Uk politics

Friday

Orlando Bird

From the archives: The Chatterley trial

From our UK edition

It’s 50 years since the case of Lady Chatterley’s Lover was declared sub judice, so commenting on the trial amounted to contempt of court. Here’s how the Spectator circumvented the order at the time: The Prosecutors, The Spectator, August 26, 1960 As Penguin Books Ltd. have been summoned under the Obscene Publications Act, the case of Lady Chatterley’s Lover is now sub judice; and this means… But what does it mean? The trouble with the law of contempt in this country is that because defendants are allowed neither trial by jury nor the right of appeal it tends to be more arbitrary, and more capriciously exercised, than any other law.

David Blackburn

Burnham goes blue in the face

From our UK edition

Whilst Ed Balls descends into bellicose self-caricature, Andy Burnham, the quiet man of this campaign, has written an incendiary article for the Guardian. It is subtly constructed: behind the veneer of his folksy idiom, Burnham proclaims a self-conscious radicalism. He has sharpened some of the ideas expressed so loosely in his pamphlet Aspirational Socialism. He advocates the adoption of land value tax, the abolition of inheritance tax and a very tough Blairite stance on crime and the causes of crime. He angrily dismisses the Milibands as thoughtless ‘comfort zone’ politicians, both stuck dumb in a trance to the mantra of ‘tax and spend’. Burnham’s aides must be as aghast as me because they are incapable of answering the phone.

Peter Hoskin

Balls’ pitch for the shadow chancellorship

From our UK edition

If there's one observation to make about Ed Balls's speech this morning it's that it's punchy stuff. His main point is that the coalition are "growth deniers" – not only do their "austerity and cuts" risk a slide back into recession, but they're also unnecessary. He explains: Attlee didn't make his "first priority ... to reduce the debts built up during second world war," and he left us with the welfare state – so why should we cut spending now? Et cetera, et cetera. These are, more or less, all arguments that we've heard from Balls before. But this is definitely the most concentrated form they have ever taken. It's an unrelenting barrage of Brownite economics. As always with Balls, there are exaggerations, inconsistencies and half-truths aplenty.

Thursday

Andrew Haldenby

What you need know ahead of the Spending Review – Civil Service

From our UK edition

This is the fifth of our posts with Reform looking ahead to the Spending Review. The first four posts were on health, education, the first hundred days and welfare.   What is the budget? The Civil Service accounts for 527,000 out of the total 6.1 million people employed in the public sector (as at March 2010).  The total annual cost of employing these civil servants is approximately £13 billion.   Where does the money go? Mostly on people. The Civil Service headcount has grown by nearly 5 per cent in the last decade from 504,000 in 1999.

Peter Hoskin

Labour’s 50p tax equation

From our UK edition

Here's one aspect of the Labour leadership contest that has passed without much comment: how many of the contenders want to extend the 50p tax rate from those earning over £150,000 to those earning over £100,000. Ed Miliband's one of them; so is Diane Abbott; and so too – as he reminds us in interview with Left Forward Forward today – is Ed Balls. Sure, only one of these candidates has a realistic chance of becoming leader – but another could easily end up as shadow chancellor. So it’s fairly probable that this will be official Labour policy in the not-too-distant.

Tom Clougherty

Tipping the scales against legal aid

From our UK edition

Britain’s legal aid system continues to fail, and should be abolished for virtually all compensation claims. Reformed Conditional Fee Agreements (CFAs for short) should take its place. Those are the headline recommendations of the Adam Smith Institute’s latest report, written by legal expert Anthony Barton.   It’s not difficult to point to problems with legal aid, but the main one is that it encourages risk-free, speculative litigation, and fuels a costly compensation culture. The fact that claimants receiving legal aid are not responsible for defendants’ costs if their case is unsuccessful essentially puts them in a no-lose situation. Defendants, on the other hand, just can’t win – they’re going to be out of pocket whatever happens.

Fraser Nelson

Revealed: the secret school wars

From our UK edition

Britain’s state school system is a national disgrace. Not because we don’t have excellent schools: we do. But only for those who can afford to move to the good catchment areas. The comprehensive system gives the best service to the rich, and the worst to the poor. It is a system which harbours bad teachers – only 18 have been struck off for incompetence in 40 years. Compare this to the USA where 252 bad teachers were sacked in one day last week. Our world-class private schools show that England can be a world leader in education. But we have one of the biggest gaps in the world between attainment in private and public sector.

David Blackburn

The man who would be shadow international development secretary

From our UK edition

Guido says that Gordon Brown wants to become shadow international development secretary. This rumour is uncorroborated, as far as I can gather, and I’m sure it’s a joke. But I can believe that Brown might seek election to the post – he cares deeply about African development and loves the thrust of frontline politics, such is his self-regard. But, surely, the next Labour leader would do everything to block Brown’s return to high-profile politics. Both Milibands have stated that Labour lost in May because the public rejected the government’s personalities, which implies that Gordon was the major problem. Their analysis is absurd, but I concede that Labour’s renewal would by polluted by the spectre of Brown gurning at the dispatch box.

David Blackburn

MPs in four-letter tirades against IPSA staff

From our UK edition

The new parliament has drawn its teeth but the MPs’ expenses scandal continues. Throughout June and July, Westminster rumbled with aggravation about IPSA. There were whispers of MPs flying off the handle at IPSA staff; yesterday brought concrete reports of outright threats and intimidation. The accounts in this morning’s press are shaming, even by the standards of this saga of pornos and sugar-daddies. IPSA’s staff have been reduced to tears by raging MPs, they have been sworn at and told that the system they operate is a ‘fucking abortion’. Owing to legislation introduced during the previous parliament, I’d be prosecuted if I informed the guard on a delayed train that he and the system he ran were ‘fucking abortions’.

Peter Hoskin

Clegg leads the fightback

From our UK edition

On Monday, I wrote that the question of whether the Budget is fair or not will "pursue the coalition more doggedly than any other". Yesterday, we saw just how dogged that pursuit will be. But there's no need for the coalition to panic as Mark Hoban did on the Today Programme yesterday. Instead, with policies from welfare reform to low taxes for low-income earners, they have built a firm redoubt from which to stage a counterattack. They can put the chase to their opponents. It is encouraging to see Nick Clegg do just that with an effective article in the FT today. He was bluntly dismissive of the IFS report yesterday, calling the organisation's work "partial".

Wednesday

James Forsyth

Five lessons for the coalition from today

From our UK edition

The coalition has had a bad day today. It has been knocked all over the park following the IFS report that labeled the Budget regressive. Now, I’m sure the coalition will say that if it had to pick a day to take a hammering, one towards the end of August would be what they would have chosen. But I think there are five lessons that the coalition needs to learn from today if it is to navigate successfully through the political shoals of the next few months. 1). It needs a stronger narrative about what it is doing. Mark Hoban was woeful on the Today programme this morning. He had no come back to Justin Webb’s lines. The coalition needs to say that it is giving everyone a chance to get on, making working pay and restoring fiscal sanity. 2).

David Blackburn

Cruddas backs David Miliband for middle Britain

From our UK edition

The rumours were true: Jon Cruddas has backed David Miliband. It’s an unlikely union on the face of it - an ambitious centrist and an almost utopian socialist. Though Cruddas once forged a partnership with the equally centrist James Purnell, so it is no great surprise that he is a pluralist. Cruddas tells the New Statesman that in ‘terms of the nature of the leadership that's needed, he's beginning to touch on some of those more profound questions that need to be addressed head-on.’ Is Cruddas right? Miliband has delivered the speech that he thinks will define his campaign. To be brutally honest, it was not profound. There was little other the usual Milibandian quota of abstractions and specious waffle.

David Blackburn

The Staggers backs Ed Miliband

From our UK edition

The New Statesman has backed Ed Miliband in the battle of the brothers. Press endorsements don’t count for what they used to, but the country’s leading left-wing magazine remains significant in this context. Below is tomorrow’s New Statesman lead article; it rejects the charge that Ed Miliband is ‘comfort zone Labour’ and portrays him as a thoughtful dissenter from New Labour’s orthodoxy. (On the counter, there are rumours that Jon Cruddas is to back David Miliband. Support from such an independent and left-minded source would be worth its weight in gold for David Miliband.) ‘The Labour leadership contest began in earnest with the New Statesman debate at Church House in Westminster on 9 June.

Patrick Nolan

What do you need to know ahead of the Spending Review – Welfare

From our UK edition

This is the fourth of our posts with Reform looking ahead to the Spending Review. The first three posts were on health, education, and the first hundred days. What is the budget? The welfare budget must be at the heart of the debate on how to restore the public finances. The Government spends more on welfare than anything else. In 2009 the bill for social protection was around £199 billion. This has almost doubled in real terms over the last 20 years from £104 billion in 1989. Social protection now represents 32.5 percent of all government expenditure or 14.2 per cent of GDP. Some welfare spending varies with economic conditions, with increasing unemployment, for example, leading to greater expenditure on assistance to support people back into work.

David Blackburn

A ‘regressive’ budget?

From our UK edition

The IFS has given the coalition’s opponents powder for their muskets, only it’s a little damp. The IFS’ analysis is drawn exclusively from straight tax and spend figures; it does not account for the future financial benefits brought by structural public service reform – so Gove’s and IDS’ reforms, both of which aim to alleviate poverty, have not been evaluated.  Matthew Sinclair explains why this means the IFS has exaggerated the severity of Osborne’s Budget: ‘Suppose you invented a policy, some kind of economic miracle, which doubled the incomes of the poorest ten per cent of families without the Government spending a pound.  That would reduce benefit spending.

David Blackburn

Clegg needs to find some courage

From our UK edition

Nick Clegg is eviscerated by this morning's press. The Independent, The FT and The Guardian gleefully report that the influential IFS has decreed the Budget (supposedly a model of fairness according to Clegg) to be regressive, that there is discontent fomenting on the Lib Dem benches and that the latest polls place Lib Dem support at 12 percent. None of this is news. The IFS is reiterating what it argued on Budget day: Osborne’s measures will hit the poorest in 2014-15. That is still some way off and action can be taken to lessen their impact. Besides, the coalition should have delivered its promise to raise the income tax threshold to £10,000 by 20-14-25.

Fraser Nelson

A New Labour landmine detonates

From our UK edition

Has Mark Hoban just become the first victim of the New Labour landmines? He was asked on the Today Programme whether the Treasury had conducted a formal study assessing the impact of the cuts on ethnic minorities. Hoban was speechless - as well you might be. But the assessment, he was told, is required under Harriet Harman's Equalities Act. Has it been carried out? He avoided the question and was asked it again. And so it continued, a la Paxman v Howard. When Labour retreated, it sewed several landmines in the political territory it was about to cede. One of them was Harman's Equalities Act, which - as Pete blogged a while ago - mandates government "to consider how decisions might help to reduce inequalities associated with socio-economic disadvantage".

Tuesday

Fraser Nelson

Today’s GCSE results prove that academies work

From our UK edition

Today's GCSE results demonstrate the tremendous success of City Academies, a hugely heartening trend given that this formula - which was so slowly rolled out under the Labour legislation which introduced them - can now be rapidly implemented under the new Academies Act. It's always been a con to look at the absolute results of Academies, as under Labour the only schools given such status were schools that were doing poorly. What matters is improvement. Let's take the three Academies groups and look at the ratio of  pupils winning five good GCSEs (i.e. A-C including English and Maths). In the The Harris Federation, which now runs nine schools, there was a 10 point increase. In the ARK academies, a 13 point increase. In the ULT Academies, an 8 point increase.

Eamonn Butler

The family is the best agent of welfare

From our UK edition

Conservatives have long been strong on family. They believe that families are the glue that sticks us together, and that traditional nuclear families therefore plays an important role in sticking the whole nation together. As a libertarian, I believe that people should live as they choose. Too many young people of my parents' and grandparents' generations were forced into marriages that were or became deeply unhappy – but divorce was thought scandalous. So people – particularly women, who rarely had independent means or income enough to escape – endured that misery. Many, too, were humiliated, or prosecuted, for conducting relationships that we would happily accept today.

James Forsyth

Lead by example: take paternity leave

From our UK edition

The birth of the Cameron’s baby daughter is, obviously, wonderful news for the Cameron family. All the political chatter around it is, frankly, irrelevant compared to the happiness that they must be feeling.   But I do hope that David Cameron does take paternity leave. The Tories have talked a lot about making Britain the ‘most family friendly country in Europe’ and the PM taking paternity leave would be a good ‘nudge’ to employers and prospective fathers alike. One other timing issue worth noting is whether Cameron now goes to the UN summit in New York on the millennium development goals.