Uk politics

Tuesday

James Forsyth

BBC alleges that Coulson received hundreds of thousands of pounds from News Int while working for the Tories

From our UK edition

Tonight, the main news is—obviously—the situation in Libya. But Robert Peston’s claim that Andy Coulson carried on receiving payments from News International, as part of his severance package, while working for the Tories is worthy of note. If true, this piece of news is a further embarrassment for the Tories and David Cameron. Even if the money was simply part of a severance deal, it does not look seemly for a political party to have a communications director who is in the pay of a media group (Though, it should be noted that these payments stopped at the end of 2007 once Coulson had been paid the amount he was entitled to).

Monday

James Forsyth

Cameron: No transition is ever smooth

From our UK edition

David Cameron’s statement on Libya just now was cautious in tone and content. The Prime Minister stressed that "no transition is ever smooth or easy." Cameron said that he wanted to see Libya become a "free, democratic and inclusive" country. He emphasised that the NATO mission there would continue for as long as necessary. In an attempt to reassure the country that the liberation of Tripoli will not be followed by the chaos that followed the fall of Baghdad, Cameron repeatedly mentioned the post-conflict reconstruction planning that has been going on. He also said that he had stressed to the National Transitional Council that there must be no reprisals. Noticeably, Cameron decided to reiterate his "necessary, legal and right" formulation in this statement.

Daniel Korski

A victory for the Libyan rebellion, and for NATO

From our UK edition

The regime of Colonel Gaddafi appears to be over. In a matter of hours, we hope, the Libyan dictator will be located and captured, assuming he does not flee Libya. Finally, after 42 of evil rule, the Libyans can build a free nation. The tumultuous events of recent days are, first of all, a victory for the brave Libyan rebels who took arms against Gaddafi. They defied the odds, underwent setbacks but carried on. But, secondly, today's events are a vindication for David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy. Keen to learn the lessons of Bosnia, Kosovo and Rwanda, they saved Benghazi from a massacre and helped to build up the Transitional National Council. In the process, they suffered the opprobrium of realists, armchair generals and so-called "experts".

Sunday

Fraser Nelson

070, licensed to rebel

From our UK edition

It's no surprise that 70 Tory MPs have formed a Eurosceptic group, as the Sunday Telegraph reveals today. They are the modernisers now. The new Tory intake are strikingly robust on all this: by and large, their idea of political balance is a picture of Thatcher on the wall and Jacques Delors on the dartboard. The impending boundary review and thinner-than-they-expected majorities mean they worry more about their constituency (and constituency associations) than the whips. But I'm told today that this rebellion isn't quite as fierce as it may seem. One Tory backbencher tells me the Tory whips have actually encouraged this group to call for renegotiation of the UK terms of EU membership.

James Forsyth

This autumn, Europe could become the most important issue in British politics again

From our UK edition

Europe will be one of the political issues of the autumn. The government expects another round of sovereign debt crises in the autumn and these will add urgency to the Merkel Sarkozy plan for ever closer fiscal union between the eurozone members. Nearly every Tory MP and minister I have spoken to is instinctively sceptical of the Franco-German strategy. But Cameron, Osborne and Hague believe that because the Eurozone members won’t accept the break-up of the currency union, Britain has to back further fiscal integration in the hope that it will make the euro work. (Cynically, one might add that their position also makes life easier within the coalition given the Lib Dem’s Europhile leanings.

David Blackburn

Human rights wrangle

From our UK edition

A set-to has broken out this morning over the Human Rights Act. David Cameron has declared that he is going to fight the Human Rights Act and its interpretation. Cameron writes: ‘The British people have fought and died for people’s rights to freedom and dignity but they did not fight so that people did not have to take full responsibility for their actions. So though it won’t be easy, though it will mean taking on parts of the establishment, I am determined we get a grip on the misrepresentation of human rights. We are looking at creating our own British Bill of Rights.

David Blackburn

Blair on the riots

From our UK edition

Tony Blair has dropped in to write an article on the social context to the recent riots. It’s insightful, especially as a testament of his failings in government. At the close of his premiership, he says, he’d realised that the acute social problems in Britain’s inner cities were “specific” and could not be solved with “conventional policy”. So much for ‘education, education, education’, Blair’s favoured solution was a mixture of early intervention on a family by family basis to militate against the “profoundly dysfunctional” upbringings these young people endure and a draconian response to antisocial behaviour. Alas, he was forced from office for before implementing the plan.

Saturday

David Blackburn

The war on Britain’s streets

From our UK edition

Police in Birmingham have released this extraordinary footage of people firing shots at lines of police officers during the riots. As Iain Duncan Smith says in this week's magazine, the riots were a wake-up call. This video shows what looks like gangs, about three dozen of them in masks, not just trashing buildings but discharging firearms at unarmed police. The West Midlands chief constable, Chris Sims, released the footage this morning and said he believes there is a "concerted and organised attempt" to kill or injure police.

David Blackburn

Starkey: the problem is the breakdown of national identity

From our UK edition

Public Enemy Number One, the unlikely figure of Dr David Starkey, is back in the papers; this time writing in the Telegraph to meet the cacophonous heckles that followed his appearance on Newsnight. Starkey begins with a viperous assault on Ed Miliband’s view that his comments were “disgusting and outrageous”, pointing out that black educationalists Tony Sewell and Katharine Birbalsingh broadly agree with him. Starkey then goes on to restate his position. The summer of discontent has revealed the “different patterns of integration at the top and bottom of the social scale.

Fraser Nelson

Tackling the far right

From our UK edition

The English Defence League marches are heinous, but tolerated by the English authorities. Not so in my homeland, where the Scottish Defence League have been told by Edinburgh council that they cannot hold a march where they'd hoped to be joined by 200. Part of me welcomes this news: Scotland has its social ills (mainly sectarianism) but racial tension has never really flared. As Alex Salmond says, there are many colours in the tartan. Then again, banning the march may serve to give credibility and a cause to the crackpots who call themselves the Scottish Defence League. Their march would probably have been a tragicomic affair, and they'd have disappeared into the black hole of public ridicule. But a ban is just what these agitators want.

James Forsyth

Pickles rebuffs calls for new taxes

From our UK edition

Anyone looking for a good blast of common sense on a Saturday morning should read Eric Pickles’ interview in the Telegraph. In it, he responds to much of the kite-flying by the Liberal Democrat left in recent weeks. In an exchange that will have many of his Cabinet colleagues nodding along in agreement, Pickles criticises judicial activism and the chilling effect it is having on ministers: “You are constantly looking over your shoulder for judicial review … the electorate is being frustrated,” he says. “I could kind of expect to be reviewed on procedural matters, but to be reviewed on policy?” But, should judges not have some oversight of policy? “No,” he replies. “I’m a bit old-fashioned really.

Friday

David Blackburn

From the archives – the great debt deceit

From our UK edition

The news that the national debt is even larger than it appears ties a knot in the stomach, limiting, as it does, the state’s ability to cut taxes. Andrew Tyrie has called time on the PFI bonanza, but in many ways this intervention comes too late. Back during the financial tempests in the autumn of 2008, my colleagues Peter Hoskin and Fraser Nelson revealed the scale of Gordon Brown’s deceit over PFI. The great debt deceit, Fraser Nelson and Peter Hoskin, The Spectator, 20 September 2008 A few months before the general election which brought New Labour to power, Geoffrey Robinson had David Davis to dinner in his flat overlooking Hyde Park.

David Blackburn

Cameron: Governments should provide enough prison places to satisfy the courts

From our UK edition

The row over sentencing rioters has morphed into a row about prison numbers and safety. Cathy Newman has been issuing a steady stream of tweets all afternoon, revealing that the Ministry of Justice is concerned about overcrowding and safety in prisons and young offenders’ institutions: an internal memo discloses that 2 convicted rioters have been assaulted and hospitalised. This is not altogether surprising: prisons are not exactly renowned for offering new inmates a genteel welcome. Still, it provides ammunition for those who oppose the courts’ stern response to the riots. There is now a record 86,654 incarcerated people in Britain; compared to 85,253 people the week before.

James Forsyth

The Mrs Bercow show

From our UK edition

What, I suspect, would infuriate Sally Bercow most is if there was a complete media blackout over her appearance on ‘Celebrity’ Big Brother. As she made clear on entering the house, her whole aim is to annoy what she calls the ‘establishment.’ But at the risk of playing Bercow’s game, it’s worth debunking one argument that her defenders make. They say that she’s a person in her own right and so should be allowed to do what she wants, that her appearance should be defended on feminist grounds. But on the show, she’s not presenting herself as that. Instead, she’s there as the Speaker’s wife — that is her claim to fame.

Thursday

James Forsyth

Miss Lightwood suggests…

From our UK edition

The press’s tendency to feature female students receiving their A-Level results rather than their male counterparts is coming in for a fair bit of ribbing today. The Guardian diary yesterday revealed quite how far some schools are prepared to go to get their pupils on the front page: “And yet eyebrows were raised at Diary HQ on receipt of an email from Badminton School, inviting Fleet Street to feature a selection of pupils on results morning who "speak extremely well and take a good picture". "I have a fabulous case study of a girl … who sadly lost her mother … and is now an active charity campaigner," reads the email from director of admissions and marketing Henrietta Lightwood.

Sally Thompson

Tobin’s folly

From our UK edition

The Eurozone Tobin tax announced on Tuesday by Merkel and Sarkozy is intended to reduce market volatility. It could have the opposite effect, and, if introduced in Britain, could cripple Britain’s financial sector, a new report by the Adam Smith Institute says. Based on the example of the “pure” Tobin tax that was implemented in Sweden in the 1980s and a large number of studies looking at equity and foreign exchange markets, a clear relationship was revealed between increasing transaction costs and higher levels of volatility. Transaction volumes also decrease as business is driven to lower tax regimes. When Sweden introduced a levy of 0.

David Blackburn

The annual A-levels helter-skelter

From our UK edition

The Gap Year has been declared dead. It’s A-levels day today, and the annual scramble for university places has been intensified ahead of next year’s tuition fees rise. According to this morning’s Times (£), the last count had 669,956 pupils sprinting after 470,000 vacancies. An estimated 50,000 students with adequate grades will not enter higher education this year as many universities have raised entry requirements to manage increased demand. This means that competition during clearance will be even more stiff than usual, particularly as universities will offer many fewer clearing places according to various surveys. Needless to say, UCAS’ website appears to have collapsed under the weight of this unparalleled interest.

Wednesday

James Forsyth

The Huhne story returns

From our UK edition

The news that the Crown Prosecution Service has asked Essex Police to make further inquiries into the whole allegation that Chris Huhne asked his then wife to take speeding points for him in 2003 is a political embarrassment for the Energy and Climate Change Secretary. Huhne has always denied these allegations and nothing has been proved against him but the whole process is hardly reputation enhancing. (But it is worth noting that the CPS’s decision suggests that they currently don’t think there’s enough evidence to lay charges against anyone. Equally, they haven't thrown the whole file out). Huhne’s troubles are also causing a certain amount of coalition friction.

Fraser Nelson

WEB EXCLUSIVE: Full-length interview with IDS

From our UK edition

I have interviewed Iain Duncan Smith for tomorrow’s Spectator. In print, space is always tight and we kept it to 1,500 words. One of the beauties of online is that you can go into detail in political debate that you never could with print: facts, graphs (my guilty pleasure) and quotes. Here is a 2,300-word version of the IDS interview, with subheadings so CoffeeHousers can skip the parts that don’t interest them. I’ve known him for years, and remember how hard it was to get out of his room four years ago when he started on the subject of gang culture and the merits early intervention. Now, he’s in the DWP, able to enact all he spoke about. He believes the riots will transform Cameron’s premiership in the same way that 9-11 did Blair’s.

James Forsyth

Recalcitrant police forces

From our UK edition

Applications to be the next commissioner of the Metropolitan Police closed at noon today. But thanks to the Home Office and the police, the best candidate for the job — Bill Bratton — hasn’t been allowed to even apply. The energy which was put into barring him shows just how determined the police and the Home Office are to prevent any outside talent from being brought into the police. Number 10, though, maintains that it still wants to appoint outsiders to positions of authority in the police, even though it is now trying to claim that the commissioner of the Met was the wrong place to start this process. It was, apparently, too big a job to give to someone from outside the magic circle of chief constables.