Uk politics

Monday

David Blackburn

Under starter’s orders | 16 November 2009

From our UK edition

The parties are limbering up for the longest, and possibly the bitterest, election campaign in living memory. Recent asides and statements indicate that Wednesday’s Queen's Speech will be the most political that New Labour has delivered.  This morning’s Times and FT give an amuse bouche of the package with which Labour intend to “smoke out the Tories”. The FSA will be furnished with powers to punish those dastardly bankers, including the power to rip up contracts that encourage excessive risk. Also, Labour will provide free home care for 350,000 people; NHS patients will receive free private care if they are not treated within 18 weeks; and pupils will have the opportunity to take free on-to-one home tuition.

Sunday

Daniel Korski

Cutting MoD staff will not win wars

From our UK edition

Liam Fox has made clear that the Conservative Party is planning to slash the number of civilian posts at the Ministry of Defence as a way of balancing the military budget if they win the general election in 2010. "We have 99,000 people in the Army and 85,000 civilians in the MoD. Some things will have to change - and believe me, they will," Fox has said. But if the Conservatives thought they had stumbled across a sure-fire criticism of Labour’s way of war, in The Times, ex-soldier, author (and, I will wager, future MP) Patrick Hennessey asks the public not to lay off the “MoD desk-jockeys.” 'The MoD deploys civilian staff into operational theatres.

David Blackburn

Last man standing

From our UK edition

That Gordon Brown is still the prime minister proves that it isn’t only Peter Mandelson who is a fighter not a quitter. It became clear this week that Brown will fight to the bitter end, and that Labour’s election strategy has emerged through him. Labour depicts the Tories as Bullingdon boy toffs and crazed Thatcherite cutters; Brown is the stern, serious figurehead, the still small voice of calm at the vanguard of Labour’s arguments on immigration and the economy.   Matthew d’Ancona’s Sunday Telegraph column details how Brown has returned to the fore this week and delivered policy statements aimed exclusively at maintaining Labour’s core support.

Saturday

Fraser Nelson

Cameron’s licence fee cut – and how he’ll pay for it

From our UK edition

All hail, Jeremy Hunt, the axe man. Cameron’s first tax cut will be a licence fee cut* – and Hunt is planning to axe some stations to pay for it.  Hunt is thinking of axing 1Extra, apparently, with BBC3 and BBC4 already under threat. Also under Hunt’s axe would be the National Lottery’s runnng costs. The Sunday Times apparently has the details tomorrow, but I give Hunt this warning: if he even tiptoes in the direction of Cbebbies then he will have a revolution on his hands. Parents depend on it now, utterly. Personally, I’d pay £100 a year just for it – just for its kid-sedating powers. But it makes you think: digital television does allow a subscription model and the BBC could well spin off many of these channels.

David Blackburn

No longer a racist party, but a party of racists

From our UK edition

The Guardian reports that the BNP membership is going to vote overwhelmingly in favour of allowing non-whites to join the party. The BNP’s electoral success entitles it to a fair hearing in the political mainstream. The Spectator has maintained that the party’s domestic policies are inspired by racial supremacist ideology and that its economic policies are like Dagenham – that is, three stops beyond Barking. The membership’s decision, forced on them by a court order with which they must comply, changes nothing.   There is more chance of Dennis Skinner being elevated to the peerage than there is of Afro-Caribbeans and Asians joining the BNP.

David Blackburn

Shaming allegations that reveal the full horror of the Iraq war

From our UK edition

The Independent's front page splash about British troops torturing and sexually abusing Iraqis in 2003 has, to put it mildly, put me right off my cornflakes. The allegations are horrific. Acts of live pornography designed to humiliate sexually conservative Muslim sensibilities, the electrocution of detainees, beatings, rapes and widespread detention without charge - the echoes of Abu Ghraib resound. Phil Shiner, the lawyer representing all the Iraqis, wrote to the MoD saying: 'Due to the wider access of information and disclosure in the US, we do know that sexual humiliation was authorised as an aid to interrogation at the highest levels of the US administration.

Fraser Nelson

In answer to your questions

From our UK edition

So, what is The Spectator coming to? Dishing out trophies to Harman and all these Labour types? Has the editor's chair made me crawl up to people like Harman and Darling? Am I angling for a political seat? The comments to my earlier blog post raise some excellent points - about politics, polemic and The Spectator itself. I thought they deserved a response in a post rather than a comment. The Spectator's tradition of honouring talent on all sides of the political divide in its annual awards is a long one:  La Harman was our 24th Parliamentarian of the Year. While Harman was speaking, Boris and I were holding her trophy and looking at the names that hers would be engaved next to.

Friday

David Blackburn

The tactics of political insurgency

From our UK edition

That Labour held one of its safest seats is newsworthy either indicates how desperate the party’s predicament is or that it is a very slow news day. Anything other than a Labour win, and a substantial one at that, was unthinkable; even the resolutely fanciful SNP must have acknowledged that privately. However, this by-election raises some interesting points nonetheless. As Alex Massie notes, the gloss has come of the hubristic SNP. Salmond’s Braveheart act about winning 20 seats and seeing Westminster “hanging from a Scottish rope” looked optimistic-to-mad when first performed; now it just looks mad.

David Blackburn

I dunno, how many hedgerows have we lost since the war?

From our UK edition

There’s a tremendous post on the FT's blog, inviting 20 influential public figures to ask questions that they believe incoming MPs should be able to answer. Jim Pickard explains: ‘But what should we be looking for in the people we elect to run the country? The question of what knowledge and expertise the ideal MP should possess is not much debated. So FT Weekend invited 20 experts in various fields to come up with questions that – in their opinion – any would-be MP should be able to answer. This exercise throws up an obvious problem right away: the areas of knowledge that our questioners address are so disparate that no normal person could reasonably be expected to answer all 20 of the questions.

Mark Bathgate

The perfect storm

From our UK edition

The UK debt crisis has three constituent parts – household, government and banking. The fact that households, government and banks all went on a debt binge at the same time makes the risks for the UK economy so unusual.  The European Commission is now estimating that total UK Government debt will rise above £1.3trillion by the end of 2011, representing a more than trebling in the total debt load since 1997. If interest rates normalise to the 5% or so seen during recoveries in previous cycles, this will see the interest service bill alone rise to around £65billion a year – more than double the total defence budget.

Thursday

David Blackburn

Nursing is the new Media Studies

From our UK edition

Administering injections is not an academic process. Like construction and policing, nursing is an essential professional and appropriate training is a pre-requisite. Procedures must be mastered and techniques known by rote. 2 year nursing diplomas have always provided that function effectively. Academic degrees develop critical intellect, something I’m sure nurses will appreciate as individuals but which will add nothing to their professional skill. Melanie Phillips argues that ‘nursing has been in the grasp of an ultra-feminist orthodoxy which regards the essence of nursing as demeaning to women.’ The plan is to furnish nursing with an equivalent status to doctors.

David Blackburn

Electoral fraud

From our UK edition

“Postal voting on demand is lethal to the democratic process. Wholesale electoral fraud is both easy and profitable.” That statement sounds like a description of Afghan electoral practices, but it was delivered by Richard Mawrey QC after an inquest into UK postal voting.   The Orange Party blog has an intriguing post about the sudden surge in postal ballots for the finally convened Glasgow North East by-election. Now, the Orange Blog may be being mischievous or merely preposterous, but it suggests that fraud could be a factor. History shows that Labour benefit from postal voting, notably at the comfortable Glenrothes by-election victory last year, when every indication was that the SNP would overturn the majority.

Daniel Korski

No Brits likely in top EU jobs

From our UK edition

The process to pick the two new EU jobs - that of Council President and High Representative - is nearing completion and Britain looks set to walk away empty-handed. Tony Blair's candidacy is unacceptable to many EU leaders - both because of his record, particularly over the Iraq War, and because of Britain's odd-man status in Europe. Last night at the Queen's Diplomatic Reception, a senior ambassador remarked to me that if Blair had really wanted the EU job, he should have started lobbying for it a few years ago - or at least shown a post-No 10 interest in European affairs. Blair, said the envoy, could have given a speech in Berlin, an interview in a French paper and so on. But he did not.

David Blackburn

British jobs for British workers

From our UK edition

Further to Alan Johnson’s immigration statement on Monday, Gordon Brown will give a speech on the topic. The intention is to re-engage with core voters who have defected to the BNP. In an interview with the Mail, Brown acknowledged that the public were right to be concerned, especially in times of economic uncertainty and hardship. Brown is expected to tighten migrant employment controls so that migrants are only used where there are labour shortages. He will strengthen the ‘Labour Market Test’ by extending vacancy exclusivity for UK citizens from 2 weeks to a month, and pledges to retrain British workers. The proposals are welcome and the rhetoric is tough, giving some weight to the maligned call of ‘British jobs for British workers’.

Wednesday

Lloyd Evans

Parallel universe

From our UK edition

Armistice Day suits Brown down to the ground. When everyone is obliged wear funeral-director garb, his grey hair and sombre jowls fit the mood perfectly while Dave’s polished and youthful glow looks a trifle out of place.  Gordon performed confidently at PMQs today. So did Dave, as it happens, but the skirmish came to nothing because neither was prepared to fight on the ground chosen by the other. Dave led on the youth unemployment figures. He wanted Brown to admit that his promise ‘to abolish youth unemployment’ had failed. Brown ignored this and took comfort from the thought that without Labour’s policies even more youngsters would be out of work. Dave went into sci-fi mode and told the PM he was ‘living in a parallel universe.

James Forsyth

An impossible position

From our UK edition

The moment that stuck out for me from today’s PMQs came right towards the end, the exchanges between the leaders were not particularly enlightening. Gerald Howarth, a member of the Tory defence team, rose from the backbenches to tell the House of an email he had received from a friend of one of those men killed in Afghanistan in recent days saying that the coalition is winning there. Howarth asked the PM to help spread this positive message — prompting Labour cries of ‘tell The Sun.’ But in his reply, Brown conspicuously did not say that we were winning. Instead, he concentrated on paying tribute to the bravery of the British forces serving there.

Daniel Korski

Helicopter reality

From our UK edition

There is something oddly comforting about discussing NATO’s Afghan mission in terms of kit, helicopters and troop numbers - or the lack thereof. These are tangible categories. You either have the right amount or you don't. And if you don't, then it is because somebody made the wrong decision or failed to make a timely one. Even Mrs Janes, grief-stricken after the killing of her son, seems to take some comfort in the question of equipment while Liam Fox has made much political capital of the Government’s failures. There are just two problems with this kind of approach to warfare. First, the stories in the press about helicopters take precedence over reality. Has the government cut the defense budget? Yes. Did it for a long time run on a peacetime budget and on SOPs? Yes.

David Blackburn

The centre left asks how? Well, here’s how

From our UK edition

The One Nation sentiments that David Cameron expressed at last night’s Hugo Young lecture have been almost uniformly applauded. Labour’s sneers about Cameron being an uber-Thatcherite are isolated from mainstream. Only Johann Hari dissents, suggesting that because Cameron is an OE and comfortably off it follows that ‘he has never known’ a poor person. Of course, if Cameron were the re-incarnation of Lord Salisbury, then Dave would have ample understanding of, and who knows perhaps even intimacy with, the various retainers, ostlers, scullery maids and farriers in his employ. Patricians have long since retired to enjoy what’s left of their estates, and Cameron’s sentiments are genuine and inflect his politics, simple as that.

David Blackburn

On the road to recovery? Don’t be daft

From our UK edition

I’d forgotten what it felt like to read positive news about the British economy. To be honest life is full of much more thrilling experiences, but my lack of enthusiasm is partially explained by the fact that a 6,000 employment rise is not proof of recovery. That half the population of Cranleigh have found employment over three months is seen as salvation puts Britain’s economic reality firmly into perspective. If you delve into the Labour Market Statistics the picture becomes clear. Unemployment was expected to rise and will continue doing so, but the employment figure is an anomaly. Britain is still visibly contracting, albeit at a decelerating rate. Vacancies fell by 1,000 and have never been at a lower level since records began in 2001.

David Blackburn

Would David Miliband make a good leader?

From our UK edition

David Miliband’s decision not to be a candidate for EU Foreign Minister has inspired an almost vociferous article from Daniel Finkelstein. He writes: ‘The Lisbon treaty is your work as much as anyone’s. You pushed it through and you told everyone that it really mattered. You’ve been making speeches on the importance of the new job as EU foreign minister. You’ve said it is an essential tool of influence. Yet now — now — you tell me that you don’t actually want to do it yourself.’ Clearly Miliband wants a crack at the leadership, and the thrust of Finkelstein’s argument is that Miliband isn’t up to leading the opposition. ‘One other thing you need to think about.