Uk politics

Thursday

Louise Cooper

The wealth transfer and where it’s going

The last three years have been one big transfer of wealth from savers to borrowers. Thanks to record low interest rates, savers have gained little from tucking their money away in bank accounts, whereas borrowers have reaped the benefits. According to data from the Bank of England, mortgage holders paid interest of £1328 billion in the three years from 2008-2011, compared to £1897 billion in the preceding three years. That’s a difference of £569 billion, or just over £50,000 for each of the UK’s 11.2 million mortgage holders. Call it a stimulus if you like. But it’s a stimulus that involves clobbering savers so that borrowers can buy a flatscreen

James Forsyth

Nervous times for Clegg ahead of the Lib Dem spring conference

This weekend’s Lib Dem spring conference is the next big political hurdle for the Health Bill. If the conference votes against the Bill, then it will create a huge political headache for the government and be a severe embarrassment to Nick Clegg. Talking to Liberal Democrats ahead of the vote on Sunday morning, I’ve been struck by how worried some Clegg supporters are that the vote might be lost. Now, this could well be expectations management. But there are more than a thousand Lib Dem members who have signed the Lib Dem petition against the bill. On balance, I think it is more likely than not that the leadership escapes

Wednesday

James Forsyth

Osborne eager to act on 50p

The debate on the 50p tax rate is moving fast. I was told by one Downing Street source today that ‘it is now more likely than not that it goes in the Budget.’ Now, obviously, there is a big caveat here. The Budget is not yet agreed: this is all subject to change. But I understand that the Chancellor is pushing hard to at least set out the roadmap to its abolition on the 21st March. I also hear that the Prime Minister is nervous about quite how determined Osborne is to do this. Cameron’s worry is that a Budget that tackles the 50p rate will be remembered solely for

Lloyd Evans

Labour’s PMQs strategy: the Super-Vulnerable Voter ploy

A sombre and muted PMQs this week. Dame Joan Ruddock raised the issue of benefits and asked David Cameron if he was proud of his new reforms. Tory backbenchers cheered on the PM’s behalf. ‘Then would he look me in the eye,’ Dame Joan went on, ‘and tell me he’s proud to have removed all disability payments from a 10-year-old with cerebral palsy.’ This tactic — the Super-Vulnerable Voter ploy — is highly manipulative and highly reliable. But Dame Joan had forgotten something which Mr Cameron is unlikely to forget. Explaining his reform of the Disability Living Allowance he glared angrily at her. ‘As someone who has had a child

James Forsyth

Afghanistan tragedy overshadows PMQs

I have rarely heard the House of Commons as quiet as it was at the start of PMQs today. The sad news from Afghanistan was, rightly, weighing on MPs’ minds. The initial Cameron Miliband exchanges were on the conflict there with the two leaders agreeing with each other. In some ways, though, I wonder whether the country would not benefit more from some forensic debate about the strategic aims of the mission. However the volume level in the House increased when Joan Ruddock asked the PM if he was ‘truly proud’ of taking benefits away from disabled children. Cameron, with a real flash of anger, shot back that ‘as someone

Tuesday

James Forsyth

Osborne backs the Beecroft proposals

In a speech tonight, George Osborne calls on businesses to respond en masse to the government’s consultation on whether to exempt small businesses from unfair dismissal claims. The Chancellor will say: ‘And now we’re beginning a call for evidence on the case for a new compensated no-fault dismissal for our smallest businesses. Plenty of trade unions and others will be submitting their evidence for why we shouldn’t do this. If you think we should, and it will increase employment, then don’t wait for someone else to send in the evidence. Send it in yourself.’ The fact that Osborne is personally throwing his weight behind the Beecroft agenda is striking. It

Jonathan Jones

Graduates struggling to get graduate jobs

Today’s ONS release will make pretty grim reading for students and recent graduates. It shows that the unemployment rate among recent graduates — those who graduated in the last six years — stands at 9.1 per cent, higher than the overall unemployment rate of 8.4 per cent. It’s even worse for those who graduated in the last two years — the unemployment rate among them is 18.9 per cent, up from 10 per cent before the recession. But there’s an even more worrying trend among those recent graduates who do find employment. In 2001, three-quarters of them were in ‘higher skill’ jobs — those requiring more than GCSEs. Now, less

Fraser Nelson

Ed Miliband just doesn’t get globalisation

If you think things couldn’t get worse than Ed Miliband’s Five Live interview, read his speech on patriotism. It seeks to build on his ‘predators’ speech, which suggested a Manichean divide between bad companies and good companies. Labour MPs of Mr Miliband’s political heritage always place manufacturers in the latter camp. He hails the success of many of them. ‘You know better than I that this success has been achieved against the odds.’ I suspect they know better than he the effect that a 25 per cent devaluation has on exports. ‘Economic protectionism is what governments reach for when they don’t believe firms can compete. And we will never return to

Fraser Nelson

The child benefit cut risks alienating striving families

Why should someone on the minimum wage subsidise the childcare arrangements of someone on £100,000? So runs the argument for abolishing child benefit for higher-rate taxpayers. You can see why George Osborne went for this: in theory, we are talking about the best-paid 14 per cent. If he was going to cap benefits, he had to be seen to hurt the rich too. The 50 per cent tax was not enough; axing child benefit would be just the tool he needed to say ‘we’re all in this together’. The problem is that the 40p tax band is set far too low in Britain, and now takes in policemen and teachers.

Sebastian Payne

Ed gets another kicking

Who let Ed Miliband out again? You’d have thought that Labour HQ would have learnt from the #AskEdM debacle but apparently not. Ed popped up on Radio 5 Live today following his Made in Britain speech to answer questions from voters. It’s hard to work out whether the callers were CCHQ staffers in disguise or ordinary members of the public, thanks to the extreme vitriol thrown at Ed. He had little of interest to say on the EU (he wouldn’t have signed the treaty), child benefit (he can’t promise to reverse the cuts) and Labour’s attitude towards business (he’s pro-, apparently). Instead, the callers took the opportunity to attack him

Melanie McDonagh

The case against gay marriage

Last night, we posted Douglas Murray’s conservative argument in favour of same-sex marriage. Here’s the opposite view: Consultations are, for the prudent, an exercise you only engage in when you’re quite sure of the outcome. I’m not sure, then, that Vincent Nichols, the Archbishop of Westminster, is entirely wise to go all out in galvanising the Catholic community into action against the Government’s plans to legalise gay marriage. As the Daily Telegraph reports today, he is issuing a letter to be read out in churches on Sunday to urge congregations to participate in the Coalition’s consultation exercise on the proposal — against. Two can play at consultations, and the very

Monday

Douglas Murray

The conservative case for equal marriage

With some right-wing voices — including Catholic Cardinal Keith O’Brien, Tory MP Peter Bone and the Daily Telegraph — speaking out against same-sex marriage, here’s a piece Douglas Murray wrote for The Spectator in October arguing that conservatives should instead be welcoming it: In America a new generation of Republicans is challenging the traditional consensus of their party on gay marriage. They — as well as some of the GOP old guard like Dick Cheney — are coming out in favour. In Britain the subject is also back on the agenda with the coalition government, at the insistence of the Prime Minister apparently, planning a ‘public consultation’ on the matter.

Lucian Cook

Why a mansion tax is wrong for Britain

There’s a huge amount of confusion surrounding the proposals for a ‘mansion tax’ and, more generally, taxation at the top end of the housing market. Old and novel arguments are rolled out by its proponents: that it is easier to tax wealth that can’t be taken offshore, or that the current level of taxation on high value property (generally perceived to be low) isn’t fair on first time buyers struggling to raise a deposit at the other end of the market. In reality, there are three main reasons why a mansion tax is unwarranted and potentially counter-productive, which I discuss in more detail in a Centre for Policy Studies report released

James Forsyth

A significant moment in the battle for the 1922 Committee

It might mean little to people outside Westminster, but the decision of Mark Pritchard not to stand for re-election to his job as Secretary of the 1922 Committee is a significant moment. It suggests that the Cameroons might be making some progress in their attempt to gain control of the internal structures of the parliamentary party. Pritchard has been a thorn in Number 10’s side ever since he started warning against the ‘Purple Plotters’ who wanted to merge the two coalition parties back in January of last year. Since then, his positions on circus animals, his role in the rebellion of the 81 and his general willingness to speak out

Jonathan Jones

Cutting legal aid might actually <em>cost</em> money

This afternoon’s Lords debate on the government’s Legal Aid Bill promises to be a heated affair. The Independent’s interview with Baroness Scotland – Labour peer and former Attorney General — gives a taste, beneath the headline ‘Women and children could die because of legal aid cuts’. But even before we get into an emotional debate about domestic violence and hitting ‘the poorest and weakest’ — important though it is — there’s one potential flaw that could undermine the whole point of the proposal: it might not actually save us any money. Take benefit claimants, for example, who will now longer be entitled to legal aid when challenging decisions about their

James Forsyth

The government’s options for a child benefit tweak

Nick Clegg has confirmed this morning that the coalition is looking at how to tweak its policy of removing child benefit from families in which someone pays the higher rate of income tax. As I wrote in the Mail on Sunday, there are three options being explored. The first is designed to address the fact that, a family where one parent works and earns £45,000 while the other stays at home raising the children would lose their child benefit while the one next door where both parents are on £40,000 would keep theirs. This change would see families with one higher rate taxpayer lose only half of their child benefit.

Peter Hoskin

Will Osborne accept the Lib Dem offer?

Try telling George Osborne that ‘tax doesn’t have to be taxing’ — I’m sure he’d laugh at the sentiment. The story this morning is that he has a grand, gritty choice to make ahead of the Budget: to tax income or to tax wealth. The Lib Dems have apparently agreed to relent on the 50p rate, but only if they get a mansion tax on properties worth over £2 million in return. The thinking is that, in the current political environment, the government must always be seen to be hitting the well-off in some way. So, will Osborne accept the offer? He and other Tories will certainly be tempted to

Sunday

Fraser Nelson

Salmond chooses the Brownite way

Can you trust someone like Alex Salmond to save Scotland from future crashes? The First Minister appeared on BBC1’s Sunday Politics earlier, where he was challenged about how he sees it. And it seems he may just be a graduate of the Gordon Brown school of Scottish financial mismanagement. In a Times debate on Friday,  SNP deputy leader Nicola Sturgeon said they’d use sterling — whether the Bank of England liked it or not — and would not need the Bank to be a lender of last resort because Scotland would be so sensible it wouldn’t need it. An interesting suggestion, given that the 1707 Union between Scotland and England

James Forsyth

Hilton’s return hinges on Cameron’s radicalism

It is a sign of the influence that Steve Hilton has on the Cameron project that there have been more column inches devoted to his departure from Downing Street than there would be to most Cabinet resignations. But even after he heads to California in May, Hilton will still be part of the Cameron brains trust. He is already scheduled to work on the Prime Minister’s conference speech. Hilton has, I understand, been mulling the idea of taking a sabbatical since last summer. His decision to go ahead and take next year off seems to have been motivated by a variety of factors. But those closest to him stress that