Uk politics

Saturday

James Forsyth

Simon Hughes speaks out against the benefit cap

From our UK edition

In the Cameroon effort to redefine the politics of fairness, the benefit cap of £26,000 a year is key. When George Osborne announced it in his 2010 conference speech, he explained it – rightly – as a matter of fairness that ‘no family on out-of-work benefits will get more than the average family gets by going out to work’.   The Tories were also aware of just how potent a wedge issue it would be. If Labour opposed the cap, they would be in favour of some households in which no one is working receiving more from the state than the average salary people achieve by working. This is, to put it mildly, not a position that would go down well on the doorsteps.   But the cap has hit a snag: Simon Hughes.

Jonathan Jones

Balls’ attempt at credibility falls short

From our UK edition

‘I must be responsible and credible in what I say.’ No, it's not Bart Simpson writing on the blackboard at the start of The Simpsons, although it may have been said with just as little enthusiasm. It's Ed Balls on the Today programme this morning, explaining his decision to endorse George Osborne's public sector pay freeze. Balls' interview in today's Guardian is his biggest effort so far to sound 'responsible and credible' on the economy.

Friday

John R. Bradley

The hypocrisy of Cameron’s Saudi trip

From our UK edition

A year ago, Tunisian strongman Zine El Abidine Ben Ali fled Tunisia for Saudi Arabia, thus ushering in the Salafi Spring. No doubt now bored out of his mind, this once stubbornly secular leader is said to have caught religion of the deranged Wahhabi variety propagated by his oil-rich hosts.   In turn, the Saudis are preparing to welcome Rachid Ghannouchi – the notoriously humble leader of the even more notoriously moderate Ennahda that now controls Tunisia’s parliament – on a state visit. This week Ghannouchi has been heaping praise on the Persian Gulf monarchies, doing us all the favour of revealing where his true sympathies lie when it comes to issues like religious moderation and its love affair with democracy.

Douglas Murray

Hague’s misplaced optimism

From our UK edition

William Hague has an article in the Times today arguing against what he refers to as the ‘pessimism’ of those who have expressed concerns about the direction of the ‘Arab Spring’. As somebody who cannot see the virtue of either optimism or pessimism as policy, and preferring facts to moods, I think the Foreign Secretary’s central points should be answered. Particularly as he chose so injudicious a day to publish his piece. Mr Hague’s argument against pessimism is that ‘such pessimism misses the extraordinary opportunities that popular demand for freedom and dignity bring’. Certainly the government of which Mr Hague is a part is not missing any opportunities.

Fraser Nelson

IDS must stay the course on welfare reform

From our UK edition

Welfare wars are erupting again, with Iain Duncan Smith’s bill amended in the Lords and more showdowns ahead. Number 10 has been completely robust, threatening to use rarely-invoked powers to overrule the Lords. In my Telegraph column today, I say why it’s so important that David Cameron does not go wobbly – as his predecessors did.   Tony Blair understood the need for radical welfare reform, especially when his idol Bill Clinton introduced it in America. Listening to his speeches in the mid-90s is heartbreaking: he had precisely the right idea, but lacked the determination to implement it.

Jonathan Jones

Gove takes on bad teachers

From our UK edition

Michael Gove’s giving a robust defence of his plans to make it quicker and easier for schools to sack bad teachers. ‘You wouldn’t tolerate an underperforming surgeon in an operating theatre, or an underperforming midwife at your child’s birth,’ he says in the Mail. ‘Why is it that we tolerate underperforming teachers in the classroom?’ And he was similarly forceful in an interview on the Today programme, the full transcript of which we’ve got here. Gove is emphatic about how important this is. ‘The evidence is quite clear,’ he says. ‘If you’re with a bad teacher, you can go back a year; if you’re with a good teacher you can leap ahead a year.

Jonathan Jones

Transcript: Gove on sacking teachers

From our UK edition

This morning, the Education Secretary went on the Today programme to explain his plans to make it easier to sack teachers. Here’s the full transcript: James Naughtie: From the start of the next school year in England, head teachers will find it easier to remove teachers that are considered to be under-performers.  The Education Secretary, Michael Gove, thinks the process is too cumbersome so it is being streamlined. The National Union of Teachers, as we heard earlier, says it could become a bullies’ charter.  Well Mr Gove is with us. Good morning. Michael Gove: Good morning. JN: Bullies? MG: I don’t believe so.

James Forsyth

Cameron hints at child benefit taper

From our UK edition

David Cameron’s comments to The House magazine on child benefit are causing quite a stir this morning. The Telegraph splashes on the PM’s line that ‘Some people say that’s the unfairness of it, that you lose the child benefit if you have a higher rate taxpayer in the family,’ he said. ‘Two people below the level keep the benefit. So, there’s a threshold, a cliff-edge issue.’ ‘We always said we would look at the way it’s implemented and that remains the case, but I don’t want to impinge on the Chancellor’s Budget.’ I suspect that what Cameron means by this is that they are looking at a taper.

Hamish Macdonell

Osborne sparks the unionists’ fightback

From our UK edition

Edinburgh It became clear last night why George Osborne was put in charge of the Coalition Government’s fightback against Alex Salmond and separatism: he is the only one who has the ability to really score points off the Nats. The Chancellor’s intervention on currency and bank notes – suggesting that an independent Scotland might not be able to keep the pound and that, if it did, it might be banned from producing Scottish bank notes – hit the SNP hard. Osborne’s remarks shook one of those comfortable certainties which the SNP has been peddling for so long – that Scotland would simply keep sterling after independence and everything would progress as normal.

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.