Uk politics

Wednesday

Fraser Nelson

The London helicopter crash reminds us how vulnerable London still is to terrorist attack

From our UK edition

To have a helicopter crash so near the site of the new American Embassy and the headquarters of MI6 raises obvious concerns for national security. I was on a train when I first heard the news, and my fellow commuters all hit their mobiles. Everyone's first reaction seemed to be to ask if this was another terrorist attack. It wasn't. But for a lot of Londoners, the incident will have been a reminder of how vulnerable the capital city still is. We choose to have the headquarters of our spies in one of the most visible locations in the country. In Prime Minister's Questions, we put the entire British government under the same roof at the same time each week — making us about the only country in the world to do this. What prevents someone renting a helicopter and doing their worst?

Alex Massie

No Country for Green Men – Spectator Blogs

From our UK edition

This week's Think Scotland column takes a gander, just for once, at the Scottish Green party. Patrick Harvie's party is in favour of Scottish independence for reasons that, frankly, seem pretty damn unconvincing. I suspect that the Greens, like those parts of the far-left that also favour independence, are liable to be desperately disappointed by life in an independent Scotland and that they will come to realise that it is not much better than their present miserable existence within the United Kingdom. Harvie, of course, rejects the label "nationalist". He is, he insists, no such thing and you don't need to be a nationalist to favour independence. Well, maybe not. But you're still, quite evidently, aiding a nationalist project. Anyway, here's the piece.

Isabel Hardman

Fresh Start’s EU powers threat could focus the mind

From our UK edition

It is always an understatement to say that David Cameron can't possibly satisfy his party with his Europe speech this week: the reason being that there is no one unified position on the EU within the Conservatives, with different groups calling for different responses to Europe. Today the Fresh Start Group of Tory MPs publishes its 'Manifesto for Change' which will propose a list of powers that Britain should repatriate from Europe. Cameron has already made clear that he will be seeking a new relationship with the EU, and so the Fresh Start MPs will be hoping that he will pick up some of their ideas. For them, it is the renegotiation that is the crucial element of Cameron's speech.

Tuesday

Lloyd Evans

Sketch: Gordon Brown resurfaces

From our UK edition

Gordon Brown lumbered back into parliament this evening to speak in an adjournment debate at 7.10 pm. Even before dinner he managed to look both over-fed and a bit exhausted. His thick dark hair has grown greyer and longer than when we last saw him barrelling out of Downing Street, in May 2010, having just blown the economy and the election. He entered the chamber unaccompanied. When the speaker called him, he stood up in a little pool of empty space. Perhaps fellow MPs feared being sucked into the red dwarf of his extinct career. As he spoke, his mood seemed chastened. His rhetoric was noticeably muted and unshowy. But his pomposity remains undimmed. ‘I rise on behalf of myself,’ was his opening phrase.

Isabel Hardman

Prime Minister and Chancellor ‘stayed submerged’ on bankers’ bonuses

From our UK edition

The irrepressible Lord Oakeshott is making mischief again: he's using Sir Mervyn King's comments about Goldman Sachs bonuses today to attack David Cameron and George Osborne. He's just told Coffee House the following: 'The Governor speaks for all on Goldman's greed. He shows leadership where the Prime Minister and Chancellor stayed submerged. Starbucks are an also ran in the tax avoidance stakes compared to world champions like Goldmans.' Then he took another covert shot at the Treasury by referring - not by name - to the appointment of former Goldman employee Mark Carney as the next Bank of England Governor: 'Big banks like Goldman can't have it both ways. If they want the kudos of advising governments and collecting fat fees like their £4.

Isabel Hardman

The Whitehall watershed moment

From our UK edition

Those pushing for reform of the civil service have been heartened still further today by the number of interventions from politicians of other parties on the need for change. Yesterday they saw Tony Blair's quotes in the Times about the problems with the service as a game-changer, and they are also pleased that former Labour ministers John Healey and Digby Jones have criticised the Whitehall machine. So why is this a watershed moment? Whitehall sources feel these quotes from opposition politicians show that there is now a unique situation where all three parties are either in government or have recently left government. These fresh memories of dealing with the civil service now means there is a cross-party consensus that change is needed.

Jonathan Jones

Mervyn King vs. Goldman Sachs

From our UK edition

What did the Governor of the Bank of England think of Goldman Sachs' plan to wait until the 50p rate is cut in April to pay bonuses? At this morning's Treasury Select Committee, Mervyn King declined Teresa Pearce's invitation to label it 'morally repugnant' but did declare it 'depressing', 'clumsy' and 'lacking in care and attention to how other people might react'. According to the BBC, Goldman Sachs has since decided not to press ahead with the plan — perhaps they heeded King's warning that 'in the long-run financial institutions, like all large institutions, do depend on goodwill from the rest of society'.

Isabel Hardman

Collective responsibility and the Leveson report

From our UK edition

Cabinet Secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood has signed off on an agreed breach of collective responsibility in the boundaries vote, but what does that mean for the way the government works from now on? The Prime Minister's official spokesman argued this afternoon that this did not in any way set a precedent for the way the two coalition parties vote on other policies. He added: 'The Cabinet Secretary was consulted. It has been formally agreed but only in this specific instance. Having consulted the Cabinet Secretary, they recorded their agreement to set aside collective responsibility on this occasion. The rules with regard to this allow for the setting aside on very specific issues of collective responsibility where, as in this case, the two party leaders have agreed that.

Melanie McDonagh

Eric Pickles ‘does God’, but does the government really agree?

From our UK edition

Personally, I don't wear a cross, on the basis that I'm not much of an advertisement for Christianity and I'd risk diminishing the brand. But for Eric Pickles, Communities Secretary, and Nadia Eweida, the former British Airways employee who has just won her appeal about cross-wearing at work at the European Court of Human Rights, it's a basic freedom. It's hard to gainsay the judges' view that manifesting your faith is a 'fundamental right'. Any organisation that doesn't have a problem about Muslim women wearing scarves and Sikh men wearing turbans but which gets uppity about a small cross, really does have a problem with consistency.

Alex Massie

Who cares about HMV? Shopping has never been better. – Spectator Blogs

From our UK edition

How many people presently lamenting the demise of HMV (at least in its current incarnation) actually spent any money there these past, say, five years? Not too many, I suspect. And for good reason: HMV was not, by its end, very good. If it had been wiser or less complacent, it might have been better placed to survive. But here's the thing: HMV was not merely the victim of technological change and new customer preferences it was also the wrong size. Because it had stores in most of Britain's largest towns and cities and because it had been around for a long time we tend to think of HMV as a large company. But it wasn't a large company.

Isabel Hardman

Tory MPs warn Cameron of ‘mañana moment’ for EU speech

From our UK edition

Number 10 has got quite the job to do over the next few days if it is to get backbenchers ready for David Cameron's EU speech on Friday. Tory MPs are now obviously in a high state of excitement, but their expectations will inevitably be disappointed to some degree. Some are already expressing fears about this, including the MP leading calls in parliament for a referendum. John Baron, who chairs the All-Party Parliamentary Group for an EU referendum, tells me that he is worried the 'mood music' in Europe isn't quite as positive about renegotiation as the Prime Minister might hope. He says: 'The chance of repatriating powers, I think they are slim: but I wish him well.

Monday

Jonathan Jones

Briefing: Simplifying the state pension

From our UK edition

There certainly seems to be something to be said for keeping an effective minister in the same post. After two years and eight months in the job, Steve Webb is by far the longest-serving Pensions Minister since the post was created in 1998. And, as last week's mid-term review showed, pensions is one area where the coalition has much to boast about: the 'triple lock', the Hutton review, raising the pension age, ending default retirement and compulsory annuitisation, and introducing automatic enrolment. And today, Webb has announced the government's new 'single tier' state pension. At the moment, the state pension system is fiendishly complex: there's the basic state pension (currently £107.45 a week), the Guarantee Credit (which tops up income to £142.

James Forsyth

Hostilities deepen in Whitehall Wars

From our UK edition

‘The relationship between my civil servants and me is summed up by trust and understanding. I don’t trust them and they don’t understand me,' one Secretary of State likes to joke. The quip sums up the current, tense mood in Whitehall. Today’s Times has done a superb job chronicling just how bad things have got. Many ministers and special advisers feel that they are being made to do huge amounts of work to compensate for the failings og the civil service and being made to carry the can when the permanent bureaucracy messes something up. But before this is dismissed as just griping from ministers who are struggling with mid-term, it is worth noting Tony Blair’s trenchant criticisms of the civil service.

Sebastian Payne

Wind power is unnecessarily stretching the cost of living

From our UK edition

The perfect news to greet a freezing Britain today — energy bills are set to take another hike thanks to a series of dodgy wind energy contracts. According to today’s Telegraph, a ‘shocking series of errors’ has resulted in deals worth £17 billion stacked in the favour of turbine manufacturers. As well as wasting taxpayers' money, it appears the excessive costs of these contracts could be handed down to families, placing an extra strain on households at a time when family incomes are being pushed to the limit. Who do we have to thank?

James Forsyth

No 10 has intensive work ahead to prevent Tory criticism drowning out Cameron’s EU speech

From our UK edition

The date of David Cameron’s Europe speech has been moved yet again. But this time it has been pulled forward, to this Friday. Downing Street realised that they weren’t going to be able to talk about anything else until the speech was done. The mood in the party ahead of the speech is not good. There’s considerable irritation among Tory Cabinet Ministers that they haven’t been consulted about the speech. Another source of irritation for Eurosceptic ministers is that Ken Clarke has been allowed to — or, at least, not prevented from — joining up with Peter Mandelson and this new Centre for British Influence Through Europe.

Isabel Hardman

Peers get ready to kill the boundaries bill

From our UK edition

Peers will vote shortly on an amendment to the Electoral Registration and Administration Bill which could kill the boundary changes. Coffee House understands that there is no government whip on the issue, and the Lib Dems are being told to support the amendment from Labour's Lord Hart which will delay the changes until 2018. A senior party source says: 'They will be expected to vote for the amendment in line with the public position set out by Nick Clegg.' The amendment will then move back to the Commons. The government's attempts, reported over the weekend, to push the reforms through using minority parties have run aground after both the DUP and SNP said they would vote against the changes. There are also at least two Conservative MPs who will vote against: Glyn Davies and Philip Davies.

Isabel Hardman

Lib Dems and Labour to push for changes to benefits uprating bill

From our UK edition

Round two of the row over rises in benefit payments is on the way, with Lib Dems and opposition parties tabling a series of amendments to the government's legislation. I have learned that Lib Dem Andrew George has already laid his proposals for changing the welfare uprating bill, which will return to the House of Commons for the report stage and third reading next Monday. George's amendments are backed by four other Lib Dem MPs: and two of them were neither rebels nor abstainers at last week's second reading vote. While Charles Kennedy and John Leech abstained and rebelled respectively on the second reading, Dan Rogerson was loyal, and Alan Reid was absent.

Alex Massie

David Cameron’s Europe “Strategy” is Going to Fail – Spectator Blogs

From our UK edition

This is unfortunate, not least because the Prime Minister is a greater realist than many of his erstwhile supporters. They, too often, seem to be another bunch of Bourbons. They helped destroy the last Conservative Prime Minister and they seem determined to help vanquish this one too. The country is not nearly so obsessed with Europe as the Conservative party thinks it is and, whatever the people's frustrations with Brussels and the European Union, I still think it unlikely the electorate is liable to be impressed with or by a party that spends quite so much time and energy on the European question. Not that the Prime Minister is helping. His forthcoming euro-speech has been so widely and lengthily trailed that it now has almost no chance of succeeding.

Rachael Jolley

Why the armed forces make young people proud

From our UK edition

The popularity of the armed forces as an icon of British pride among young people shows the value of seeing members of the military out and about in our regular lives. In a poll for British Future, 16-24 year olds picked the military as the institution that makes them proudest to be British. They rated it at 43 per cent, ahead of Team GB at 39 per cent and the NHS at 37 per cent. Only a couple of years ago the wider population never saw soldiers and sailors in uniform as they walked to the supermarket or boarded a bus. But the rules  changed and this is a generation which has grown up seeing members of the military around far more regularly than their parents would have done.

Isabel Hardman

Ministers hope pension reforms will calm concerns about stay-at-home mothers

From our UK edition

Today's pensions announcement contains an attempt by strategists to reassure those who worry that the government is abandoning the family. One of the gripes from the Tory backbenches about the mid-term review was that it provided precious little confidence that the tax break for married couples that they hope for will be forthcoming, with simply a promise that the Lib Dems could abstain in a vote on the matter. It was all very well announcing new childcare measures, MPs such as Tim Loughton complained, but what about those women who wanted to stay at home with their children? But the briefings ahead of today's announcement have carefully sought to underline that stay-at-home mothers will be among those who will benefit.