Uk politics

Wednesday

David Blackburn

The emergence of a Cameron doctrine

From our UK edition

Daniel Finkelstein makes a simple but important point in the Times today (£): a Prime Minister’s foreign policy is determined by events more than by instincts. The revolts in the Middle East are defining David Cameron’s diplomacy. The emerging policy is a realistic expression of Britain’s current domestic and international capabilities. Cameron’s speech to the Kuwaiti parliament did not match Harold Macmillan’s ‘winds of change’ speech because Britain no longer disposes of continents. Likewise, Tony Blair’s messianic tendencies belong to a past era. Colonel Gaddafi’s murderous stream of conscious could have given cause to evoke the moral certainty of an 'ethical foreign policy'.

Tuesday

Patrick Nolan

Reforming welfare: a mixed bag

From our UK edition

Last week, Reform published its 2011 scorecard of the coalition government’s public service reform programme. Yesterday, Thomas Cawston explained how the coalition can get NHS reforms back on track. Today, Patrick Nolan, Chief Economist at Reform, discusses why the government’s welfare reforms scraped through with a pass. The government’s welfare reforms are significant. The 2010 Emergency Budget and Spending Review announced cuts of £18 billion to benefits, so the DWP had to respond with a radical agenda. The Work Programme aims to incentivise providers to deliver better outcomes from welfare to work services and the Universal Credit promises to create a simpler system where “work always pays.

James Forsyth

Ashdown goes Fox-hunting

From our UK edition

There’s a quite remarkable op-ed by Paddy Ashdown in The Times (£) today which goes public with a lot of the griping about Liam Fox that one heard behind the scenes at the time of the Strategic Defence Review. Ashdown remarks that the ‘problem with the SDSR was not speed, but lack of political direction.’ He then details how ‘Sir David Richards, then head of the Army and now Chief of the Defence Staff, had to bypass the whole process (and his Secretary of State) to appeal to the Prime Minister to avert catastrophe in the Army.

Fraser Nelson

The 50p tax in action

From our UK edition

Today, we have seen the 50p tax in action: reflected in January’s bumper tax receipts. A jubilant John Rentoul has just tweeted: “Where is Fraser Nelson when you need him? The 50p income tax rate has brought in a ton of money. He said it would probably reduce revenue.” He is absolutely right – but not for the reasons he thinks. Were John self-employed, he’d know that the tax paid last month was in respect of the 2009-10 tax year – when the top rate of tax was 40p. Of course, many of the super-rich are on PAYE – but that has happened since last April. It doesn't explain a January uplift. Today’s surprise tax haul can be partly explained by the fact that folk sucked forward their income, to avoid the 50p rate.

Peter Hoskin

Tehran’s latest provocation

From our UK edition

The people of Egypt and Libya may have swung the spotlight onto their respective countries – but it is a spotlight that Iran is keen to exploit. Two of their warships have just passed through the Suez canal en route to Syria, the first to do so since 1979. They were given clearance by Egypt's new military stewards a few days ago. On one level, Tehran's actions are unimpeachable: Egypt cannot forbid access to Suez unless it is at war with the country at sail. But they are also, of course, designed to provoke. Why choose to do this now, other than to suggest something about the new latticework of power, and of power relationships, in a turbulent Middle East? Israel, for its part, is less than impressed.

James Forsyth

Cameron’s fine, liberal speech

From our UK edition

David Cameron’s speech in Kuwait today did not take on his hosts in the way that Harold Macmillan’s ‘winds of change’ speech did. But it was a still fine, liberal speech. The key argument of the speech was that: ”As recent events have confirmed, denying people their basic rights does not preserve stability, rather the reverse. Our interests lie in upholding our values – in insisting on the right to peaceful protest, in freedom of speech and the internet, in freedom of assembly and the rule of law. But these are not just our values, but the entitlement of people everywhere; of people in Tahrir Square as much as Trafalgar Square.” This is the crucial point: crude realism is not realistic.

Fraser Nelson

Osborne shouldn’t spend the extra money

From our UK edition

Lucky old George Osborne. The British economy is not in "meltdown," but churning out tax revenue like a fruit machine. Figures out from the ONS today show that the tax haul for January alone was £58.4 billion – pushing the public finances into a surplus £3.7 billion for that month (an almighty £3.6 billion more than expected). If this rate continues (no reason why not, seeing as we're all getting drunk on Mervyn King's underpriced debt again), then Citi estimates he will have £8 billion more to play with than expected in the current financial year. So what will he do? Osborne's decision will tell us plenty about what type of Chancellor he is.

Daniel Korski

How young Arabs saved the old West

From our UK edition

Three months ago the future looked bleak for the West. The countries that once dominated the world, invented capitalism, articulated mankind's universal desire for freedom and defended it against all enemies looked destined for an impoverished future squeezed by the authoritarian capitalists of the East and unsure about the righteousness of its ideological foundation. Even one-time liberals, whose life has been shaped in a struggle for human rights embraced China and its state-backed progress. Now, thanks to the pro-democracy protesters in the Middle East, the West is back. Not that it backed the democratic movements and now stands to reap the benefits.

Fraser Nelson

Coffee House Exclusive: McBride joins CAFOD

From our UK edition

                  The penance of Damian McBride continues. After being ejected from No10, and disowned by his mentor Ed Balls, I can reveal that our antihero now has a new job – head of media at the Catholic overseas aid charity CAFOD. He will be doubtless be brilliantly effective at briefing against its enemies (in CAFOD's case, hunger and the devil). I imagine the pay is several leagues below what he'd get from cashing in on his notoriety and publishing a hit man's confessions. The weird thing is that McBride could have done so well, had he steered clear of Balls. He was a Treasury civil servant, specialising in VAT, before Balls trained him up in the art of character assassination.

Monday

Thomas Cawston

Reforming the NHS: accountability

From our UK edition

Last week, Reform published its 2011 public service reform scorecard. It judged each major government department against the three criteria set out by David Cameron: accountability, flexibility and value for money. The report finds the Home Office’s policing reforms succeeding on all three fronts, but inconsistency across other government departments. The Government’s health reforms are awarded grade D overall, with an E for accountability, a D for flexibility and a D for value for money. Here's how the coalition can get its NHS reforms back on track.   The government has recognised the need for fundamental reform of the NHS. The proposals announced in the July 2010 White Paper are substantial.

James Forsyth

Is David Cameron about to have one of his Garibaldi moments?

From our UK edition

To date, this government has not had much of a foreign policy. Where there should have been grand strategy there has been trade promotion. But this appears to be changing. It is certainly striking that Cameron is the first western leader to visit post-Mubarak Egypt. Cameron himself is, normally, at the realist end of the foreign policy spectrum. But, as one close friend observes, one of the most important things to grasp in understanding the Prime Minister is that Garibaldi is one of his great heroes. As Cameron told Charles Moore, he admires Garibaldi’s ‘romantic nationalism'.

Peter Hoskin

Libya catch-up: Gaddafi on the precipice

From our UK edition

Aside from official – and provocative – proclamations from Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, the news from Libya is still arriving piecemeal. The latest reports are that the protestors have prevailed in Zawia, in the west of the country, to add to their "liberation" of Benghazi last night. And there is some speculation that Gaddafi Senior has fled the country, which would certainly reinforce the sense that his power is being whittled down, potentially to naught. As for Britain, the questions about our prior relationship with Libya still hover awkwardly over proceedings, and over the heads of the last government in particular. There was the al-Megrahi deal, of course, as well as all those meetings in Gaddafi's tent.

Daniel Korski

Why a major reshuffle is unlikely

From our UK edition

The clamour for a reshuffle is getting louder. Caroline Spelman is said to be a leading candidate for ejection, following her awful performance over the forestry sell-off. Many also want Ken Clarke's scalp. Party chairman Baroness Warsi has already been the target of gossip, while dissatisfaction with Chief Whip Patrick McLoughlin is palpable. Then there is the desire by Nick Clegg to bring back David Laws, if he is cleared of financial malfeasance.   However, most of the talk of a reshuffle is fuelled by self-serving backbench MPs who lost out of jobs in the coalition negotiations. Those from the 2005 intake feel the 2010 intake breathing down their necks, while older MPs hiss about the "cult of youth".

Peter Hoskin

How far will Cameron go to break the state monopolies?

From our UK edition

Call it the Big Society, decentralisation, people power, whatever – but David Cameron's vision for society just became a good deal more concrete. In an article for the Telegraph this morning, the Prime Minister makes a quite momentous proposal: that there ought to be a new presumption towards diversity in public services, whereby the private, voluntary and charitable sectors are as privileged as the state is now. Or as he puts it: "We will create a new presumption – backed up by new rights for public service users and a new system of independent adjudication – that public services should be open to a range of providers competing to offer a better service.

Sunday

Daniel Korski

The Bahraini challenge

From our UK edition

The debacle in Bahrain cuts close to the British bone. The Ministry of Defence has helped train at least 100 Bahraini officers and supplied a range of equipment to the Gulf state. Egypt was important because of its regional role and ties to the United States. But there was no link to London, anymore than there was one to Paris or Berlin. Bahrain is different. Only a few months ago, British officials were applauding the Khalifa dynasty for taking steps towards democracy. But the fact is simple: the steps were insufficient – not by British standards, but by Bahraini ones. It should serve as a wake-up call to the Foreign Office and those in government with close ties to Bahrain.

Fraser Nelson

Cameron’s back is against the wall – now he must fight

From our UK edition

Given that David Cameron will have a tougher fight than perhaps any postwar Prime Minister other than Thatcher, it’s a bit unfortunate that his team doesn’t like political combat. Losing to Rachel Johnson over forests last week exposed major weaknesses, and sent a message to the government’s enemies: that these guys have pretty poor political combat skills. Now word is out, the cuts protests in Liverpool today will be the first in a series of challenges. Cameron, too, is stung by the avoidable mistakes of the last few weeks – and is reshaping No.10 to account for them. Some changes are great, some less so, others downright worrying. Here's my overview: 1. The Big Society. Cameron has started from first principles.

Fraser Nelson

British jobs for whom?

From our UK edition

Immigration isn’t a topic much discussed nowadays, because it’s one where the Tories and Lib Dems don’t agree. That’s a shame. Because there’s an urgent problem to be fixed in the British labour market: that every time the economy grows, it sucks in immigrant workers. If this dysfunction continues, it will finish Cameron. The News of the World (where yours truly is a columnist (£)) has today looked at the latest figures for this. I reprint them for CoffeeHousers below. They show that during that disastrous fourth quarter in 2010, where the economy shrank by 0.5 percent, the number of employed British-born people fell by 110,000. As grim as you’d expect. But the number of foreign-born workers actually rose – by 7,000.

Saturday

Guy Newey

Tinkering with solar panel subsidy risks making bad policy worse

From our UK edition

The fallout from Chris Huhne's sudden review of the government's system of subsidies for small-scale renewable energy gathers momentum. Solar firms, who built business cases on the system of subsidies, are threatening judicial review over the Energy Secretary's change of direction. So why did the government raise concerns about the policy? Apparently, because it has been too successful. The scheme encourages householders, communities and businesses to cover their roofs in solar panels and erect wind turbines by offering them a generous subsidy for the electricity they produce.

David Blackburn

Cuddly Ken comes out snarling, and sneering

From our UK edition

Another Saturday, another interview with Ken Clarke. This time, the bruised bruiser has been talking to the FT and the remarkable thing is that he has managed to say nothing. Not a sausage. Colleagues were not insulted, Middle England escaped unscathed and the European Court of Human Rights wasn’t even mentioned.  But Clarke conveys his determination to fight. He defends his prison reforms and community sentences, to which the right has now applied the grave term ‘misconceived’. Clarke retorts: ‘We are trying to take 23 per cent out of the budget. I don’t recall any government that’s ever tried to make any spending reductions on law and order – let alone 23 per cent.

David Blackburn

Bad banking

From our UK edition

No wonder the banks like Britain's corporation tax regime. This morning’s newspapers all tell that Barclays paid just £113m in corporation tax in 2009, despite making profits of more than £11bn. In a rare instance of justified anger, Labour’s chosen men have launched an attack on the government’s failure to ‘take the robust action needed to make sure that the banks which caused the crash pay their fair share, and will stick in the stomachs of small businesses struggling to borrow and ordinary people feeling the pinch of the government's austerity measures.’ Whatever the absurdities of Labour’s position, this news will ‘stick in the stomachs’ of the little people, whose wealth is withering before their eyes.