David cameron

Sunday

James Forsyth

The charge that the coalition should fear

The greatest political, as opposed to strategic, threat to the coalition from the Libya evacuation crisis was that it would give the government a reputation for incompetence. As I say in the Mail on Sunday, Labour are looking to pin the incompetence charge to the coalition at every possible opportunity. The Miliband team knows that if the coalition comes to be seen as incompetent, then it is done for. Once a government comes to be seen as incompetent, then it is almost impossible for it to gain support for any of its proposals as even those who agree with the ideas don’t trust the government to implement them. Equally, any good news is seen to be fortuitous and not a consequence of the policies that the government has pursued.

Fraser Nelson

Corporatism is not an adequate foreign policy

The events of the last two weeks have demonstrated that David Cameron needs a revamped foreign policy. This is not, in itself, a surprise. Foreign policies sketched out in opposition seldom survive contact with reality. Remember Bush saying he did “not do nation-building”? And who can forget the ignominious fate of Robin Cook’s “ethical foreign policy”? David Cameron sought to distinguish himself from the adventuring, idealistic Blair with what he regarded as a ‘pragmatic’ foreign policy – that is, promoting British exporters.

Saturday

Peter Hoskin

What difference will sanctions make?

Slowly, haltingly, the West decides what to do about Gaddafi. The latest news is that, having broken his silence over Libya a few days ago, Barack Obama is now imposing sanctions against its despicable regime: freezing assets, blocking transactions, that sort of thing. It follows a package of sanctions, including an arms embargo, that Britain and France have proposed to the UN. Although these sanctions are better than nothing – the West shouldn't house Gaddafi's slush funds, nor transfer weapons in his direction – they are of limited actual worth. Yesterday, the Mad Dog was parading the parapets once again, promising death for the protestors. You suspect he is unlikely to be put off by restrictions to his and his country's finances.

Friday

Peter Hoskin

It’s the Q1 2011 growth figures that matter now

The Office for National Statistics' preliminary figures for Q4 growth, released a few weeks ago, were a curious beast. They they were, suggesting that because of a snow-laden December our economy had started shrinking again, to the tune of -0.5 per cent. And yet so many other indicators were doing rather nicely: from activity in the services sector to the Exchequer's tax take. Many people, myself included, suspected it was only a matter of time before the ONS revised that -0.5 figure into more positive territory. Now time has passed, and the ONS has just revised the Q4 figure downwards, not upwards. Their preliminary figure wasn't quite right, they say. It should have been -0.6 per cent. Given that the snow was thought to reduce GDP growth by 0.

Thursday

Jonathan Jones

Will cuts kill the little platoons?

David Cameron is clear that his Big Society is about more than just volunteering. Yet during the recent spat on the matter, one of the strongest, most frequent criticisms voiced against it was that cutting state spending will lead to fewer volunteers. Dame Elisabeth Hoodless, executive director of Community Service Volunteers, claimed that the coalition’s spending cuts risk “destroying the volunteer army”. Johann Hari was also among those making this attack. In the 10 O’Clock Live debate that Fraser blogged last week, he claimed that international evidence tells us that volunteering is highest where public spending is highest.

James Forsyth

What the Libyan debacle reveals about the Civil Service

The headlines about Nick Clegg forgetting that he was running the country and the botched evacuation of British nationals from Libya have combined to make the coalition look rather incompetent, the most dangerous thing for a government to appear as. Certainly, the effort to get British people out of Libya has been a national embarrassment. The whole evacuation debacle is, though, more a tale of bureaucratic incompetence than anything else; a painful reminder that the Civil Service machine, upon which the government relies, is in bad repair. I hear that William Hague has already carpeted senior officials in the department over the whole episode.

Peter Hoskin

Downing Street’s bureaucratic burden

Do head over to ConservativeHome, where Tim Montgomerie has put together a comprehensive guide to the revamped Downing Street operation. I won't spoil its considerable insights here, except to highlight this: "An analysis of papers sent to Downing Street and the Cabinet Office has revealed that just 40% are directly related to the Coalition's programme. Roughly 30% come from the Whitehall bureaucracy and another 30% from the EU." James makes the point in his latest politics column that Tory ministers are becoming more and more Eurosceptic as they face the EU in government. That pile of European directives in the in-tray must just be getting too much.

David Blackburn

Chaos thy name is Libya

Colonel Gaddafi’s strength appears to be diminishing: Foreign Office sources suggest that the latest YouTube footage suggests that the rebels are now 30 miles from Tripoli, there are reports of Libyan servicemen spiking their guns rather than fire on their compatriots and members of the Gaddafi family have failed to present a united front to the dissent that intends to depose them. But, chaos thy name is Libya. Communications have long been silent, except for the savage drone of state radio, conduit for Gaddafi’s prophesies of victory or martyrdom. Evacuees from Tripoli’s now hellish airport relate a city bristling with arms and testosterone – the fear is that Gaddafi and his dogs of war are sufficiently mad to fight to the last bullet.

Wednesday

David Blackburn

The emergence of a Cameron doctrine

Daniel Finkelstein makes a simple but important point in the Times today (£): a Prime Minister’s foreign policy is determined by events more than by instincts. The revolts in the Middle East are defining David Cameron’s diplomacy. The emerging policy is a realistic expression of Britain’s current domestic and international capabilities. Cameron’s speech to the Kuwaiti parliament did not match Harold Macmillan’s ‘winds of change’ speech because Britain no longer disposes of continents. Likewise, Tony Blair’s messianic tendencies belong to a past era. Colonel Gaddafi’s murderous stream of conscious could have given cause to evoke the moral certainty of an 'ethical foreign policy'.

Tuesday

James Forsyth

Ashdown goes Fox-hunting

There’s a quite remarkable op-ed by Paddy Ashdown in The Times (£) today which goes public with a lot of the griping about Liam Fox that one heard behind the scenes at the time of the Strategic Defence Review. Ashdown remarks that the ‘problem with the SDSR was not speed, but lack of political direction.’ He then details how ‘Sir David Richards, then head of the Army and now Chief of the Defence Staff, had to bypass the whole process (and his Secretary of State) to appeal to the Prime Minister to avert catastrophe in the Army.

Peter Hoskin

Tehran’s latest provocation

The people of Egypt and Libya may have swung the spotlight onto their respective countries – but it is a spotlight that Iran is keen to exploit. Two of their warships have just passed through the Suez canal en route to Syria, the first to do so since 1979. They were given clearance by Egypt's new military stewards a few days ago. On one level, Tehran's actions are unimpeachable: Egypt cannot forbid access to Suez unless it is at war with the country at sail. But they are also, of course, designed to provoke. Why choose to do this now, other than to suggest something about the new latticework of power, and of power relationships, in a turbulent Middle East? Israel, for its part, is less than impressed.

James Forsyth

Cameron’s fine, liberal speech

David Cameron’s speech in Kuwait today did not take on his hosts in the way that Harold Macmillan’s ‘winds of change’ speech did. But it was a still fine, liberal speech. The key argument of the speech was that: ”As recent events have confirmed, denying people their basic rights does not preserve stability, rather the reverse. Our interests lie in upholding our values – in insisting on the right to peaceful protest, in freedom of speech and the internet, in freedom of assembly and the rule of law. But these are not just our values, but the entitlement of people everywhere; of people in Tahrir Square as much as Trafalgar Square.” This is the crucial point: crude realism is not realistic.

Daniel Korski

How young Arabs saved the old West

Three months ago the future looked bleak for the West. The countries that once dominated the world, invented capitalism, articulated mankind's universal desire for freedom and defended it against all enemies looked destined for an impoverished future squeezed by the authoritarian capitalists of the East and unsure about the righteousness of its ideological foundation. Even one-time liberals, whose life has been shaped in a struggle for human rights embraced China and its state-backed progress. Now, thanks to the pro-democracy protesters in the Middle East, the West is back. Not that it backed the democratic movements and now stands to reap the benefits.

Monday

James Forsyth

Three reasons why David Cameron should get involved in the No to AV campaign

Over at Comment Central, Danny Finkelstein has written a post saying that it might not be in the best interests of the No campaign for Cameron to campaign heavily against AV. His argument is that the No campaign’s best hope is to run as a spiky, anti-establishment effort. I think this is true but that the No camp has rather forfeited this chance by appointing Margaret Beckett as its president and having a former Labour MP front its launch. If the No campaign is going to be use so many politicians as spokesmen for it, it might as well have one of the most able ones involved. Second, and most importantly, Cameron’s presence on the trail would highlight Nick Clegg’s absence.

Thomas Cawston

Reforming the NHS: accountability

Last week, Reform published its 2011 public service reform scorecard. It judged each major government department against the three criteria set out by David Cameron: accountability, flexibility and value for money. The report finds the Home Office’s policing reforms succeeding on all three fronts, but inconsistency across other government departments. The Government’s health reforms are awarded grade D overall, with an E for accountability, a D for flexibility and a D for value for money. Here's how the coalition can get its NHS reforms back on track.   The government has recognised the need for fundamental reform of the NHS. The proposals announced in the July 2010 White Paper are substantial.

James Forsyth

Is David Cameron about to have one of his Garibaldi moments?

To date, this government has not had much of a foreign policy. Where there should have been grand strategy there has been trade promotion. But this appears to be changing. It is certainly striking that Cameron is the first western leader to visit post-Mubarak Egypt. Cameron himself is, normally, at the realist end of the foreign policy spectrum. But, as one close friend observes, one of the most important things to grasp in understanding the Prime Minister is that Garibaldi is one of his great heroes. As Cameron told Charles Moore, he admires Garibaldi’s ‘romantic nationalism'.

James Forsyth

Will Clegg’s caution turn Cameron’s big bang reforms for public services into a damp squib?

David Cameron’s piece on opening up public services today is, as Ben Brogan notes, one of the most important moments of Cameron’s premiership so far. First, it is, as I discussed last week (subscribers here), part of a concerted attempt to get the Big Society back to its original meaning, that public services do not need to be provided by the state. As Cameron writes, “our plans to devolve power from Whitehall, and to modernise public services, are more significant aspects of our Big Society agenda than the work we're doing to boost social action.” Next, the ideas in this piece are the central thread that runs through the public service reforms the coalition is pushing through.

Daniel Korski

Why a major reshuffle is unlikely

The clamour for a reshuffle is getting louder. Caroline Spelman is said to be a leading candidate for ejection, following her awful performance over the forestry sell-off. Many also want Ken Clarke's scalp. Party chairman Baroness Warsi has already been the target of gossip, while dissatisfaction with Chief Whip Patrick McLoughlin is palpable. Then there is the desire by Nick Clegg to bring back David Laws, if he is cleared of financial malfeasance.   However, most of the talk of a reshuffle is fuelled by self-serving backbench MPs who lost out of jobs in the coalition negotiations. Those from the 2005 intake feel the 2010 intake breathing down their necks, while older MPs hiss about the "cult of youth".

Peter Hoskin

How far will Cameron go to break the state monopolies?

Call it the Big Society, decentralisation, people power, whatever – but David Cameron's vision for society just became a good deal more concrete. In an article for the Telegraph this morning, the Prime Minister makes a quite momentous proposal: that there ought to be a new presumption towards diversity in public services, whereby the private, voluntary and charitable sectors are as privileged as the state is now. Or as he puts it: "We will create a new presumption – backed up by new rights for public service users and a new system of independent adjudication – that public services should be open to a range of providers competing to offer a better service.

Sunday

Fraser Nelson

Cameron’s back is against the wall – now he must fight

Given that David Cameron will have a tougher fight than perhaps any postwar Prime Minister other than Thatcher, it’s a bit unfortunate that his team doesn’t like political combat. Losing to Rachel Johnson over forests last week exposed major weaknesses, and sent a message to the government’s enemies: that these guys have pretty poor political combat skills. Now word is out, the cuts protests in Liverpool today will be the first in a series of challenges. Cameron, too, is stung by the avoidable mistakes of the last few weeks – and is reshaping No.10 to account for them. Some changes are great, some less so, others downright worrying. Here's my overview: 1. The Big Society. Cameron has started from first principles.