Labour party

Friday

Peter Hoskin

Strike-a-rama<br />

So there we have it: talks between the BA management and Unite have collapsed, and the strike is back on for midnight tonight.  Throw in the news that railway workers have also voted in favour of strikes, and it looks like there will be more transport trouble ahead. Politically-speaking, the government won’t enjoy operating against a backdrop of industrial unrest as the election approaches.  Sure, last year’s postal strikes had no discernible effect on the polls.  But, this time around, the Brown premiership has closer ties with the striking party – and those ties are already front-page news.  Involving Charlie Whelan in Labour’s election campaign is now looking like an

Peter Hoskin

Darling’s Budget takes shape

Yep, it’s that time of the year again – when the government starts briefing about the contents of the Budget.  First up, there’s the news that Alistair Darling may cut projected borrowing figures by £5-10 billion, thanks to higher-than-expected tax receipts.  And then there’s Peter Mandelson’s claim that new tax rises would have to be considered a year from now – implying, perhaps, that there won’t many in this year’s Budget. Many folk around Westminister were surprised that the government was putting out a pre-election Budget – especially given the sorry state of the public finances.  But Labour’s plan is becoming clearer now: lower borrowing figures, no significant tax hikes,

Thursday

David Blackburn

It’s turning into an extremely good week for Osborne

The gods are smiling on George Osborne. On Monday, he wrote an excellent article in the FT, explaining why he opposed the government’s fiscal plans and giving a brief sketch of his alternative vision. It was a short, sharp, shock article that contrasted with the tentative and nebulous announcements that characterised the Tory post-New Year slump. They were immediate benefits. On Tuesday, the EU Commission broadly supported the Conservative position on reducing public spending, and today a City AM poll indicated that 77 percent of a panel of City experts think that cuts must be made this year. Indeed, many panellists rejected Samuel Brittan’s contention, elucidated in last week’s Spectator,

Alex Massie

The Tories & Middle England: United Against the Unions

The admirable Hopi Sen thinks the Tories will blunder if they continue their Unite-bashing. Childish, playground stuff he calls it: The idea that Gordon Brown is in the pocket of the Unions because errr, he keeps going around condemning them, and (in the case of the RMT) designs business models that make them so angry they disaffilliate from the Labour party is silly on its face – and therein lies the danger for the Tories. This false perception leads the Tories to overplay their hand. If  you put up posters condemning the Government for being in the pocket of the Unions,  that just gives ministers the chance to make you look silly by proving

Peter Hoskin

The Lib Dems keep ’em guessing

Last week, Nick Clegg was singing the blues.  But, this week, it’s clear that he’s doing as much as possible to distinguish his party from the others.  Indeed, his performance in PMQs yesterday was a case in point: he went out of his way to attack both Brown and Cameron, and positioned his side as the non-Unite, non-Ashcroft choice.  Given the Lib Dem’s recent history with dodgy donors, that’s a move which – at the very least – is going to ruffle a few red and blue feathers. So it’s striking, today, that the Lib Dems are probably going even heavier on the Ashcroft story than Labour.  While Peter Mandelson

Peter Hoskin

The Tories and Lord Ashcroft – stupidity rather than wrongdoing?<br />

So the Lord Ashcroft story is back on the airwaves, courtesy of a document leaked to the BBC.  That document shows William Hague was “satisfied” with the discussions about Ashcroft’s undertakings in 2000 – so the Tories wheeled the shadow foreign secretary onto the Today programme to explain himself to Evan Davis.  Three things struck me: i) Stupidity rather than wrongdoing.  When the Ashcroft story first broke a couple of weeks ago, Labour seemed eager to turn it into one of Tory wrongdoing – they called for inquiries left, right and centre (indeed, there’s one taking place today), in the apparent hope that they’d find something improper had gone on.

Alex Massie

Tales from the Downing Street Crypt

Why aren’t more people talking more about Andrew Rawnsley’s book, The End of the Party? It’s full of fascinating, appalling stories! Again, the Tories (and the Lib Dems) should be producing a Rawnsley Dossier on Brown. There’s nae shortage of material that’s for sure. Here’s a bit from page 305: The scene: Anthony Minghella has arrived to film a 2005 PPB featuring Gordon and Tony that’s designed to show what good pals they are… ‘It’s all about working as a team,’ Brown was recorded saying to the Prime Minister he wanted rid of. ‘It’s a partnership that has worked,’ said Blair of the Chancellor he had planned to sack. Before

Wednesday

Fraser Nelson

The cost of Brown’s propaganda splurge

Gordon Brown has been shameless in using the tools of state to advance his party political objectives – to him, government is electoral war by other means. Anyone who has turned on a commercial radio station recently will have worked out his latest trick: a mass propaganda splurge before an election campaign. Get on a bus, and it can be 100 percent state adverts – advising how Big Brother will help you get a job, buy a car, see off door-to-door salesmen, give you a job in the prison services – anything you want. We at The Spectator have tracked down the figures that show the extent of all this.

James Forsyth

The Tories’ growing mood of quiet confidence

It is worth pointing out, because it is so different from what was happening a few weeks back, that the Tories are having another good day today. Gordon Brown has been forced to admit at PMQs that he had got his defence statistics wrong when addressing both the Commons and the Chilcot inquiry, the Unite story is rumbling on and there are various rows breaking out over Labour’s process for selecting candidates. All of this has led to a distinct improvement in Tory morale. A few weeks ago, Tory MPs were irritated and despondent. Some had even started ruminating on the leadership challenge that would occur if the Tories were

Fraser Nelson

Piers for Parliament?

Could you vote for Piers Morgan? In an interview with Freddy Gray in The Spectator tomorrow, he says he’s tempted to stand for Parliament – and it’s not such a surprise. He has weirdly inserted himself in the political process in recent weeks, defining Nick “no more than 30” Clegg and giving Gordon Brown probably the best piece of television coverage he will receive – ever. Now he is even considering standing for election. ‘I am tempted to run on a ticket of openness and frankness about the problems of this country and not being afraid to deal with them,’ he says. He doesn’t have much time for Cameron, describing

David Blackburn

Two blasts from the past

Michael Savage observes that Cameron’s denunciation of Brown’s ‘weak’ premiership recalled Tony Blair’s famous savaging of the ‘weak, weak, weak’ Major government . Here it is: After watching that, I chanced upon an exchange between Blair and Cameron, dated November 2006. Their subject? NHS budget cuts. The first two minutes of the clip reinforce just how complicit the Conservatives were in Brown and Blair’s free for all. Cameron was aghast that “budgets were being raided to solve financial deficits”.

Peter Hoskin

PMQs live blog | 17 March 2010

Stay tuned for live coverage from 1200. 1201: And here we go. Brown starts with condolences for fallen troops, and also for the late Labour MP Ashok Kumar and his family.  For the first question, Tony Baldry takes on Brown over his claim that defence expendintue has risen in real terms under Labour.  A note from the House of Commons library has since shown this to be “incorrect”.  Brown says that he is already writing to Chilcot to correct this.  Brown: “I do accept that, in one or two years, defence expenditure did not rise in real terms” – but it did rise in cash terms.  Not a good start

David Blackburn

The Tories’ Unite strategy is paying unimagined dividends

The Tories Unite strategy has been so effective, even Peter Mandelson is peddling it. Led by Mandelson, Labour’s isolated right has questioned Unite’s influence over candidate selection. James Purnell’s preferred successor, Jonny Reynolds, was omitted from the Stalybridge and Hyde shortlist, compiled by the NEC, which has two Unite members on its board. Mandelson and Purnell have urged Downing Street to reopen the race. For its part, Unite responded. One of its preferred candidates for the seat, Glyn Ford, who failed to make the cut, demanded a right to appeal also. The Tories’ must be ecstatic. Their strategy, initially conceived to nullify the Ashcroft scandal, is paying unimagined dividends. Brigades

Peter Hoskin

For the workers?

One of the defences that Labour types are mustering over Unite is, bascially, that it’s better to be funded by a body which represents some two million workers than by Ashcroft type figures who may have their own personal agendas. In which case, the question is: do Charlie Whelan and his coterie really represent the views and interests of Unite’s members?  And, in answer, it’s worth pulling out two snippets from today’s papers. EXHIBIT A, courtesy of Danny Finkelstein: “A Populus poll of Unite members last year showed the majority preferring David Cameron to Gordon Brown and opposing Unite donations to Labour.” And EXHIBIT B, from Ben Brogan’s interview with

Tuesday

Peter Hoskin

The Tories open fire on Unite

So, the Tories have declared war on Charlie Whelan and Unite – what Eric Pickles calls the “great untold story of British politics”. He was joined by no less than two more shadow frontbenchers – Michael Gove and Theresa Villiers – at a briefing attacking the union’s political influence this morning. And that’s not all: the Tories have produced a document detailing how Unite is funding Labour and opposing reform, and there’s even a new digital poster campaign to go along with it.  The gloves are well and truly off. As for what the shadow ministers actually said, Villiers highlighted Unite’s role in the BA troubles, while Gove gave a

Peter Hoskin

Brown faces the horror of the petrol pumps

Yes, I know, cause and correlation aren’t the same thing – but Mike Smithson’s latest graph over at Political Betting is still incredibly striking.  It shows that the Tories’ strongest poll position over the last few years coincided with a high in the petrol price.  It also shows that the smallest gap between Labour and the Tories coincided with when petrol prices were at their lowest.  Which all makes today’s Telegraph story about petrol potentially hitting a new high of 120p a litre, as the election approaches, very resonant indeed. The problem for the government is twofold.  First, rising petrol prices are something which millions of people will understand and

Monday

Peter Hoskin

Tories to outline spending cuts after the Budget

Now here’s a turn up: according to Nick Robinson, the Tories are going to announce details of what spending they would cut in the forthcoming fiscal year after next week’s Budget.  So it looks like Cameron might come good on his promise, after all. We’ll have to wait and see before judging whether those cuts are credible.  But, along with George Osborne’s FT article today, it does seem that the Tories have rediscovered the will to take on Labour over when and what to cut.

Peter Hoskin

Brown sets the stage for a scorched earth Budget

Gordon Brown must be feeling generous today, for he did the Tories two favours on Woman’s Hour earlier.  David has already mentioned the first one: Brown saying that he would “keep going” as party leader even if Labour loses the next election, which ups the potential for more summertime Sturm und Drang on his own side.  But the second, as Ben Brogan points out, is his claim that the state of the economy makes it difficult for the government to detail any spending cuts.  The Tories will happily seize on that to justify their own “wait until we see the books” approach. More broadly, Brown’s claim also sets the stage

Alex Massie

The Tories’ Second-Best Recruiting Sergeant…

Things have come to a pretty pass when the Secretary of State for Education endorses ignorance and scoffs at knowledge pretending, one is given to understand, that it’s just a kind of posh irrelevance favoured only by the terminally stuffy and fuddy-duddy and out-of-touch. Such, however, seems to be the case for you poor English folk, lumbered as you are with the grim Mr Edward Balls. I’d thought Boris must be exaggerrating matters in his Telegraph  column today. As the Mayor puts it: “Speaking on the radio, Spheroids dismissed the idea that Latin could inspire or motivate pupils. Head teachers often took him to see the benefits of dance, or

David Blackburn

Brown dithers over BA

At last, Gordon Brown has been forced from the comfort of silence on the Unite/BA strike. Yesterday, Lord Adonis said that he “absolutely deplored the strike” because the “stakes were too high”. Brown has done nothing more than echo those sentiments, but that is at least a step in the right direction. Obviously, the strike poses an enormous problem for the government. Betting men would get decent odds on BA collapsing, but it is a failing business that needs to change. Labour is a near insolvent party that needs Unite, and not just for its funds but for Charlie Whelan’s tireless work in support if the PM in an election