The Sun sets for Gordon Brown
The Sun comes out heavily against the Government’s handling of the Afghanistan conflict in their leader column today. Do read the whole thing
Labour party
Friday
Brown faces another backbench revolt
Despite protesting to the contrary, it turns out the government have been cutting all along. The Times reports that, buried in the small print of the budget, there is a commitment to abolish the £780 per year surplus housing benefit allowance, which encourages families to pay their rent and trade quality of accommodation for cash. These changes come into force on April 1, probably a month before the election. Labour backbenchers condemn the saving, worth £160 million per year, and plan to table amendments. Frank Field, who draws a comparison between this cut and the 10p rate revolt, tells the Times: “At one stroke, they get rid of a reform aimed
Thursday
Delicately poised in Scotland
Despite a week of international codemnation, a YouGov poll shows that 42 per cent of Scottish voters still agree with Kenny MacAskill’s decision to release al-Megrahi, whereas 51 per cent oppose it. Channel Four’s Gary Gibbon notes that this undermines Labour’s arguments that the SNP’s decision is not backed by the Scottish working class, and that Labour will find the Glasgow North East by-election hard going. I’m not so sure. Clearly it’s going to be tight, but Labour will take heart from this poll, which also reveals voting intentions. The SNP is down 6 points to 33 per cent and Labour is up 5 to 33 per cent. It was
Public scepticism about Labour’s record on education
Isn’t it funny how things work out? I imagine the government once thought they’d get credit for the ever-improving GCSE and A-level pass rates, but now results day just rekindles the debate about slipping standards – and rightly so. Ed Balls may have tried to divert attention on to the Tories this morning, but he can’t really escape the verdict of this ComRes poll commissioned by Newsnight. Here are the main results: 67 percent of respondents said Labour hasn’t lived up to Tony Blair’s “education, education, education” vow. 52 percent said Labour hasn’t improved the overall quality of education. 41 percent said they have. 47 percent said the standard of
Exam result shock: Balls fails
You know how it is. You start reading an article by Ed Balls – in this case, in today’s Guardian – and, before long, you’ve come across so many deceptions, half-truths and tribal slurs that you decide to fisk the whole thing. So here is Balls’s article, with my supplementary comments in bold: The first group of young people to have been entirely educated under Labour pick up their GCSE results today. No doubt this will provoke some commentators into even greater efforts to do down their achievements – claiming more young people succeeding must mean exams are getting easier. In the early years of David Cameron’s leadership, the Tories
Wednesday
Nobody’s special
In The Times today, Danny Finkelstein defended the most hated profession in contemporary politics – the Special Advisers, or SpAds. Booo, hissss. The case against was (again) laid out by a number of former senior officials, with ex-Cabinet Secretary Andrew Turnbull telling a Lords committee recently that he did not like SpAds rising to become Cabinet ministers by the time they were 38 “without touching the sides of real life”. Booo. Hisssss. Boooo. But how many of the current Shadow Cabinet do you think have been SpAds in the past? Come on, what do you think? Half? A third? Out of the 28 members of the Shadow Cabinet, including David
Libyagate has its roots in Labour’s devolution
One of the oddest parts of Libyagate is what it says about Gordon Brown’s notions of devolution. The Prime Minister does not want to comment on the affair because, we are told, he sees it as a matter for the Scottish government, not the British government. So, if the actions of a devolved but subordinate level of government go against the state’s interests, the leaders of that state should stay mum? That’s certainly not the view taken by successive US administrations; they have often condemned state-level actions, even when the federal government has been legally powerless to do anything in practice. The UK has no written constitution as in the
On August opinion polls…
Do check out Mike Smithson’s latest post over at Political Betting, in which he relays an email he received from Nick Sparrow of ICM. Sparrow highlights the close fit between August ICM polls in the years before elections and the actual election results themselves: “August 1996 poll suggested that Labour were ahead by 12%. The result – Labour won by 13% August 2000 poll suggested that Labour were ahead by 10% The result – Labour won by 9% August 2004 poll suggested that Labour were ahead by 3% The result – Labour won by 3% August 2009 poll suggests that the Tories are ahead by 16% The result – ?????????”
Tuesday
It’s written in the stars
The gods of fortune have spoken: Gordon Brown is not finished. According to the Independent’s Andrew Buncombe, an Indian astrologer has cast the embattled PM’s horoscope and predicts that we “can expect sudden positive changes in the economy from 19th November 2009”; that Mr Brown will win the election; and that “the year 2011 will be the best year of his lifetime, with many achievements”. “Why must the British people endure another term as tennis balls for the gods’ sport?” I hear you ask. Well, because Gordon’s got good karma – the position of the moon in his chart suggests that Brown “did good for the marine animals” of yesteryear.
Twilight Zone Tuesday: Brown to announce spending cuts
Now this is a turn up. According to the Independent, Gordon Brown is going to “issue a list of specific [spending] cuts” as part of his Autumn “fightback”. Here’s how the strategy goes: “Initially, Mr Brown will seek to establish in voters’ minds the key differences between Labour and the Tories – on policy, government intervention to limit the impact of the recession and preserving frontline services. Then he will acknowledge that the Government needs to go beyond the £35bn of efficiency savings it has already promised. The aim will be to show Labour is serious about reducing the deficit, which is set to rocket to £175bn in the current
Monday
There’s no one like Macavity
Paul Waugh’s spot on: Brown has been reluctant to congratulate England for their Ashes victory because he is so desperate to avoid being dragged into the international furore surrounding al-Megrahi’s release. A Number.10 spokesman described Kenny MacAskill’s release order as a “uniquely sensitive and difficult decision” and one that (surprise, surprise) was taken completely independently of the British government. But, as yet, Macavity’s not here. I suppose I could be doing the PM a disservice. Braying about our Ashes victory would, of course, be uniquely insensitive to our Australian brothers. And besides, giving congratulations is probably someone else’s job.
Sunday
Thank God they’re not running a war
Last week, defence maestro Kevan Jones launched his master-strategy to smear General Sir Richard Dannatt. It was ingenious. An FOI request would reveal the General to be a spendthrift, abusing taxpayers’ generosity by lavishing their money on his grace and favour accommodation and on raucous parties for his army mates. To borrow a phrase, there was just one small flaw in the plan: it was rubbish. The Mail reveals that General Dannatt’s grace and favour apartment is a stable block, not a palace, and that he pays tax on it because he views it as a perk. His other claims are modest. Audiciously, Sir Richard secured £19,270.77p in expenses between 2005
The stench of realpolitik
Suggesting that al-Megrahi’s release was the result of a deal being struck to protect commercial interests should be offensive, but there are a number of questions the government need to answer. First, was al-Megrahi’s transfer a condition of the Blair-Gadaffi Deal in the Desert? On Friday, Saif al-Islam said: “In all commercial contracts for oil and gas with Britain, Megrahi was always on the negotiating table”. The Foreign Office deny this and yesterday Lord Mandelson said: “The issue of the prisoner’s release is quite separate from the general matter of our relations and indeed the prisoner’s release has not been influenced in any way by the British government.” In addition
Another Sunday, another set of damaging rumours for Brown
Brace yourselves, it’s leadership speculation time again. A story in the Mail on Sunday alleges that Alistair Darling has been attacking Brown in private – “I am trying to talk sense into that man…” – before adding this: “Last night there were claims that backers of Home Secretary Alan Johnson – widely seen as the stop-gap leader if Mr Brown quits before the General Election – were secretly canvassing ‘non-aligned’ Labour MPs not closely linked to any potential successor. Sports Minister Gerry Sutcliffe, who ran Mr Johnson’s unsuccessful Labour deputy leadership bid in 2007, was accused of quietly taking names.” Whether true or no’, these rumblings tell you everything you
Saturday
Tories more trusted on NHS than Labour
The Tories will be pleased. After the #welovetheNHS brouhaha of the past couple of weeks, a ComRes poll in tomorrow’s Independent on Sunday gives them a healthy lead on the NHS. In response to the statement “The NHS would be safer under Labour than the Conservatives,” 39 percent of respondents said they agreed, while 47 percent said they disagreed. That’s an 8 point advantage for the Tories. It’s pretty devastating stuff for Labour, but – oddly – comes in one of the Tories’ weakest policy areas. Let’s hope this encourages Cameron & Co. to think and talk more about health service reform.
The ‘Dear Leader’s Children’
A major political headache is how to ensure the recession doesn’t claim another lost generation. Official figures suggest that nearly 1 million people under the age of 25 are already on the dole, with a further 1.5 million being economically inactive. These figures will only get worse. Polly Toynbee thinks that Germany is pulling out of recession because they have the answer: ‘Labour’s efforts are directed towards getting people into work. But Germany focuses on stopping people falling out of work, by contributing to wages. A study this week says a ¤6bn scheme prevented a major rise in unemployment, and helps explain why Germany is already pulling out of recession.
Saturday
The Importance of Penance
Following this excellent column at the Daily Beast, Bruce Bartlett, a veteran Republican whose credentials are established by his work for Jack Kemp, Ronald Reagan and Goerge HW Bush, emails Steve Benen to make a very useful point: I believe that political parties should do penance for their mistakes and just losing power is not enough. Part of that involves understanding why those mistakes were made and how to prevent them from happening again. Republicans, however, have done no penance. They just pretend that they did nothing wrong. But until they do penance they don’t deserve any credibility and should be ignored until they do. That’s what my attacks on
Thursday
Mandy: Brown would “relish” televised debates with Cameron
So Mandy’s brought up the idea of a public debate between Brown and Cameron again, claiming – in interview with Sky (see footage above) – that the PM would “relish” the opportunity to “take the fight to the Conservatives”. If you remember, the last time Mandy mentioned it, Downing St quickly moved to dampen all the speculation – the rumour was that Brown was going to challenge* Cameron to a series of debates in his conference speech, and was irritated at the PoD for giving the game away so early. But now that Mandy has made the same point again – indeed, even more forcefully this time – I reckon
The real origins of the Mandelson Osborne feud and why Mandelson wants to keep it going
One of the great misapprehensions about the Mandelson-Osborne feud is that Osborne was the instigator of it. The Independent in its piece on the relationship between the two says: “When, a couple of months later in October, Peter Mandelson was offered a peerage and brought back into the Cabinet as Business Secretary, Osborne began briefing journalists to the effect that Lord Mandelson, then a European commissioner, had spent his holiday dripping “pure poison” about Gordon Brown.” But my understanding is that Osborne gave the briefing in the summer. Osborne called Daniel Finkelstein, a former colleague of his from Tory central office who was at the time comment editor of The
Wednesday
Does Mandelson remember that Blair thought cross-dressing was a good idea?<br />
Peter Mandelson has been getting very cross, and rather personal, about George Osborne’s ‘political cross dressing”. But during the Blair era, it was New Labour politicians who were keen on cross dressing. Indeed, on his farewell tour Tony Blair went out of his way to declare it as something that was here to stay: “Most confusingly for modern politicians, many of the policy prescriptions cross traditional left-right lines. Basic values, attitudes to the positive role of government, social objectives – these still divide among familiar party lines, but on policy cross-dressing is rampant and a feature of modern politics that will stay. “The era of tribal political leadership is over.”
