Uk politics

Friday

James Forsyth

An independent rap across the knuckles for the Prime Minister

Today’s letter from the Office of Budget Responsibility pointing out to David Cameron that the OBR’s growth forecasts have taken into account the effect of austerity on growth is embarrassing for the Prime Minister. This kind of letter is a gift to the opposition and Ed Balls has set about taking full advantage. Now, it is worth noting that Cameron’s comments in this case were more defensible than his ones about the national debt in the Conservative party political broadcast, which Fraser picked up on at the time. As government spin doctors have been vigorously arguing, Cameron was mainly talking about why growth has undershot the 2010 forecast which factored in the government’s deficit reduction programme.

Melanie McDonagh

What was it that made the Vicky Pryce trial so compelling?

Just about the only respectable moral that can be drawn from the grisly extended farce that was the Vicky Pryce trial is that the defence of marital coercion is a choice absurdity; one look at the feisty, tightlipped Ms Pryce should have been enough to persuade any jury that this one wasn’t a runner. Everything else about the trial was just horrible. And, obviously, utterly compelling.

Rupert Myers

International Women’s Day is a bit silly

The British do not do seven day mourning the way many Venezuelans are for Hugo Chavez, neither – as a rule – do we flock to the roads to see the bodies of our politicians being driven through the streets. With the exception of Jeremy Bentham we do not – mercifully - put our departed on display.  We tend to leave that to communists. Just as Chavez’s death reminds us that we like to keep our grief low-key, it is fair to say that we are incredibly bad at most public events, with people grumbling, criticising, and proudly declaring that they are going away on holiday just to avoid the thing. We are useless at celebrating St George’s day, and have never fully converted to Halloween.

Isabel Hardman

Labour courts Lib Dem support with mansion tax motion

Labour is still pursuing its mansion tax vote, with the debate set for next Tuesday. It's a clever piece of political timing by Ed Miliband's party, as the text of the motion is now out and about in time for the Lib Dems to assemble in Brighton for their Spring Conference. Vince Cable is speaking tonight at a fringe event, and will undoubtedly be asked whether he wants the Lib Dems to support it. The motion, which the party has just released, reads as follows: 'That this House believes that a mansion tax on properties worth over £2million, to fund a tax cut for millions of people on middle and low incomes, should be part of a fair tax system and calls on the Government to bring forward proposals at the earliest opportunity.' This is very carefully-worded indeed.

Alex Massie

Ed Miliband’s Convenient, Part-Time, Cowardly, Zionism

For a few hours this morning it looked as though Ed Miliband might do something uncharacteristically courageous. The Jewish Chronicle reported that the Labour leader had described himself as a Zionist at a meeting organised by the Board of Deputies. It may be sad that this would need to be considered, as Dan Hodges put it, 'a brave and welcome statement' but that's the modern British left for you. Mr Hodges wondered if Miliband would 'stand by' this statement. His scepticism was sensible. And sure enough, word comes that Miliband's views have been 'misinterpreted' by the Jewish Chronicle. As Hodges relates the story: 'Asked at the event whether he was a Zionist Miliband reportedly responded, “Yes, I am a supporter of Israel”.

Thursday

Isabel Hardman

Labour will have to get used to about-turns on policies it opposed

Yesterday Ed Miliband reiterated his party's existing policies on immigration for voters, today Yvette Cooper went into further detail about how Labour would address the policy area in government. Like Miliband's PPB, Cooper's speech speech to IPPR included an acknowledgement that politicians don't like to talk about immigration, and a mea culpa. She said Labour should have been quicker to bring in the Australian-style points-based system, that the party should have kept transitional controls for Eastern Europe, and that as a government it should have 'looked more at the impact, and been ready to talk about problems.

Isabel Hardman

David Cameron DOES have a magic money tree

So David Cameron says there is 'no magic money tree'. In his big economy speech today, the Prime Minister said:  'Now of course there are plenty of people out there with different advice about how to fix our broken economy. Some say cut more and borrow less, others cut less and borrow more. Go faster. Go slower. Cut taxes. Put them up. We need to cut through all this and tell people some plain truths. So let me speak frankly and do just that. 'There are some people who think we don’t have to take all these tough decisions to deal with our debts. They say that our focus on deficit reduction is damaging growth. And what we need to do is to spend more and borrow more. It’s as if they think there’s some magic money tree.

Harry Cole

The Lib Dems make another personal scandal their party’s problem

Another evening and another set of headlines opening with the now familiar line ‘senior Liberal Democrats have denied they knew’. Not the allegations about Lord Rennard (which he denies) this time, but whether they had any prior warning in spring 2011 about the coming storm that seems likely to land Chris Huhne and his ex-wife in jail. What should have been a scandal about Chris Huhne could taint the entire senior party. Isabel argues that the political fallout from today’s verdict and next week’s sentencing of Pryce and Huhne will be relatively minor. In the short-term I agree, but in the long-run days like today are occurring a little too regularly for the Liberal Democrats.

Isabel Hardman

Chris Huhne and Vicky Pryce: the politics

What is the political impact of the Chris Huhne/Vicky Pryce case? It's a question that you'll hear a lot from those who view everything through what Edward Leigh might call the merciless prism of politics. And yet, as James Kirkup points out on his Telegraph blog, this is more about a terrible family breakdown than it is about the Liberal Democrats. However, as we're still holding up that merciless prism of politics, here are a few thoughts. The first is that of course people will discuss this in the bars at the Lib Dem spring conference this weekend. But will it overshadow the event itself? Not really: this has become a story about a broken family and a broken law, not a political party.

Isabel Hardman

‘We aren’t connecting with the electorate’: Michael Fabricant on the Tory election challenge

The only Tory more Tiggerish than Michael Fabricant is the party chairman Grant Shapps, and perhaps that's why the two work so well together on campaigns. But even the jovial Conservative vice chairman is exhausted after the full-throttle Eastleigh by-election. Fabricant was shouted at in the street by a voter who, thinking he was a Lib Dem, harangued him about Chris Huhne, and one voter placed notice on a wheelie bin telling campaigners to dump their leaflets there, not through the letterbox. But in spite of that, from the glowing way he describes the campaign, you might be forgiven for thinking the Tories won it, or at least came second, not a dismal third behind UKIP.

The Spectator

Vicky Pryce found guilty

Vicky Pryce has been found guilty at Southwark Crown Court of perverting the course of justice by taking speeding points for her ex-husband Chris Huhne. Huhne had already pleaded guilty, but Pryce had pleaded not guilty on the grounds of marital coercion. The jury rejected her defence. The pair will be sentenced at a later date. The offence took place over a speeding incident in 2003, and Pryce had claimed she had been forced by her husband to sign a form saying she was the driver of the car, not him. More analysis to follow...

Len Shackleton

Do public sector job cuts hit women disproportionately?

As we move towards the budget we will be hearing more and more warnings about the impact of further cuts in public sector employment. One line, pursued repeatedly by the TUC and the Fawcett Society since Mr Osborne's first budget, is that such cuts will particularly impact on women. As the public sector employs more women than men, it is argued, the cuts mean higher unemployment for women. It has even been suggested that an Impact Assessment along these lines would conclude that public sector cuts breach the Equality Act. I don't know about that. But it is worth pointing out how difficult it is to assess the impact of public sector 'cuts' on unemployment.

Melanie McDonagh

The bossy state shouldn’t stop us buying cigarettes with pleasing packaging

The Government’s bid to make Britain that little bit more like Australia, in a bad way, by requiring cigarettes to be sold in plain white packaging may well be announced on that annual irritant, No Smoking Day, next Wednesday. And for good measure, it may throw in a ban on smoking in cars carrying children under 16. The only upshot of that last one will be to make it that bit more difficult to get a lift for a child. I am not  a serious smoker. I can manage perhaps two or three cigarettes a year, Clinton style, but that’s enough to forfeit a premium rate of life insurance (actually a life insurance computer can’t handle a smoking rate of less than five a week). I don’t care at all for the smell of stale smoke.

The Spectator

Germany realises the limits of the EU project

Britain isn't the only country whose politicians are getting just a little bit jittery about an increase in Bulgarian and Romanian migrants. In this week's Spectator, Rod Liddle examines the German and Dutch response to the lifting of transitional controls. We were enjoined by the Romanians to believe that our fears of being ‘flooded’ or ‘swamped’, or whatever emotive term you wish to use, were greatly overstated, and that the citizens of Romania would prefer to travel to places with which the home country had historic links. Such as, for example, Germany. But that simply isn’t going to happen, is it? The Germans won’t let it happen.

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman

Vince Cable’s borrowing bombshell

It is only towards the tail end of his lengthy New Statesman essay on 'the long economic stagnation of post-crisis Britain' that Vince Cable lets off one of his bombshells. He's clearly freelancing, and not at a bad time, either, given it's his party's Spring Conference this weekend. Although it's possibly not enormously helpful for the Prime Minister, who is giving a major speech on the economy tomorrow. The Business Secretary examines misinterpretations of Keynesianism and the effect of the government's deficit reduction programme on the economy before dropping this: 'Nevertheless, one obvious question is why capital investment cannot now be greatly expanded. Pessimists say that the central government is incapable of mobilising capital investment quickly.

James Forsyth

1922 Committee: Tory MPs call on Sir David Nicholson to go

Tonight’s meeting of the 1922 Committee of Tory MPs was dominated by calls for Sir David Nicholson to quit as NHS Chief Executive over the Mid Staffs scandal. Bill Cash, who was the MP for Stafford and now represents the Staffordshire seat of Stone, stood up and asked, ‘is there a single person in this room who thinks Nicholson shouldn’t go?’ Only one person indicated that they disagreed with Cash. I understand that more than 10 MPs followed Cash’s lead and made the case that Nicholson had to go if accountability in public life was to mean anything. Those calling for Nicholson’s departure were emphatically not the usual suspects. Indeed, I understand that ultra loyalist Charlie Elphicke was one of them.

The Spectator

George Osborne’s only plan is to pray for recovery

What sort of Budget will George Osborne unveil on 20 March? In this week's Spectator, Fraser Nelson predicts that it will be an empty one, devoid of radicalism. The piece outlines one meeting in which the Chancellor explained why he is feeling so cautious: Before every Budget, George Osborne always seeks the advice of various MPs. He usually doesn’t heed it but it’s a good way, he thinks, to keep the troops happy. As the economic headwinds have strengthened, this advice has tended to be increasingly radical and in a recent meeting with the Free Enterprise Group of Tory MPs, the Chancellor made clear he was in no mood for it. ‘Look,’ he told them, ‘I tried radicalism in last year’s Budget, and I had blowback for it.

Isabel Hardman

Tories set Labour in their crosshairs over Mid-Staffs

After today's slightly confusing PMQs line from the Prime Minister about unidentified 'people' who 'should be thinking of their positions' after the Mid-Staffs scandal, ministers and loyal backbenchers have gone out to bat for the government. After PMQs, the Prime Minister's sources refused to say who these 'people' were who needed to consider their positions. But now Jeremy Hunt has written a piece for ConHome saying 'Labour can and will be held accountable for what happened at Mid-Staffs'. He then warns that the party appears to have learned no lessons at all from the Francis Report and that the public shouldn't trust them again: 'Labour’s reaction to Mid Staffs has been a deafening silence which is shocking both in its arrogance and complacency.

Chris Skidmore

Who should we blame for the Mid-Staffs scandal?

As the row over who knew what and when in the Mid-Staffordshire tragedy grows, it's worth taking a close look at the data involved. When you consider the Mid-Staffs scandal across the timeline of the previous government, the findings present extremely uncomfortable evidence for which the Labour party must be held to account. There are two key measures. These are the number of ‘expected deaths’, weighing up the age and condition of patients admitted to hospital, against the actual total number of deaths occurring. The difference between the two figures is known as ‘unexplained deaths’.

Lloyd Evans

PMQs sketch: Miliband packs a punch, and Cameron punches back

Whooo that was nasty. Today’s was the most vicious PMQs of the last twelve months. Easily. Ed Miliband started by quoting the case of a Londoner called ‘John’ who was concerned about living standards. ‘John’, however, wasn’t a disabled pensioner but a City fat cat concerned that next year’s bonus might be capped at two million pounds. ‘What’s the prime minister going to do to help him?’ Nifty tactics from Miliband’s team. Cameron might have floundered here but his reply matched the full force of Miliband’s attack. His government, he declared, had cut bonuses to a quarter of what they’d been under Labour. ‘And we aren’t going to listen to the croupiers who were in the casino when it all went bust.