Uk politics

Tuesday

Jonathan Jones

Deficit falls by 0.3%… maybe

From our UK edition

George Osborne will be breathing a sigh of relief this morning. The boast he made in his Autumn Statement in December — 'the deficit is coming down this year, and every year of this Parliament' — appears to have held up. But only just. The figures from the ONS today show that the government borrowed £120.9 billion in 2011-12 and £86.2 billion in 2012-13. But that 2012-13 figure is artificially lowered by £28 billion by the Royal Mail pension transfer, and by a further £6.4 billion by the cash transferred to the Treasury from the Bank of England's Asset Purchase Facility. Strip out those two effects and borrowing in 2012-13 was £120.6 billion — still lower than 2011-12, but only by £300 million, or 0.3 per cent.

Isabel Hardman

George Osborne stays in attack mode

From our UK edition

George Osborne is well-known as the 'submarine Chancellor'. But recently he's been out and about a little bit more than we're used to. He went on the attack this month on welfare, and today he made a rare appearance on Radio 4, and then gave a speech on Scotland and the pound. Ahead of today's borrowing figures - which show he's just about squeaked home on his claim that the deficit is coming down every year of this Parliament - he told John Humphrys that the economy was recovering, and discounted the views of the IMF's chief economist Olivier Blanchard, saying: 'That is one voice, one person. The chief economist has a well-known set of views on this, which he has expressed in various forms over several years.

Monday

James Forsyth

How Michael Heseltine won his first showdown with Margaret Thatcher in government

From our UK edition

The extracts in the Telegraph of Charles Moore’s biography of Margaret Thatcher have confirmed that this will be one of the most important political books of recent times. One of the intriguing things about Thatcher’s premiership is how, for the early years of it, she had to deal with a Cabinet that was not convinced of her policy prescription. This meant that, contrary to the latter image, she could not simply proceed as she wished. (Though, it should be noted that events vindicated Thatcher’s judgment.) Charles Moore reveals in his book that in 1979 Michael Heseltine flatly refused the job of energy secretary. He reports that when Thatcher offered it to him, he replied ‘“No… I’ve been rehearsing environment for three years.

Isabel Hardman

The question Labour won’t even consider on the NHS

From our UK edition

Labour's new independent commission on health and social care aims to draw up plans on bringing together health services and social care so that the NHS can be financially sustainable. Launching the plans today, Ed Miliband said that 'we must make every pound we spend go further at a time when our NHS faces the risk of being overwhelmed by a crisis in funding because of care needs by the end of this decade'. But there is one big question that Sir John Oldham, who will chair the year-long review, won't be asking about the long-term financial viability of the health service. It's a question that some Labourites are well-attuned to, and that the chair of NHS England (formerly the NHS Commissioning Board) Malcolm Grant raised earlier this month.

Isabel Hardman

Tory MPs hunt new Labour education shadow

From our UK edition

The other interesting thing about Ed Miliband's personnel 'lurch to the left' last week was that he appointed Tristram Hunt to Labour's shadow education team to replace Karen Buck. If CCHQ was excited about Buck becoming the Labour leader's PPS, then Tory MPs were just as energised today by Hunt's presence on the frontbench at departmental question time. Andrew Rosindell asked a question about the history curriculum. As Michael Gove came to the end of his answer and Rosindell rose to ask his supplementary question, Tory backbencher David Ruffley started to shout 'come on, Tristram!' He repeated his heckling, wiggling his hands in a 'stand-up-for-yourself' gesture.

Isabel Hardman

MPs to push government on plans for new migrants

From our UK edition

MPs will debate the government's preparations for more Bulgarian and Romanian migrants in Westminster Hall today, as another survey suggests that there's no need to get unduly worried about the lifting of transitional controls. Ministers have in recent weeks managed to calm Tory backbenchers down by making announcements regarding restricted access to benefits and housing, but there's still sufficient appetite for this afternoon's debate, led by Mark Pritchard, and a session of the Home Affairs Select Committee tomorrow with the Bulgarian and Romanian Ambassadors and Immigration Minister Mark Harper. Pritchard tells me: 'EU migration and non-EU immigration is of real concern to many communities throughout Britain given the record numbers who entered Britain between 1997-2005.

Isabel Hardman

Number 10 defends Sir Jeremy Heywood’s freelancing

From our UK edition

What is Sir Jeremy Heywood up to? Last week he jointly wrote an article praising Margaret Thatcher which led to a Labour MP accusing him of having 'prostituted his high office'. This week he's revealed to be discussing the behind-the-scenes wranglings in the Cabinet on economic policy. The Times' Sam Coates reports this morning that the Cabinet Secretary revealed to a private meeting of bankers that there were four different positions on growth in the Cabinet.

Alex Massie

No, the Tory Detoxification Project is Not Complete.

From our UK edition

There are times, I confess, when I wonder about politicians. They are a rum breed and it still seems possible to rise to quite elevated heights without possessing very much of an idea about anything. Consider the cabinet minister quoted in this Telegraph article: Mr Cameron won the leadership promising to modernise the party, but one Cabinet minister said it should now “move on” to more “traditional” Conservative issues such as welfare reform and immigration control. “The 'toxic’ issue has been neutralised,” the minister said. “Now we can move on to the red meat Conservative issues.

Isabel Hardman

Nurses cannot dismiss calls for reform out of hand

From our UK edition

It's not unusual for a trade union representing its members to resist change, and today the Royal College of Nursing is sticking well and truly to form. Not only has Peter Carter, its chief executive, called the government's plan to put nurses through a year of work as healthcare assistants 'stupid', he has also penned an op-ed for the Guardian in which he appears resistant to the suggestion that the profession needs to consider wholesale reform following the Francis Report. Carter writes: 'For the million or so people working in the NHS, a number of things come with the job: a boom-and-bust budget, growing demand and a high level of public expectation.

Sunday

Isabel Hardman

How can the Tories work with trade unions?

From our UK edition

In the latest instalment of WWTD? Boris Johnson has called for 'Thatcherite zeal' from the government in standing up to militant trade unions. According to the Sun on Sunday, the Mayor of London wants a turnout threshold of 50 per cent before a strike is legitimate. A group of Tory MPs - including those quoted in today's story - have been pushing for trade union reform for some time. Their argument is that a movement founded to push the rights of the low-paid to the top of the agenda is now more interested in flattering the vanity of its high-paid leaders by pulling unnecessary strikes on low turnouts.

James Forsyth

What will Ed Miliband do on spending?

From our UK edition

The political mood has shifted these past few weeks. There’s now, as the Sunday papers demonstrate, far more focus on Labour than there was a couple of months back, something which pleases Number 10 which is confident that Labour is ill-equipped to deal with much scrutiny. Ed Miliband is coming under pressure to be far more specific about what he would do in government. Much of this is being driven by the coalition’s spending review for 2015/16, the results of which will be announced on June 26th. If Labour wins the next election, it’ll be in office when these cuts are being implemented. This leads to the question of whether or not Labour will accept these spending plans.

Friday

James Forsyth

Ed Miliband needs to talk about 2015, not what he would do now

From our UK edition

Ed Miliband’s speech to the Scottish Labour conference is another illustration that he intends to depict ‘One Nation Labour’ as the answer to so-called Tory divisiveness. Miliband told the conference: ‘As leader of the Labour Party [I] will never seek to divide our country and say to young person in Inverness or the older worker laid off in Ipswich desperately looking for work, that they are scroungers, skivers or somehow cheating the system.’ But in the context of today’s Independent story about Labour planning to go into the next election committed to higher spending than the Tories, a story which Ed Balls crossly contested on the radio this morning, what struck me about the speech was the way Miliband talked about Labour’s policies.

Isabel Hardman

Fitch downgrades UK credit rating

From our UK edition

Fitch's announcement that it is downgrading the UK's credit rating to AA+ isn't as politically explosive as the downgrade from Moody's in February, as it was inevitable that once one major ratings agency dropped the AAA, the others would follow like dominoes. The bigger story will be when all agencies have dropped the rating. Fitch said this afternoon that the reason for the downgrade was that 'the fiscal space to absorb further adverse economic and financial shocks is no longer consistent with a 'AAA' rating'. The agency forecasts that general government gross debt will peak at 101 per cent of GDP in 2015/16, having previously warned that failure to turn this around and place debt on a downward trajectory towards 90 per cent of GDP would trigger a downgrade.

Isabel Hardman

Tories keen to exploit Labour’s Southern Discomfort in local elections

From our UK edition

David Cameron's local election kick-off speech today notably contained no reference to UKIP, but 12 mentions of Labour. The Conservative leader and his colleagues concerned with campaigns are on a damage-limitation exercise about the party's chances in the local elections, and as well as taking the attack to Labour on the policy front - arguing that the Tories have freed councils from Labour's restrictions, kept council tax down and reduced local government waste - a plank of their strategy involves attacking Labour's prowess in southern council seats. The key phrase which you can expect to hear whenever there is evidence that the Labour campaign is faltering in the south is 'Labour's Southern Discomfort'.

Nick De Bois

The scattergun Snooping Bill won’t help tackle crime, or protect people

From our UK edition

Over a year ago, the Government proposed to increase the available powers of surveillance – giving authorities the ability to monitor every British citizen’s internet activities. It is claimed that such powers are essential to keep pace with tackling crime and terrorism; even though such proposals were ditched by the last Government. Their plans faced substantial opposition across Parliament, from the public, internet experts and civil liberties groups. Interestingly, the Government’s current plans bear little difference and continue to face similar oppositions. A Joint Committee of both Houses of Parliament, alongside the Intelligence and Security Select Committee conducted pre-legislative scrutiny of the Communications Data Bill.

Fraser Nelson

Is Gove’s school reform genie out of the bottle?

From our UK edition

Will Michael Gove's reforms outlast him? They are perhaps this government’s single greatest accomplishment. Within three years it has gone from legislation to a nascent industry, and much of it on display at yesterday's Spectator education conference, which the Education Secretary addressed. But towards the end, he raised an important point: how much of this agenda is due to his personal patronage? Is the school reform genie out of the bottle? He thinks so. I disagree, and explain why in my Telegraph column today. Here are my main points, with some highlights from yesterday's conference. 1. The energy and thoroughness of the Gove reforms are remarkable, and go way beyond free schools.

Isabel Hardman

Govt keeps Snooping Bill campaigners in the dark

From our UK edition

It's not looking good for the Snooping Bill. The legislation is currently being re-written after serious concerns were raised with the first draft, but I've got hold of a letter from privacy campaigners which accuses the government of failing to hold the public consultation that was one of the conditions laid down in the damning report that killed off the first draft. The letter, from Big Brother Watch, Liberty, Open Rights Group and Privacy International, expresses fears that meetings between the organisations and Home Office ministers could be used as evidence that ministers have been consulting on the new legislation.

Thursday

Isabel Hardman

A ‘lurch to the left’ or a wise appointment?

From our UK edition

One interesting decision that Ed Miliband made this week was to appoint Karen Buck as his PPS, following the long-planned departure of John Denham. Tory MPs have told me they were very quickly given 'lines to take' on how this represented a big 'lurch to the left' on the Labour leader's part. CCHQ is right that Karen Buck is on the left of her party: as a shadow welfare minister she pushed for the party to oppose the £26,000 benefit cap when Liam Byrne's official line was to leave it be (one he later reversed). But the line to take conveniently forgets that one of the principal purposes of a PPS is to act as a conduit between a leader or minister and the opposite side of the party. So a minister on the right of their party should in theory appoint a PPS on the left.

Isabel Hardman

Ed Miliband shouldn’t dismiss husky-hugging out of hand

From our UK edition

Today's Ipsos MORI finding that voters can't see Ed Miliband as Prime Minister underlines how much hard work the Labour leader really has to do. The poll for the Evening Standard found 66 per cent of those asked didn't believe he was ready to rule the country, against 24 per cent who did. He is also polling behind his party, with 58 per cent disagreeing that Labour is ready to form the next government against 29 per cent who do. As the general election draws closer, voters will find their minds focus more on this question of whether they can imagine the party governing rather than simply on Labour as what Tony Blair described as a 'repository for people's anger'. And as they do that, they'll want to know what it is that Labour stands for rather than simply what it is that Labour opposes.

Isabel Hardman

Michael Gove: Unions need to do a better job

From our UK edition

Cometh the Gove, cometh the angry trade union representative. It was inevitable that the Education Secretary would have at least one exchange with someone from one of the two largest teaching unions when he took questions from the floor at today's Spectator education conference. Gove spoke powerfully without notes on his vision for education, and then in conversation with Andrew Neil, attacked those he believed had low expectations for certain pupils. He said: 'There are wonderful people in teaching and I want to empower them. This is, I think, a tremendous opportunity for teachers. But there are some in the teaching profession, I'm afraid, who won't take yes for an answer. They say we'd like more freedom - and we'd give them more freedom with academies and free schools.