Uk politics

Thursday

James Forsyth

Osborne’s Autumn Statement was about creating more Tories

From our UK edition

In this week's Spectator – which hits newsstands today – James Forsyth reveals the political calculations behind the Chancellor's announcements on Tuesday. Here, for CoffeeHousers, is a taster of James' column: The government wants to be seen as on the side of necessary but fair reform; facing down opponents who believe in ‘something for nothing economics’. Public sector unions, with their desire to protect pensions that are far more generous than those on offer in the private sector, are ideal opponents in the eyes of coalition strategists. On Tuesday, George Osborne chose to raise the stakes in this battle.

Wednesday

Will Straw

Another voice: Why the strike is right

From our UK edition

If I were a teacher, I’d be on strike today. Public sector workers are being asked — in what is now a well-rehearsed soundbite — to work longer, receive less, and pay more. In these austere times, with deficit reduction a necessity,  two of those three aims might be reasonable. But doing all three at once, and conflating the package with the spurious notion that public sector pensions are ‘unsustainable’, justifies the direct action being taken today.   The rise in contribution rates — in effect a three per cent tax rise — will be especially hard to bear for those on modest salaries who are already facing a prolonged pay freeze. A nurse, for example, can expect to pay an extra £1,000 per year.

Johnnie Kerr

In the middle of the march

From our UK edition

Walking through Parliament Square this afternoon, you’d be forgiven for wondering whether some kind of bomb threat had been made on Westminster Palace. The fleets of police vans and hoards of fluorescent-jacketed officers seemed absurdly disproportionate to the motley pickets of public sector strikers gathered serenely outside parliament’s gates. ‘Actually, I shouldn’t be working today,’ one officer told me, chuckling. ‘It’s my day off. That’s ironic, isn’t it?’ As Pete remarked this morning, there wasn’t a huge amount to see along the Westminster picket lines, apart from the policemen.

Matthew Sinclair

The unions’ pension myths

From our UK edition

This morning I debated the President of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers live on Sky News.  It was incredible how few answers she had when confronted with the facts about the strike. According to research at the Office for National Statistics, public sector workers are paid 7.8 per cent more than those in the private sector after controlling for things like age and qualifications. And they get far more generous pensions, worth about a quarter of their pay (see here, p35), on top of that — with most of the cost paid for by taxpayers. But they striking and opposing quite modest reforms, creating yet more disruption for the families who pick up the bill for their pay and pensions.

Lloyd Evans

Rowdy and raucous — but that’s how we like it

From our UK edition

It was vicious. It was frenetic. It was full of rage and class-hatred. It was great political sport. If you like a serious punch-up, the Commons at mid-day was the place to be. The viewing figures at home were boosted by the many millions of strikers who couldn’t quite make their local anti-cuts demo and were sitting out the revolution with a nice cup of tea and PMQs on the Parliament channel.  Ed Miliband started by claiming that the PM had been seen in private rubbing his hands, like Moriarty, and boasting that ‘the unions have walked into my trap’. Cameron, although not denying this, slammed the Labour leader for supporting a strike which had been called in the middle of the negotiations.

Jonathan Jones

Will the strikes exacerbate Cameron’s women problem?

From our UK edition

We've already heard a lot about Dave's problem with female voters. Melanie McDonagh wrote our cover piece on it in June, and in September there was that memo detailing Number 10's efforts to respond. But, judging by the polls, we may well be hearing even more about it after today's strikes. It seems that, while the government has men broadly on its side in the battle against the unions, women are far less supportive. 51 per cent of men told ComRes that public sector workers are wrong to strike today, but only 42 per cent of women agreed: TNS BMRB asked people whether they thought that the government was right to press ahead with the reforms, or that public sector workers were right to strike against them.

James Forsyth

Dave and Ed strike each other

From our UK edition

It was a real blood and thunder PMQs today. This was the politics of the viscera; whose side are you on stuff.   Ed Miliband chose to start on the strikes. David Cameron ripped into him from the off, calling him ‘irresponsible, left-wing and weak.’ Miliband came back with an attack about how he wasn’t going to demonise dinner ladies who earn less in a year than George Osborne’s annual skiing holiday costs, though he flubbed the line slightly.   The Tory benches were in full cry, and throughout the session Cameron kept coming back for another swing at Miliband and the union link.

Peter Hoskin

Picketing Parliament

From our UK edition

By way of Spectating, I thought I'd take a quick stroll along Westminster's picket lines. And, to be honest, there isn't a huge amount to see, as yet. The groups of around five or six industrial actioneers outside some departments trump the small pile of placards outside the Treasury. There are about thirty to forty people picketing Parliament itself. The photo I shot hastily on my iPhone, above, should give you the sense of it. The striking workers I spoke with, however, were bullish about people turning up later in the day, especially with the march that's happening this afternoon — as well as for the strike's general progress in the rest of London and beyond. An organiser for Met staff reckoned on about 70 per cent turnout from his cohort.

Peter Hoskin

A day of disruption

From our UK edition

Another testing day for the government, as we shift from the autumn statement to a national strike. It will certainly be more noticeable than the industrial action in June. Some 2 million public sector workers will be involved. According to the schools minister Nick Gibb, around 75 per cent of state schools will be closed. And on top of that, airport queues will lengthen; non-emergency operations will be cancelled; and today's parliamentary proceedings will go untranscribed. The government's attitude towards the unions — or, rather, union bosses — appears to have been hardening. The brothers will not have liked yesterday's forecast that 710,000 jobs will be shed from the public sector by 2017. And they will not have liked George Osborne's rhetoric either.

Tuesday

James Forsyth

Osborne plays a tough hand well

From our UK edition

Today was always going to be a difficult day for the Chancellor. The figures from the OBR were always going to dominate the headlines and the restrictions of coalition meant that there couldn’t be as much as the Tories would have liked on the supply side. It was striking that the loudest Tory cheer of Osborne’s statement came when he reiterated his opposition to an EU-imposed financial transactions tax. But the silver lining for Osborne and co is that Labour still lack economic credibility. It is hard for Labour to savage Osborne for borrowing more than he said he would — which he is to the tune of £158 billion — and then say that they would borrow even more than that.

Robert Halfon-Mp

Fuelling the recovery

From our UK edition

Today, the government has listened. In his Autumn Statement, George Osborne scrapped the fuel tax bombshell that was scheduled for January 2012.    As regular Coffee House readers will know, more than 100 MPs supported my cross-party campaign for cheaper petrol. At its height, it saw an e-petition attract more than 124,000 names — triggering a full MPs’ debate in Parliament. It has been a very long campaign, working with many organisations, from FairFuelUK and the RAC, to the independent forecourt industry, The Spectator and the Sun, to thousands of members of the public who wrote to me in support.

Fraser Nelson

Osborne has made the right choice — but it’s not without its costs

From our UK edition

Today, George Osborne had a choice. Growth prospects have evaporated, and tax revenues along with it. Should he reopen the 2010 Spending Review and cut the spending totals? Or stick with those totals, and finance this with extra debt? He chose the latter. And I think, on balance, he was right to do so. Credibility is the most valuable currency in this eurozone crisis, and Osborne said it was a fixed five-year plan. He chose more debt over less certainty, and it looks today like the markets believe he chose correctly.  But all this comes at a cost. The government will now run deficits higher than those which Labour proposed. Certainly, had Labour been confronted by evaporating growth it may have had to choose even lower spending or even higher borrowing.

Peter Hoskin

Growth has upset Osborne’s plans — and it’s likely to get worse

From our UK edition

The real story, as everyone expected, wasn't in the Pre-Budget Report ‘Green Book’ — but in the supplementary document produced by the Office for Budgetary Responsibility. Growth forecasts have taken a dive. And while that is both unsurprising and not all that revealing, it carries grim implications for so much else. I mean, just look at the graphs we produced in our last post: forecasts for debt, unemployment and borrowing are all up. It is not a pretty picture. But despite the dreariness of it all, I suspect that the numbers are far too optimistic.

Jonathan Jones

The Autumn Statement: What you need to know

From our UK edition

We've been posting some of these charts on Twitter, but here they are, collected, for CoffeeHousers. You can expect more as we mine deeper into the OBR's supplementary document. Do shout out, also, if you spot anything yourself. 1. Weaker growth — except for a very optimistic figure for 2015 2. Higher debt — both in real terms and as percentage of GDP   3. Osborne borrowing more than he'd hoped 4. More persistent — and deeper — ILO unemployment 5.

Fraser Nelson

Your Autumn Statement check-list

From our UK edition

I very much doubt today’s Pre-Budget Report will be memorable; a shame, given the circumstances. The supplementary Office for Budget Responsibility document will be more interesting — and relevant to people’s lives — than the Budget itself. Sure, everyone focuses their attention on the Red Book (or Green Book, as it is for the PBR) and GDP projections. But even GDP isn’t really useful. You can manipulate GDP by printing money, or by borrowing money. Gets you nowhere. GDP is only useful insofar as it’s a proxy for national prosperity. And thanks to the OBR we’ll have other, more useful metrics today. Here's my guide to them:   1. Net debt: up or down? How much will national debt rise by? It’s due to hit £1.

Monday

James Forsyth

Osborne has a few cards up his sleeve, but no aces

From our UK edition

In some ways, George Osborne will always be haunted by his 2007 Tory conference speech. That speech and the reaction to his commitment to raise all estates worth less than £1 million out of inheritance tax contributed to Gordon Brown not calling an early election. It has a claim to be one of the most important speeches in modern British politics — it is certainly the one that saved the Cameron project. But it has also created an expectation that Osborne has a set of aces up his sleeve every time he stands up to give a big speech. Tomorrow’s speech won’t see the Chancellor pull out any unexpected trumps.

Mats Persson

Cameron may have more leverage in Europe than he thinks

From our UK edition

There's just over a week to go until the crunch EU summit on 8-9 December, so David Cameron has to decide how best to play his cards — and quick. The problem, as Daniel Korski has pointed out, is that Britain faces the risk of ‘structural isolation’ in Europe in the short-term. To counter this, Cameron effectively has two options. First, work with allies on both sides of the euro divide to seek political assurances — formal or informal — against the formation of a two-tier Europe with a more integrated eurozone in the driving seat. Or, second, press ahead with UK-specific carve-outs from the EU structure.

Fraser Nelson

Sifting through the rubble from the riots

From our UK edition

Not many folk are aware of it, but there is an official riots inquiry and it has delivered its interim report today. Its conclusions are pretty clichéd and not really worth studying; David Lammy’s book is infinitely more instructive and readable. But it does produce a few figures about the rioters — or, I should say, those arrested mainly because they didn’t think to cover their face. I looked at this for my Telegraph column last week. Here’s my summary of today's report:   1. Broken Britain. Some 46 per cent of those arrested live in the lowest ‘decile’. These guys are not working class, but welfare class.

James Forsyth

Preparing for the strike

From our UK edition

Wednesday’s strike is going to be big — unlike the one in June, which I suspect most people didn’t really notice. You’re not going to be able to miss this one as 90 per cent plus of schools shut — compared to a third in June — and it takes half a day for anyone coming to Britain to pass through passport control. Michael Gove’s speech this morning is being widely seen as the government taking a more confrontational attitude to the strike. But I think that’s only half the story. What Gove was trying to do was appeal to the union membership while attacking those union leaders who really don’t want a deal.

Peter Hoskin

Those gloomy OECD projections in full

From our UK edition

Thanks to the tremors along Westminster's grapevine, we already knew that today's OECD Economic Outlook would make for pretty dreary reading. But now that the report is actually out, we can see the organisation's numbers for ourselves. The headline point appears to be that the eurozone is in, or is facing, ‘mild recession’. Or to put it in graphic form: And the current situation isn't look particularly encouraging for the UK either. The first heading in the section on us reads ‘The economy is weakening sharply’. And a subsequent pair of graphs predicts, first, that we'll experience a mild recession of our own across the next two quarters, and then that unemployment will keep on rising to a peak in 2013.