Uk politics

Friday

Fraser Nelson

Lansley’s battle should’ve never been fought

A small war has broken out over Lansley's NHS Bill — ConservativeHome has three Cabinet members attacking it. I find that shocking. At least a dozen want the Bill killed, and why ConHome found just three is beyond me. Politically, it's probably impossible for Cameron to drop it. But if it was torn up, I for one would shed no tears. For what it's worth, here's my take. It’s depressing to think that Alan Milburn’s NHS Plan of 2000 was both more radical and more sensible than what Andrew Lansley is serving up now. The whole debacle has shown politics at its most petty, partisan and pointless — a complete contrast to the coalition’s approach to school reform, which has been to fit rocket boosters to a very good Labour reform.

Melanie McDonagh

Cameron should leave this terrible ‘tax breaks for cleaners’ idea in Sweden

There are times when you think, really, the Prime Minister should get out less. The good ideas he comes back with when he goes abroad are fine and dandy — of which, more later — but the bad ones are very bad indeed. One notion he is considering just now after attending a Nordic-Baltic summit is the Swedish/Finnish one of giving people who employ domestic help tax relief on half of the cost. On the plus side, you get more women in the workplace, by allowing them to subcontract the domestic drudgery, and you shift thousands of workers, mostly female, from the black economy to the respectable economy. For the downside, I hardly know where to start.

Peter Hoskin

Lansley’s health problems are starting to look terminal

The discontent with Andrew Lansley's health reforms has been rising since the New Year. But, one or two threatening quotations aside, most of this has come from the government's natural opponents: Labour and the unions. That changes today. Over at ConservativeHome, Tim Montgomerie has written a post calling for the Health Bill to be dropped. It is, Tim says, ‘not just a distraction... but potentially fatal to the Conservative Party's electoral prospects.’ And he finishes: ‘It must be stopped before it's too late.’ This would be striking enough by itself, but its impact is doubled by a single sentence: ‘Speaking to ConservativeHome, three Tory Cabinet ministers have now also rung the alarm bell.

Thursday

Douglas Murray

Livingstone will get away with it, of course — because he’s on the ‘left’

When is a homophobic comment not a homophobic comment?  When it is spoken by somebody on the ‘left’ of course. Ken Livingstone has just reminded us of a prevailing rule in British politics. His comment that the Conservative party is ‘riddled’ with homosexuals ‘like everywhere else’ would have earned him a sacking if the parties had been reversed and a Conservative politician had talked of the Labour party in this fashion. In the same way, if a Conservative had made the kind of smearing racial generalisation that Diane Abbott recently twittered, they would have found themselves sent beneath the bottom rung of the political ladder.

James Forsyth

One for the Tories’ manifesto in 2015

David Cameron’s comments today that he finds a Swedish-scheme that offers tax breaks for employing domestic workers ‘very interesting’ and would ‘want to look at further’ are, predictably, being attacked by Labour. They are claiming that they are proof that he is ‘out of touch’. But it is, actually, a thoroughly sensible idea.   As I wrote back in October, the Cameroons have long been interested in the idea of trying to make childcare tax deductible. The appeal of this policy is that it would make it far more attractive for many highly-skilled — and high-earning — people to return to the workforce.

Sebastian Payne

Ken’s gaffe and what it tells us about his campaign

We now have the first major gaffe of the 2012 London Mayor race and to everyone's surprise it wasn't Boris. Ken Livingstone granted an extraordinary interview to the New Statesman, where his comments on the incumbent mayor, Margaret Thatcher and his work ethic have caused a decent stir. However, it is the thoughts on homosexuality in the Conservative Party - 'the Tory party was riddled with it like everywhere else is' - that have prompted outrage. He was claiming hypocrisy, but instead came off bitter and twisted. The pro-Boris politicos are delighted - Ken's true colours have been exposed, they say, and Labour should deselect him at once. But they shouldn't overstate the case. Ken has been supporting gay rights for years now, so probably deserves some benefit of the doubt.

Peter Hoskin

Cameron’s quotas: a policy or a threat?

We've heard enough about David Cameron's woman troubles to regard anything he says about the fairer sex as a naked pitch for votes. But I reckon his comments today, about getting more women into boardrooms, are just as much motivated by concerns about the economy. ‘The drive for more women in business is not simply about equal opportunity, it's about effectiveness,’ is how he put it earlier, ‘It's about quality, not just equality.’ It's a claim that reflects both the thinking of Masters of Nothing — a book by two highly-regarded members of the 2010 intake, Matthew Hancock and Nadhim Zahawi — and its continuing influence in Cameroonian circles.

Peter Hoskin

A feast of Quantitative Easing

Fire up the printing presses, once again. The Bank of England has just announced another £50 billion of Quantitative Easing, bringing the total monetary expansion up to £325 billion. And it probably won't end there: Citi, among other analysts, forecast that it could go as high as £600 billion next year.  So what are we getting for all this free money? The Bank would tell you that its supporting the economy: keeping interest rates down and encouraging investors to flush money into growth-inducing schemes and mechanisms. And there's obviously truth in that. But we, and the suits of Threadneedle St, shouldn't pretend that QE doesn't create victims too — and it is those victims that we highlight in the latest issue of The Spectator.

Wednesday

James Forsyth

The BIS select committee makes its presence felt

We will soon find out whether the coalition meant what it said about empowering parliament. The BIS select committee has rejected the government’s preferred candidate for the post of the head of the Office of Fair Access. The committee concluded that it was ‘unable to endorse the appointment of Professor Ebdon as the Director of OFFA and we recommend that the Department conduct a new recruitment exercise.’ But Vince Cable, the business secretary, is said to be keen to override the committee’s verdict. Number 10, which has never been keen on Ebdon, is opposed. As I said on Sunday, the circumstances behind Ebdon’s name going forward are straight from The Thick Of It.

James Forsyth

Passed over

The thirty ministers of state in this coalition could be forgiven for feeling a bit unloved. They are notionally the most senior members of the government after the Cabinet. But every time there has been a Cabinet vacancy, they have been passed over. The three Cabinet positions that have become available have gone to a backbencher and two parliamentary under secretaries respectively. Judging from the talk around Westminster, Cameron and Clegg’s respective decisions to bypass the ministers of state has left them feeling a bit sore and rather nervous about the reshuffle, currently expected post-Olympics. Many ministers of state regard this reshuffle as their last chance to make Cabinet.

Sebastian Payne

Brits sceptical of Syria intervention

Britain’s response to Syria so far has been uncertain and cautious. A YouGov poll today suggests that the public is keen for this hands-off approach to continue. When presented several possible offences, the public responds with almost universal disapproval. A measly 9 per cent would support sending in British and allied troops to overthrow President al-Assad. Only 16 per cent would support providing arms to the rebels and 18 per cent support sending in troops to protect civilians. The only modicum of support is for the proposed no-fly zone. But, although a majority would agree with the zone, less than half believe it is necessary right now, with 26 per cent believing it may be useful in the future.

Lloyd Evans

In PMQs, Cameron plays for a draw on the NHS

How much does it cost to change a light bulb? Three hundred quid, said David Cameron at PMQs today. Ed Miliband came to the House eager to pile more pressure on the PM and his unloved NHS restructuring plan. Cameron fought back by citing the health bungles Labour presided over while in office. Billions wasted on kaput computers. Hundreds of millions blown on phantom operations. And dead light bulbs that cost more to replace than a week’s holiday in Spain. Cameron’s tactics were better than in previous weeks. Rather than citing some lone wolf medic who supports his reforms he gave us a surprise announcement, albeit unsourced.

James Forsyth

Miliband gets the better of Cameron on the NHS

As expected, Ed Miliband went on the NHS and it helped deliver him a points victory. Whenever Miliband raises the issue at PMQs, David Cameron’s rather overly macho body language gives away that he knows he is playing on a sticky wicket. The exchanges today were not particularly enlightening but Miliband had the better of them. There was, though, one effective counter-attack from Cameron where he compared what is happening to the NHS in England to what is happening in Wales where the devolved administration is sticking with the status quo. There’s mileage in this argument if the coalition has the patience to develop it. But part of the problem is that the coalition is so clearly unenthusiastic about its own reforms.

James Forsyth

Miliband to keep pressing on with his NHS attacks

The last PMQs before recess gives Ed Miliband a chance to have another go at the coalition’s NHS reforms. I suspect that the ‘Andrew Lansley should be taken out and shot’ quote that appeared in Rachel Sylvester’s column (£) will make an appearance at some point.   Miliband will keep going on the NHS because he knows it is one of the Tories’ biggest vulnerabilities and one of the few subjects on which Cameron isn’t confident attacking. Based on past performance, any PMQs where the focus is on NHS reform will produce at least a score draw for the Labour leader.   But I still don’t expect Cameron to move Lansley anytime soon.

Fraser Nelson

Lawson: Abolish DECC

Did we need to replace Chris Huhne at all? Nigel Lawson, a former editor of The Spectator (amongst other things), has an intriguing idea in a letter to today’s FT: just break up the Department for Energy and Climate Change. It has done nothing to encourage the development of shale gas, which — as we argue in a leader in tomorrow’s Spectator — could keep Britain in energy for the next 100 years without the need to build another windmill. Lord Lawson, a former energy secretary, says that Ed Davey: ‘...has the opportunity to enter the history books as the only minister to use his position to abolish it for the wider public good.

Tuesday

James Plunkett

Cameron is right to focus on quality apprenticeships

If there are ‘no votes in skills’, as the old dictum goes, there seem to be some in apprenticeships. Hence David Cameron's call this morning for apprenticeships to become a ‘gold standard’ qualification ranking alongside degrees from the best universities. His goal is to rectify Britain's shockingly poor performance on mid-level skills compared to world leaders such as Germany. So how hard would it be for us to catch the Germans? The numbers speak for themselves. Of every 1,000 employed people in England 11 are apprentices; compared to 40 in Germany. Here, fewer than one in ten employers are training an apprentice; in Germany it’s roughly a third.

Douglas Murray

Ignore the European Court and deport Abu Qatada tonight

The Al-Qaeda preacher Abu Qatada is a Jordanian national who is in the UK illegally (having come here in 1993 on a forged United Arab Emirates passport). The headache he has caused successive UK governments looks like finally reaching a peak. But there is a simple solution to the problem he poses. Last month, not only for the first time in the decade-long Qatada process, but for the first time ever in an extradition case, the European Court of Human Rights cited Article 6 ‘rights to fair trial’ to ensure that Abu Qatada could not be returned to Jordan. The Court had previously played around in the Qatada case only with Articles 2, 3 and 5.

Richard Marsh

No-one emerges from the health reform smash-up with any credit

Andrew Lansley should be grateful for small mercies. Rachel Sylvester's column (£) today may quote a Downing Street source to the effect that ‘Lansley should be taken out and shot’, but there is yet no sign that a hundred Conservative MPs will write to the Prime Minister to say that the Health Secretary's reforms have to stop. We've had such a letter for wind farms and for Europe, but on the NHS it's not very likely. Most Tory MPs find the NHS a difficult rallying point at the best of times. And these are the worst: they are acutely embarrassed by the car-crash that has been the Health and Social Care Bill, and dearly want the whole thing just to go away. Besides, you try finding a hundred of them who actually know what these health reforms are about.