Uk politics

Thursday

Mark Littlewood

Finding a narrative of hope

From our UK edition

In these grim dark days of austerity and cuts, the coalition urgently needs to find a compelling political narrative of hope and optimism. David Cameron's Big Society rhetoric occasionally threatens to contain some philosophical depth, but suffers from the same problem as most new fangled analyses of the world. Namely, it is so fluffy that it becomes bewildering.   To the government's credit, they have managed to prepare the public for the upcoming belt tightening. This achievement is all the more remarkable given the woeful refusal of either coalition party to admit the scale of the fiscal problem facing Britain during the general election campaign.   But softening up public opinion for wide ranging cuts is only a short term tactic, however necessary.

Ruth Richardson

Pulling off a public finance rescue mission

From our UK edition

This is the next of our posts with Reform looking ahead to the Spending Review. Earlier posts were on health, education, the first hundred days, welfare, the Civil Service, international experiences (New Zealand, Canada,Ireland) and Hon Ruth Richardson’s recent speech and selling the case for cuts to the public.   George Osborne was right to frame the forthcoming UK Spending Review as a once in a generation opportunity to reshape government.  While it is convenient to see the current fiscal debate as cyclical, the truth is that heavily indebted countries such as the UK have a structural problem rooted in the overreach of government.

Peter Hoskin

On the Pope’s visit

From our UK edition

The Pope, as I'm sure you know, has touched down in Britain. Here, for CoffeeHousers, is the editorial on his visit from this week's new-look issue of the magazine: Benedict brings hope The arrival of Pope Benedict XVI in Britain has provoked protests that, in the intesity of their anger, far exceed those that greet the state visits of blood-drenched dictators. That is because the Pope is seen to represent — in ascending order of secular distaste — religion, Christianity, the Roman Catholic Church and the conservative wing of Catholicism. Fair enough: Benedict does represent all of these things. He opposes atheism, regarding it as a desperately sad alienation of man from his creator.

James Forsyth

Andrew Mitchell recasts DfiD’s role

From our UK edition

Andrew Mitchell’s speech today at the Royal College of Defence Studies confirms me in my view that Mitchell is one of the most impressive members of the current government. Mitchell, a former soldier, is moving the Department for International Development away from being the government wing of Oxfam and into a department that plays its part in delivering Britain’s foreign policy objectives. The main theme of his speech today was that DfID and the Ministry of Defence have to work more closely together in post-conflict environments. For instance, Mitchell has cut aid to middle income countries to redirect it to Afghanistan, where it can play a role in trying to help secure the gains made by the military operation there.

David Blackburn

Deferring deterrent

From our UK edition

We’ve been here before: Hacker’s ‘Grand Design’, a scheme to save money by cancelling Trident. The BBC reports that the coalition plots a similar ruse – the renewal of Trident is understood to have been deferred until after the next election. This is the best of bad a situation. Britain has an independent nuclear deterrent, albeit nearing obsolescence. Trident’s renewal Is a point of contention for the coalition – with the Tories for and the Lib Dems against. Better to delay than squabble.

Peter Hoskin

Clegg gets forceful over welfare

From our UK edition

Enter Nick Clegg with another self-assured article for a national newspaper. A few weeks ago, it was his defence of the coalition's Budget for the FT that caught the eye. Today, it's his case for welfare reform in the Times (£). These may be arguments, about dependency and disincentives, that you've heard before – but here they're packaged in a particularly clear and persuasive way. Just what's needed as the welfare wars, between Labour and the coalition, spill back into newsprint.   Writing about the article, the Times frames it as "Nick Clegg [putting] himself on a collision course with his party" – and you can see why they might think that.

Wednesday

Andrew Haldenby

How the unions oppose the achievement of more for less

From our UK edition

The TUC’s attack on a leading public sector reformer, reported today, was designed to embarrass him and discredit the idea of reforming the public sector.  In fact, it has shown that they will oppose any change to the public sector workforce, even if it results in a better service for the public.   According to reports (here and here), TUC staff yesterday handed out copies of the transcript to Reform’s conference on public sector productivity.  They highlighted a quote from the presentation by Tony McGuirk, the chief fire officer of the Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service (FRS), that, “we’ve got some bone idle people in the public sector”.  Tony McGuirk apologised for the tone of his remarks this morning.

Peter Hoskin

The “progressive coalition” cuts its teeth

From our UK edition

Trust Bob Crow to turn down the charm. Explaining why he was boycotting Mervyn King's address to the TUC today, the RMT union boss managed to liken the Governor of the Bank of England to both the "devil" and the "Sheriff of Nottingham". Unsurprising, perhaps – but it's yet another reminder of why, for the Labour leadership contenders, marching in lockstep with the unions may not be such a good idea. To Harriet Harman, a Labour Party bound to Crow & Co. might be a “progressive coalition”. But to the rest of the country, it will probably look slightly left of sane. Only David Miliband, to his credit, seems to have properly grasped this fact – and the fact that he might hope to work alongside people like King one day.

Lloyd Evans

Citizen Castro rains on Comrade Hattie’s last parade

From our UK edition

There was praise for Fidel Castro – of all people – at PMQs today. That the tribute came from a Tory MP must make this a unique event in the annals of parliament. Castro’s recent admission that Cuba’s state monopolies might profit from a little nibbling around the edges gave Priti Patel, (Con, Witham), a bright idea. She asked the prime minister if the Marxist cigar-enthusiast might visit the TUC Conference to share his economic vision with the brothers. The PM, who seemed calm, fresh and genially bullish today, caught the joke and ran with it. He offered his own tribute to the semi-retired dictator. ‘Even Comrade Castro is on the same planet as the rest of us. Now we just need to get Labour and the unions across as well.

Peter Hoskin

Another difference of opinion on welfare?

From our UK edition

For the briefest of moments, the welfare war seemed to have quietened down. But, this morning, a new front may have flared open. Answering questions from the work and pensions committee, Iain Duncan Smith has struck out against the figures for benefit cuts that emerged at the weekend. The Guardian's Haroon Siddique reports: "During questioning by the work and pensions committee, Duncan Smith was at pains to play down newspaper reports that he and Osborne were at loggerheads with each other. But when asked by committee chair Anne Begg about a variety of figures that had been 'bandied about' including the £11bn savings set out in the June budget and the £4bn, he responded: 'As with regards to figures like 4bn, I simply do not recognise that figure at all.

James Forsyth

Harman’s last hurrah

From our UK edition

Today is Harriet Harman’s last PMQs as acting Labour leader. I suspect that Harman, who has performed far better than people expected she would, might well go on the story in The Times this morning about how the coalition is cutting a review into how rape cases are handled to save money. Immediately after the coalition was formed, Harman had considerable success at PMQs pressing David Cameron on the coalition agreement’s commitment to granting anonymity to rape suspects, something that had made it into the coalition agreement by mistake. If Harman went with the shelving of the rape review today, she would again put Cameron on the back foot. This cut also plays into Labour’s alarmist rhetoric about how the cuts are dangerous and will put people at risk.

David Blackburn

A Whitehall cabal has Fox by the short and curlies

From our UK edition

The Defence Select Committee delivers a familiar litany this morning. The Strategic Defence Review (a structural reform of Britain’s defence establishment) is being driven by savings not threat, consultation has been insufficient and cuts will be implemented at terrifying speed. The committee’s report concludes that the review will be to the detriment of Britain’s defence capabilities. Liam Fox’s summer battle with Downing Street has been overshadowed by IDS’ belligerence. In truth Fox has already lost. The National Security Council, the Treasury and the Cabinet Office have put him in a strait-jacket and hijacked his review.

Peter Hoskin

YouGov has Labour and the Tories at their closest since October 2007

From our UK edition

Factor in the usual caveats about polling so soon after a change of government, but the latest Sun/YouGov poll is still pretty eyecatching. It has the Tories on 40 percent, Labour on 39 and the Lib Dems on 12 – the smallest gap between the two main parties since the election-that-never-was in October 2007. Here's a graph of the the two parties' positions since the beginnning of the general election campaign: The Pollmaster General, Anthony Wells, suggests that Labour will overtake the Tories any day now.

Tuesday

Kate Maltby

The tensions undermining a pact

From our UK edition

The announcement, yesterday, of Nick Boles' proposal for a Lib-Con electoral pact conveniently coincided with the opening of an election court hearing into a particularly unpleasant battle between former Labour minister Phil Woolas and his Lib Dem opponent, Councillor Elwyn Watkins. The most serious allegations against Mr Woolas, who won the seat with a 103 vote majority at the last general election, are that he deliberately lied in accusing Mr Watkins of being “in league with extremist Muslims ... and prepared to condone death threats against Mr Woolas,” and that in election pamphlets he falsely accused Mr Watkins of receiving funding from abroad.

James Forsyth

The Pope might be coming but the Milibands are still Topic A at Westminster

From our UK edition

Parliament is busy preparing to receive the Pope, the red carpet has been put down in Westminster Hall and the Commons authorities have announced that they are closing all the bars down from 2pm on Friday. But it is earthly matters that are still preoccupying people here. As you walk through the gothic arches, you see little clumps of people gathering together trying to work out which Miliband will be the next leader of the Labour party. At the moment, the race really does seem too close to call. But it is just worth reflecting for a second how crucial the new leader’s first few weeks will be. 3 days after the result is announced, the leader will need to give the leader’s speech at conference.

David Blackburn

A Tory-Liberal pact is possible if the coalition lasts the distance

From our UK edition

The outrider has returned to stables. Nick Boles MP, a one-time Cameroon confidante tipped for promotion, formally introduced the possibility of a Tory-Lib Dem electoral pact, it made a few cursory headlines and then David Cameron and Nick Clegg promptly denied any such intention. It had the appearance of the classic three-card trick. A formal alliance or non-aggression pact is highly unlikely unless the coalition survives to 2015. The government will collapse before then if enough Liberal Democrats believe its record is indefensible. However, if it doesn’t then the parties must defend their joint record and in doing so will offer a collaborative future. The alternative is absurd.

Peter Hoskin

Cameron readies his forces

From our UK edition

Carry on cutting – and carry on making the case for cuts. That's the message that David Cameron drilled into his ministers during a political session of Cabinet this afternoon. Paul Waugh has a typically precise account of what was said, and the Press Association has a decent round-up, but the key observation is just how forceful Cameron was in making his point. The government, he said, should take on the "vested interests" arguing against cuts – and the Budget was the right action taken at the right time. The PM, you sense, is limbering up for a fight. As Ben Brogan suggests over at the Telegraph, Cameron is right to hold the line. This is not a time for wavering at the chopping block, even if the public have their qualms about the bloodshed to come.

Ed Howker

Barber, Blanchflower and the fake debate on double dip

From our UK edition

Watch or read much of the economics coverage in Britain and you sometimes get the sense that we're entering the final round of a peculiar game. Let's call it 'Russian Roulette for Economists'. The rules are simple: teams of academics and economically-literate politicos line up on either side of an issue and hurl abuse at one another. The winner will be declared when something significant changes in the macro-economic position of the UK. The game was played when Britain entered the ERM (those who said it would be a disaster won). The current double dip debate is another example. This time, the principal players on one side are the former Bank of England policymaker Professor David Blanchflower and the TUC general secretary Brendan Barber. On the other, is George Osborne.

David Blackburn

At last…

From our UK edition

…a minister has repudiated the Brownite axiom that spending is the sole indicator for healthy public services. Nick Herbert has said, unequivocally, that ‘cuts and good services are not mutually exclusive.’ Herbert, minister of state at the Home of Office, continued: ‘I don't think we can go on playing this numbers game and say that we can automatically assume that every additional police officer recruited is bound to help deal with crime because I think what matters is what's being done with those forces.’ Then he elaborated, mentioning the Independent Inspectorate of Constabulary’s opinion that the police can find £1bn in efficiency savings by cutting administrative duties.

Ed Holmes

Reforming Britain’s antiquated industrial relations laws

From our UK edition

The TUC Conference rumbles on with some rather blood-curdling statements about the future of industrial relations in Britain.  The RMT leader Bob Crow called for a campaign of civil disobedience and spoke of ‘confronting... the enemy’.  The PCS’ Mark Serwotka has spoken of a ‘campaign of resistance the likes of which we will not have seen in this country for decades.’  Perhaps for good measure, the TUC also took the opportunity to attack our recent report on modernising industrial relations. The trade unions are arguing vociferously against not only the very clear necessity for reductions in public expenditure, but also any change in industrial relations procedures which are largely obsolete for the modern workplace.