Uk politics

Thursday

Peter Hoskin

Off target on immigration

From our UK edition

How goes the Tories’ plan to reduce net migration to the ‘tens of thousands’ over this Parliament? Not too well, judging by the latest ONS figures released today. As it is, net migration was 252,000 in the year up to September 2011. That, lest you need reminding, is over double the Tory target. No.10, however, has been fairly defiant in response. ‘It's still our intention to bring levels of net migration back down to tens of thousands,’ said a spokesman today, before adding that, ‘clearly that's going to take some time.’ They also cited different Home Office statistics, which record the number of visas issued up until March of this year.

James Forsyth

Leveson continues, but it is a sideshow to the Euro drama

From our UK edition

Fred Michel’s testimony this morning at the Leveson Inquiry was embarrassing but not devastating. The texts between him and Jeremy Hunt are cringe-worthy but my read is that the Culture Secretary is not in a weaker position than he was this morning. More important for Hunt’s survival prospect is the appearance of his former spad Adam Smith this afternoon. The question is, did Hunt not know of the extent of contact between Smith and Michel? Everything going on at Leveson, though, is a sideshow compared to the economic news and the storm brewing on the continent. On that note, it does seem odd that Nick Clegg is suggesting that the seventy percent of German voters who would like Greece to leave the euro are irrational.

James Forsyth

What Farage’s offer means for David Cameron

From our UK edition

Nigel Farage’s suggestion of joint UKIP / Tory candidates at the next general election is part serious offer, part mischief-making. Farage knows that if the polls stay the same this will be an appealing offer to Tory candidates. As one leading Eurosceptic Tory MP said to me when I put the idea to him, ‘the maths says is has got to be done.’ There are an increasingly large number of Tory MPs who fear that they can’t hold their seats unless they can win back the voters and activists who have gone over to UKIP. They will be attracted to the concept of an electoral alliance with UKIP.

Wednesday

Jonathan Jones

Obama vs Balls

From our UK edition

What do Ed Balls and Mitt Romney have in common? They both want you to think that Barack Obama is spending government money like never before. For Mitt Romney, it’s an attack: he wants to make Obama a Big Government bogeyman who’s failing to tackle America’s deficit. ‘I will lead us out of this debt and spending inferno,’ the Republican nominee promises. For Ed Balls, it’s an example for Britain to follow: ‘I will lead us into this debt and spending inferno’, the shadow chancellor promises. Well, essentially. But the Obama camp is pushing back hard against such claims, highlighting a Wall Street Journal article yesterday titled ‘Obama spending binge never happened’.

Richard Marsh

More evidence of the need for NHS reform

From our UK edition

If you want to know why the great Labour-NHS argument about healthcare is wrong, read today’s National Audit Office report on the provision of diabetes care in England. Diabetes is one of this country’s biggest health problems and it is getting worse. There are currently over three million people with diabetes here today, and, on some estimates, by 2020 there will be nearly four. In the last 15 years the number of people with the condition in England has more than doubled. Yet according to the NAO, the treatment they receive from the NHS is little short of shocking.

Lloyd Evans

Cameron’s attack on Balls is strangely endearing

From our UK edition

Ed Miliband had it easy at PMQs today. The government is bleeding in all directions. And a further haemorrhage has arrived in the shape of Adrian Beecroft, a government adviser, whose proposal to relax employment law has delighted the Tory right and incensed the soft-and-cuddly Lib Dem left. ‘A proposal to fire at will’, is how Mr Miliband described the Beecroft plan. Did the Prime Minister support it or did he agree with the Business Secretary who has covered it in scorn? Cameron didn’t so much duck the question as swan straight past it. He pretended it wasn’t there. Instead he cherry-picked some positive footnotes from yesterday’s IMF statement on our economy and announced that everything is rosy in the garden.

James Forsyth

Cameron loses his rag

From our UK edition

Ed Balls succeeded in getting David Cameron to lose his rag at PMQs today. The shadow Chancellor sledged the PM throughout the session, apparently asking him how many glasses of wine he had had today and the like. Towards the end of the session, Cameron snapped and called Balls ‘the muttering idiot sitting opposite me’. The House erupted. Ed Balls looked even more pleased with himself than usual while the Tory benches cheered the line. The exchange will put Cameron’s temper up for discussion which is Downing Street’s second least-favourite topic after the PM’s work-rate. But I suspect that there’ll be limited cut through to the public: politicians insulting each other in the House isn’t exactly new.

James Forsyth

The pressure on Cameron to call Clegg’s bluff

From our UK edition

The debate over the Beecroft report is now the politics of the viscera. For Tory MPs it has become symbolic of how the Liberal Democrats — and Vince Cable, in particular — are holding them back from doing what they need to get the country out of this economic emergency. On the Liberal Democrat side it has become emblematic of everything about Steve Hilton — ‘Thatcher in a t-shirt’ as they dubbed him — that annoyed them. Adrian Beecroft’s intervention today in the Telegraph and the Mail is bound to increase Tory tensions on the matter. He tells the Mail that Cameron and Osborne have ‘given up’ on unfair dismissal.

Peter Hoskin

Where will our politicians’ obsession with Hollande lead?

From our UK edition

Hollande fever strikes again in Nick Clegg’s interview with the FT this morning. ‘I personally massively welcome the arrival of Hollande on to the scene,’ he says, but it goes deeper than that. You see, the Deputy Prime Minister also places an emphasis on ‘growth’, as opposed to ‘austerity’, suggesting that the government might do more to get infrastructure projects up and running. When asked why they didn’t do this before, Clegg responds, ‘It’s for the obvious reason — because the economy is flatter than we anticipated two years ago.’ In some respects, this is unsurprising.

Tuesday

James Forsyth

A matter of conscience

From our UK edition

Personally, I’m in favour of gay marriage. But it is precisely the kind of issue that should be subject to a free vote and all the indications are that the government intends that when the legislation comes to Parliament it will be. So, it shouldn’t be a big deal that the Northern Ireland Secretary Owen Paterson feels that he can’t support it, a view he expressed in a letter to a gay constituent that Politics Home has obtained a copy of. There are several other ministers who feel the same way. Indeed, I understand that the Chief Whip himself has grave reservations about the matter. It would be deeply intolerant to attempt to whip these ministers to vote against their consciences.

James Forsyth

Susie Squire to take over as Tory press chief

From our UK edition

Senior Conservative sources are confirming that, as Guido Fawkes reported this morning, Susie Squire will take over from Henry Macrory as the party’s head of press. Squire, who is currently Iain Duncan Smith’s media special adviser, is highly-thought of in Number 10 where she is credited with ramming home the party’s advantage over Labour on welfare. The decision to move someone from such an important department to CCHQ shows that Number 10 has recognised that coalition requires the party to have a more distinctive presence. What also makes the appointment noteworthy is that in her current brief Squire has not been afraid to mix it with the other parties.

Peter Hoskin

ASBOs weren’t much cop, but what about their replacement?

From our UK edition

Brace yourselves for a new crime wave sweeping across the country — the government is doing away with ASBOs. Or, rather, don't. The truth about ASBOs is that they were rather less significant than Labour would have you believe. As reports such as this one from Policy Exchange suggest, they've probably cropped up more frequently in newspaper articles than they have in real life. Only 20,335 ASBOs have been issued to date, covering less than one per cent of all incidences of anti-social behaviour. What’s more, there’s little evidence to suggest that those ASBOs that were issued made much difference. As the graph below shows, 57 per cent of all ASBOs have been breached at least once by their recipients. 42 per cent have been breached more than once.

Peter Hoskin

Clegg rallies behind Cable

From our UK edition

It’s no surprise that the Lib Dems aren’t keen on Adrian Beecroft’s proposals for hiring and firing. This intra-coalition disagreement has been rumbling on for months now, after all. But when Vince Cable spoke out against them yesterday, it wasn’t entirely clear whether this was his party’s line or just Vince being Vince. Other Lib Dems might have taken a more conciliatory approach. Today, however, it’s clear that they’re not going to.

Peter Hoskin

The IMF says it’s the Bank’s economy now

From our UK edition

When the IMF published a report into the UK economy last year, I wrote a blog post detailing how it managed to please everyone: George Osborne, Vince Cable, Mervyn King, Ed Balls, everyone. This morning, I’ve been tempted to just publish that post again — because the IMF’s latest report is basically the same. Osborne will be pleased with its emphasis on deficit reduction, including the line that ‘Strong fiscal consolidation is underway and reducing the high structural deficit over the medium term remains essential.

Sebastian Payne

Making the loan companies pay

From our UK edition

Will Parliament soon decide to clamp down on payday loans? The controversial firms, offering ultra-high interest short-term loans, have proliferated on high streets and across the Web, utilising crafty advertising to make them appear far less dangerous than the 4,000 per cent APR would imply. Our Campaigner of the Year, Stella Creasy MP, has been fighting for legislation to regulate the firms, after witnessing the consequences of the 17 payday loan businesses in her consistency. Ahead of a crucial Commons vote on her proposals to regulate the firms, polling by ComRes has given her a boost, with strong support inside and out of Parliament for action on the matter.

Monday

James Forsyth

Bust-up postponed

From our UK edition

A coalition bust-up was avoided today by Vince Cable’s absence from the Commons for the urgent question on the Beecroft Report. Tory MP after Tory MP got up to make warm noises about a report which Vince Cable has been gleefully trashing, describing one of its proposals as ‘bonkers.’ That Cable couldn’t make it back in time from the north of England to appear at the dispatch box will have been a relief to the Tory whips; one of them was distinctly concerned about how the Tory benches would treat the Business Secretary when he heard about the UQ earlier. Indeed, it was telling that when Chris Heaton-Harris attacked Cable and Lord Oakeshott, Mark Prisk — the Tory minister answering the question — did not rebuke him.

Peter Hoskin

Iran and oil are still on the agenda

From our UK edition

For all the talk about Greece and France and the Eurozone, it’s telling just how much our politicians are focusing on Iran. Indeed, some of the most concrete political settlements of the past few days have concerned that turbulent state. On Friday, the US Congress approved a Bill which included the blunt reminder that, ‘It shall be the policy of the United States to take all necessary measures, including military action if required, to prevent Iran from threatening the United States, its allies or Iran's neighbours with a nuclear weapon.’ And the G8 subsequently put out a statement about oil reserves that clearly had Iran in mind.

Peter Hoskin

Europe is set to exacerbate the coalition’s internal tensions

From our UK edition

As James suggested yesterday, the publication of the Beecroft proposals this week could be a significant moment. If the coalition can carve a constructive agenda from them, then we might have a set of growth policies worthy of the name. But if it degrades into yet another internal squabble, then that chance may be missed. So, what’s it to be? It must be said, the tea leaves aren’t terribly encouraging this morning. Yesterday, we were told that David Cameron and George Osborne are minded to unravel the red tape that surrounds businesses when it comes to hiring and firing. But, today, one of their fellow ministers has spoken out against that sort of thinking. And guess which one it is. Yep, Vince Cable.