Fraser Nelson is a Times columnist and a former editor of The Spectator.
Spend just a few minutes on the campaign trail for next week’s local elections and it suddenly becomes clear why Labour MPs got into such a mutinous mood. When they happily voted through Gordon Brown’s abolition of the 10p starting rate of income tax last year, it was argued that having 5.3 million pay a
Why are all these Labour MPs worried about the 10p tax? It is the least of the ways in which this Labour government has hurt the poor over its years in government. Let me count the ways – well, half a dozen anyway: 1) Sink schools. By granting LEAs monopoly control over education provision, bureaucrats
After hearing Tony Blair’s first confession, Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor is on a roll. He landed Blair for a speech on religion at Westminster Cathedral earlier this month, and now he’s lined up William Hague for another talk. The shadow foreign secretary’s lecture on Thursday, entitled “Practical politics, principled faith”, has now sold out. Is our Wilberforce
Like George Osborne, I was struck by David Miliband saying in his News of the World article that the government needs to look at things through the eyes of the voters. Right now, Gordon Brown is looking at them through the eyes of a central planner saying “you ungrateful lot, don’t you know inflation is
Gordon Brown claims he is baffled by the suggestion that his decision to double (not abolish) the 10p starting rate of tax hurts anyone. We all have it confused somehow, he says. So this comment on The Times website may be worth repeating: “Mr. Brown. LET ME SPELL IT OUT TO YOU. I do not pay
Before the campaign for an English parliament has time to gather critical mass, its goal may already be achieved. The first vote David Cameron’s government holds on health will be a unique constitutional event: all Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish MPs will be banned from the voting lobbies. There is likely to be no fanfare,
Now for four words which, in my experience, CoffeeHousers hate the most: “in fairness to Brown”. Not many other national leaders could have drawn all three presidential hopefuls to meet him in one day. We teased him for having next to no coverage in the American press yesterday, and there’s plenty today. He also struck
George Osborne’s main opponent isn’t Alistair Darling. It’s Vince Cable. As former chief economist at Shell, he’s that rare thing – a politician who knows what he’s talking about. Today he releases an “open letter” saying what I have heard some senior Tories say in private. The charge is that Osborne has come back from
Whenever Blair didn’t like the heat in Britain he’d jet off abroad. But Brown’s trip to America seems to cast his shortcomings into even sharper relief. My thoughts on the visit so far: 1) Meeting Wall Street figures and pretending to bang heads together about the credit crunch will be recognised as a stunt in America.
Can someone please give Gordon Brown a crash course in recent world history? “European leadership did not support President Bush in Iraq other than Britain and one or two other countries,” he tells CBS before his trip to the US . “I feel I can bring Europe and America closer together for the future.” Hmmm. Only
Tory splits are rare nowadays, which is why it’s good to see Lord Forsyth talking sense about tax in the Telegraph today. It is “mad” for the Tories to propose to bring back the 10p starting rate of tax (which – in his seminal tax report (pdf) – he proposed to abolish long before Brown
Shire Pharmaceutics, a FTSE100 firm worth GBP5.5bn, is to relist its head office offshore for tax reasons. Global firms (as Shire now is) can report profits anywhere – and Shire will move to Jersey and pay tax in Ireland (where corporation tax is 12.5% for trading income, not 28%). It is a move explicitly “designed
George Osborne had a bit of a rough ride on Channel Four news at 7pm and the Labour Party has gleefully sent around a transcript. Jon Snow put to him that “the IMF says that our growth is going to be 1.6%, not only this year but next year as well, and that outstrips any
A first for British politics – standing room only in a speech about economics. George Osborne was at Policy Exchange laying out his “alternative view” and, as he went, ticking many of the boxes I had for him. The first half of his speech was a punchy critique of Gordon Brown, pointing out times where
Gordon Brown doesn’t boast anymore about his friendship with Alan Greenspan – and little wonder. The former Fed Chairman’s name is fast becoming mud in America, as they turn on the man they lionised for more than a decade. America is about nine months ahead of the UK in the credit crunch, and what fascinates
At 11am today, Radio Four looks at the Tory school reform plan – inspired, apparently, by our recent cover story on Cameron’s schools revolution. I’m on the panel of Talking Politics, Dennis Sewell is hosting and my fellow panellists are Michael White from the Guardian and Anne McElvoy from the Evening Standard. We pre-recorded on
I’m in the Sky News green room, preparing for an 11.30pm paper review. The front pages coming in could be straight from Gordon Brown’s nightmares. “Consumer crunch” says The Times in huge type: mortgages up £150 a month, holidays up, petrol 107p a litre and bread up 25p in a year. Its the best way
Don’t breathe easily. Apart from the lucky minority with mortgages linked to Bank of England’s base rates, today’s rate cut won’t alleviate the mortgage industry misery. The city expected this cut and many expected a larger one, so the all important Libor interbank lending rate remains sky high. As Anatole Kaletsky says today, the pain
Here is Gordon Brown’s five-step plan to escape blame for the credit crunch. 1) Blame America for the credit crunch, present Britain as the innocent victim of a global storm. 2) With a straight face, claim the economy is well-placed to withstand the crunch, even though the UK household debt/income ratio is the highest in the
Is Gordon Brown on a mission to prove he is out of touch with what’s happening in the economy? First he tells us inflation is at a record low. Today he offers a £1,500 incentive for certain groups of people to enter a shared equity scheme to buy a house. But today the Halifax shows
