Uk politics

Tuesday

Fraser Nelson

The austerity hasn’t started yet

Another month, and another all-time record for state spending in Britain. The government splurged £1.8 billion a day in April — of which £332 million a day was borrowed. Up goes the national debt. All of which leaves us with the question: where is this austerity that George Osborne keeps talking about? He's been in No.11 a year now, and each month state spending has been — on average — 4.9 per cent higher than the same month under Gordon Brown. He seems to be taking the St Augustine approach to fiscal conservatism: Lord, give me spending restraint. But not yet. The below graph shows state spending, per month. The amount in red is how much the government had to bum from the City: This does not look so much different to Labour's plans.

James Forsyth

Gove strikes to ease the removal of bad teachers

The quality of teaching in schools is one of the main determinants of how well a child does. But, shockingly, in almost half the local authorities in England a teacher hasn’t been sacked for being incompetent in the last five years. Retaining sub-standard teachers has harmed the life chances of goodness knows how many children. So the news that Michael Gove is now consulting on rules that will make it far easier to fire bad teachers is welcome. The Gove proposals give heads much more control and enable them to get rid of a poor teacher in a term; at the moment it takes at least a year and is a bureaucratic minefield which is why so many schools shy away from taking action against those who aren’t up to the job.

Daniel Korski

Stop Gordon Brown

Gordon Brown's friends have launched a shameless effort to compel the government into nominating him for the IMF post. The government would be mad if they did. Mad. This is not about petty score-settling, as yesterday's Evening Standard would have it. This is about qualifications to lead, and the former Prime Minister, despite his intellect, does not have those skills. He led the country to ruin and remains in denial about it: he saved the world, don't cha know. The UK should be smarter about using talent from across the House, but there are limits. And it is a bit rich for the ex-PM's friends to argue that David Cameron should back him. This is the man who gave lukewarm support to Paddy Ashdown's candidacy to run the UN in Kabul back in 2008.

Monday

James Forsyth

Hemming divulges

‘Mr Speaker, With about 75,000 people having named Ryan Giggs on Twitter it is impractical to imprison them all and with reports that Giles Coren is facing imprisonment’ This was as far as John Hemming got in his question to the attorney general before the Speaker interrupted him to warn that he should be talking about the principles involved in super-injunctions not the people. But now that it has been said in parliament it can be reported by the press, although I do not believe any newspaper is allowed say which super injunction he has taken out or whether those naming Giggs on Twitter are correct. There were gasps in the chamber as Hemming mentioned Giggs by name and there was cold anger in John Bercow’s voice as he upbraided him for mentioning him.

Fraser Nelson

Cutting through the BS

If the Big Society were a horse, it would be shot. The wounds are too deep, the contamination too great, its legs are broken. And, worse, the Big Society is giving a good idea a bad name. David Cameron tried manfully today, but we only ever hear about the BS (as most Tory MPs call it) when he’s trying to relaunch it. No agenda can be sustained with such thin support. It has become hopelessly confused as an issue. Myths have crept in that volunteering relies on heavy state spending, so Cameron is talking out of his hat. It ain’t so — Jonathan Jones did the digging — but people still believe it. Cameron gives multiple definitions of the BS, confusing the issue further. Does it mean families? Diversity of public service providers? More volunteering?

James Forsyth

What the attorney general needs to do

I’m sure that all CoffeeHousers know who the footballer is with the super injunction preventing newspapers from publishing anything about his affair with the Big Brother contestant Imogen Thomas. But if you didn’t, the papers would have made pretty odd reading over the past few days because the press keeps making little in jokes that are only funny if you know the player’s identity. David Cameron this morning announced that he knew the identity of the player.  This highlights one of many ironies of the situation, which is that far more people are now aware of who the errant footballer is than would have been if the news had just come out and been a two day tabloid story.

Peter Hoskin

Why Miliband needs to be more specific — and quick

Ed Miliband owes Coffee House contributor Ed Howker a drink. In his speech today, the Labour leader borrows the central idea — and the title — of the stunningly insightful book that Ed wrote with Shiv Malik last year, Jilted Generation: How Britain Bankrupted its Youth. It is, basically speaking, the idea that the current generation of twenty-somethings is, in many respects, disadvantaged in comparison their baby-boomer forbears. From the burden of dealing with debt, both personal and national, to the fluctuations of the housing and labour markets, young people are up against it. And it may get worse. As Miliband puts it, "I am worried — and every parent should be worried — about what will happen to our children in the coming decades.

Peter Hoskin

Going big on the Big Society

You certainly can't fault David Cameron for his perseverance. Six years after pushing the thinking behind the Big Society in his pitch for the Tory leadership, and three relaunches of the idea later, he is still at it in a speech today. He will, apparently, stress that the Big Society is not some nebulous nothingness — but, rather, "as gritty and as important as it gets". And as if to underline the point, the PM will announce some solid new measures to bolster his grand projet, such as £40 million of extra funding for volunteering. Cameron is, I suspect, making this case for two main reasons: to counter criticism of his Big Idea and to present a sunny flipside to the cuts, cuts, cuts. But an accident of timing adds to the resonance of this speech.

Fraser Nelson

More thoughts on Cameron’s Cabinet of the undead

CoffeeHousers raised some very good points about my post on Cameron’s undead ministers. I thought I’d reply in a post, rather than the comments thread. 1. About the ‘undead’. Cameron leads a radical government of surprisingly competent people: the ambitious tasks of welfare and school reform are testimony to how far he is moving. Cameron’s policy is to delay a reshuffle for as long as he can. While Blair did reshuffle a lot, he tried his best not to do so to satisfy the media headlines. This is when the concept of undead ministers first arose. You’d have people like Geoff Hoon in defence and Stephen Byers in transport, who obviously had to go — but Blair would wait until the media stopped saying so.

Sunday

Daniel Korski

Cathy Ashton beats UK ministers to Bengazi

EU foreign policy Tsar Catherine Ashton has come under a lot of criticism, much of it unfair and/or put forward by those who want the EU to supplant the member-states. In this piece, I have tried to defend her. I argue that her realistic take on the EU’s role is in the UK’s interest: the last thing London needs is someone who ignores member-states to build an independent foreign policy. And she has managed to get Europe’s SAHEL policy in a better shape, worked closely with William Hague and Guido Westerwelle to coax Serbia into negotiations with Kosovo and helped to solve, at least for the moment, a crisis in Bosnia. For these reasons, she retains the support of David Cameron and William Hague.

David Blackburn

A special relationship | 22 May 2011

The visit of President Obama on Tuesday has not yet inspired rapid British soul searching about the ‘special relationship’, not by comparison to David Cameron’s trip to America last July at any rate. After an awkward beginning, the Obama administration has been at pains to stress that America’s alliance with Britain is inviolable even in a changing world. The administration’s deputy national security adviser, Ben Rhodes, said “there’s no closer ally for the US than the UK” last week. But like all close alliances, the two parties have their differences.

Fraser Nelson

Cameron should cleanse his Cabinet of the undead

Chris Huhne "cannot be sure" whether he might, after all, have been driving his car that fateful night. Ken Clarke cannot be sure why he spoke about rape in that way. Andrew Lansley cannot be sure. All this we learn from the Sunday newspapers: three ministers are for the chop — it's just a matter of time. They will sit in the Cabinet death row alongside Caroline Spelman, unforgiven for her handling of the forests fiasco, and Vince Cable, caught on tape boasting about his “nuclear option” of resignation. This makes no fewer than five dead men walking — and that's before you think about the party chairmanship. As I say in the News of the World today, Cameron needs a clearout.

Saturday

Jonathan Jones

Conservative support to collapse at 6pm

This evening, an event will occur that will make all the controversies and scandals of the last week seem somewhat irrelevant — at least according to American evangelical Harold Camping. He says that 6pm today is the time of the Rapture, as foretold in Thessalonians 4:17: all those "true believers" who accept Jesus Christ as their one true saviour will be taken up to heaven. For those of us left, we might wonder who will lead us through the "chaos and awful suffering" following both the loss of 40 per cent of the UK population and the earthquakes that will accompany it. Our Prime Minister — with his "sort of fairly classic Church of England faith" — would be gone.

Peter Hoskin

Miliband’s “national mission” lacks a mission plan

I didn't expect to be overwhelmed by Ed Miliband's speech to the Progress Annual Conference today, but neither did I expect to be quite so underwhelmed. This was meant to be his Great Exposition of how, as he put it his introductory remarks, Labour "will win the next election". But what we got was a straighforward list of some of the major themes of his leadership so far: the "squeezed middle," the prospects for young people, community breakdown, and so on and so forth. These are all worthwhile areas for debate, but Miliband has dwelt on them before now, and more persuasively — such as in his speech to the Resolution Foundation in February. Repeating them may help make the point, but it doesn't mean that Labour have any solutions.

Peter Hoskin

Cable’s latest warnings and provocations

My favourite part of the Guardian's interview with Vince Cable today? When the business secretary says that his sermonic prescriptions from during the crash are of "enduring relevance" now. But there's more to the article than self-aggrandisement, not least Cable's gloomy overview of the British economy. It's not quite the same as Alastair Darling's Guardian interview in August 2008, but there is a touch of that here. "I think it is not understood that the British economy has declined by 6 or 7 per cent — it is now 10 per cent below trend," says Cable, "Britain is no longer one of the world's price setters. It is painful.

Friday

Fraser Nelson

Hugh Grant and Low Life

I’ve always rather admired Hugh Grant, so it was almost a pleasure to be beaten up by him on Newsnight last Friday. He was attacking the celebrity-hunting media, whereas I set out to defend free press and self-regulation of the media. If you’re going to have sympathy with any Hollywood figure, you’d have sympathy with Hugh: he’s a single man who has never tried to moralise, and has cameras pointing at him everywhere he goes. Besides, he made an impassioned and powerful case against the intrusion of the paparazzi — while yours truly was left defending the Press Complaints Commission. But I didn’t know, until I met him that night, that Hugh is also a Spectator subscriber — and has been for years.

Daniel Korski

Will Britain leave the EU in 2025?

Britain is going to stay in the EU for the next ten years at least. Of that I'm sure. But after that, when David Cameron's retired, William Hague has taken to writing books, George Osborne's had his chance and the 2010 intake run the party, the Tories are going to be more openly hostile to the EU. Labour will too; it has a larger reservoir of pro-EU sentiment among its ranks, but one that is shallower than it was. Focusing on the Tories, it is worth noting that nearly all of the names being bandied about as future Tory leaders have a visceral dislike of the EU. By and large they will, by then reflect popular opinion (if they don't already): as veteran EU watcher Charles Grant notes, there is a limit to how long an elite can cross the population.

Jonathan Jones

Ken Bloke’s proposals are not so popular

What do the public think of Ken Clarke after his gaffe on Wednesday? According to a YouGov poll conducted during the 48 hours since his comments, a slim pluarlity think he should resign from his post as justice secretary: Perhaps unsurpisingly, the majority of Labour supporters agree with their leader's call for him to go, although a majority of Tories and two-thirds of Lib Dems think he ought to stay. When it comes to the issue at the centre of the furore - reducing the sentence for someone who pleads guilty by up to half (as opposed to a third, as it stands now) - the public is much more set against Clarke: More specifically, 33 per cent say there should be no reduction in sentences at all for people who plead guilty, whatever their crime.

David Blackburn

The World Service versus al-Jazeera

Yesterday’s debate on the future of the World Service was an unqualified success for its convener, Richard Ottaway. His motion received very extensive cross-party support and the MPs involved are confident of victory. As one source put it, “I haven’t met anyone – anyone – who agrees with that cut.” For its part, the government will “reflect carefully on the issue.” Parliament and Whitehall ring to anxious talk that cuts to the World Service will diminish Britain’s status abroad, and that less impartial state broadcasters, notably al-Jazeera, are capitalising on our withdrawal: al-Jazeera’s dominant coverage of the Arab Spring is a case in point.