Uk politics

Monday

Fraser Nelson

The limits of stigma

From our UK edition

As James says, it’s been a day of high passions here at The Spectator. He feels strongly that many of the problems in Britain are societal, and require a cultural shift. Maybe so. I disagree with James when he says a Prime Minister's role is to “lead society". I disagree. We pay him to run the government, not offer his advice (or, worse, condemnation) on how society is running itself. Sure, society is shaped by government incentives. Cameron can fix these. But shaping society by exhortation is not what we expect of limited government. Fundamentally, it confuses what I see as the natural pecking order. In Britain, the people pass judgment on politicians. Not the other way around.   Tim Montgomerie is on James’ side, and chastised me yesterday.

James Forsyth

Hoban wobbles in the House

From our UK edition

Mark Hoban has just turned in a remarkably unconvincing performance at the despatch box. Summoned to the Commons to answer an urgent question from Gisela Stuart, one of the best backbenchers in the House, on what contingency planning the government was doing for a Greek default, Hoban attempted to stonewall.   But Hoban’s stonewalling could only carry him so far. Strikingly, he declined several opportunities to confirm that the British government thinks that the euro will survive in its current form with all its current members.   By contrast, Jack Straw was quite happy to make predictions. He told the House that ‘the euro in its current form is going to collapse.

James Forsyth

Cameron is right to use the bully pulpit of his office

From our UK edition

The normal Monday morning calm of The Spectator was disturbed today by an argument about David Cameron’s comments about fathers who go ‘AWOL’. I thought Cameron was right to say what he did, my editor didn’t. He felt that it wasn’t the Prime Minister’s job to moralise, and that him doing so was the beginning of a descent into totalitarianism.   The reason I think Cameron was right to speak out is that so many of the problems in this country are social or cultural. They can’t be solved by another piece of legislation or a government initiative.

Peter Hoskin

Gove reaffirms his faith in free schools

From our UK edition

Invigorating, that's probably the best word for Policy Exchange's event on free schools this morning. Right from Sir Michael Wilshaw's opening address — which set out the reasons why he, as headteacher of Mossbourne Academy, is optimistic about education reform — to Michael Gove's longer, more involved speech, this was all about celebrating and promoting the new freedoms that teachers are enjoying. There were some specifics about the schools that are opening, and the numbers of them, but very little of it was new. For the first time in a week, Gove wasn't announcing policy, but instead referring back to it. Which isn't to say that this was an ornamental occasion — far from it. Sir Michael's "four reasons for optimism" were, by themselves, pretty noteworthy.

Peter Hoskin

Boris’s one-two punch against the coalition

From our UK edition

Boris, we know, has never had any compunctions about distinguishing his views from those of the coalition government. Take his recent proclamations on the unions or on the economy, for instance. But his latest remarks are still striking in their forthrightness. Exhibit A is the article he has written for today's Sun, which — although it doesn't mention Ken Clarke by name — clearly has the Justice Secretary in mind when it exhorts that "it's time to stop offering shorter sentences and get-out clauses." And Exhibit B is his column for the Telegraph, which waxes condemnatory about Greece and the euro.

Sunday

Peter Hoskin

It’s not just about public sector pensions

From our UK edition

The bustle around public sector pensions has obscured an equally significant, pensions-related story today: the Sunday Telegraph's claim that George Osborne is considering sucking £7 billion from the pensions of higher earners. The way it would be achieved, reports Patrick Hennessey, would be to terminate the tax relief on pension contributions made by those in the 40 and 50 per cent income tax brackets. He adds that the Exchequer could spend the resulting funds on deficit reduction, or on notching up the basic state pension. At the moment, it sounds as though this is just one of those on-the-table type deals: an idea being passed around the Treasury, but not yet decided upon.

James Forsyth

Profit could hasten Gove’s school reforms

From our UK edition

Michael Gove is giving a big speech tomorrow on free schools amid evidence that the policy is beginning to gather momentum. The papers report today that there have been 281 applications to set up free schools in the round that closed this month alone (sentence updated).   One of the best known of these planned free schools is the one being set up Tony Blair’s former strategist Peter Hyman. Ever since The Spectator revealed back in May that Hyman was planning to take advantage of the Tories’ reforms to start his own school, there’s been considerable interest in what Hyman is up to. In today’s Sunday Times he eloquently defends his project, arguing that free schools are just the logical continuation of Blair’s education reforms.

Peter Hoskin

Labour’s striking attack

From our UK edition

Quite some claim from Ed Balls, writing in the Sunday Mirror today. "Let's be clear what George Osborne's game is," he blusters, "he's trying to pick a fight about pensions, provoke strikes and persuade the public to blame the stalling economy on the unions." And it is a charge that Andy Burnham repeated on Dermot Murnaghan's Sky show earlier. I was on live-tweeting duty, and lost count of how many times the shadow education secretary used phrases such as "provocation," "confrontation," "playing politics," and "back to the 1980s." This, clearly, is an attack that Labour are determined to push as relentlessly as possible. George Osborne is politicking, they are saying, at the nation's expense. It is, at the very least, an intriguing gambit on Labour's part.

Fraser Nelson

Cameron takes on bad dads

From our UK edition

It’s Fathers’ Day today — and David Cameron is marking it with an extraordinary attack on those dads who are AWOL. It comes in one paragaph of an otherwise excellent and moving piece for the Sunday Telegraph (albeit one that downplays the role of the taxman), in which he says that men leaving their family is "beyond the pale"; that such fathers should feel the "full force" of society; and goes as far as comparing them to drunk drivers. This is a brave move — in the Sir Humphry sense of the word — for three reasons. 1. Britain has more absent fathers than any country in the EU. That’s numerically: as a proportion, only in Estonia do single mothers compose a larger chunk of the electorate. Perhaps Cameron is appealing to single mothers here.

Saturday

James Forsyth

Why enshrining the military covenant in law might not be such a good idea

From our UK edition

Charles Moore’s column in the Telegraph today makes a very good case against enshrining the military covenant in law. As Charles argues, once the lawyers and the judges get their hands on it there could be a whole slew of unintended consequences. Judges could decide, for instance, that the court martial system does not offer soldiers ‘fair treatment’. Indeed, it is worth noting that the Major General, now retired, who drafted the covenant does not believe that it should be made law for precisely this reason. There’s no doubt that under the last government were expected to fight wars on peace time budgets and that spending on the military overall was too low. But putting the covenant into law is not the right solution to that problem.

Daniel Korski

Cameron vs Kirchner

From our UK edition

After stating the obvious at PMQs this week — that the Falklands would remain sovereign British territory as long as they want to be — David Cameron has come under heavy fire from the Argentine President, Cristina Kirchner. As today's papers report, she yesterday described our PM as "arrogant," and said his comments were an "expression of mediocrity and almost of stupidity". But there is nothing new in the British position, which has always been that there can be no negotiations over sovereignty unless and until such a time as the Falkland Islanders so wish.

James Forsyth

Osborne throws his weight behind education reform

From our UK edition

Pete rightly points to Michael Gove’s interview in The Times this morning as the story of the day.  Some producer interests are objecting to Gove dismissing the exam system as ‘discredited’ and his plans to return A-Levels to being a proper preparation for undergraduate study. But there’ll be no backing down. A Gove spokesman tells me that ‘'The system is discredited and it needs fixing. The public know it and support change. If some don't like hearing that, tough. They'll find it much more unpleasant in ten years if we don't fix the system and they're working for Chinese billionaires who did maths at Harvard.' But, perhaps, the most important development on education reform this week was George Osborne throwing his weight behind it.

Peter Hoskin

Gove keeps on going

From our UK edition

My gosh, Michael Gove is hyperactive at the moment. From his interview with James in the latest issue of the Spectator, to his recent announcements about failing primary schools and secondary school standards, this is a man who just cannot stop. So stop he doesn't. The Secretary of State for education is delivering yet another speech on Monday. And he has another interview (£), with Rachel Sylvester and Alice Thomson, in today's Times. The Times interview, if you can vault across the paywall, is a worthwhile read.

Friday

Peter Hoskin

From the archives: Ed Miliband, before the leadership

From our UK edition

It has been a turbulent, ol' week for Ed Miliband — all the way from those Ed Balls files, through his most substantial speech so far, to that bruising Twitter appearance. By way of putting a full-stop to it all, here's an interview that our deputy editor, Mary Wakefield, conducted with him in 2007. This is MiliMinor, aged 37, and relatively carefree:  The charm of Ed Miliband, Mary Wakefield, The Spectator, 2 June 2007 Sitting opposite Ed Miliband MP in a large and airy office, the sort of office that befits the Minister for the Third Sector, I suddenly have the surreal impression that I’m at the doctor’s. It’s the medicinal green of the carpet but, more than that, it’s Ed’s demeanour.

Fraser Nelson

Hilton will probably ride it out

From our UK edition

Not for the first time, a throwaway line in a Spectator article by James Forsyth has been picked up by Fleet St and set the hares running. It's about Steve Hilton, Cameron's best friend and chief strategist, and whether he'll quit. Hilton is a man in a hurry — rightly, in my view, as the Tories are not incapable of blowing the next election. So he wants things transformed, and — for all his faults — acutely feels the sense of urgency and tries to communicate it through government. The Whitehall machine (and, more specifically, the permanent secretary of No.10) does not share this urgency and waters down change. It poses a grave risk. Cameron's mission to change Britain could be over, before it begins.

Peter Hoskin

Don’t dismiss Davies out of hand

From our UK edition

Touchpaper, meet match. That's the explosive situation engendered by Tory MP Philip Davies and his comments about disabled people this afternoon. His suggestion, made in the Commons, was that disabled people could work for less than the national minimum wage. And his justification? That the minimum wage "prevents those people from being given the opportunity to get to the first rung on the employment ladder." Charities such as Mind have since lambasted Davies for even broaching such a thing. The phrase "nasty party" is gushing around Twitter with tidal abandon. But before we pile on, it's worth noting that Davies has identified an issue that is more shades of grey than black-and-white.

James Forsyth

How the Tories could capitalise on the eurozone’s woes

From our UK edition

With events in Greece moving at pace, next week’s European Council meeting (which was scheduled to be a low-key affair) could be the place where attempts to resolve the crisis in the eurozone take place. I’m told that Number 10 has now woken up to this possibility and is doing some preparatory work on the matter.   But, frustratingly, there’s still no strategy for how David Cameron could use this crisis to advance the British national interest. As I wrote last week, if the eurozone countries decide that a solution will require a treaty change, then Britain has a veto over that — and could use the negotiations to secure various things that Britain wants from the EU.

Daniel Korski

Danny’s maths

From our UK edition

And so Danny Alexander has further angered unions by making it clear that "painful decisions" are needed to reform public-sector pensions, including raising the retirement age. But his proposals should no come as a surprise. Rapid demographic transitions caused by rising life expectancy and declining fertility mean that the proportion of old to young is growing rapidly. But when the Lib Dem minister says that "people are living much longer now," he is in fact underplaying how dramatic the change has been in the last decade. According to the Office of National Statistics, the proportion of people in Britain aged 65-and-over increased from 15 per cent in 1984 to 16 per cent in 2009, an increase of 1.7 million people.

Peter Hoskin

Greece on the precipice

From our UK edition

Europe is a doom-monger's paradise at the moment. Riots in Greece; summary Cabinet reshuffles; meetings between Merkel and Sarkozy to save the single currency — and there's still the potential for things to get worse, much worse. If the Greek government defaults on its debts, then there's no knowing where the contagion will spread, only that it it will spread wide: from Spain and Portugal to markets across the world. Share indices have already been trembling at the prospect, although many of them rallied slightly today. One consolation, however scant, is that all this crystallises just what can happen to governments who operate beyond their means.

Peter Hoskin

Alexander’s not for turning

From our UK edition

After the vacillations of recent days, the government could do with a show of hardheadedness — and Danny Alexander is delivering just that today. He is announcing the government's plans for public sector pension reform later, and they're exactly the sort of plans that will set the union bosses frothing: an increase in the public sector retirement age to 66, an increase in contributions, that sort of thing. But the Chief Secretary to the Treasury is unapolgetic. In an article for the Telegraph, he effectively says that this is a take-it-or-leave-it offer for the public sector. "It may be that those who oppose change think they can force the Government to change its mind," he writes, with his pen pointed accusingly at the unions planning strikes for next month.