Uk politics

Tuesday

Peter Hoskin

Labour's pursuit of Ashcroft could backfire

I wrote yesterday that Lord Ashcroft’s statement about his tax status should have drawn a “rather neat line under the issue”.  Sure, it’s hardly ideal that someone with such influence in our politics hasn’t been paying UK taxes on much of his wealth (something which could equally be said of Labour donors like Lord Paul and Lakshmi Mittal), and was keeping mysterious about it.  But at least, now, most of the uncertainty surrounding Ashcroft’s position has been removed.  And we have his indication that he will become a full UK taxpayer in due course.   But I hadn’t counted on the tenacity of Labour, who are trying to spin this

Peter Hoskin

Who should be the Tory attack dog?

A persuasive passage (complete with a spiky, ministerial quote – highlighted) from Rachel Sylvester’s column this morning: “There is growing concern among some Shadow Cabinet ministers and strategists about the increasingly aggressive tone Mr Cameron uses against Mr Brown. It is, they believe, no coincidence that the poll gap has narrowed as the Tory leader launches a series of increasingly vitriolic personal attacks on the Prime Minister. Last week, for example, by turning the bully into the victim, Mr Cameron seems to have simply solidified support for Mr Brown. There was a similar backlash to the Conservatives’ misleading ‘death tax’ poster campaign. Although ministers admit privately that ‘even I couldn’t

Monday

Peter Hoskin

Brown goes crime-fighting<br />

Yeah, I know: 4,500 words of Brown’s rhetoric is too much for most CoffeeHousers to bear.  So I thought I’d read his “speech on crime and anti-social behaviour” on your behalf, and highlight three things which jumped out at me.  Here goes: 1. Taking on the Tories over DNA retention. Paul Waugh has already blogged on what may turn out to be the most significant passage of Brown’s speech – at least so far as the cut ‘n’ thrust of the election campaign is concerned.  In it, Brown highlights the case of Jeremiah Sheridan, who raped a woman some 19 years ago, but was caught last year thanks to DNA

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Are the Tories over the worst of the wobble?

We are expecting at least one poll tonight, the YouGov tracker, and I think there will be one other. If these polls show the Tories ahead by six—a level that just last week was seen as rather disappointing—they will add to the sense that the Tories are over the worst of the wobble. Significantly, the Lord Ashcroft story, an irritating one for the party and particularly so today, is not being depicted as part of a Tories in crisis story. (One does wonder why Ashcroft didn’t choose to get the news out earlier after the Information Commissioner ruled at the beginning of February that the Cabinet Office should reveal what

Peter Hoskin

Market tremors

Forget the polls, the markets should be enough to give any of us a sharp dose of The Fear.  Exhibit A: Sterling, which has slumped below $1.50 today, for the first time in nine months, and on the back of what analyists are calling “deficit worries”.  And Exhibit B: the UK Gilt markets, where rising interest rates suggest that investors are rapidly losing confidence in Britain’s ability to pay back its debt, just as Coffee House’s Mark Bathgate warned a few months back.  Check out the FT for the full story. Of course, I say “forget the the polls” – but this is all very poll-related.  The possiblity of a

Daniel Korski

Wanted: The Hague Doctrine

Out of the conference hall, and back on to the campaign trail, it would nice to see the Tories talking about the things which make them ready for government.  In particular, William Hague should make a foreign policy speech setting out what ideas he has, and which would merit him being referred to as the likely “greatest foreign secretary in a generation” by David Cameron. Hague’s past foreign policy speeches have been solid, but unspectacular. He ticks off the likely issues, talks about global trends and looks knowledgeable about the crises that could emerge. But there is no overaching concept, such David Miliband’s idea of Britain as a “global hub”.

Peter Hoskin

Lord Ashcroft confirms his tax status

Lord Ashcroft has just released a statement admitting that he’s a non-dom, and suggesting that he’ll soon become a full UK taxpayer.  Here’s the key passage: “My precise tax status therefore is that of a ‘non-dom’. Two of Labour’s biggest donors – Lord Paul (recently made a privy councillor by the Prime Minister) and Sir Ronald Cohen, both long-term residents of the UK, are also ‘non-doms’. As for the future, while the non-dom status will continue for many people in business or public life, David Cameron has said that anyone sitting in the legislature – Lords or Commons – must be treated as resident and domiciled in the UK for

Peter Hoskin

The morning after the speech before

So, what did the newspapers make of Cameron’s Big Speech?  A brisk stroll through this morning’s coverage, and you’ll come across the whole gamut of responses: from wholehearted enthusiasm in the Sun, to wholehearted scepticism in the Independent.  But the general tone is somewhere in between: the mitigated praise of, say, the Times or the Guardian.  Which is, I think, fair enough.  The speech struck me as effective, perhaps elegant, without ever quite hitting the heights. But the Tories should only be concerned by the media response insofar as it’s a conduit for their own message.  What bits of that message have cut through?  Will that message resonate with voters? 

Sunday

James Forsyth

The no notes speech does the trick for Cameron again

Whenever a sense of crisis is building around him, David Cameron delivers a speech without notes. This has the effect of bringing things to a head, of creating a moment which, if Cameron can make it through, the situation is defused. Today’s speech did that. It has, I suspect, moved the story on from Tory wobbles. This strategy is, obviously, not without risk. If Cameron had dried up on stage or mangled something beyond repair then the crisis story would have been escalated. The intensity with which George Osborne and Michael Gove, Cameron’s two closest shadow Cabinet allies, were listening to the speech showed how much was at stake. The

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Cameron to speak 'from the heart'

There is only one topic of conversation here in Brighton, the shrinking Tory poll lead. The optimistic take is that a poll suggesting Labour would be the largest party actually makes the prospect of five more years of Gordon Brown real to people and so lets the Tories emphasise that this election is choice between them and Labour. As Cameron’s spokesperson jokes, ‘Labour’s underdog strategy has been blown apart’ The poll does give David Cameron’s speech today a whole new level of significance. Cameron will reprise his walking and talking technique that served him so well in 2005 and 2007 today. He will speak ‘from the heart’ for about half

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Hammer blow or gift from God?

Is the Sunday Times poll a hammer blow to the Tories, or a gift from God? It sounds a weird question, but think of the logic. So far, Cameron’s big mistake was to allow the campaign to become a referendum on him. He was desperate to turn that into a basic question: do you want five more years of Brown? Until now, the voters’ response would be “yeah, right. Brown is going down. The question is whether I’m enthusiastic about you lot, with your fuzzy green tree logo and your lack of any discernable agenda, and the answer is no”. As James said, the message “five more years of Brown”

Saturday

Fraser Nelson

A tonic to dispel doubt

If any CoffeeHousers have been feeling despondent about the Tores, I have the perfect tonic: Cameron’s YouTube video released today. In my News of the World column last week, I listed five messages I thought he should give. And he ticked all of them off – and then some. It was one of those biannual events: where Cameron gives a speech that he obviously wrote himself, and put a lot of energy into it. And the result is always great. Now, this may be a wavelength thing: some CoffeeHousers may see a whole load of cliches. But I see in here an agenda for change – plus some clever debating

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Telling tales of his mother and father

Gordon Brown does not have much of a personal “backstory” but he does talk about his family. When he’s feeling guilty about something, he mentions his father. But today, speaking to the Welsh Labour Party, he again talks about a figure we heard about a few days ago: his grandfather. “Like so many here I come from a family whose grandfather went without work during much of the 1930s. A grandfather whose small savings gave his son, my father, the chance of an education, the first in our family to go to university. And the lesson of those days is that even in the worst of times families helped each

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Hague warns the country: If you don’t vote Conservative this time, it will be too late to reverse Britain’s decline

As this morning papers’ show, the Tories know that their spring conference here in Brighton offers them a chance to change the narrative of this campaign, to get back on the front foot. William Hague’s speech, the first big set-piece of the event, tried to frame the choice facing the country at the election as being between ‘change or ruin’. Hague warned that if the country doesn’t return a Conservative government at this election, ‘it will be too late…too late to reverse the decline: the debt will be too big, the bureaucracy too bloated, the small businesses too stifled, the slope Britain is sliding down will be too steep.’ Labour

David Blackburn

Change we must believe in

Both James and Tim Montgomerie felt that William Hague must be more prominent during this campaign and Cameron has reached the same conclusion. Hague opened the spring confernece with a stark, bleak message: “And I say it is that most crucial election because I believe the choice for Britain is as stark as this: it is change or ruin.” He then detailed the easiest illustration of Brown’s appalling economic stweardship: a 13 year statistical progress of regression for which Brown, and Brown alone, is responsible. ‘When Gordon Brown took over, this, our great country, was the 4th largest economy in the world. Now it is falling behind and forecast within

Daniel Korski

Let us help plucky Moldova

Now that the post-Cold War era has ended it is hard to find small, inspirational states who seek to cement a new-found independence and yearn for what the West has to offer. Georgia looked like such a state until Russian aggression and Tblisi’s behaviour put an end to the country’s westward journey. Ukraine is too big, and too bolshy to count. Belarus is happy in Moscow’s embrace.  But one country still fits the bill – Moldova. Sandwiched between Ukraine and Romania, Europe’s absolute poorest country is undergoing a new political spring after the recent elections. A new, Western-minded, youthful coalition government has replaced the old-style communists. It faces enormous challenges,

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The Tories need to hammer home that tax cuts will stimulate growth

George Osborne saved the 2007 Tory conference with a tax cut. He’s recalling that mood today, elaborating on the plans to cut corporation tax which – as James detailed a while ago – will be the backbone of his first budget. Now, you may think: we know all this. Osborne has said he’d cut corporation tax from 28p to 25p and cutting the small companies rate to 20p. He had promised to go lower still, telling the CBI  last April that Britain “will need to go further if we are to keep pace with an increasingly competitive global economy” – and we have heard no more of this since. But

Friday

James Forsyth

The election speculation has given Cameron an opening

Tory spring forum gives David Cameron a chance to regain the momentum. The media will be there in numbers and I suspect that the rumours of an early election mean that it will get more attention than it otherwise would have done. Cameron’s speech is a real chance to show what the Tories are going to fight the election on. The speech isn’t as important as the one he gave at the 2007 conference when Brown appeared set to call an election, but Cameron would be well advised to reprise a couple of tricks from it. He should speak without a text—Cameron is just such a better speaker that way.

Daniel Korski

Defence debate? No thanks, we are British

A few days ago, BBC Newsnight ran in effect the first live TV debate between the three parties when Secretary of State for Defence, Bob Ainsworth, Shadow Defence Secretary, Liam Fox, and Liberal Democrat defence spokesperson Nick Harvey shared a platform at the Imperial War museum. The programme was meant to focus on the main issues facing the future of British defence and security. In the event, it defaulted to a discussion about Afghanistan. Despite Jeremy Paxman’s prodding, many of the strategic questions were shirked as an audience of generals and airmen fought each other over which service had played a bigger role in the Afghan theatre, and the issue

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

An interview packed with Brownies

Brownies galore in our PM’s interview with the Economist. So many, in fact, that I thought I do a quick Fisk:   The Economist: The big worry seems to be the deficit—the deficit. What should the message should be? Gordon Brown: I actually think that the first thing that we’ve got to do as a global community—and I said it this morning and I’ll say it again—is that the reforms of the global financial system are not complete. As far as Britain is concerned, we are dealing with a one-off hit as a result of globalisation. FN: Let us pause, here, to consider the brazenness. Brown’s policies pumped the UK