Uk politics

Thursday

David Blackburn

What the statist left thinks of the liberal right

The Tories have the evil gene – that was the subtext to Ed Miliband’s jibes about the complacency of the children of Thatcher. Labour’s former General Secretary, Peter Watt, disagrees. In an important post for Labour Uncut, Watt observes: ‘But there is an arrogance at the heart of our politics that is going to make it difficult to really understand why we lost. It is an arrogance that says that we alone own morality and that we alone want the best for people. It says that our instincts and our motives alone are pure.  It’s an arrogance that belittles others’ fears and concerns as “isms” whilst raising ours as righteous.

Matthew Sinclair

Putting a stop to taxpayer funded environmentalism

It’s that time of year again, time for the world to pay attention to climate change policy for a few weeks.  Most of the year, schemes like the EU Emissions Trading System and the Renewables Obligation just wallow in dysfunction and quietly cost us a fortune, adding to our electricity bills in particular.  Manufacturers pay attention, and higher energy costs threaten to drive industrial jobs abroad, and the poor and elderly feel the effects, even if they don’t know why their bills are rising.  But the only people who really have the staff and the organisational clout to pursue this issue all year round are the environmental campaigns.   Many of them, like Friends of the Earth, have multi-million pound budgets and dozens of staff.

Wednesday

Peter Hoskin

Leaked embassy cable: what the Americans thought of Thatcher

Forget the children of Thatcher, here's what the Americans were saying about the Iron Lady herself when she became Tory party leader. The source is a confidential cable from the American Embassy in London to the US State Department, dated 16 February 1975, and referenced in Claire Berlinski's book There is No Alternative: Subject: Margaret Thatcher: Some First Impressions 1. We understand Department is providing Secretary with biographic data on Margaret Thatcher prior to his meeting with her February 18, Here are our initial impressions of Britain's newest political star. 2. Margaret Thatcher has blazed into national prominence almost literally from out of nowhere.

Blair Gibbs

The welcome arrival of elected Police & Crime Commissioners

Directly-elected Police & Crime Commissioners (PCCs) are the boldest reform of policing since the 1960s. In May 2012 there will be 41 new political beasts in England and Wales with large, direct mandates. They look set to transform policing and public debate about crime. The new Commissioners will replace weak and invisible police authorities who, despite costing £65m a year and spending £25m in the last 3 years alone on expenses and allowances, have failed to hold chief constables to account. As a result, police chiefs have become too powerful, too detached and too risk-averse – with failure to tackle crime often just excused.

Daniel Korski

The Guardian’s Wiki-spin

In today's Wikileaks revelations, it is Mervyn King's turn to be pushed through the mill. Did he act politically when pushing for a deficit reduction plan? Was he critical of David Cameron and George Osborne or just pointing out the obvious: that the Tory leaders had not held power before and - shock horror - were keen to get elected? The Guardian's reading of the cables suggests that the government's Batman and Robin (to keep with US diplomatic style) were unprepared for the task ahead. But re-read the key passages and it is clear that Cameron and Osborne were no different from any other opposition leaders - reliant on a small staff, and unprepared for the special pleading they would face as they entered government and tried to cut the deficit.

Lloyd Evans

Nothing Miliband says can rain on Mr Confident’s parade

Back from Zurich, where he’s been helping FIFA determine the winner of the world’s greatest bribery festival, Cameron was in hearty form at PMQs today. He faced Ed Miliband who looks increasingly like the life and soul of the funeral. His party is riding high in the polls – but only when he’s away. As soon as he pops his head back around the door a groan of misery goes up and his rating collapses. Earlier this week the OBR gave an upbeat assessment of the economy so Ed sent his bad-news beavers to sift through it for signs of toxicity. They couldn’t find much. Jobless totals are to rise. But only a bit. The economy will grow reluctantly. But not that reluctantly. We’re faring worse than some of our rivals, and better than others.

Peter Hoskin

PMQs live blog | 1 December 2010

VERDICT: A freewheeling, swashbuckling sort of performance from Cameron today, that was encapsulated by a single line: "I'd rather be a Child of Thatcher than a Son of Brown". Sure, that may not go down too well with lefty Lib Dems nor, indeed, many Scottish voters. But, in the context of PMQs, it was a rapier response to Ed Miliband's sclerotic lines of questioning. Why the Labour leader chose to completely ignore today's Mervyn King quotes, and sift unpersuasively through the footnotes of the OBR report, I'm not sure. In any case, the plan didn't work at all. This was yet another PMQs which generated more heat than light, but Miliband was the only participant who got burnt.  1233: And that's it. My quick verdict shortly.

Daniel Korski

Poverty NGO or Labour stooge?

While I worked at DfiD, officials were very keen to disabuse me of my suspicion that some NGOs are in fact not focused on a politically-neutral campaign to end worldwide poverty but are instead extensions of the Labour movement. They may be staffed by Labour supporters, run by ex-Labour advisers or just be used to working with a Labour government; but they were not corporately aligned in any way. Or so I was told. And I was happy to believe it. But what is this? War on Want and the Jubilee Debt Campaign - two supposedly internationally-focused NGOs - are said to have joined forces with the protest organisation UK Uncut to fight the Coalition Government's deficit reduction.

Peter Hoskin

Pakistan’s double game comes under the spotlight once again

The leak that keeps on leaking has one or two embarrassing titbits about our domestic policymakers this morning. Yet far more noteworthy are the documents on Pakistan. While they don't tell us too much that is surprising – being mostly about the duplicitous game that country is playing with the West – they do highlight some potentially worrying trends. Chief among them is the growing influence of General Ashfaq Pervez Kiyani, the head of Pakistan's army. His name is littered generously throughout the US briefings, and it is often connected with dangerous conspiracy and double-dealing. One document, for instance, suggests that Kiyani was prepared to overthrow the Pakistani President, Asif Zardari, last year.

Tuesday

James Forsyth

The Lib Dems need to get their act together on tuition fees

There have been a huge amount of police out in Westminster today. After being caught off-guard by the student demo a few weeks back, the cops are now leaving nothing to chance.   But if the police have now got their act together, the same cannot be said of the Liberal Democrats. They are currently considering whipping their MPs to abstain on tuition fees despite the fact that the government’s policy is one that has been crafted by a Lib Dem Secretary of State, Vince Cable, and a Tory Minister of State, David Willetts.   If the Lib Dems were to abstain, it would play to the worst stereotypes of the party. They would be derided as ditherers of the first degree, incapable of taking a tough decision.

James Forsyth

The money that didn’t swing the election

Before the election, the Tories used to regularly, and with a certain justification, complain about how the vast majority of money that Peter Mandelson’s department was dishing out to businesses via the Strategic Investment Fund went to those based in Labour constituencies. Not a single Tory-held seat benefitted from this £601.5 million of spending. Indeed, 84 percent of the constituencies that benefitted from this money were Labour at the time. But new research on the election result shows that this money doesn’t seem to have made voters much more loyal to Labour. In the 25 seats that benefitted from the fund the swing against Labour was 12 percent. This is only marginally smaller than the 14 percent swing against Labour nationally.

Joanna Hughes

What were the CPS and the courts thinking? 

A mother jailed for retracting allegations of rape by her husband, (allegations she now says were truthful) has been freed. A few days ago, appeal judges overturned the eight-month sentence of which she had served seventeen days, ordering her immediate release.  A triumph for common sense and compassion, but why was she jailed in the first place? Yes, the CPS thought she’d lied under oath and invented a rape claim - and that’s serious – but, as it turns out, her husband intimidated her into retracting the claim. In any event, an eight-month sentence is excessive.

David Blackburn

The government takes the fight to students

The government’s response to the protest over tuition fee hikes has stiffened. Nick Clegg has written to Aaron Porter and David Cameron has penned an op-ed piece in the Standard today. They are united. The NUS should protest; debate is important. But that debate is moribund if the NUS deliberately misrepresent the government and mislead students. Cameron writes: ‘Of course these people have a right to protest. But I also believe they have a responsibility to know the full facts about what they're objecting to — and judging by the fury that's been unleashed, there are a lot of misconceptions flying around.’ It is vital that the Conservatives assist their embattled colleagues; the government must be unified.

Daniel Korski

Brit-free EU diplomacy takes shape

After months of behind-the-scenes work, the shape of the European External Action Service - the EU’s diplomatic corps - is now coming into view. The Bruxelles2 blog has obtained a version of its structure with some of the key names penciled in. You can find it here.      The top three jobs in the EU’s diplomatic headquarters will go to a Frenchman, a Pole and a German. The only senior UK official, besides Catherine Ashton (and her personal aides) is long-serving diplomat and geo-strategist Robert Cooper. But his name, rather mysteriously, is followed by a question mark. Of the EU “ambassadors” that have been appointed until now, there is one one Brit, ex-Ambassador Ros Marsden, who is now the EU envoy in Sudan.

David Blackburn

Clegg fights back in tuition fees row

Nick Clegg has written a gloriously condescending letter to Aaron Porter, who hopes to recall Liberal Democrat MPs who vote in favour of tuition fees rises. Clegg emphasises that he was unable to deliver the tuition fee pledge in coalition, and therefore struck out to make university funding as fair as possible. After a wide consultation, it was found that the graduate contribution scheme is the fairest and most progressive outcome. He urges Porter to temper his language and not misrepresent the government’s position for political aims. ‘Grow up’ seems to be the unspoken request.

Monday

Fraser Nelson

Tax cuts: a Swedish recession remedy

I travelled in from frozen Stockholm this morning. My colleague Mary Wakefield set out from County Durham. No prizes for guessing whose journey took more time due to snow. When my £38 norewgian.com flight arrived at Gatwick, the captain said: “Sorry, we’re going to be delayed. They can’t seem to find people to open the gate, they say they are short staffed.” The Swedes on the flight burst out laughing: welcome to Britain. Mary’s £107 train was two hours late arriving to the station, and spent a further two hours stuck in the snow. That the Swedes do better at us in the snow is no great surprise, but it’s odd to see them do better at supply-side economics.

James Forsyth

Osborne airs the Tories’ election message

George Osborne’s autumn statement previewed what I suspect will be the coalition, or at least the Conservatives, re-election message. ‘This government has taken Britain out of the financial danger zone and set our economy on the path to recovery.’   Today’s OBR forecast was a boon for the Chancellor. It suggests that there won’t be a double-dip recession, as his critics suggested there would be. The improved economic numbers allowed him to come to the House and declare that the deficit reduction ‘plan is working’, and that already the coalition has saved the country £19 billion in debt interest. Alan Johnson was his usual self in response.

David Blackburn

Osborne saves his glad tidings for another day

Courtesy of Paul Waugh and the Standard, the OBR projects there to be a £6bn budget surplus by 2015-16. There was no fanfare to herald this in George Osborne’s statement, which was a litany of dirge-like thanksgiving for catastrophe averted. The Treasury is now describing the figure as being 'within the margin of error’, which is fluent Sir Humphrey-speak. The Standard’s discovery is another example of the government deliberately hiding good economic news - in what Fraser terms Osborne's Paul Daniels Act. Now why, I wonder, would a self-confessed tactical obsessive, who just happens to be the Chancellor of the Exchequer, be doing that?

David Blackburn

The coalition will not be able to reduce net migration <br />

The FT’s Alex Barker has made an important discovery in the OBR’s report. The coalition’s immigration cap will make no impact on net migration. ‘The interim OBR’s June Budget estimates of trend growth estimates were based on an average net inward migration assumption of 140,000 per annum…. Since June, the Government has announced a limit of 21,700 for non-EU migrants coming into the UK under the skilled and highly skilled routes from April 2011, a reduction of 6,300 on 2009. At this stage, we judge that there is insufficient reason to change our average net migration assumption of 140,000 per year from 2010, which remains well below the net inflows of 198,000 seen in 2009.