Uk politics

Monday

David Blackburn

5 Labour ‘refusenik’ MPs threaten to resign over Legg letters

From our UK edition

Paul Waugh reports that 5 ‘refusenik’ Labour MPs are threatening to trigger by-elections over Brown’s reluctance to curb Sir Thomas Legg’s retrospective cap. Clearly, Brown is in an invidious position – it is conceivable that Labour will lose these by-elections in any event, but Brown would be committing very protracted and very painful electoral suicide if he demanded that Sir Thomas retract his demands. Brown is indecisive when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing in his favour, so God knows what agonies the Hamlet of Kirkcaldy is wrestling with at the moment, and I suspect most of us would have died of old age if the refuseniks were not going to make the decision for him.

David Blackburn

Lost in the post | 19 October 2009

From our UK edition

It is much to my regret, but I do not know the postman’s name. In fact, I have never met him or her because the post is delivered after I have left for work. I suspect that a large majority of people are in the same boat. That so few of us have any contact with our postman undoes Jackie Ashley’s ‘Support your local postie’ argument in today’s Guardian. She writes: ‘After the shock of the credit crunch, I thought we were pulling back from the age of neoliberal market worship and rethinking the value of reassuring institutions. With the disappearance of the milkman, the postie has a vital role in the community.

Sunday

Fraser Nelson

Welcome to London

From our UK edition

Visitors to London are now given an extra special welcome when they arrive at our stations, thanks to the Metropolitan Police’s latest advert (pictured). It is advising commuters that, if they hide a gun for someone else, they will go to prison too. That’s told ‘em.   But when I walked past, I did wonder what effect this has on our capital’s image. Sure, the homicide rate is now statistically worse in Lambeth, where there have been 12 homicides so far this year, than it is in the Bronx's notorious 52nd precinct, where there have been 6. And gun crime continues to rise sharply in the capital.

Fraser Nelson

Current Tory health plans are backward-looking and reactionary

From our UK edition

I have long been depressed about Tory health policy, or lack thereof. The News of the World today does a head-to-head about whether Andy Burnham or Andrew Lansley would be better to run the NHS – and I give my verdict.  The answer, I say, is neither of them. The patient should become the consumer, as is the case in the healthcare system of every developed country. But this would require taking on the NHS establishment, which no party is committed to doing. Or, rather, Alan Milburn was committed to – and had actually started to enact. But that reform agenda came under attack from the Brownites and Andrew Lansley. The Tory health policy, as it stands, defies understanding.

David Blackburn

Scotland the Brave

From our UK edition

Everyone knows that Martin Luther King had a dream. It featured eloquent, high-minded ambitions about little white girls and little black girls playing together in harmony. Alex Salmond has dreams too. In an utterance that should have resulted in immediate committal, he compared Kenny MacAskill to Mahatma Gandhi, and then, with the rhetorical panache of a Scottish Judge Jeffries, told the SNP conference that he wanted to see “Westminster dangling from a Scottish rope”. As visions of the future go, capital punishment is not as appealing as Dr Luther King’s evocation of Christian brotherhood; but, in the event of a hung parliament, Salmond’s dream might be realised.

Saturday

James Forsyth

The end of a convenient fiction

From our UK edition

No one really thought that Vaclav Klaus would hold out against the Lisbon treaty until the British general election, but it was a convenient fiction for the Conservative party. It enabled both the leadeship and Eurosceptics to pretend that the current policy remained operative and that any questions about what would happen if the Lisbon treaty was ratified by the time of the next election were hypotheticals. So, as David notes, to hear Klaus conceding that he can't hold out until the election is a blow. The question now is what happens next. Domestically, I doubt that the party will have a big row about Europe—it is too disciplined, too eager for power for that. In European terms, the question is always put as does Cameron have the stomach for a battle with Brussels.

David Blackburn

Vaclav Klaus caves into the “train carrying Lisbon”

From our UK edition

Czech President Vaclav Klaus has developed cult status among Eurosceptics in Britain - a latter day Mons Angel. But it would have been nothing short of miraculous if Klaus had been able to derail the Lisbon Treaty. The Telegraph reports that Klaus can delay signing the treaty no longer. He said:  "The train carrying the treaty is going so fast and it's so far that it can't be stopped or returned, no matter how much some of us would want that. I cannot and will not wait for British elections, unless they hold them in the next few days or weeks." The Czech Courts will rule on compatibility on the 27th October, soon after which the treaty will become law.

Fraser Nelson

The horror story of the BNP’s success is not over

From our UK edition

Up to now, MEPs can use Westminster’s facilities; but, yesterday, Nick Brown tabled a deplorable motion in the House of Commons - to ban Nick Griffin from parliament. Just in case there were any doubt, Andrew Dismore spelled it out, saying Brown's motion would "mean that the newly elected British National Party members would not be allowed to get into this place. Most Members are of the view that that should be the case." I bet they are. But why? Whose fault is it that Griffin was elected in the first place? As I argued in the News of the World a while ago: if I had my way, I'd base Griffin in Westminster so MPs would see his smug face walking past them every day.

Peter Hoskin

Brown the Reformer: er, good luck with that

From our UK edition

Brace yourselves. According to the Guardian, Brown is about to sell himself as a Great Reformer: "Brown, the cabinet sources say, decided in the past few weeks to adopt a tougher pro-public sector reform stance, in order that his defence of the state in the face of recent attacks on big government by David Cameron does not become confused with complacency about the current performance of the public sector." Despite the sensibleness of the reform argument, I can't imagine that Brown will make much headway with this. For starters, he has that "Roadblock to Reform" label, and Labour's patchy record on public service reform, hovering over him like the proverbial albatross.

Peter Hoskin

Tax-free troubles

From our UK edition

And so it gets even messier. Today's Telegraph reports that HMRC are conducting formal investigations into the tax affairs of 27 MPs. You see, expenses claims are only supposed to be tax-free provided that they're wholly necessary for Parliamentary work. And, as we all know by now, quite a few of our, ahem, honourable members haven't been following that requirement - so they may owe some cash to Her Majesty's tax collectors. It probably won't be enough to fill the black hole in the public finances. But it's a start. They'll be something deliciously perverse about this if any of those MPs investigated are also among those who claimed for tax advice at the taxpayers' expense.

Friday

David Blackburn

Evidence relating to the incarceration of Binyam Mohamed will be published

From our UK edition

The High Court has ruled that a summary of US intelligence, relating to Binyam Mohamed’s allegations that he was tortured, will be made public. David Miliband expressed his “deep disappointment” at the ruling and issued the following statement: ‘The Government is deeply disappointed by the judgment handed down today by the High Court which concludes that a summary of US intelligence material should be put into the public domain against their wishes. We will be appealing in the strongest possible terms. The issues at stake are simple, but profound. They go to the heart of the efforts made to defend the security of the citizens of this country.

James Forsyth

Cameron would intensify No. 10’s spin operation

From our UK edition

One already hears grumblings from members of the Shadow Cabinet about how much power has been concentrated in Norman Shaw South, the suite of offices where Cameron and Osborne and their teams sit in Parliament. But judging by a report in The Times today the leadership is thinking about centralising power even more when in office. Jill Sherman writes that: 'Cabinet ministers have traditionally had two special advisers with another 25 in Downing Street. But Mr Maude is said to be thinking of giving ministers one each, supplemented by a separate pool of advisers, who would be based at No 10. Only advisers from the central pool would be authorised to speak to the media, “spinning” policy proposals and giving David Cameron control over the message going out to voters.

David Blackburn

The Tories’ Laffer-style radicalism

From our UK edition

In contrast to David Brooks’ optimism about Conservative economic policy, is Oliver Marc Harwich, former Chief Economist at Policy Exchange, who described George Osborne’s plans as “timid and unimaginative”. In a speech to the Centre for Independent studies, Dr Harwich remarked: “To be fair to the Tories, at their last party conference in Manchester George Osborne finally spelt out that a future Conservative government will be cutting public spending. But even the £23 billion over the next five years that Osborne announced amounts to little more than a rounding error in Britain’s public finances. Even in the face of the greatest economic crisis that Britain has experienced in decades, Tory policy remains timid and unimaginative.

James Forsyth

The Cameron project is more intellectually interesting than we appreciate

From our UK edition

David Brooks is the most influential American newspaper columnist and his column today is a paean of praise for George Osborne. He praises Osborne for offering not just pain but a “different economic vision — different from Labour and different from the Thatcherism that was designed to meet the problems of the 1980s.” He goes on to argue that Cameron and Osborne’s responsibility agenda is something that the Republicans should copy. This isn’t the first time that Brooks, who Tim Montgomerie identified as a guru for Cameron back in 2007, has applauded the Tories.

David Blackburn

Bercow defends the Legg letters

From our UK edition

The BBC reports that John Bercow will defend Sir Thomas Legg’s commission in an interview to be broadcast tomorrow. The Speaker makes two points. First, it is vital that the public are satisfied that MPs have “got the message” on expenses. And second he defended Sir Thomas’ retrospective charges on the grounds that there must be “consequences for past claims if they are shown to be wrong or extravagant.” Of course, the Speaker could hardly say anything else, lest he provoke a public march on Westminster, but the difference between the Speaker’s stance and that of Harriet Harman indicates that Bercow will not lie down and allow overbearing government or disgruntled MPs to walk all over him.

David Blackburn

The government’s greatest failing is ignoring advice

From our UK edition

On matters of mechanics, I take my mechanic’s advice; there would be little point in paying him if I turned around and thought: ‘Who needs brake pads, what does he know’. The government labours under the misapprehension that it is omniscient: the final extension of ‘nanny knows best’. But 12 years of Labour government has increased the gulf between rich and poor and educational standards have regressed. Advice that suggests an alternative path from that which was pre-ordained is dismissed, as if it were an unwanted cappuccino. Today sees the publication of a report into primary school education.

Thursday

David Blackburn

Speaker Bercow asserts himself

From our UK edition

Despite the circumstances of his election, Speaker Bercow is showing scant regard for the party who secured his election. First, he recommended that ministers who sat in the House of Lords, particularly the Lord Most High, should be cross-examined by MPs, and today he gave Battlin’ Bob a severe dressing down in the Commons. The very damning Gray report was debated today, and Ainsworth can hardly have been anticipating this event with generous thoughts and easy gaiety. To avoid total disaster, the cunning Defence Secretary played the ‘George Carmen card’ – that is, release the evidence an hour before the debate so that none of the participants have the time to read it. But this Speaker stands firm against the executive's skullduggery.

Peter Hoskin

Put up or shut up?

From our UK edition

One of the main questions arising out of the Legg controversy is whether MPs should put up or shut up.  Like John Hutton, I tend to think that they should just pay what's asked of them, hope that restores some public faith in the political class, and get on with reforming the expenses system for the future.  But there is room for nuance in all this.  For instance, we shouldn't expect those MPs who are the genuine victims of errors and inconsistencies to automatically take the path of least resistance.  The problem, of course, is working out which ones really are the "genuine" cases. But there's no nuance necessary when it comes to this story highlighted by the Guardian's Deborah Summers.

Peter Hoskin

What can the Tories learn from Boris’s fare dilemma?

From our UK edition

Oh dear.  Boris has just had to announce a bunch of inflation-busting fare increases for public transport in London.  From January, the congestion charge will be up by 25 percent, Oyster card fares will have 20p added to them, 7-day bus passes will cost just under £3 more – and so on, and so on.  To be fair, we shouldn't be too surprised at these kinds of hikes.  This is a recession, after all, and City Hall are currently struggling to deal with the black hole in the transport budget left over from the Livingstone days.  Boris himself sets out a persuasive defence of the measures in today's Evening Standard. You wonder what on-looking Cameroons are making of it all.

David Blackburn

The Equalities Commission plays straight into Griffin’s hands

From our UK edition

The BBC reports that Nick Griffin is to put an amended constitution before his party that will abolish the ‘White only’ membership clause. This is the result of legal action brought by the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, who proved that the clause was at odds with equality law. John Wadham, of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, told the BBC: "We are pleased the party has conceded this case and agreed to all of the Commission requirements. Political parties, like any other organisation, are obliged to respect the law and not discriminate against people." On the face of it, this should be welcome news, but the opposite is true.