Uk politics

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.

Fraser Nelson

EXCLUSIVE: IDS on British jobs

From our UK edition

Last week, George Osborne boasted that Britain has the second-fastest job creation in the G7. In tomorrow's Spectator, we disclose official figures showing that 154 per cent of the employment increase can be accounted for by foreign-born workers. We on Coffee House have often questioned Labour's record: 99.9 per cent of the rise in employment was accounted for by foreign-born workers. The graphs for the Labour years and the coalition year are below:     The idea of 154 per cent is strange, so I will reproduce the raw figures below:     Now, no one outside Westminster expects the UK labour market to change the day a new government is elected, but what matters is that the problem still exists.

David Blackburn

Riot sentencing row brews

From our UK edition

David Cameron promised that looters would feel the full force of the law. Courts have been sitting round the clock holding defendants on remand and issuing stern sentences. This is causing disquiet in some circles. Lib Dem MPs complain that the government has overacted, incapable of resisting the temptation to take draconian decisions without adequate scrutiny. Tessa Munt told the Guardian that the government’s approach “smacks of headline grabbing by Conservatives, not calm, rational policy-making.” Lady Hamwee also told the paper that it would be a “great pity if what [the justice secretary] Ken Clarke has been doing – finding a better way of sentencing – was to be undone.

David Blackburn

With an eye on 2015, Osborne is ramping up the growth agenda

From our UK edition

30,000 new jobs by 2015: that is the glittering prediction made by the government as it announces the creation of more enterprise zones this morning. 11 zones* have been identified in total, tailored to foster the expansion of hi-tech manufacturing industries away from London and the M4 corridor. Enterprise zones certainly have their critics – notably the Work Foundation’s Andrew Sissons, who told the Today programme that they were merely an “expensive way of moving jobs around the country.” But the coalition is adamant that it has learnt from past mistakes, insisting that the policy will rebalance the economy and rejuvenate regions that have been “left behind”.

Tuesday

David Blackburn

Government expected to renew growth strategy

From our UK edition

The word flying around Westminster this evening is that the government is going to announce a fresh package to stimulate growth tomorrow. In line with recent reports, the expectation is that new enterprise zones will be unveiled. Enterprise zones are, of course, the linchpin of the chancellor’s current strategy, offering generous tax breaks for start-up industries, relaxed planning regulations and investment in state-of-the-art broadband, so this would not be a novel move. But an announcement would be timely nonetheless.

David Blackburn

The phone hacking saga bursts back to life

From our UK edition

The phone hacking saga has burst back to life this afternoon, with the publication of a letter by Clive Goodman that contradicts much of the evidence given by News International Executives to the Culture, Media and Sport Committee. Goodman’s letter (which you can read here) , apparently written on 2 March 2007, states that phone hacking was widely discussed in editorial meetings at the News of the World and that senior executives were informed of the practice, contrary to their protestations that Goodman was a lone rogue reporter. Goodman alleges that Andy Coulson banned references to phone hacking in meetings and then offered to save Goodman's job if the disgraced reporter did not implicate the paper during his trial.

Fraser Nelson

Inflation rises yet again

From our UK edition

"Inflation destroys nations and societies as surely as invading nations do. Inflation is the parent of unemployment. It is the unseen robber of those who have saved. No policy which puts at risk the defeat of inflation - however great the short-term attraction - can be justified". That was Margaret Thatcher, speaking in 1980 when inflation was much higher but British politicians actually cared about it. You won't even hear the Governor of the Bank of England denounce today's figures: CPI at 4.4 per cent and the traditional measure of inflation, RPI, at 5.0 per cent. It is seen as just another statistic. The government has also chosen to announce that rail fares will be rising by 8 per cent. George Osborne is in charge of getting inflation right.

James Forsyth

Cameron’s missed opportunity

From our UK edition

As David noted earlier, the big headline in Nick Clegg’s speech this morning is that the government will hold some kind of inquiry into the riots after all. This climb down in the face of demands from Ed Miliband makes it all the more baffling that Cameron didn’t announce his own inquiry earlier. If he had taken the initiative, he could have determined both its terms of reference and membership which would have ensured that it came up with the right answers. But, in policy terms, I suspect the more important announcement is that prisoners leaving jail will now be placed straight into the work programme. The work programme, masterminded by Chris Grayling, promises to be one of the coalition’s most successful initiatives.