Uk politics

Tuesday

Peter Hoskin

Defending his own premiership

The Times’s story of how Bob Ainsworth came to be Defence Secretary is equal parts extraordinary and disheartening.  Here are the key passages: “Mr Ainsworth’s predecessor, John Hutton, had indicated to Mr Brown in mid-May that he was thinking of leaving the Government. Mr Hutton, recently remarried, had a compelling family reason for wanting to step down. But Mr Brown, preoccupied with the elections and the possibility of a leadership challenge, appears to have spent little time thinking about the vacancy. It wasn’t until around noon the day after the polls that he began to focus on who should oversee Britain’s military and its engagement in Afghanistan. In the midst

Monday

Peter Hoskin

A burden for future governments

If you haven’t already, it’s well worth reading Robert Peston’s analysis of the first annual report from UKFI, the government’s banking wing.  There are plenty of fascinating titbits in there, but this passage on how long it will take the government to sell its shares in Lloyds and RBS rather jumped out at me: “As the annual report makes clear, flogging perhaps £100bn of stock in Lloyds and RBS – which is what the holdings may easily be worth in a couple of year – can’t be done overnight. That’s just too big a mouthful for investors to swallow quickly. How can I be certain? Well in the entire history

Peter Hoskin

What did Mitchell mean?

Andrew Mitchell is doing the media rounds to discuss the Tories’ new policy paper on international development, and he seemed to let slip with a major claim on defence spending to the BBC earlier.  Here’s how the indispensable PoliticsHome reports it: “Mr Mitchell said that it was not a question of choosing between the budgets for defence and international development, adding that the two departments would work much more closely under a Conservative government. ‘I don’t think that defence will face cuts, but it’s not a question of either or, you have to do both,” he said. ‘The development effort in Afghanistan which hasn’t always gone well and so to

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Continuing the immigration debate

My post on immigration the other week was picked up by BBC World Service, who invited me to discuss it with Lord Maurice Peston (podcast here). I regard it as one of the most important yet least discussed issues in Britain right now, and my original also raised some typically robust comments and critiques from CoffeeHousers. My point is that Britain has a dangerously dysfunctional labour market, one so flawed that when the economy expands it sucks in foreign workers rather than tackling our unemployment. I also revealed that all net job creation in the private sector can be accounted for by immigration. Anyway, allow me to respond to some

Daniel Korski

Who watches the watchmen?

In the US, a storm is brewing over Dick Cheney’s alleged role in concealing an intelligence programme from Congress. Whatever the details of the alleged offence, it raises an interesting question: should oversight of the intelligence community intrinsically be different from other kinds of parliamentary oversight? Over in the States, Legislators were content to delegate the management of intelligence agencies to the executive until a series of abuses was revealed in the early 1970s, and the House and Senate Committees on Intelligence were set up in 1977. In Britain, however, Parliament has only had scant role in overseeing the intelligence community. Only nine parliamentarians have the legal authority to pry

Sunday

Daniel Korski

The UK “surge” debate

The support for Britain’s involvement in Afghanistan is, for the first time, showing major signs of fraying. Nick Clegg broke ranks with the other party leaders last week, and this weekend the total number of British deaths went beyond the number of soldiers killed in Iraq. Understandably, the Sunday papers are filled with stories about the lack of troops and kit. The Observer reports that an emergency review is taking place in the MoD to see if more soldiers need to be sent out. So what to make of it all? First of all, it is clear that there were too few troops and civilians deployed to start off. I

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

What Labour women think of Gordon

For those of you who missed it, Radio Four has just broadcast a piece about what the women who worked with think Gordon Brown think of him. Not a lot, it seems. Here are some of the quotes: Jane Kennedy “Well I think that the Labour Party is expecting us to do better. The Parliamentary Labour Party were told in the first meeting after the election in June we were promised that there was going to be a change.  We haven’t seen that change yet, we haven’t even really seen the kind of clarity and willingness to listen to what the voters are telling us about policy.  I’ve had lots

Peter Hoskin

A framework for shelving tax cuts

So, the News of the World claims that the Tories are planning to shelve some of their tax-cutting proposals – including the inheritance tax cut and tax breaks for married couples – to help combat the fiscal crisis.  Guido suspects that the news came direct from the Blackberry of Andy Coulson, but the Tories have told Tim Montgomerie to “treat the story with a ton of salt”. Either way, I do – like Tim – have some sympathy for the idea that commitments will have to be sidelined to overcome Brown’s debt mountain.  The longer those terrible deficits remain, the more future generations will be burdened by the Dear Leader’s

Peter Hoskin

So who’s really “playing politics” over troop numbers?

Just when you thought Brown’s government couldn’t sink any lower, you go and read the Sunday Times’s lead story today and the comments it contains from “senior Labour figures”, including a minister.  Here are the first few paragraphs: “Senior Labour figures accused the head of the army last night of playing politics as he said that there were too few troops and helicopters in the Afghan war zone. One minister expressed fury that General Sir Richard Dannatt, the chief of the general staff, had attended a private dinner with Tory MPs and suggested an extra 2,000 troops were needed in Helmand province. The general’s remarks put him at odds with

Saturday

Daniel Korski

Good lord

Earlier this week, Lord Malloch Brown announced he’s resigning his brief as Africa Minister in the Foreign Office. I’m sure this will cause some rejoicing, including among my Coffee House colleagues. It was, after all, the Spectator that went to town on the former UN staffer’s grace-and-favour appartment in Admiralty Arch and the other niceties offered to him by the Prime Minister a few years ago. However, I have always found Malloch Brown professional, courteous, and insightful. He may have struggled to find his proper role immediately upon appointment – foolishly describing himself as a Richelieu-type character to David Milliband’s king – and sometimes allowed his sense of self-worth get

Peter Hoskin

Smith’s claims call Brown’s political judgement into question

Ok, let’s get the hard, grim facts out of the way first: Jacqui Smith was an ineffective Home Secretary whose expense claims were dubious, to say the least, and who rightly lost her job in government.  But – having said that – it’s hard not to feel slightly sorry for her as she discusses the embarrassment caused by her husband’s porn rentals in an interview with the Guardian today.  The whole piece is a remarkably candid exchange: she also discusses how she “did wrong” with her expenses, and how she’d “definitely” be voted out “if the general election was tomorrow”.  But this passage struck me more than any other:      “[Smith]

Friday

Daniel Korski

National security priorities: your say

Watch out: it’s security review season. The Brown government is about to issue a second version of its National Security Strategy. You can expect Pauline Neville-Jones to put out a revised version of the paper she did for the Tories a while ago. The Obama administration is set to launch a new “Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review,” to be headed up by Deputy Secretary of State Jacob “Jack” Lew and Policy Planning chief Anne-Marie Slaughter. While NATO has just begun work on its Strategic Concept, and Russia recently updated its National Security Strategy. Oh, and the EU disseminated a new Security Strategy under the French EU Presidency, which also saw

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Brown’s legacy of inequality, poverty and joblessness

We all know Labour has failed to run an efficient economy or public services, but what’s little discussed is its failure to achieve even its own goals. Had Brown bankrupted the country but, say, made the poorest much better off, then Labour members might not be facing such an existential crisis. As it stands they won three victories, trebled health spending, redistributed some £1.5 trillion – and will end up with a society even more ‘unequal’ than it ever was under Thatcher. I look at this in my column today, and thought I’d share a few of the points with CoffeeHousers. First, equality. This (rather than making the poor better

Andrew Webster

Whom do you trust more?

So, a ComRes poll for the Daily Politics has Cameron leading Brown on the issue of which party leader would be more honest about spending cuts. It echoes a poll that we conducted a few days ago; the results of which we figured we’d share with CoffeeHousers, before our work experience at the Speccie comes to an end. Basically, we hit the streets of London (avoiding Westminster and all the party hacks), and asked around 350 people: “Who do you trust more, Gordon Brown or David Cameron?” Sure, it may not be as scientific as a YouGov or ComRes poll, but the results are still striking. Cameron polled a comfortable

Peter Hoskin

The extent of Johnson’s loyalty?

Kevin Maguire’s Commons Confidential column in the latest New Statesman contains this intriguing little snippet: “Home Secretary Alan Johnson was a picture of innocence during the plot to oust Brown and replace him with a former postie with the initials A J. Not so his entourage. It has come to the attention of No 10 that one of his team offered a job in Downing Street to a hackette.” After his article for the Indy earlier this week – and his fizzy performance in Manchester yesterday (covered by John Rentoul as part of his AJ4PM series) – you suspect Johnson is being a little more active than the Dear Leader

Daniel Korski

The Lib Dems threaten to go AWOL 

Though Nick Clegg has greater pre-existing international experience than either David Cameron or Gordon Brown (having worked in Brussels), he cannot help but see international affairs through a narrow political lens. Last year it was Israel’s targetting of Hamas, now it is Nato’s Afghan mission. Clegg wants the British troop contribution to ISAF either massively expanded or for the boys to come home. Simple enough. But it is also a sign that the Lib Dems, despite having such foreign policy luminaries like Ming Campbell on their benches, lack depth. It would be great for the number of British troop in Helmand to be expanded. But with almost 9000 troops already

Peter Hoskin

Lansley takes one step forward and two steps back on spending

Although Andrew Lansley’s “10 percent” gaffe may have worked out alright in the end, I can’t help but think he’s pushing his luck with his latest comments: Andrew Lansley has called on the Government to come clean about their spending plans after it was revealed that the NHS has been asked to plan for efficiency savings of £15-20 billion against its 2010-11 budget. The Department of Health has refused to confirm whether these savings will be available for reinvestment in the NHS – if they are not, it will equate to a real terms annual cut to the NHS budget of 2.3 per cent. Andrew, the Shadow Health Secretary, said,

Peter Hoskin

No change on the Coulson front

After the news that there won’t be a new police investigation last night, the second thing the Tories feared most hasn’t happened either: neither the Guardian nor any other outlet has anything to further implicate Andy Coulson in the phone-hacking scandal this morning.  Indeed, the Guardian’s main story concerns how a private investigator working for the NotW collected phone messages from Sir Alex Ferguson and Alan Shearer, among others.  That deepens the media controversy, but hardly fuels the political controversy which was trying to burst into flames yesterday. I should stress – as I did in a comment yesterday – that I think phone-hacking is a disgraceful practice.  But the

Thursday

James Forsyth

The old gray lady on Cameron

Christopher Caldwell’s New York Times Magazine profile of David Cameron has finally been published; Caldwell first interviewed Cameron for it last year. I expect the Tories will see it as an important non-electoral milestone for them, a sign that the American establishment expects Cameron to be the next Prime Minister. The piece is, as you would expect with a Caldwell article, well written and, as it is written for an audience that knows little about Cameron, offers a good overview of the project. Caldwell proposes that there are two types of modernizers. “There are really two strands of modernizers in the Tory party. There are the green-friendly, diversity-oriented, welfare-state-defending ones