring to

David Blackburn

The most corrupt parliament ever?

It makes you proud to be British. Where resourcefulness and self-worth are concerned, our political class is unmatched. Former Sports minister and ambassador for the 2018 World Cup bid, Richard Caborn, has been stung by the Sunday Times soliciting influence for £2,500 a day ‘plus expenses, obviously’. Obviously Richard, we would expect nothing less from a man of your eminence. So to for former Defence Minister, Adam Ingram, who takes lobbying so seriously he charges VAT. I wonder how Colonel Gadaffi reacted to the 17.5 percent extra charge when Ingram facilitated the construction of a new Libyan defence academy? Hypocrisy is more ubiquitous at Westminster than Pugin. Apologists for the expenses scandal argue that

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Explaining the NotW endorsement

The News of the World’s endorsement of the Conservatives today is worth reading. It has taken some time and much soul-searching for the paper to make this decision. Papers, even under the same proprietor, have different readerships with different outlooks on life. The Sun came out for the Tories on the last day of the Labour conference last September, but its stablemate has taken far longer. It has been firm in its denunciation of Brown’s failings but – like many voters – it has looked long and hard at just how a Tory government would correct them. The reason for its endorsement now is laid out in the leading article.

Saturday

Peter Hoskin

Three Sunday polls have growing Tory leads

We’re operating in or around the margin of error here, so we can’t be certain whether this is truly the result of the Budget – but it’s still striking that three polls in tomorrow’s papers have growing Tory leads.  The ICM poll for the News of the World has the Tories up one to 39 percent, Labour down one to 31, and the Lib Dems on 19.   YouGov’s daily tracker has the the Tories unchanged on 37 percent, Labour down one to 32, and the Lib Dems on 19.  And Anthony Wells is reporting a BPIX poll for the Mail on Sunday, which has the Tories on 37 percent, and

Peter Hoskin

How Brown would get Darling out of the Treasury

After reading Brown’s claims in the Guardian today, this Kill A Minister mechanism in his speech today rather jumped out at me: “I will set out a clear and public annual contract for each new Cabinet Minister, detailing what I expect them and their department to deliver to the British people, and that their continued appointment is dependent on their delivery just as it would be in a business or any other organisation.” I mean, you can just imagine what Alistair Darling’s first “contract” would look like: You, the Chancellor, will undertake to deliver the following to the British people: i) Economic growth of 5 percent in 2010-11 ii) A

Peter Hoskin

Will anyone take any notice of Labour’s five pledges?

So the Labour pledge card is back – and, this time, it’s a good deal more nebulous than in 1997 or 2001, but quite similar to 2005.*  Here are the themes that Brown & Co. will be campaigning on: i) Secure our recovery ii) Raise family living standards iii) Build a high tech economy iv) Protect frontline services v) Strengthen fairness in communities There’s another key difference with previous elections too: one of trust.  Sure, voters have always been reluctant to take politicians’ promises and exhortations at face value.  But it’s a safe bet that they’re even more sceptical and uninterested this time around. *Although, as Alastair Campbell points out,

Friday

Daniel Korski

The Euro is so great – let’s have two of them

European leaders have now agreed to bail out Greece in a coordinated affair, involving the IMF and bilateral assistance. The Times has written this up as a grab for more centralisation of policy-making by European Council President Herman Van Rompuy, but even the Tories know that’s not true, as judge by William Hague’s calm remarks. Trying to understand the problems of the euro has sent me back to my undergraduate economic textbooks and Robert Mundell’s work on optimum currency areas. As Spectator readers (many of whom are bankers) will know, the US economist theorised that a group of countries will benefit from a common currency like the euro if three

Ed Howker

Exclusive: how Byers’ lobbying emails dump him and Adonis in it

Stephen Byers is in a bind. Desperate to salvage some credibility following the Channel 4 Dispatches sting in which he claimed to be a “cab for hire” by lobbyists who were prepared to pay between £3,000 and £5,000 for his Westminster contacts, he referred himself to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards at the start of this week. Mr. Byers is sure that his comments, broadcast on Monday, will not constitute a breach of Parliamentary rules. And, I suspect, some of his defence will come in the form of the clutch of retractions he sent to the production company posing as lobbyists before broadcast. He should not be too sure. Coffee

David Blackburn

The Tories are paying the price for Osborne’s mercurial political instincts

I’m at a loss. How can a government that will raise the national debt to £1.4 trillion be trusted to run the economy? The Daily Politics/Com Res poll shows that Labour is more trusted on the economy than the Tories; it indicts George Osborne’s political performance. As Fraser noted, Osborne blew an unprecedented opportunity on yesterday’s Today programme. The danger inherent in a £1.4 trillion national debt is not a difficult argument to make. Tax hikes, inflation and soaring interest rates will be the progeny of Brown’s continued borrowing binge. Yet Osborne confined his attack to valid but esoteric points about credit ratings and a list of acronyms. Ken Clarke

David Blackburn

A week to forget for Andrew Adonis

The weekend cannot come quick enough for Andrew Adonis. What an awful week. The BA strike wrecked travel; the absurd Stephen Byers dragged him into the lobbying scandal; the RMT voted in favour of Bob Crow’s surreal steam-era fantasy; and today comes the coup de grace: the High Court decides that the third Heathrow runway is ‘untenable’. Transport is beginning to make Northern Ireland look like a soft brief, but Adonis hides his perturbation. He responded to this morning’s news by saying: “I welcome this court ruling. Heathrow is Britain’s principal hub airport. It is vital not only to the national economy but also enables millions of citizens to keep

Peter Hoskin

What did Darling mean by his “deeper and tougher” cuts claim?

There’s been some hubbub on the good ol’ blogosphere about Darling’s claim that Labour spending cuts would be “deeper and tougher” than Thatcher’s.  Did Thatcher actually cut spending?  What would that indicatate about Labour’s plans?  And so on. Part of the confusion is caused by the different metrics that are referred to as “spending”.  So here’s a quick guide to what Darling might have had in mind: OPTION 1: Real-terms total spending.  As the below graph from the IFS shows (taken from this excellent blogpost by the FT’s Alex Barker), real-terms total public spending only fell in two years of the Thatcher premiership.  In all the other years it rose. 

Thursday

Fraser Nelson

Labour’s spending cuts exposed

Darling has now exposed as false the Brown/Balls dividing line of “investment vs cuts”. If Labour were to win, he said, the cuts would be worse than anything seen under Thatcher in the 1980s. This is Darling’s problem: he’s a dreadful liar. The IFS today laid out the scale of the cuts that would happen whoever wins the election, and the below graph is worth reprinting. Overall spending falls 12 percent (once dole and debt interest are taken into account). So when Darling says this is worse than anything in the 1980s, he is simply stating a fact. You’d never catch Balls or Brown doing that, by the way, and

Peter Hoskin

The two sides of Alistair Darling

After delivering an insipid, insufficient Budget yesterday, Alistair Darling has now smuggled a little bit of honesty into the fiscal debate.  In interview with Nick Robinson, he has claimed that if Labour is re-elected its spending cuts “will be deeper and tougher” than Thatcher’s.  Needless to say, that’s a message which will not sit well with his Cabinet colleagues like Ed “investment vs cuts” Balls. And this is precisely why Darling is such a confusing figure.  Yes, he deserves some praise for being more upfront about the public finances than his predecessor ever could be, and for restricting the wilder excesses of Brown and Balls.  But it’s hard to forget

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Labour’s plans require non-ringfenced Budgets to be cut by 25 percent in the next parliament

At lunchtime, the press headed off to hear the referee’s verdict on the Budget. The Institute for Fiscal Studies is now so respected that its view of the Budget largely determines the news agenda. Its briefings are now so popular that they can no longer be held in their basement. So, journalists, economists and accountants piled into a room at the University of London Union which is normally used for battle of the bands contests rather than Budget analysis. The most striking number the IFS presented was that if Labour ringfences the already protected areas of spending for the whole parliament, other departmental budgets will have to be cut by

Peter Hoskin

How to foil a Dispatches sting

The producer and director behind the Dispatches lobbying sting, Philip Clothier, has a snappy article over at Prospect, in which he basically asks the question: how could MPs have been so stupid?  But it’s his suggestion that some former ministers may have got off lightly which really caught my eye: “Meanwhile, one former Labour cabinet minister was interviewed, but the sound was so poor that we could only hear appetising phrases. He had the good fortune to be sitting in front of a brightly lit window, over-exposing the shot. And we just couldn’t understand much of what another former minister said because of his thick accent.” Cue all MPs adopting

David Blackburn

Vested interests at the MoD

Yesterday, Alistair Darling pledged £4 billion for the MoD, earmarked for Afghanistan. He did not specify what the cash would buy, presumably because the Defence Spending Review will take place after the election. But a day is a long time in politics and the forthcoming spending review no longer seems to be so decisive: BAE and the MoD have signed a £127million four-year contract to design the proposed Type 26 frigate. This is welcome in principle: the Type 22 and 23 frigates need to be replaced eventually and British companies and their employees will prosper. But this contract should have fallen under the spending review – defence procurement remains unreformed