Uk politics

Friday

David Blackburn

Ed Balls and the art of campaigning

I thought that Ed Balls would be a natural for opposition politics. But I’ve been struck by the naivety of some of his recent interventions – notably the Duffy-wooing immigration proposal. As James has argued, Balls’ plan to limit freedom of movement within the EU ia classic opposition politics. They are eye-catching, populist and but completely unworkable in practice. But Balls isn’t really in opposition yet: the Labour party is caught in a kind of limbo whilst it determines its future, a future that Balls wants to control. Advocating the unimplementable looks conniving rather than statesmanlike, naïve rather than astute.

David Blackburn

Hain: the Liberals demanded that we cut now

Andrew Neil interviews Peter Hain for this week's BBC Straight Talk. Mastering the obvious, Hain argues that Duffygate cost Labour dear: 'PH:  The damaging incident of course was the Duffygate incident. AN:  In Rochdale, the old aged pensioner? PH:  In Rochdale, and that had a palpable effect.  I think we were just beginning to get a bit of traction - not necessarily to win but possibly to be the biggest party in the election - and that was a real hammer blow, and everybody knew it. AN:  You really think that affected the public’s perception of the then Prime Minister?

David Blackburn

David Davis is the darling of the Tory right

ConservativeHome conducted a poll into prominent, right-wing Tory backbenchers. Unsurprisingly, David Davis topped the poll. 70 percent of respondents hold that David Davis represents their views and 54 percent believe he articulates those views effectively. John Redwood and Daniel Hannan were some way behind as DD’s closest rivals. Davis’s chief weapon is communication. Plain speaking and from a working class background, people easily identify with him; and he expresses an acute intelligence in simple terms, something that John Redwood has failed to do. And whilst Hannan has charisma, Davis has more - the fruit of a decade at the forefront of British politics.

Daniel Korski

RAB

ABC was the acronym used for meetings of Madeleine Albright, Sandy Berger and William Cohen when they all worked for the President Bill Clinton. RAB will hopefully in future be an American-style acronym for the cooperation of the three people voted to chair the parliamentary committees for foreign affairs, defence and international development: Richard Ottaway, James Arbuthnot and Malcolm Bruce. If the government succeeds in welding together the different perspectives of the FCO, DFID and the MoD – a prerequisite of modern crisis management - then the three MPs will have to find new ways of working together too as parliament will have to scrutinise this new dynamic.

Daniel Korski

The end of BP

BP is in trouble. Deep trouble. American lawmakers are threatening to take away its dividends and now President Obama is huffing and puffing in order to deflect attention from the role of his administration. BP is struggling to get a word in with the media, pundits, talking heads, politicians and environmental experts monopolising the airwaves.      Not a lot of people will be sympathetic to BP’s plight. The Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill is first and foremost a human and natural tragedy: 11 workers were killed, others were injured and now many Gulf Coast residents will end up losing their homes and livelihoods while their natural environment will be polluted for years to come. BP should, rightly, share much of the blame for this.

Eamonn Butler

The Star Chamber won’t re-structure government. Philip Hammond might

You have a computer for years. It gets gummed up with old applications, many of which can’t do the job you need them for today. It hogs far too much memory, and – when it doesn’t freeze entirely – it runs painfully slowly. That’s Britain’s government: it is clogged with quangos and schemes and even whole departments that eat up vast quantities of tax and deliver very little output. So it’s time to re-boot government. Back up the useful bits, bin the rest, group your files more rationally, and re-start. Which seems to be what Britain’s coalition government now promises: but will they succeed? Several countries have been through the same mill – Ireland, New Zealand, Sweden, Canada all turned around big budget deficits.

David Blackburn

Field gets to work

The Times leads with the story that Frank Field, the government’s independent poverty advisor, is recommending that child benefit be stopped at age 13, arguing that: ‘at that age mothers feel even more engaged with work than they are with children.’ Currently, the benefit is paid until children are 19 - £20 is paid for the first child and £13.40 for each subsequent child. The benefit costs the taxpayer £11bn per year; Field’s proposal would save £3bn a year and there would be considerably larger savings if the cut was extended to child tax credits.

Thursday

James Forsyth

Keeping the backbenches occupied

In this new world of Coalition politics, there is a difference between Conservative party policy and government policy. There are things that the Conservatives would like to do but can’t do because they didn’t win a majority. As Tim wrote this morning, this provides an opportunity for the Conservative parliamentary party to fill this gap. When the backbench policy committees of the 1922 are set up, they should start working on developing, detailed policy ideas rather than just critiques of Coalition policy. The Prime Minister should encourage this for three reasons. First, it would provide him with a series of possible options for the next manifesto.

Fraser Nelson

Events that are shaking the special relationship

Barack Obama knows language and innuendo: he will know what he’s doing by deploying what Boris Johnson rightly calls “anti-British rhetoric” in the BP disaster. BP has not – for many years – stood for British Petroleum’ – you won’t find the two words anywhere in its annual report. But you hear them plenty tripping off the presidential tongue, as if to point the finger on the other side of the Atlantic. It makes you wonder how highly he values UK-US relations: Bush was genuinely grateful for the fact that Britain was America’s most dependable ally in Iraq and Afghanistan. It’s hard to imagine Bush using the rhetoric that Obama has so quickly resorted to.

David Blackburn

Select committee chairmen in full

Courtesy of PoliticsHome, here is the full list of the new chairmen of select committees: 'The following candidates have been elected unopposed as select committee chairs: - Culture, Media and Sport: Mr John Whittingdale - International Development: Malcolm Bruce - Justice: Sir Alan Beith - Northern Ireland: Mr Laurence Robertson - Procedure: Mr Greg Knight - Scottish Affairs: Mr Ian Davidson - Transport: Mrs Louise Ellman - Welsh Affairs: David T. C.

David Blackburn

Coulson on £140,000

The list of Special Advisors pay is out. The headline grabbing figures are that Andy Coulson is on £2,500 less than the PM, and that the overall bill is allegedly £1.9m less than Labour’s. Also, George Osborne appointed Rupert Harrison and Eleanor Shawcross to the Council of Economic Affairs, but they will claim no extra salary. And, for those interested, there are 5 SpAd vacancies in government. Still, £4.9m is a lot of money for unaccountable, party officials. Some time ago, I asked if Cameron would govern any differently. Transparency and cost-cutting are welcome, but wearing fewer garments doesn’t change the innards of a government.

Daniel Korski

Did the bureaucrats lose the war?

The Times went big on their story of Britain’s campaign in Helmand, and all the mistakes made in 2005 when the deployment was being planned. It is a good piece of reporting, which adds to the volume of stories about the war, its planning and execution. Britain’s effort Helmand, like the one in Basra, will in time need a magisterial study, a sort of multi-volume study like Winston Churchill’s The Second World War, which can weave the front-line experience together with the turning of the bureaucratic wheels. But at least the first draft of history is now being written.

David Blackburn

What can Cameron do about Obama’s war against BP?

Very little is my immediate answer. The President’s approval ratings are biting the dust. Powerless to stem the tide of oil and unpopularity, Obama can only victimise a ‘foreign’ oil company. Obama may be embattled at home, but if any doubt the US President’s ability to influence global events, they need only look at BP’s share value and the pension funds derived thereof. BP is mired in an expensive oil disaster, but the President’s rhetoric about the ‘habitual environmental criminal’ and threatening BP with criminal proceedings demolishes market confidence. If the British government had condemned AIG, Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch in similar tones, the US administration would have retorted. Cameron can do nothing.

Patrick Hennessey

No politician visits the frontline

A few years ago, when I was serving with the Grenadier Guards in Iraq, I was part of a team tasked with looking after the visiting Secretary of State. There were five Defence Secretaries during my short spell in the army – a sign, perhaps, of the lack of attention the last government paid to the armed forces. Some were impressive, some less so. One was famous for falling asleep during briefings, but the one I was accompanying in Basra was wide awake. He wished to carry out of the most important missions facing Cabinet members in a warzone: conduct an interview with the Today programme on BBC Radio Four. He asked if we could turn off our own radios, so as to reduce the background noise – and seemed amazed and a not a little put out when we refused.

Wednesday

David Blackburn

Simon Hughes elected Lib Dem deputy leader

As expected Simon Hughes, has won the race to be Lib Dem deputy leader, congratulations. Both candidates pledged to assert the party’s independence within the context of supporting the coalition. Hughes intends to appoint Lib Dem spokesmen for all government departments to improve accountability in parliament. A renowned left-winger, Hughes’s inclination must run contrary to the Conservative dominated coalition, and I wonder how he will take Patrick Wintour’s news that the coalition is beginning to act as one politically, mastering a strategy to deflect Labour’s political assaults.

David Blackburn

Ed Miliband pitches at change

Obviously, the Labour party must change and make a clean break with the era of Blair and Brown. I have my doubts if any of these candidates, other than incredible Diane Abbott, can escape the politics that moulded them. None have said anything substantively new. They are not wedded to the past; they pine for it. Today, however, Ed Miliband has suggested that he would break from New Labour. He has written an article for the Mirror, arguing that he would keep the 50 percent tax rate. His analysis is: ‘There is something wrong with a society where nurses earn less in a year than bankers - whose botched deals caused the credit crunch - pay themselves every week.

Daniel Korski

Who could Britain place in the UN’s humanitarian department?

After Sir John Holmes retires as the head of the UN’s humanitarian activities later in the year, the Cameron government will have the chance to make its first high-level international appointment. Officially, the job is appointed by UN secretary-general Ban ki-Moon, but the unpopular South Korean is likely to want to keep the new British government on board as he seeks re-election for a second term. So the UK is likely to get its pick. Rumours have it that three people are on the short list drawn up by officials:  Valerie Amos, the Labour peer and former International Development Secretary; Dame Barbara Stocking, the head of OXFAM, and Martin Griffiths, the head of the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue and formerly Deputy UN Humanitarian Relief Coordinator.

James Forsyth

Cameron repulses Harman’s misdirected assault

The PMQs attack No 10 was expecting from Labour on the Coalition’s planned spending cuts did not materialise and today’s was another relatively quiet affair. It started with a minute’s silence in memory of those who died in the shootings in Cumbria. Harman asked one question on gun laws before moving on to the electoral roll and whether it is fair to redraw the boundaries on a roll that does not include three and a half million people. Harman would be on quite strong ground here except for the fact that the boundaries were redrawn under the last government using this electoral register, a point Cameron made.

David Blackburn

BREAKING: Abbott has made it onto the ballot

David Miliband's patronising ruse has worked. The rumours that have circulated for half an hour or so have now been confirmed by the BBC. I wonder what damage Abbott will now cause the other candidates? Also, what does it say for the case for diversity and Labour's internal policy debate if Abbott's election was a stitch-up?

David Blackburn

The Labour leadership race descends into farce

Perhaps it’s just me but this morning’s Labour leadership machinations are a farce of political correctness. Everyone is falling over themselves to be as nice as possible and essentially rig the ballot so that Diane Abbott receives a nomination. As James notes, it's a peculiar tactic as Abbott will cause no end of trouble for the ‘serious’ contenders for the ultimate prize. Needless to say, David Miliband, that auteur of absurdity, planted the banana skin. Attempting to be magnanimous but excelling in pomposity, he has voted for Abbot and urges all to do the same. My hunch is that there are many on the right of the party who will resent this move and conclude, finally, that David Miliband is not a leader.