Uk politics

Thursday

Sebastian Payne

What influences GCSE grades?

For the first time in the history of GCSE exams, this year’s results have seen a decline in grades. Today, the Joint Council for Qualifications, which represents exam boards, announced that the number of papers marked A*-C has dropped from 69.8 per cent last year to 69.4 per cent. A grades have dropped by 0.8 per cent while A* grades are down by 0.5 per cent and C grades also down 0.4 per cent. Since GCSEs were first set in 1986, rising grades each year may have been welcomed by the pupils receiving them, but have led to concerns about grade inflation. To address this, the exams regulator Ofqual has placed extra

Vidhya Alakeson

Working families risk being shut out by Montague row

Today’s publication of the Montague Review into institutional investment in build-to-let addresses an important gap in our housing market. Large numbers of people, and a growing number of families, who would have bought homes in the past are now shut out of ownership for the medium to long term. Dominated by buy-to-let landlords, the private rented sector currently offers them variable quality and limited security at a high price. These working families represent a new form of housing need but they risk being overlooked if the Review’s recommendations get caught up in a conflict between affordable housing (or social housing as it used to be called) and the private rented

Isabel Hardman

You can’t judge a school by its sports fields

There’s a glass case in the hall of Number 10 at the moment which contains a large sports bag with two shiny Olympic medals poking out. This wasn’t left behind by a Team GB athlete: it’s actually an enormous, elaborate cake, complete with icing zips. Downing Street staffers are looking forward to eating this part of the Olympic legacy soon. A considerably less tasty leftover from the Games is the row over school sports provision. During the Olympics, I argued that the Prime Minister’s interventions on the matter were largely unhelpful, but as Fraser and Matthew d’Ancona have pointed out, schools selling off old tennis courts to pay for new

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman

Straining every sinew a just that little bit further for growth

The Institute of Directors added a bit more moss to the rolling stone of worry about the government’s growth agenda today, releasing the results of a survey of business leaders that condemned a list of the government’s reforms as ‘ineffective’. It’s worth looking at the full list of areas where the respondents felt the government is failing to deliver, but in short simplifying the planning system was deemed the least ineffectual set of reforms, with reducing tax complexity the area where the government scored worst. Now, before Chuka Umunna gets too excited about the words ‘too far and too fast’, the IoD’s members did support the government’s deficit reduction measures.

Isabel Hardman

Pay study embarrasses teaching unions

The teaching unions like to dismiss talk of introducing regional pay to the public sector as a plan that will hit deprived areas hardest. Their fierce opposition to the plans touted by Michael Gove and other ministers threatens to crystallise into strike action should the government make any serious moves towards the changes. But research from Bristol University published today changes the terms of the debate rather, as it suggests that pupils are paying the price for a national pay rate for teachers. The study, which compared pay to performance in around 3,000 schools, found that in areas where salaries in the private sector are significantly higher than in schools,

Shiraz Maher

Galloway and Murray’s smears ignore how simple the Assange case is

The remorseless smears of the alleged victims of serious sexual assault by George Galloway MP and Craig Murray, our former ambassador to Uzbekistan will have serious consequences for the victims of sexual assault on British shores. Both men are guilty of some of the most callous behaviour of modern political times in their intemperate outbursts, which are about much more than Julian Assange. The victims of these crimes in this country already suffer from a unique combination of trauma and stigma. It is no surprise that rape and associated crimes are perennially underreported. An authoritative study commissioned by the Home Office in 2007 found that ‘between 75 and 95 per

Sebastian Payne

Firestarter Francis Maude needs to keep fanning the quango bonfire

The Prime Minister once promised a ‘bonfire of the quangos’. Although his government has sometimes failed to fulfil expectations, his firestarter in the Cabinet Office, Francis Maude, has managed to make a dent in the 1,000+ organisations that flourished under Labour. The latest figures released by the Cabinet Office today claim that £1.4bn has saved through the government’s quango reform programme. So far, 106 public bodies have closed, with a further 150 merged down into 70. Among the more quirky ex-quangos  are the Government Hospitality Advisory Committee on the Purchase of Wines, Advisory Committee on National Historic Ships and Advisory Committee on Packaging. In an article for ConservativeHome, Maude outlines his clear

Peter John

Why a Labour council is selling expensive housing stock

The Policy Exchange report Ending Expensive Social Tenancies has predictably provoked a renewed debate about council housing and the value of genuinely mixed communities. It was welcomed by the right as providing a potential narrative for ending the automatic claim of the working and non-working poor to live in more salubrious neighbourhoods, whilst some on the left have attacked it as a fundamental attack on the very notion of council housing. On the basis of my experience as leader of Southwark Council – the largest social landlord in London – I believe the report actually presents us with an opportunity to start talking about what we want our social housing

Julie Meyer

The world belongs to small businesses. Why are we stifling them?

From the moment the Queen uttered the words, ‘Good evening, Mr. Bond,’ Britain was caught in a two-week Olympic bubble of sporting and national pride. I’m sorry to kill the buzz, but while Mo Farah was hurtling at full speed towards the finishing line, Britain’s economy was crawling on its knees. We’ve seen a shock rise in inflation. We’ve seen warnings from the TUC that the job outlook for the young is its toughest since 1994. And, with Britain now being the only major economy apart from Italy to stay in recession, we’ve been dubbed the ‘sick man of Europe’. If Britain is going to perform as well as its

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman

MPs and voters turn on Osborne

The Treasury received some bad news today, so it sent out Chloe Smith to respond instead of her boss George Osborne. The economic secretary made the same point as Fraser about Labour’s alternative strategy when she responded to the latest borrowing figures this afternoon. She said: ‘Their strategy would be to borrow more and to spend more and we cannot take that kind of decision in these circumstances.’ But she then added: ‘What these figures really show is the importance of sticking to the plan that has won Britain international credibility.’ The ‘international credibility’ line is quite interesting as presumably Smith is referring to Britain’s credit rating, which Danny Alexander

Sebastian Payne

Cameron does not have to worry about the lack of big donations, at least not yet

Are the big Tory donors running away from David Cameron? The Times reports that many of the major backers have held back on coughing up funds, as a result of their dissatisfaction with Cameron’s leadership: ‘Some donors have told The Times that they are pessimistic about the next election. Other donors complain about government disarray, lack of action on the economy, irritation at gay marriage plans and the party’s stance on bonuses and bankers. Boris Johnson is attracting some interest from the donor community, according to two of them.’ So far, the Tories are £1.28 million down on the same period in 2011. But it is the depleted income from

Isabel Hardman

Lib Dems push Treasury on mansion tax

The Treasury’s consultation on taxing residential property transactions closes this Thursday, and the Liberal Democrats are using it to push their preferred policy of a full mansion tax. The party has asked its members to send this email to the Treasury: I am writing in response to HM Treasury’s public consultation on the taxation of residential property transactions. Ultimately, I want the government to go further and introduce a full mansion tax charge of 1 per cent annually on all properties worth £2 million or more, with an option of delaying payment for those who are asset-rich but cash-poor. If the government wants those with the broadest shoulders to bear

Fraser Nelson

Sorry, Rachel, but more debt is not the answer to the debt crisis

Has anyone seen George Osborne’s £3 billion? The Chancellor seems to have lost it. His government had expected to net £2.5 billion more than it spent last month, as July is normally a good month for tax receipts. Instead the figure has come in at a £600 million deficit. This is a major shock to the City, and analysts are spending today reworking their forecasts. Sure, we know the economy has flatlined. But we didn’t know that the impact on the tax haul would be so bad. As you’d expect, Labour has gone on the attack. But the Ed Balls line (being voiced by Rachel Reeves today) sounds less convincing

Matthew Sinclair

Promoting tax transparency at the petrol pumps

Too many taxes are buried in prices. From Value Added Tax to the cost of extravagant subsidies for renewable energy, all people see is the shop charging them a higher price. That is convenient for politicians trying to hike our taxes, but it distorts democratic decisions over the level of taxes and spending, and which taxes to increase and decrease. That is why we have seen steady increases in Employers’ National Insurance. It is why climate regulations are structured so a huge part of the cost is buried in the electricity market. And it is telling that the taxes people resent most are the lump sums they have to write

Isabel Hardman

Ministers take brand NHS to the world

Danny Boyle had us all fooled. There we were, thinking the dancing nurses and luminous NHS logo in his opening ceremony for the Olympic Games were part of a piece of ‘Marxist propaganda’, when actually he was sneakily paving the way for what Labour this morning derided as the ‘rampant commercialisation’ of the health service. Yes: it turns out that the Olympic opening ceremony was just one big fat right wing advertising ploy to entice the world to buy into Brand NHS. Whoops. The government is opening an agency called Healthcare UK, which is designed to set up contacts between world-respected NHS operations and private clients overseas. The Health department

Monday

Sebastian Payne

Proalition risks becoming a noalition

The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats are preparing for their last-ditch attempt to kiss and make up before having to accept their union is over. The coalition partners are heading into the conference season with a positive attitude they hope will carry them through 2015 (and potentially beyond). A new word to describe the second coalition love-in has entered the Westminster lexicon this week — ‘proalition’. Both sides are desperate for proalition to work. Not out of a desire to work together, but out of sheer necessity. If the coalition falls apart in the near future, both parties would face annihilation at the polls. Neither side has managed to distinguish itself

Rupert Myers

There’s no right to live in Chelsea

Your local council owns prime real estate and could sell it to build new social houses. Housing Minister Grant Shapps says the appeal of this idea promoted by Policy Exchange is ‘obvious’. With a potential pot of £5.5bn to build up to 170,000 affordable homes, what’s not to like? Plenty, apparently: Labour MP Karen Buck warned of a risk to communities, and the importance of mixing groups within our population. Lord Prescott called the idea ‘gerrymandering’. The empty slogans come from both sides. When someone says ‘nobody has a right to live in’ Chelsea they ought to remember that some people do have a right to live there, and that

Madsen Pirie

Voters say goodbye to nanny

Has nanny finally blown it?  That was what we sought to find out.  After having the state tell us what to eat and drink, how to exercise, and even how to cook turkey, anecdotal evidence suggests people are growing tired of it all and would like nanny to stop being so bossy.  A small group of self-styled ‘experts’ who think they know better than we do how to live our lives seems to have persuaded government to bully us into compliance. In 1998 the Adam Smith Institute surveyed, with a polling organisation, the attitudes of the younger generation.  We found then that they didn’t expect government to gain them a

Isabel Hardman

Is selling off expensive council homes such a bright idea?

Here’s a policy that looks like it could be a vote winner while helping to solve Britain’s housing crisis: selling off expensive council homes. Think tank Policy Exchange has published a paper this morning proposing that local authorities be allowed to sell luxurious properties in their boroughs as they become vacant in order to raise money for new, cheaper social properties. The report’s author, Alex Morton, believes this could lead to 28,500 expensive properties being sold off each year, raising £5.5 billion for new housing construction. The idea is also, unsurprisingly, quite a popular one with voters. The report points to 73 per cent of voters agreeing that people should

Sunday

Isabel Hardman

A U-turn on rail fares would buoy up backbenchers

It’s not unusual in politics for what would in abstract seem a sensible policy to become hugely unpopular when it hits Westminster. Most Conservative MPs would agree, in principle, that placing the burden of the cost of rail travel on the shoulders of those who actually travel by train is far more sensible than the money coming from all taxpayers, regardless of whether they use the rail network, and regardless of whether they live in commuter-land or not. But it was also inevitable that this week’s huge price rise would be very difficult for MPs to sell to their constituents when the cost of living is rising across the board.