Uk politics

Thursday

Hamish Macdonell

Salmond goes for the surprise referendum date

Always the showman, Alex Salmond did the unexpected today when he announced that the referendum on Scottish independence would be held on Thursday September 18 2014. He knew everyone was expecting it to be in October so he chose something different. He knew, we knew: everyone, it seemed, knew, that the events of 2014 have been so carefully planned in the Nationalist calendar that it seemed impossible for the First Minister to choose another date than October. The 700th anniversary celebrations of the Battle of Bannockburn will take place at the end of June 2014. This bout of Nationalist patriotic outpouring will be followed by the Glasgow Commonwealth Games in

Rod Liddle

Just cutting spending isn’t enough. Osborne needs to invest as well

Economic growth for the next year is predicted to be lower than 1.0%. I can’t think, offhand, or a more obvious indication that the Chancellor is gripped by some sort of weird paralysis which will result, for the rest of us, in continually declining standards of living. I have no great objection to many of the cuts he has made; and believe, à la Dr Fox, that he could be still more stringent. However, he should also be investing heavily in stuff which will see our economy grow – science, engineering, what used to be called ‘public works’. Simply cutting spending will not promote growth. Simply investing in the productive parts

James Forsyth

The durable coalition

This time last week, Westminster was full of speculation about alternative coalitions. Politics-watchers, myself included, all started speculating about what the Clegg Miliband alternative coalition on press regulation meant. But the Budget was a reminder of how solid the coalition actually is. The Quad still agrees on the government’s economic strategy. Vince Cable — as his recent essay demonstrated — may have his doubts. But it would be hard to find much distance between Cameron, Clegg, Osborne and Alexander. Indeed, it was striking the relish with which Danny Alexander tore into Labour’s Chris Leslie on Newsnight last night. Going through the whole Budget, it is — unlike last year —

Alex Massie

The Boys of the Green Brigade

Och, now’s the hour and now’s the day for the Historic Announcement of the Historic Date for Scotland’s Historic Referendum on Independence. It’s only taken the SNP the best part of two years to get to this point and, of course, there’s only another 18 months or so to wait for the Historic Day itself. So today’s parliamentary announcement is hardly the stuff legends are built from. Never mind. But this being a banner day for the SNP and all that, let us pause to recall one of the party’s most dismal – yet telling – failures. I refer, of course, to the Offensive Behaviour at Football and Threatening Communciations

Isabel Hardman

Forget beer and petrol: will MPs debate monetary policy today?

MPs are debating the detail of the Budget today, and will doubtless pick over some of the lines from George Osborne’s round of interviews this morning, particularly the confusion over whether Help to Buy is available for those buying second homes. There are plenty of queries about whether the government’s new mortgage plans are actually very wise at all. The debate will inevitably focus on the doorstep issues on taxes and cuts. But will MPs talk about one of the most important elements of yesterday’s announcement? It wasn’t on petrol, and it wasn’t beer duty. It actually concerned monetary policy. The first was that finally the Chancellor wants the Bank

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman

Osborne’s pitch to Sun-reading voters caught up in Leveson row

If this was a Budget for Sun readers, then it hasn’t quite worked out as well as George Osborne might have hoped. The newspaper sounded pretty cheery this morning with its story about the beer duty escalator. But here’s the front page for tomorrow’s edition: Now, this is clearly as much about Leveson and the newspaper’s industry disgust that it wasn’t consulted when the lobbying group Hacked Off was invited to the late night negotiations as it is about the measures announced today. But there’s also the point that Fraser makes tirelessly on this blog that politicians like to be lazy at best when it comes to talking about debt

Isabel Hardman

Budget 2013: Ed Balls sticks to his favourite 50p attack

Ed Balls has just given his post-Budget briefing in parliament. The striking thing about Balls, no matter how much you might disagree with him, is how much he relishes these occasions. His whole face lights up, like a large Cheshire cat that has spied a snoozing mouse, as he goes in for the kill. He even went through a list circulated by CCHQ of ‘questions for Labour’. No wonder some Tory MPs wish they had someone on their side who loves the political game as much as the Shadow Chancellor. Now, Balls had plenty of soundbites: he has calculated that you’d have to drink 50,000 pints of beer a year

James Forsyth

The Budget puts petrol in the Tories’ political tank

For the opening half of George Osborne’s Budget speech, the Labour front bench was busy waving around copies of the Evening Standard’s front page. This was visibly putting Osborne off; he wouldn’t be human if the fear that another of his Budgets was going to be dashed on the media rocks hadn’t crossed his mind. But by the time he sat down, the storm over the Standard front had died down thanks to a quick and dignified apology from the paper itself. Osborne will also have been pleased by the cheers of his own side as he returned to his seat. For all the speculation got up by the irreconcilables,

Isabel Hardman

Budget 2013: New ‘Help to Buy’ plan is a boost for Eric Pickles

One of the big measures in today’s Budget was the Help to Buy scheme. It answers two demands: the first for the Tories to continue to support home ownership as what George Osborne called ‘the most human of aspirations’, and the second for the government to do everything it can to get construction moving again. But there’s an interesting political point here. In the summer, George Osborne frightened the living daylights out of Eric Pickles and his team at the Communities and Local Government department by putting it about that he wanted further relaxations on planning regulations to encourage economic growth through construction. Pickles & Co fought back pretty hard,

Lloyd Evans

PMQs sketch: Everyone talks about nothing, while no-one listens

Let’s have a breather. It seemed like a truce had been tacitly declared between the party leaders at today’s PMQs. Instead of going on the offensive, Cameron and Miliband turned their solemn and unified gaze towards the sorrows of the eastern Mediterranean. Miliband asked about Syria. Cameron used the opportunity to take a pot-shot at the EU, still agonising over the arms embargo. Their sluggish and dithersome talks, he said, reminded him of the hesitation that caused needless bloodshed in Bosnia. Cameron wants the rebels to get tooled up pronto and to finish off the appalling Assad regime. He called it ‘hateful’ three times, just be sure. Next the EU

Fraser Nelson

Budget 2013: Osborne’s empty budget

This was, as I suspected, an empty budget. There was the usual whale spray of policies: a penny off beer duty here, petrol tax reduced there. Nowadays, we don’t have to wonder if the Budget will make a blind bit of difference: the Office for Budget Responsibility sees the figures in advance and does the sums. It concludes that the Budget will have ‘no impact on level of GDP at the end of the forecast horizon’. To Osborne’s credit, he didn’t try to spin this. The recovery has stalled and he has run out of ideas about how to start it again. It’s difficult to put a gloss on this

Isabel Hardman

Budget 2013: It’s all about the ‘aspiration nation’

So did he do it? This was a budget with a strong narrative about the ‘aspiration nation’, and the Chancellor certainly did everything he could to nod to two of those three groups that James identified last week. He had two distinct sections on making Britain competitive in the global race and tackling the cost of living, while dismissing ‘those who would want to cut much more than we are planning to – and chase the debt target’. The cost of living section was a careful attempt to please Sun readers who had been so irritated by last year’s Budget. And Osborne also took care to spell out the tangible

The Spectator

Budget 2013: George Osborne’s statement in full

Mr Deputy Speaker, this is a Budget for people who aspire to work hard and get on. It’s a Budget for people who realise there are no easy answers to problems built up over many years. Just the painstaking work of putting right what went so badly wrong. And together with the British people we are, slowly but surely, fixing our country’s economic problems. We’ve now cut the deficit not by a quarter, but by a third. We’ve helped business create not a million new jobs, but one and a quarter million new jobs. We’ve kept interest rates at record lows. But Mr Deputy Speaker, despite the progress we’ve made,

Isabel Hardman

Budget 2013: Five boxes George Osborne needs to tick

We’ve got just over half an hour until the Chancellor stands up to give his Budget statement in the House of Commons. It’s the last Budget, many Tory MPs believe, that he has to make a real difference to the party before 2015. And those who enjoy plotting against the leadership are touting it as one of the last chances David Cameron and George Osborne have to convince their own MPs that they’re worth backing for the long run. So what does the Chancellor need to do to emerge unscathed from this bleak Budget? Here are five boxes he needs to tick. 1. Cost of living. A big issue for

Alex Massie

An Antediluvian Tory Press Causes Problems for David Cameron

Today’s papers make dreadful reading for anyone with an interest in modern, reformed conservatism. They are a reminder – if it were needed – that the Tory press is estranged from the Prime Minister. Mr Cameron has played his part in the breakdown of relations (his behaviour over press-regulation has hardly helped) but he is hardly the only guilty party. Today is one of those days you look at the headlines and just wonder what decade it is. An Insult To Stay At Home Mothers screams the Mail. The Telegraph is only modestly more restrained: PM’s ‘slur’ on stay-at-home mothers. Good lord, you may think and wonder, what on earth Mr Cameron has done

Fraser Nelson

Why the confusion between debt and deficit?

Polls show that, depending on how you ask the question, just between 8pc and 12pc of us realize that debt is rising. It’s not hard to work out why: first, politicians – even the Prime Minister – says that debt is falling. They say they get it confused with ‘deficit’. But this morning, I tweeted that blame lies with the BBC and its failure to mention this basic point when reporting on the public finance. Its narrative tends to be one of fast, deep cuts. It tends to use language that no one understands, and not just conflating ‘debt/gdp ratio’ with ‘debt’. Most normal people don’t know what ‘deficit’ means,

Isabel Hardman

Budget 2013: what the papers say

The Treasury has largely managed to maintain discipline in the run-up to the Budget, with only controlled briefings in the past few days, rather than last year’s public row over tax cuts. Yesterday we were told about the additional departmental spending cuts to fund infrastructure: the pain has already been briefed so that today the £2.5billion raised from cuts can be painted more as gain. There are also some carefully-placed stories on the front pages this morning, too. Last year’s Budget didn’t have much in it for Sun readers: the pasty and caravan taxes did for any suggestion that the government was on their side while it cut the top

Tuesday

Dan Byles

The quiet global energy revolution

In all the noise of tomorrow’s Budget, many may not spot a small tweak to the fiscal regime for UK oil and gas. Those of us with a close interest in unconventional oil and gas, however, will be watching closely. Last year the Chancellor announced a consultation on a specific tax regime for onshore shale gas development, the results of which are expected on Wednesday. Press coverage of shale gas is often characterised by myth and hyperbole. For some, it’s the last gasp for fossil fuels; for others, a new source of energy security and the key to bringing down bills for industry and consumers. We are not used to

Isabel Hardman

Letter to PM: ‘Nicholson must go with all speed’

Earlier, I blogged that Tory MP Charlotte Leslie planned to raise concerns with the Prime Minister about Sir David Nicholson’s incorrect select committee evidence. She’s now written a letter, which I’ve seen, telling David Cameron that the NHS chief executive ‘must go with all speed’, and reminding the Tory leader that she has the backing of 60 colleagues. The letter is pretty strong stuff. It says: ‘I am deeply concerned that the man who currently leads the largest employer in the country has not only overseen a culture that has damaged our NHS, but has now given a false account to a Select Committee in this way. I know you