Fraser Nelson is a Times columnist and a former editor of The Spectator.
When I met Chris Grayling last week, he was about the only member of the shadow cabinet who looked relaxed rather than as though he was nervously awaiting news of the reshuffle. His work on welfare reform had been hailed widely enough for him to feel secure. ‘I’d like to stay in this department. I’m
Britain is now as likely to go bust as RBS – this is the official verdict of the markets. At the bottom of this post is Bloomberg’s Graph of the Day, which shows how Britain’s dodgiest bank and Europe’s dodgiest government now have the same “credit default swap” rating – the yardstick the markets use to guage
How’s this for a frank assessment of the UK economy? “I would urge you to sell any sterling you might have. It’s finished. I hate to say it, but I would not put any money in the UK”. It’s by Jim Rogers, who co-founded the Quantum Fund with George Soros. The markets agree with him – the pound is, again,
Ken Clarke walked back into the chamber to cheers as if he’d just won a by-election, itself an indication of how little we’ve seen from the man who took an MP’s salary for the last 11 years but has seldom been seen around the House. It was his first time, ever, on an opposition front
For me, this reshuffle is blemished by the puzzling decision to make Theresa May shadow work and pensions secretary. Welfare reform is, by some margin, the toughest task in politics. If Cameron was genuinely planning to go through with it, he’d realise it would be his single most important departmental appointment. You’re talking about liberating millions
There’s a scene from Superman: The Movie which sums up the problem with the banking bailout. As the eponymous hero catches Lois Lane falling from a skyscraper, he says ‘Easy miss, I’ve got you’. She replies ‘You got me? Who’s got you?’ So it is with the Gordon Brown and the banks. The bailout plan is intended
So it’s official – Ken Clarke is back in a reshuffle to be announced tomorrow, replacing Alan Duncan as Shadow Business Secretary. Clarke promised to behave over a lunch with Cameron and Osborne yesterday. He apparently told them he does not accept the party line on Lisbon or the EPP, but will shut up about
The game is up for Brown. Cameron’s lead has doubled to 13 points, and that’s even before he’s got back in his stride. It’s fairly obvious what’s going to happen next: Brown will cling on, fight, lose then quit. Perhaps he’ll lose by a little, perhaps by a lot, but he’s toast. Then Labour’s fighting
David Cameron has long been keen for his shadow Cabinet to exude greater empathy with recession-struck Britain — and he has inadvertently succeeded in one important regard. Most are now fearful of losing their jobs. The coming reshuffle is being spoken of like a vicious redundancy plan that could claim any scalp at random. Frontbenchers
It’s bloody depressing being a columnist right now. The meltdown is easily the most important topic, but how many variants of this can you produce before readers give up? Or think they have read it all before? I was going to give you the latest economic horror story of our L-shaped downturn but instead I’ll
Will Gordon Brown’s stimulus serve only to suck in more immigrants? The Prime Minister should ask himself this as he visits the London Olympic 2012 site – it’s a classic example of the problem. Sure, there have been plenty of jobs created by the construction. But which English borough registered the biggest increase in National
If the Tories really didn’t want a third runway at Heathrow they should have called for one. That would have stopped Gordon Brown. He is only going ahead because he thinks it will draw a dividing line between the supposedly pro-business Labour and naïve tree-hugging Tories. And I confess that I started out being in
Another good day for Gordon Brown – not because anyone watching PMQs from the gallery would have been inspired (not even Lord Mandelson) but because he has so much to be guilty about and brushed a lot of it off. The highlight of this PMQs was about how the two party leaders use the recession as weapon,
Now that Brown has copied the Tory proposal to underwrite bank loans, what’s the real picture on interest rates? Since the UK debt crisis started, the Bank of England base rates have become woefully detached from the rates charged to real people. This is powerfully summarised by three graphs from Citi, which I reprint here..
Superb poster by the Tories which makes debt into a real, human issue (just as Coffee House urged him to in November) – a picture of a baby with the words “Dad’s nose, Mum’s eyes, Gordon Brown’s debt”. It calculates that a baby born today will owe £17,000 – and there is no exaggeration here. Brown repeatedly claims
James Purnell is the welfare and pensions secretary – the title ‘work and pensions’ is a bit of a euphemism. Britain isn’t a planned economy, the government doesn’t set employment levels, so the ‘jobs summit’ today is based on a false premise. We ain’t Cuba. Yet Brown wants to play up to the narrative that
Gordon Brown’s trick is setting the parameters of debate, and fooling the opposition into accepting them. And in the next few weeks, he has a mission: to define the Obama bailout for the British media. He must teach them to see it as a Brown-style stimulus – thus allowing him to be quoted, without criticism,
Even though it’s deemed America’s second most influential book, there are plenty in Britain who haven’t heard of Atlas Shrugged – or Ayn Rand, its Russian-born author who had such a profound impact on American conservatism. Now is a very good time to read it, because – as Stephen Moore argues in the Journal today
More defections from Tory HQ: Natalie Kirby, Cameron’s assistant head of media, is off to run the press at….. McDonald’s UK. Before Coffee Housers snigger, I’d like to point out that McDonald’s corporate debt has a lower risk rating than UK government bonds, so the markets are in no doubt about which is the dodgier
As expected, base rates are down half a point to 1.5% – so, yet again, drinks are on those lucky few with variable mortgages. I suspect they’ll hit 1% before Easter. Then what? “Nobody is talking about printing money” says Alistair Darling – but this is a little Brownie. Quantitative Easing – the equivalent of