Uk politics

Monday

David Blackburn

Gove the bully?

From our UK edition

There has been a telling development in the resistance against ‘free schools’ this morning. The Evening Standard reports that Brian Lloyd, the headmaster of a school in Bromley, claims he is being ‘bullied’ by Michael Gove into adopting academy status. In a matter of weeks then, Gove has morphed from ‘miserable pipsqueak’ into Judd Nelson in The Breakfast Club – an odd transformation even in caricature. But depicting Gove’s schools revolution as the agent of draconian central government is a cunning ploy by local education establishments.   However, test Lloyd’s case and the real picture emerges.

Peter Hoskin

Transparency is only half of the accountability story

From our UK edition

And the word of the day is … accountability. Or at least it's the guiding ideal behind these departmental business plans that the government is releasing. When David Cameron introduces them later he will call it a "new system of democratic accountability". The idea is that, if we know what each department is tasked with achieving, we can praise them should they succeed – or attack them when they fail. Which is all very heartening. The Tories, in particular, came to power promising to lift the bonnet on the engine of Whitehall – and they are doing just that. But transparency is only one half of the accountability story. The other is the rather more bloody, but no less crucial, business of blame.

Peter Hoskin

Congratulations to Ed Miliband and Justine Thornton

From our UK edition

Congratulations to the Labour leader and his partner on the birth of their second son. Miliband will now take two weeks of paternity leave, during which time Harriet Harman will step into his brogues, etc. Here's the official statement: "Ed and Justine are overjoyed at the birth of their second child and can't wait to introduce the new arrival to his big brother, Daniel. Both are keen to pass on their thanks to the NHS staff at the hospital.

Sunday

James Forsyth

The Archbishop’s attack

From our UK edition

The Archbishop of Canterbury’s intervention in the welfare debate isn’t going to change anyone views of the politics of the Church of England’s hierarchy. But what struck me was how even Archbishop is now using fair as shorthand for moral and right. IDS’ proposals do strike me as fair. They both offer long-term claimants a way to return to the routines and disciplines of a job while also creating an appropriate level of pressure to find work. One fascinating thing to watch is how often the Archbishop will speak out explicitly against government policies. Are we heading for a re-run of the 80s and all the controversies caused by Faith in the City, the CofE’s attack on the economic and social policies of the Thatcher government?

David Blackburn

A day of electoral positioning

From our UK edition

Away from turbulent priests and the welfare battle, there have been important changes to electoral politics today. The coalition partners will fight one another in Oldham East and Saddleworth. The seat is a three way marginal, which was number 83 on the Tories’ target list – precisely the sort of seat they’ll need to win in 2015. However, as James noted on Friday, the Liberal Democrats’ need is greater at the moment. Already, tongues are wagging that a pimpled Etonian is destined to journey north of the Watford Gap, safe in the knowledge that gallant defeat will ensure he is the next Prime Minister but three. Enter Nigel Farage, opportunistically.

Fraser Nelson

Cameron the optimist

From our UK edition

Is David Cameron just too nice? There are worse accusations to levy at a politician, but it's one I have heard suggested quite a lot recently - and I have written about it in my News of the World column today. He seems to have adopted the politics of wishful thinking. There is a "zip-a-dee-do-dah strategy" and precious little contingency if things go wrong. He makes defence cuts, because he doesn't intend to go on a massive deployment (neither did Woodrow Wilson). He will make prison cuts, because he thinks - bless him - that it won't increase crime. He signs a deal with French for military co-operation, thinking they will dump the habit of 500-years and actually agree with Britain on the next major foreign policy dispute.

David Blackburn

Breaking dependency

From our UK edition

IDS has played the party politics of welfare reform adeptly. He has built a coalition beyond the government, convinced of the need for urgency and dynamic reform. Even Labour is on side, only criticising when valid and necessary. It has not proposed a comprehensive alternative because it is protecting its record in government - sensing, correctly, that it is vulnerable to its history. Douglas Alexander rallies to New Labour’s defence in the Independent on Sunday. Labour’s record on welfare was not uniformly baleful: Purnell, Hutton and Murphy did important work, on which IDS has drawn. But Alexander overlooks some inconvenient truths.

Saturday

Fraser Nelson

Diversity is the name of the game: different pupils have different needs

From our UK edition

The Times has a spread on free schools (p20-p21) today (£), focusing on the model of Kunskapskolan, one of the largest Swedish chains, who are setting up shop in Britain. "Pupils set their own homework, decide their timetables, set themselves targets and work at their own speed - oh, and they clock off at 2pm," says Greg Hurst, the paper's education editor. He visits one of their schools in Twickenham. "At the heart of the personalised learning", he says, lies a "one-on-one tutorial with a teacher for 15 minutes to review progress, weekly and long-term targets and timetables to meet them." A pupil, Lisa, is quoted saying: "You talk to the teacher and you cannot embarrass yourself. If you want to say something personal, you can say it to her.

David Blackburn

Sense in Balls

From our UK edition

Ed Balls has a reputation as a master of subterfuge and vicious smear – undeserved I’m sure. But the Shadow Home Secretary is right, incontrovertibly so, when he says that Andy Coulson is innocent until proved guilty. One can understand Chris Bryant’s fury that his phone was tapped by one of Coulson’s more furtive underlings. But the law does not presume guilt without evidence and before due process, and neither should he.

David Blackburn

The Coulson saga rumbles on

From our UK edition

Andy Coulson had a chat and a Bath Oliver with the Met recently. Rejoice! The News of the World phone tapping story continues. The allegations against Coulson do the government no favours. But, even if, in a hypothetical drama, Coulson were to be charged I doubt many would care. I don’t deny the seriousness of the offences already committed by employees of News International, but it’s a very tiresome story and saturation point has been reached. So the usual suspects make little impact when they call for Coulson to resign, fall on his sword, take the rap or whatever cliché they happen to adopt. Coulson needn’t resign because there is no case against him. The government’s inability to communicate a growth strategy is another matter.

Daniel Korski

Is Euro-pragmatism here to stay?

From our UK edition

I'm off to Brussels, capital of the superstate, home of the EUSSR, or whatever you might want to call it. It has made me re-engage with European issues for the first time in six months. If Europe is not dead as a political issue in Britain then it is at least firmly stored in a coalition freezer, which can only be unlocked in the case of a thumping electoral for the Conservatives. But if the Tories scrape in at the next election or come up short of an outright majority,  David Cameron is likely to want the Coalition to continue. That would mean another decade of euro-pragmatism. A decade is a very long time in politics.

James Forsyth

The importance of teaching British values in schools

From our UK edition

One of the websites that the young Muslim woman, Roshonara Choudhry who stabbed Stephen Timms MP mentioned in her police interview was RevolutionMuslim, which now appears to have been taken down. Charles Moore turns his attention to the site in his column today: 'After Choudhry’s conviction, I had a look at RevolutionMuslim. It has put up a list of all MPs who voted for the Iraq war, details of their surgeries and even a link to a supermarket website where you can buy knives. I watched its video, in which a young man praised Choudhry for “taking the matter into her own hands”, and attacked Muslims who collaborate with the infidel. A similar-looking young man featured in press pictures of demonstrators outside the Old Bailey.

David Blackburn

Waiting for welfare reform

From our UK edition

After a summer of sporadic announcements, IDS’ welfare reforms will be published in a white paper next week. As in 1997, when Tony Blair urged Frank Field to think the unthinkable, there is consensus on the need for radical welfare change. IDS has earned respect as a moral and pragmatic reformer, and he attracts goodwill from across the House. The Liberal Democrats, Nick Clegg and Steve Webb particularly, were ‘vital’ in securing a spending concession from George Osborne, whilst Douglas Alexander has described IDS’ plans and ‘noble’ and pledges to support principle that welfare should be a safety net, not a vocation. He warms to the theme in today’s Guardian.

Friday

David Blackburn

Transparency: the government’s self-protection aid

From our UK edition

Monday is eagle day for the overhaul of government machinery. Ben Brogan explains how the publication of 20 departmental business plans will enable the public to chart the progress of government reform – inaugurating a revolution is transparency, that meme of the moment. I’ve always wondered why the Tories are so keen on touting ‘transparency’. One answer, it seems, is to expose those ministers and departments who are dragging their feet. This instrument of New Politics doubles as a self-protection mechanism, which is especially useful with those dastardly Lib Dems and the odd pugilistic right winger scurrying about. Brogan writes: ‘The plans will spell out the timetables for implementing every stage of the reforms promised this summer.

David Blackburn

Toughening up on Home Affairs

From our UK edition

An intriguing argument from the Economist’s Bagehot this week: the government’s liberal prisons policy will force Coalition 2.0 to tack to the right on Home Affairs. ‘If the Lib Dems’ sway on these issues was foreseeable, so are its political dangers. One is Tory anger. Even some of the Conservative MPs who agree with the Lib Dems on control orders worry about their liberal line on crime. Behind the scenes, figures from both parties are coming together to plan “coalition 2.0”—a policy programme for the second half of the parliament. Among the rumoured Tory representatives are confirmed hawks such as Michael Gove, the education secretary, Owen Paterson, the Northern Ireland secretary, and Tim Montgomerie, a well-known blogger.

David Blackburn

From the archives – striking matters

From our UK edition

This week, there have been calls for certain public sector strikes to be made unlawful, Tube strikes and, today, the firemen have called off their strike having ‘listened to the concerns of the public’. It is all so 2002. Go To Blazes, The Spectator, 26 October 2002 Any public sector union contemplating a strike is best advised to start by targeting children’s bookshops. It is remarkable how groups of workers who first impinge on the consciousness through the pages of nursery books manage to command greater public affection and higher wage settlements than those who do not. Nurses and train-drivers have done particularly well out of recent pay disputes.

David Blackburn

Miliband’s colossal misjudgement

From our UK edition

The question at the bottom of this shoddy leaflet must surely join John Rentoul’s famous list. Who on earth will stand by the egregious Phil Woolas now? As with the Tower Hamlets debacle, Ed Miliband is taking eons to make a straight forward statement: the Labour leadership condemns the actions of Phil Woolas and hopes that he will not be selected to stand again. George Eaton gives a reason for Miliband’s reticence: in a colossal error of judgement, Miliband selected Woolas as a shadow Home Office minister, reward no doubt for his deft expertise in race relations. The Oldham East by-election is a test for the coalition, but it is also the first major test of Miliband’s leadership qualities and his ability to fire-fight.

James Forsyth

The coalition faces a by-election test

From our UK edition

The court’s decision that the Oldham East and Saddleworth election must be re-run because Phil Woolas was guilty of illegal practices under election law presents the coalition with a dilemma. Do both parties campaign fully in this three-way marginal? Oldham East and Saddleworth is number 83 on the Tory target seats list, it would require just over a five percent swing for them to win. But the Lib Dems are even closer, only a hundred odd votes behind Labour. If both of the coalition parties went all out for it, Labour would have a much better chance of holding on and winning the seat would be a welcome morale boost for the Lib Dems who were down at nine percent in one poll this week. I expect that the Tories will field a candidate.

Daniel Korski

Junior Games

From our UK edition

Government allows some top-tier politicians to shine, while others lose the sheen they once had in opposition. So it has been with this Government. It has mostly been Lib Dems who have gleamed. Much can be said of Nick Clegg, Vince Cable, and Chris Huhne, but nobody will ever question the party’s ability to govern, or dismiss its front-line politicians as back-bench critics. In fact, if the Coalition lasts until 2015, the Lib Dems will have more Cabinet-level experience than the majority of the Shadow Cabinet, most of whom entered Cabinet under Gordon Brown in 2007. That will be quite a turnaround.

Peter Hoskin

Strike out

From our UK edition

Spark up those Roman candles, the firefighters have called off their strike for today and tomorrow. According to the general secretary of the Fire Brigades Union (FBU), it's all because "we've listened to the concerns about public safety and we were extremely concerned about the capabilities of the private contractors being brought in to cover our strike" – which is awfully thoughtful of them, considering that they previously stoked those "concerns about public safety" by threatening to strike over Bonfire Night. Oh, and they appear to have won some concessions too: the London Fire Brigade will no longer sack any firefighters who refuse to accept contracts that include the disputed shift system.