Uk politics

Monday

Douglas Murray

Why would Conservatives want to pass the ‘Danny Boyle’ test?

So the Conservative party’s immigration minister, Damian Green MP, has introduced the idea of the ‘Danny Boyle test.’  In today’s Telegraph he argues that the Conservative party must resist ‘nostalgists promoting a better yesterday’ and that since the Olympics opening ceremony was a demonstration of ‘modern Britain’ it is therefore a ‘test’ that Conservatives must pass. And so the Labour MP Paul Flynn who described the opening ceremony of the Olympics as ‘a Trojan horse’  for the Conservative Party has been proved precisely right.

Sebastian Payne

Never mind about David, we need to talk about George

It’s a familiar theme: the Tory conference is approaching, David Cameron is in trouble and knives are coming out for him. But how much of the problems are of his own making, and how many have come from the Treasury? Tim Montgomerie focuses today on No.10 (£), saying that Prime Minister must come out fighting for his own survival: 'Gay marriage is only the latest issue that is beginning to create the dangerous impression that Mr Cameron is smaller than the events, factions and tides of public opinion that swirl around his Government. The Prime Minister is no longer seen as his own man. People wonder if he’s in command of his own destiny, let alone the nation’s. He can’t cure our economic ills because everything Britain does is overshadowed by the eurozone.

Sunday

Isabel Hardman

May and Green put up the barricades on migration targets

David Cameron is already going to struggle to hit his target of taking net migration from 250,000 to the tens of thousands. But I understand that the Home Office is nervous that other Whitehall departments could undermine that target further, seeing immigration as one sinew that could be strained as they begin to panic about growth. Look closely, and you can see an inter-governmental battle being fought. Theresa May and Damian Green have been on manoeuvres today, highlighting the government's progress in cutting net migration. The Home Secretary has an op-ed in The Sun on Sunday, where she also lists some of the areas which have been tightened to 'make life in the UK much more uncomfortable' for illegal immigrants.

Fraser Nelson

Keep our MPs in the Commons bear pit

The idea of closing the House of Commons for five years will, I suspect, be popular with those who see in this a chance to move the MPs to a lifeless, European style semi-circular chamber that supposedly encourages them to co-operate. The current Commons chamber is divided by the length of two swords, a deliberately adversarial system. It is a bear pit, rough and merciless. Personally, that’s how I like it, and that’s how it ought to stay. The idea is that moving MPs to another arena would save money as the Palace of Westminster is refurbished. But you can bet a new chamber would be kitted out in ways that suit your average MP: they’d have a chair each, no doubt, and a desk like most other parliaments in the world.

Isabel Hardman

Cameron under pressure on Heathrow

David Cameron and his Liberal Democrat partners are coming under increasing pressure from Tory ministers and other senior party figures to U-turn on a third runway at Heathrow. Yesterday, in what appeared to be a bid to take over from Justine Greening as Transport Secretary, Grant Shapps became the first minister to call on the Prime Minister to drop the government's opposition to development at the airport. Today sees the first Cabinet minister to openly voice concerns: Owen Paterson, the Northern Ireland Secretary. The Sunday Telegraph reports that Paterson has urged colleagues in Cabinet meetings to re-consider the third runway, fearing that economic growth in Northern Ireland will suffer.

Saturday

Isabel Hardman

Ofqual to investigate GCSE results

Labour and the teachers' unions have had their way: there is going to be an official inquiry into the GCSE results. The exams regulator Ofqual is only investigating the English results, though, saying there are 'questions about how grade boundaries were set in a very small number of units across the year'. In a letter to the National Association of Head Teachers, Ofqual chief regulator Glenys Stacey wrote: 'We recognise the continuing concerns among students, parents and teachers about this year's GCSE English results. We will look closely at how the results were arrived at. We will do this quickly, but thoroughly, so that we ensure confidence is maintained in our examinations system.

Alex Massie

The SNP’s Slumbering Summer – Spectator Blogs

I have it on good authority that, as matters stand, some senior figures within the SNP are concerned by the way the party has lost - or is perceived to have lost - momentum this summer. Of course, the road to the independence referendum is a long one and there's ample time for the nationalists to up their game. Nevertheless, right now, their message is not cutting through as effectively as they would hope. That's the subject for a column I've written for today's Scotsman: Even so, the SNP’s message has become oddly blurred. What is independence actually designed to achieve? For months now, the party has reassured voters that much of what they hold dear about Britain will remain unchanged post-independence.

Isabel Hardman

Reshuffling the whips won’t solve Cameron’s rebel problem

One of the biggest problems that David Cameron faces at the moment is discipline within his own party. He was astonished by the size of the rebellion on the second reading of the House of Lords Reform Bill, which he had expected to be much smaller. He is now considering what to do with the many talented Conservative rebels as he approaches the September reshuffle: does he promote some more of those who revolted over Europe, but leave the Lords rebels languishing in career Coventry for a little longer? The Guardian carries a story by Nick Watt which suggests Cameron isn't just going to tackle bad behaviour by keeping rebellious spirits on side, though.

Isabel Hardman

The IMF’s ‘too far, too fast’ warning

There is great excitement in some circles at a paper from the International Monetary Fund which has emerged in the past 24 hours. This piece of research warns that cutting government spending too quickly can weaken economies permanently and lead to even deeper recessions. It says: The analysis in this paper shows that withdrawing fiscal stimuli too quickly in economies where output is already contracting can prolong their recessions without generating the expected fiscal saving. This is particularly true if the consolidation is centred around cuts to public expenditure - likely reflecting the fact that reductions in public spending have powerful effects on the consumption of financially-constrained agents in the economy - and if the size of the consolidation is large.

Friday

Sebastian Payne

Farage eyes working class Labour vote

One of the solutions Tory MPs are mulling over now the boundary reforms are dead in the water is some sort of partnership with UKIP to boost the party's chances in 2015. As many as 60 per cent of Conservative activists are reported to favour such a pact. But David Cameron has yet to show any sign that he's warming towards the party he once described as consisting of ‘loonies, fruitcakes and racists'. If he is not careful, Cameron's hand may be played for him. The Eurozone crisis may finally come to a head, which could lead to a soar in UKIP’s popularity. The Prime Minister might then have to broker a deal to avoid electoral meltdown. If he refuses then, Nigel Jones thinks another Tory leader might be more willing.

Isabel Hardman

Forget school sports: the Paralympic row could be far more toxic

The Paralympic flame is now burning in Trafalgar Square ahead of the Games' opening ceremony on Wednesday. As it was lit, Boris Johnson encouraged London to 're-ignite the spirit of the Golden Games' for the Paralympics, which London looks ready to do, given the record sales of 2.3 million tickets (a lesson in endurance and determination to succeed in spite of many obstacles in itself, given the quality of the Locog website that sells those tickets). As with the Olympics, even though the Paralympics are not about politics, they still offer an opportunity for some to make political points. During the first Games, the arguments focused largely on school sports and were as amusing as they were vitriolic.

Fraser Nelson

How mini jobs could support people back into work

Remember when we used to laugh at Germany’s economy? Gordon Brown loved to contrast its sclerotic labour market with booming Britain. That was in the boom years. As Warren Buffet said, when the tide goes out you can see who is swimming naked – and today Britain looks as naked as a prince on a billiard table while Germany celebrates unemployment at near-record lows. We know where we went wrong, but it’s time for us to learn where Germany went right.  It's main insight was that the problem is a supply of willing workers, not a supply of jobs. There's no point borrowing cash to create vacancies if you can't find Germans to fill them.The so-called Hartz reforms were aimed at reforming the labour market, and improving the incentive to take jobs.

Thursday

Isabel Hardman

Why do the Lib Dems love leaflets so much?

Polling analyst Mark Gettleson has a fascinating piece of research on ConHome today about the implications for the Conservatives of a collapse in the Liberal Democrat vote in 2015. In summary, it will be bad news for the Tories. Gettleson argues that in seats where the Lib Dems come third, those who had supported the party did so on the basis of national political messages. He says: 'It is with these voters that an obvious left-right split becomes important - more precisely a Labour vs Coalition one. While Liberal Democrat voters who feel favourably towards the Coalition may well stick with Mr Clegg rather than leap to the defence of their incumbent Conservative, those who find the idea of going into bed with the Tories revolting will switch directly to Labour.

Fraser Nelson

QE — the ultimate subsidy for the rich

It’s official: Quantitative Easing has marked the biggest transfer of wealth to the rich of any government policy in recent documented history. The Bank of England released an analysis today, which was rejected as being an underestimate by the former government pensions adviser Ros Altman. But it was shocking enough, and the strongest point was made by the brilliant Ed Conway, economics editor of Sky News, who put it into a graph who would benefit from a QE-inspired boom in asset prices described by the Bank of England  today. "10th" means the richest tenth of the population, and so on. This is our new graph system: hover your mouse over each line, and the value should come up.

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 pressure on examiners as well as curbing the modular aspects of some exams.

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 sector.

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 gyms, or a proliferation of Indian dancing classes will become more common under the freedoms they now enjoy.

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. But this survey does add to the growing consensus that something must be done about growth this autumn.

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, pupils can drop one GCSE grade in one subject.

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 cent of rape crimes are never reported to the police'.