Uk politics

Friday

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.

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman

The date George Osborne’s vultures are circling over

From our UK edition

It was only last week that a Tory MP was warning Coffee House of the dangerous impact that high levels of public debt can have on growth. Today that theory is fighting for its life, with the authors of the Harvard paper that developed it in the first place in the firing line for an error in a spreadsheet. If you haven't been following the Reinhart and Rogoff row, here's a quick catch-up: a paper from two professors and a doctoral student at the University of Massachusetts published this week argues that Carman Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff of Harvard were wrong to reach the conclusion they did about a 90% debt to GDP ratio seriously affecting the growth of a country's economy.

James Forsyth

Margaret Thatcher’s funeral was the right funeral

From our UK edition

Today was a moment in our island story. The longest serving Prime Minister of the 2oth century was laid to rest with due ceremony. Watching the coffin move down to St Paul’s and the service itself, I was struck by how right it was that it was a ceremonial funeral. A private affair would not have done justice to the legacy of our first, and only, female Prime Minister. It was noticeable that the much talked-about protests along the route failed to materialise. But it should be stressed that today’s service was not a political affair. The eulogy was not about her policies but her faith and her understanding of it. Margaret Thatcher now passes into history. I suspect that her name will live on in the way that Gladstone and Disraeli have.

Jonathan Jones

Has the jobs recovery stalled?

From our UK edition

The number of people in work in December to February was 29.698 million — lower than last month's 29.732 million and representing a very slight 2,000 quarter-on-quarter fall — according to today's figures from the Office for National Statistics. Of course, 2,000 is just a 0.008 per cent drop, and since the margin of error for that change is ±139,000, the quarter could yet turn out to have been one of reasonable jobs growth. But in today's figures, the lack of employment growth, while the economically active population continued to expand, meant that the unemployment level rose by 70,000 — its biggest quarter-on-quarter rise since September to November 2011. The unemployment rate, which had fallen from 8.4 per cent in late-2011 to 7.

Steerpike

Margaret Thatcher’s funeral unites the political class

From our UK edition

Where there has been discord, Mrs Thatcher’s funeral brought harmony. From my seat in the gods at St. Paul’s, I watched as Westminster’s lesser mortals gathered in front of the altar to shoot the breeze in the hour before Lady Thatcher’s coffin arrived. Gordon and Sarah Brown were first to arrive. They plonked themselves down, but soon jumped up to chat to a passer-by. Quick as a flash, Ed Miliband and his wife Justine pinched the Browns’ vacated chairs. Time rolled by, and Miliband found it impossible to shake the shadow of his old master as he walked around the nave. How’s that for art imitating life? The pews soon filled up with cabinet ministers.

The Spectator

Margaret Thatcher’s funeral: in words and pictures

From our UK edition

[caption id="attachment_8501512" align="alignnone" width="600"] Margaret Thatcher's coffin is carried from the Palace of Westminster to a hearse for the first leg of its journey to St Paul's. Picture: Getty[/caption] [caption id="attachment_8501522" align="alignnone" width="600"] The hearse moves past crowds outside Parliament. Picture: Getty[/caption] [caption id="attachment_8501532" align="alignnone" width="600"] The hearse passes Downing Street. Picture: Getty[/caption] [caption id="attachment_8501542" align="alignnone" width="600"] Some members of the crowd turn their backs on the cortege as it passes. Picture: Getty[/caption] [caption id="attachment_8501562" align="alignnone" width="600"] Another member of the crowd holds a placard protesting the cost.

Isabel Hardman

Lion-hearted crowds cheer the Iron Lady

From our UK edition

When I arrived at St Paul's at 6 o'clock this morning, a line of people, around 40-strong, had already set up camp with union flags (and one Canadian flag, too) opposite the church courtyard. The police officer drawing to the end of his night shift told me they had been there all night. Later, as the hearse left the Palace of Westminster, the pavements opposite were packed. Yes, there were some people who turned their backs, and others who held placards decrying Thatcher's legacy. This video from the Guardian shows some of them chanting 'waste of money!' as the procession approached. As Thatcher's friend Conor Burns has been repeatedly saying for the past week and a half, the late Prime Minister would have seen that as a tribute in kind as well.

The Spectator

Sir John Hoskyns: the Margaret Thatcher I knew

From our UK edition

Sir John Hoskyns was head of Margaret Thatcher's Policy Unit from 1979 to 1982. In a Q&A with The Spectator, he describes what it was really like to work with her, and how David Cameron could learn from the late Prime Minister. In 1977, you wrote the Stepping Stones Report, which looked at the fundamental problems holding Britain back in the pre-Thatcher era. If you were to write a sequel, what would you focus on? There’s no snap answer – at least from a bystander. Stepping Stones, and our ‘Wiring Diagram’ were written for  a particular crisis for the British economy. I had been working on an analysis of the problem since since the mid-seventies with the nuclear physicist and one-time head of the MoD think-tank, Terry Price.

Isabel Hardman

David Cameron: We’re all Thatcherites now

From our UK edition

David Cameron is giving a reading at Margaret Thatcher's funeral later today, but this morning he gave his eulogy on the Today programme. He made the quite striking observation that 'we're all Thatcherites now'. In one sense this is quite an obvious comment: as countless commentators have observed over the past week and a half, Margaret Thatcher didn't just change the way the Conservative party viewed economics and the state, she also changed the way Labour sold itself as a party. Cameron said: 'I think in a way we're all Thatcherites now because - I mean - I think one of the things about her legacy is some of those big arguments that she had had, you know, everyone now accepts.

Tuesday

Sebastian Payne

Exclusive: George Osborne on GOV.UK winning Design of the Year

From our UK edition

One of the government’s lesser known reforms, the GOV.UK website, has just been named as the 2013 Design of the Year. Before the coalition, the public sector was represented online by nearly 1,000 websites. Under the auspices of the Government Digital Service — a newly recruited band of nerds based outside of Whitehall — GOV.UK has been an attempt to reboot the government’s web presence with a slicker site under a single unifying brand. This award suggests that the project has been a success. Up against tough competition from the Shard and Olympic cauldron, the win is a triumph for the GDS.

Isabel Hardman

Was today’s conservatory revolt really necessary?

From our UK edition

Eric Pickles did manage to avert a defeat in the Commons on plans to let homeowners build extensions and conservatories without planning permission, but it's worth asking how on earth the government managed to get in the position where its backbench was so worked up on a policy like this in the first place? The amendment, tabled by Lord True and approved by peers - would have allowed councils to opt out of the new freedoms.

Isabel Hardman

Michael Gove the evil overlord strikes again

From our UK edition

Michael Gove is at it again. Today he's taken it upon himself to 'heap further misery' onto teachers with 'reckless' plans that would damage children's education. At least, that's what the NASUWT teaching union would have you believe. The Education Secretary has in fact published advice for schools on performance-related pay, which they can use from September of this year. It means that coasting teachers won't get automatic pay rises based solely on length of service, and that good teachers who put extra effort in will get pay rises. So the unions appear to be outraged not on behalf of their entire membership, but on behalf of those teachers who aren't going to get pay rises: in other words, they're annoyed that the game is up for poor performers.

Isabel Hardman

Maria Miller and Oliver Letwin’s perfect press regulation

From our UK edition

There was a curious meeting of the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee this morning. The MPs took evidence from Oliver Letwin and Maria Miller, and then from Harriet Harman, on press regulation. An evidence session with Oliver Letwin is curious enough anyway, as the Minister for Government Policy does tend to speak as though he's reading from a will, complete with codicils. But what was really rum was that everyone in the room seemed to be talking about quite different systems of press regulation. Miller and Letwin were eerily cheery, repeatedly telling committee chair John Whittingdale that they were 'the optimist in this case', and that their plans were not statutory regulation. Miller even objected to the idea that the industry might not be keen.

Isabel Hardman

Planning ‘love-in’ fails to rouse good feelings

From our UK edition

So it doesn't look as though last night's 'love-in' that I reported went particularly well. Cheryl Gillan described planning minister Nick Boles last night as 'completely unmoveable'. Meanwhile, Zac Goldsmith, leader of the rebels on the extensions row in the Commons, was on the Today programme this morning calling it an 'odd policy' and 'very bad, clumsy politics'. He argued that there were other ways of using construction to promote growth: 'There are alternatives: we could relax the planning system without undermining democracy, without going against everything we said in opposition about localism, protecting back gardens and so on. We could easily have a sort of default green light for developments that aren't opposed by neighbours.

Monday

Stephanie Lis

Increasing the minimum wage ignores economic realities

From our UK edition

In economically uncertain times, we should strive to remove all blockages to employment, not create more. The national minimum wage is one such blockage. Whilst forced pay hikes may privilege those in work, they make it much harder for those outside the labour market to get their feet on the employment ladder. In times of plenty, the impact of pricing employees out of the labour market were less dramatic, but in harder times, it becomes a considerable barrier to employment. This is a real problem, and today the government raised the rate by 12p an hour to £6.31 for adults. Employers, especially smaller businesses with fewer resources, will often be unable to pay the minimum wage.

Isabel Hardman

MPs invited to planning ‘love-in’

From our UK edition

Parliament's only just back from Easter recess and already there's a threat of rebellion in the Commons. The Growth and Infrastructure Bill returns to the Commons tomorrow afternoon for 'ping-pong', and a number of MPs are agitated about an amendment that passed as a result of a rebellion in the Upper Chamber. In March, the Lords passed an amendment from Tory peer Lord True which would allow councils to opt out of a policy giving homeowners the right to extend their homes without planning permission. The government is naturally seeking to overturn that amendment, but Tory MPs aren't convinced.