Uk politics

Thursday

Daniel Korski

Uncivil service

From our UK edition

Political cultures differ. In Iran, for example, hyperbole is expected in all political conversations. So slogans always call for ‘Death to the US’, and nothing less. In Britain, of course, the use of language is more even-tempered, but other rules apply. Blaming the civil service for failure is considered OK, but charging an individual official, even a Permanent Secretary, for the same is considered off-limits. If a minister were to try it, then he'd be accused of trying to pass the buck on towards defenceless officials. But, as Camilla Cavendish points out in today's Times (£), failure is often also the fault of senior officials who, despite problems in the past, move seamlessly from job to job and from Department to Department.

James Forsyth

Would Spain stop Scotland from joining the EU?

From our UK edition

Alex Salmond’s case for independence relies on Scotland joining the European Union. If an independent Scotland was a member of the EU, then Scotland would be part of the single market and free movement of labour across the border could continue (an independent Scotland would also have to join the euro, but that’s something Salmond is less keen to talk about). But, as one Whitehall source points out to me, it is far from certain that Scotland would be able to join the EU.   The Spanish are currently blocking Kosovo’s accession to the EU. Why? Because the Spanish, who don’t even recognise Kosovo as a state, fear the implications of a region becoming independent and then joining the EU. They worry that it would encourage Basque separatism.

Jonathan Jones

More Mili-woe

From our UK edition

It gets worse for Ed Miliband in the polls today. After revealing last week that just 20 per cent of the public think he's doing well as Labour leader, YouGov now find that only 17 per cent think he'd make the best Prime Minister. That's his lowest score yet, and it compares to 41 per cent for David Cameron. But the way those numbers break down may be even more worrying for Ed. Only half of current Labour supporters say he'd be the best PM, and a minority — just 43 per cent — of 2010 Labour voters pick him. By contrast, Cameron has the backing of 97 per cent of Tory voters. Of course Miliband's personal ratings have been poor for a long time, but they're now worse than ever.

Peter Hoskin

Where will the Welfare Reform Bill go from here?

From our UK edition

Yep, it's that battle over ‘fairness’ again. Labour peers, along with a decent scattering of Lib Dems and independents, believe that some of the government's money-saving welfare measures are unfair – which is why they voted them down in the Lords last night. Whereas the government, of course, thinks quite the opposite. Their proposed limits to Employment and Support Allowance are designed, they say, to affect those who either can work or who have a relatively good level of income already, while keeping the ‘safety net’ in place for everyone. And that's fair not just to benefit claimants, but also to other taxpayers who are contributing towards the system.

Wednesday

Peter Hoskin

Why Ed Miliband’s PMQs slip-up matters

From our UK edition

The exchange about rail fares in PMQs earlier was, it's true, not one for the photo album. But the way it's resolved itself this afternoon has been considerably more diverting. You see, it turns out that David Cameron was right: Labour did arrange for these fare increases when in government. And, what's more, Ed Miliband was wrong: the coalition didn't ‘reverse’ the cap on fares that Labour then conveniently introduced in the run up to the general election. That cap was limited to one year by the Labour government itself. It was always intended that it would expire on 1 January 2011, at which point — barring a new cap — the train companies could go back to the hyper-inflated fares they'd imposed previously. And that's what happened.

Lloyd Evans

Ed Miliband lives to flop another day

From our UK edition

Miliband survives! That news should steady Labour nerves. For today at least. Their leader has the knack of turning near-certain defeat into absolutely-certain catastrophe, but he bumbled through PMQs this afternoon without suffering a serious setback. He has so little ground from which to attack the government that he had to lead on a niche issue. Rail fares. He asked the prime minister why the operating companies have managed to hike prices by 11 per cent on the busiest routes. Cameron: ‘Because of a power given to them by the last Labour government.’   With that lethally terse response the PM sat down. To his credit, Miliband wasn’t rattled.

James Forsyth

A fairly bland PMQs

From our UK edition

Today's PMQs was rather a bland affair. Ed Miliband started with three questions on train fares that David Cameron batted away, but there is a little row brewing over whether Cameron's claim that he is simply continuing the policy of the last government is correct. Later, Miliband moved onto the safe territory of the Union and consensus broke out with only the half dozen SNP MPs dissenting from it. Angus Robertson, the SNP's Westminster leader, then asked the PM a question that, in a preview of the SNP's campaign tactics, was designed purely to get the words Cameron, Thatcher and Scotland into the same sentence. There were two other things worth noting from the session.

James Forsyth

Will Miliband use his lifeline in PMQs?

From our UK edition

At the weekend, Tories were anticipating giving Ed Miliband an almighty kicking at PMQs. Lord Glasman’s description of Labour’s economic record as ‘all crap’ had given them a killer line. As one member of the Cameron circle joked to me, ‘we’ve never had more material to work with.’    But Ed Miliband now has a get out of jail free card. If he asks six questions about the Union and the referendum, it will be impossible for Cameron to have a pop at him without looking distinctly unstatesmanlike. On Scotland, the two leaders need each other. The Unionist side cannot win without the Labour party and the Labour party will find it very hard to win general elections without Scotland.

James Forsyth

The battle lines that are being drawn over Scotland

From our UK edition

In the wrangling between Westminster and Holyrood over the referendum there are two big issues at stake, the date of the vote and —more importantly — the number of options on the ballot paper. Salmond, as he made clear on the Today Programme this morning, wants to have the referendum in autumn 2014 and have three options — the status quo, independence and ‘devo-max’ — on offer.   The reason Salmond wants ‘devo-max’ to be there is that he’s not confident he can get independence through this time round.

Tuesday

Hamish Macdonell

Salmond’s running rings around Cameron

From our UK edition

Edinburgh If anyone had any doubts why Alex Salmond picked up almost every UK political award going last year, then they should study how he has dealt with the referendum issue this week. At every turn he has out-manoeuvred his UK counterparts — and this was perfectly demonstrated tonight. Earlier today, in the Commons, Michael Moore, the Scottish Secretary, had delivered the UK government’s riposte to the SNP’s referendum plans. Mr Moore was considered, clever and smart. In fact, it was a first cogent and effective strike back by the UK government on this issue for more than a year. But what will lead tomorrow’s papers in Scotland? It won’t be Mr Moore’s statement.

Matthew Sinclair

A green-light for HS2 — but the coalition’s political instincts should tell it to stop

From our UK edition

Earlier today, the Government announced that it is still planning to go ahead with a new high-speed rail line that will reach Birmingham by 2026, and then be connected to Manchester and Leeds. And it's doing so in the face of widespread scepticism among the public and business leaders. When we at the TPA commissioned YouGov to test public support for different cuts in public spending, 48 per cent of the public supported cutting the project against just 34 per cent opposed. While organisations like the CBI back high-speed rail, the Institute of Directors (IoD) actually asked their members and found that 38 per cent thought HS2 would represent poor value for money, against 30 per cent who thought it would represent good value.

Peter Hoskin

The coalition finds its balance over Scotland

From our UK edition

As much as I dislike the phrase ‘the third way’, it sums up what the coalition has done today. Given the choice between hobbling or accommodating Alex Salmond and his referendum on Scottish independence, it has decided to do neither and both. In the words of the Scottish Secretary Michael Moore, speaking in the House just now, the referendum will be ‘made in Scotland, by the people of Scotland’ — just so long as Westminster okays it first. Maybe that'll make more sense if we look at what, specifically, was announced today. Moore's main point was that any referendum held by the Scottish government, without the approval of the UK government, would be ‘unconstitutional’.

Fraser Nelson

The battle for Britain | 10 January 2012

From our UK edition

So, Alex Salmond has named his date for the independence referendum: August 2014, a few weeks after the 700th anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn. David Cameron wanted it earlier, and may yet refuse to grant Salmond this date — No10 hasn't yet responded. Cameron was forcing the issue on the grounds that he wanted to end uncertainty — Salmond is now offering certainty, at least in terms of timing. But he hasn't said whether he wants a two- or three-question referendum. This is crucial, because Salmond is likely to lose an independence referendum and he knows it. So his game plan will be to have a third option, a consolation prize, so he doesn't walk away from this empty handed.

Jonathan Jones

Can Scotland make it on its own?

From our UK edition

What would an independent Scotland's public finances look like? ‘Good, actually,’ says the SNP as they present their ongoing case for independence. They like to claim that, discounting the rest of the UK, Scotland was in surplus for ‘four out of the last five years’ — it's Westminster, not Holyrood, that can't manage the public's money.  Which would be a powerful argument were it actually true. You see, the SNP are talking about the ‘current budget balance’, which excludes the £6.4 billion a year that Scotland spends on capital. When you include that spending — according to the Scottish government's own figures — there has been a deficit for every one of the last five years.

Peter Hoskin

Miliband’s speech fails to excite

From our UK edition

Was Ed's Big Speech worth the extended wait? Not really. It wasn't a stone-cold terrible speech, but neither was it the rambunctious, attention-grabbing number that his leadership could do with. In fact, we could have saved ourselves the effort by simply reading his New Year's message again. That was considerably shorter, and covered almost all of the same ground. Squeezed middle? Check. Tackling vested interests? Check. An admission that Labour will need to cut? Ch… oh, you get the point. The best that could be said about today's speech is that it presented some of these arguments more clearly than in the past. Indeed, the attack on George Osborne's fiscal agenda was, by Miliband's usual standards, particularly punchy.

James Forsyth

Miliband tries to get his message heard

From our UK edition

Ed Miliband is trying to do something interesting today. He is attempting to answer the question, ‘what’s the point of Labour when there’s no money left to spend?’ This is the problem that Miliband has been grappling with since winning the leadership and there’s no easy answer to it. It seems that today Miliband will give us more of a sense of the ‘new economy’ which he wants to see in this country. The test of the speech will be whether it gets beyond generalities about a long-term vision for an economy that is ‘fairer’. The challenge for Miliband will be to make his subtle message heard above the chatter about his leadership which so dominated his Today Programme interview.

Monday

Sam Bowman

Cutting immigration won’t help youth unemployment

From our UK edition

Reading the papers today, you could be forgiven for thinking that MigrationWatch’s new report was a smoking gun against immigration. Here we have a study that links immigration to unemployment, in the face of nearly all previous research that has found no such link. However, looking at the MigrationWatch piece itself, it quickly becomes clear how implausible these claims are. The MigrationWatch report centres on a comparison of rising youth unemployment and rising immigration from the ‘A8’ countries – the Eastern European states that joined the EU in 2004. The correlation between the two is remarkably weak. During the initial rise in immigration between 2004 and the end of 2008, there is no significant rise in unemployment at all.

Daniel Korski

The Burma trail

From our UK edition

Foreign policy specialists have been confused about how to categorise the coalition. Is it neoconservative, given its backing for the Libyan rebels? No, says no less a figure than the Prime Minister. Is it realpolitical, given the PM’s willingness to make up with Russia and court China? Most No.10 officials would wince at such a description. So what is it? To answer the question, look no further than William Hague's trip to Burma last week. Not only was it the first visit by a British foreign minister since 1955, but it was also the culmination of little known, high-level, behind-the-scenes outreach to Aung San Suu Kyi by No 10 and concomitant pressure on the Burmese junta. And it seems to be paying off.

James Forsyth

Osborne the Unionist

From our UK edition

There’s much chatter in Westminster today about the fact that George Osborne is chairing the Cabinet committee on Scotland. Osborne is, of course, the Conservatives’ chief electoral strategist as well as the Chancellor of Exchequer. This has led to some suggestions that he wouldn’t be too upset by a referendum defeat that would make it an awful lot easier for the Tories to win a majority at Westminster. This is unfair: Osborne is a Unionist. What those around Osborne have long been interested in is the option that the coalition seems to be ruling out: fiscal autonomy. The circle around Osborne have long believed that it is only when Scottish politics is about how to raise money as well as how to spend it that the Tories will revive north of the border.