Fraser Nelson is a Times columnist and a former editor of The Spectator.
‘Tis the season for Christmas receptions at Westminster, where the hacks like myself compare notes with people who know a lot more about life than we do. There’s a distinct lack of bubbly this year – funny how ministers take special care over that, while the government overspend is (literally) enough to fill every bath
David Cameron plans to lead Labour rebels into inserting an amendment into the government’s welfare reform plans, basically removing all threat of sanction from lone mothers of children of pre-school age. This, I think, is the upshot of his press conference today. “The state prodding, pushing, cajoling mothers of children so young is simply wrong,”
Much as I applaud David Cameron’s warnings about debt, and his bravery for doing so at a time when the borrowed penny hasn’t quite dropped over Westminster, would he actually do anything about it? I asked him at his press conference this morning. My point: that from April 2010 Gordon Brown intends to increase state spending
Gordon Brown is actually uniting the world, so far as his approach to the downturn is concerned, but not in the way he’d like us to think. From Tokyo to Toronto, finance ministers are saying that countries with a budget problem (like Britain) shouldn’t seek to borrow their way out of this. Slowly, a consensus
Does Britain need more volunteers? David Blunkett thinks so, and has just told BBC Westminster Hour that a “civil corps” is the answer to deep poverty. Here are his words (transcribed by the indispensable Politics Home). The lower classes, he says, “see volunteering as the preserve of the middle classes. To reach them, you have
So much for supposed British electoral apathy: the final of the X Factor just attracted 8m votes – that stands pretty good comparison to the last election where Labour received 9.6m votes and the Tories 8.8m (and most under 35s didn’t vote). Moreover most of tonight’s electorate will have paid to vote – and gladly
When Gordon Brown urges the bank to “pass on” the interest rate cut, why doesn’t he lead by example with his very own state-owned mortgage company, Northern Rock? Because NR is up to no good – and the Financial Services Authority has given us a rare glimpse into exactly what its game is. It released
How much is Britain’s true national debt? Gordon Brown says 37% of GDP, the ONS says 43% of GDP – but this is just government debt. The reason Britain is in so much trouble is that our corporate and household debts are huge. It is the combination that makes us such a credit liability –
I’ve just come back from the Policy Exchange party, which had an austerity feel to it: smaller guest list, no bubbly. And David Cameron gave a good, but rather low-key speech where he said he was pleased that his speech at LSE today went past with no tomatoes being thrown. LSE has a left-wing reputation,
Is Sure Start really the success story that Rachel Sylvester suggests it is? I asked my colleague at the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS), Jill Kirby – perhaps the leading expert on family issues – for her take. She reviewed Sure Start in her CPS report Nationalisation of Childhood. That was two years ago, and
That three-hour debate on Damian Green really was a waste of time. A poll of MPs shows 30 want Michael Martin to go, but how many say that to in the chamber? Nada. We have some honesty from Douglas Carswell and Bob Marshall-Andrews and that’s about it. Some rebellion. All they were left with was
This year has seen a gruesome series of stories bearing out the Broken Society narrative, starting with teenagers shooting each other and ending with Karen Matthews abducting her own daughter in search of a McCann-style reward. Look at most of these stories, including Baby P, and there is a common theme: they take place in
When news of the Tory budget cut was broken by Conservative Home it was spun as a prudent cost-cutting. Yet there is (as ever, with CCHQ) plenty of comic chaos behind the scenes. The basic problem was overspending in the boom years. Last year the cash was flowing in from bankers who could easily spare
Knowledge that a secret exists is half of the secret, and Westminster loves nothing more than guessing what a secret might be. When The Spectator’s website revealed at 6 p.m. last Thursday that a major Conservative story was about to unfold, there was a flurry of frenzied speculation. One Cabinet member even called 10 Downing
Why won’t the banks pass on the rate cut? Because there isn’t anything to pass on. And for the life of me, I can’t work out why they don’t point this out. The Bank of England base rate simply doesn’t mean the Bank of England is lending to banks at 2 percent. The plumping doesn’t
How much should we worry about a falling pound? Since Monday sterling is off 5 percent against the Euro, 6.5 percent against the dollar, 9 percent against the Yen and 3.4 percent against the Hungarian forint: Hungary, of course, had to be bailed out by the IMF. This is worrying for the government as its
After the rate cut, one question presents itself: is the British economy turning Japanese? Now rates are at 2%, it makes you wonder how low they can go and whether we are approaching a zero-rate like Japan after its economy blew up in 1990, leading to the “lost decade”? To answer it, let’s get a
So it was all Jill Pay’s fault. That was Michael Martin’s verdict. He didn’t know. The Serjeant At Arms should have asked for a warrant and she didn’t. Nor did he shrink from dumping on her. He’ll grant a debate on Monday and set up a committee of grandees (just as he did with the
I do feel for Her Majesty. This ordeal should be foisted on her only after an election. Having to read out the New Labour newspeak was bad enough, but the Brownian argot is dreadful. I do love the way she did it without any feeling – with a wearisome look in her eye – and
Those of us in favour of “fiscal autonomy” for Scotland have been sent homewards to think again by the Calman Commission (pdf, here), which looks at the asymmetrical mess which calls itself devolution. But it’s not all bad news. It had been expected to dump on the idea, but is fairly clear about the need to
