Uk politics

Friday

James Forsyth

The West must prepare contingency plans to bomb Iran

Chuck Wald, a retired US Air Force General who was the air commander for the US response to the 9/11 attacks, has an important op-ed in the Wall Street Journal today about Iran. Wald argues that while no one wants to see the military options explored before all others have been exhausted, it would be a mistake to think that there are none. He argues that even the mere act of a military build up might persuade the Iranian regime that the cost of continuing with their nuclear programme would be being bombed and thus persuade them to give up. Alternatively, a naval blockade could deny Tehran the petrol imports it needs, bringing its already teetering economy to a halt.

Fraser Nelson

Why Georgia matters

When David Cameron flew to Georgia last year, it was perhaps the clearest and most welcome statement of foreign policy made by the party since he became leader. Liam Fox’s piece on conservativehome today pays tribute to this, and gives us a welcome reminder of the stakes. The Russian threat is growing: there are 10,000 troops there and settlements will soon start. The best the West can do is show solidarity, and there is no clearer sign than going there. As Cameron did. Like Israel in the Middle East, Georgia is a light of democratic freedom in an area with plenty of unlit candles. There is something totemic about its independence, something the Conservatives can express clear and unequivocal support for.

James Forsyth

The human cost of deprivation 

The news that in one Northern city, 15 percent of Neets, those young people not in education, employment or training, are dead within ten years in immensely depressing. It is a reminder of the horrendous toll that drugs and social breakdown take on our society. The director general of schools, who revealed this, stresses that these numbers shouldn’t be taken to be typical of the country as a whole. But seeing as we don’t have numbers for the rest of the country, this was a local study, it is impossible to know how serious the situation is nationally.   One can talk in policy terms about possible solutions to this problem.

David Blackburn

Confusion reigns

On Wednesday, the Downing Street press office confirmed with us that there was a timetable for ministers to stand-in for Gordon Brown. They said that Harriet Harman was in the job this week and last and that Lord Mandelson would begin “next week”. Today it’s emerged that Harman’s stint has ended prematurely, and that she’s been replaced by Mandelson – though he’s yet to return from Corfu. The Dark Lord is influential, but can even he run the government from the Med? We thought we’d check what was going and put in another call to Downing Street. This time they had a different story: we were told that there was no timetable; that there never had been a timetable.

Wednesday

James Forsyth

What Dougie didn’t say

The New Statesman’s interview with Douglas Alexander is making waves for Alexander’s admission that he was briefed against by Brown’s inner circle following the election that never was. The treatment of Alexander, a man who had been a Brown loyalist for his entire political career and was only following instructions, was particularly brutal. But what strikes me about the interview is how Alexander, who is still Labour’s general election coordinator, did not produce a single positive domestic policy argument for re-electing Labour that the New Statesman thought was worth printing. Indeed, when the interview turns to British politics, all we hear from Alexander is negative slogans about the Tories: they are “untested” and “outside the mainstream.

Patrick Nolan

Reforming maternity pay

While it is widely accepted that the costs of family breakdown are significant, there is less agreement on policy options to support families. Pete Hoskin set out arguments against a simplistic subsidy approach earlier today. Putting together ideas that work is made even harder by the catastrophic state of the government’s books. New policies should provide real value for money and be (at least) revenue neutral. In our latest report, Reform identified a set of cost-effective reforms to one area of support for new families – maternity and paternity pay and leave – which is currently underperforming. This system of support receives surprisingly little attention, although it currently costs taxpayers around £2 billion every year.

Lloyd Evans

Helicopters hover over PMQs<br />

One of the strangest and most dramatic parliamentary terms ended today in bizarre fashion. The fiasco over fiddled expenses has preoccupied Westminster for months but it was helicopters in Afghanistan that dominated PMQs. From whoppers to choppers. The Speaker seems to have ruled against public lamentations over battlefield casualties and, without these solemnities, our MPs had more time to ask questions and the PM had more time to avoid answering them. David Cameron said the Afghan mission needed, ‘a tighter definition, greater urgency and more visible progress,’ in order to maintain public support. Brown’s definition was looser rather than tighter.

James Forsyth

How close we came to Chancellor Balls

Sue Cameron’s Notebook in the FT is one of the best guides there is to the mood in Whitehall. The main focus of her column today is the discontent among the Mandarins about the fact that huge cuts will have to be made but they are getting no guidance from their current ministers as to where and how this is to be done. But the bit which stood out to me was how advanced Ed Balls plans for moving to the Treasury were. Cameron reports that: "Some in Whitehall have still not recovered from the reshuffle drama when schools secretary Ed Balls had his hopes of becoming chancellor dashed. 'It was Shakespearean,' says one onlooker. 'Ed had his finger on the crown. He’d even cleared his diary and said goodbye to his civil servants. He knew he was moving – then he didn’t.

Peter Hoskin

Why I remain unconvinced about the Tories’ tax break for married couples

Ok, Fraser - I'm not going to let this tax 'n' marriage debate rumble on interminably, but I do want the final word!  First, I appreciate your response - it makes a very strong case, but one which fails to convince me.  Why?  Well, largely because I agreed with most of it already.  As I said in my original post, IDS and others have unearthed plenty of statistics which show just how important marriage is to the functioning of society, and to the lives of people within it.  This evidence, much of which you raise, is important and shouldn't be ignored.   But there are still reasons - beyond those set out by Philip Collins today - for being wary of, specifically, tax-breaks for married couples.  For starters, what's to be gained from them?

James Forsyth

A mutual decision?

There is an interesting little story tucked away in today’s Daily Mirror, the government might only sell off Northern Rock and Bradford and Bingley on condition that they are turned into mutually-owned societies. Jason Beattie reports that the idea of turning them back into building societies is being backed by John McFall, the chairman of the Treasury Select Committee, and 29 other Co-Operative party Labour MPs. I suspect that if Northern Rock and Bradford and Bingley are de-nationalised this side of the election, something that I suspect Brown would like to do, the price will be the key determinant.

Fraser Nelson

Why marriage should be recognised in the tax system

Cameron has been fairly bold in entering the debate on marriage, because we don't like do that debate in Britain. Not really - it's private, and we Brits don't like debating private things. Anything which helps marriage can easily be paraphrased as "deploying fiscal incentives to force something which should largely be a private decision". And not by the left, but by our very own Pete Hoskin in the below post. Now, we are a heterodox bunch of baristas here at CoffeeHouse and we do disagree - so here is why I think Pete is wrong. I'd like to have a go offering some of the "convincing answers" he's looking for. Right now, millions of couples are better off apart under the perverted incentives of the welfare state. The Tories would remove this anomaly.

Peter Hoskin

Love and marriage?

Ok, I must admit I'm quite wary of Tory plans to encourage marriage via a £20-a-week tax break for married couples.  Not because I don't think marriage is a positive social force.  I do.  And Iain Duncan Smith's usually excellent Centre for Social Justice - who are pushing the tax break proposal, along with other, more convincing, ideas, in their recent Every Family Matters report - has unearthed enough statistics over the years to prove that it is.  But there's something crude and debasing about deploying fiscal incentives to force something which should largely be a private decision, based on sappier motives such as love, between two people.

Tuesday

James Forsyth

Another goat goes

News is breaking that the Health Minister Lord Darzi is leaving the government. By my count, that means Lord West is the ony one of Gordon's goats still in post.

Peter Hoskin

The slowdown in government

It's no secret around Westminster that civil servants are giving up on the Labour government and are wait-wait-waiting for the Tories to shuffle into power.  But few articles have captured that process so well as Rachel Sylvester's column in the Times today, which contains this striking passage about the suspended animation along Whitehall: "It is said that the Civil Service has the engine of a lawn mower and the brakes of a Rolls-Royce. And slowly but surely the government machine is coming to a halt. Contracts are delayed, decisions deferred, reviews welcomed. When Alan Johnson, the Home Secretary, announced a U-turn on ID cards recently, he was only catching up with his civil servants.

James Forsyth

The tide turns on public spending

If further proof were needed that the public’s attitude to public spending has changed it comes in the latest Guardian / ICM poll. It finds that 64 percent of voters think that spending should be being reduced now as opposed to 28 percent who want it increased: the electorate is on the other side of Brown’s favourite dividing line. Even among Labour and Liberal Democrat supporters, a majority favour cuts. Amongst those who favour cuts, the Tories have a significant advantage. 46 percent of those who support cuts think Labour would cut too little with 21 percent saying it would cut too much. With the Tories, 30 percent worry they would cut too much and 22 percent that they would not cut enough.

Peter Hoskin

Public in favour of ringfencing defence spending

A timely poll from PoliticsHome which finds that two-thirds of the public think defence should be protected from any spending cuts.  Here's their graphic with full results: The question, of course, is whether this kind of public pressure forces any of the main parties to actually shield defence from cuts.  With the debt burden as it is, its difficult to see them doing so while also sticking to their current commitments in other areas. UPDATE: Ok, just to provide a bit of context in the wake of some thought-provoking comments from CoffeeHousers below.

Daniel Korski

Time for a British Manley Commission?

If the government wants to stem the haemorrhaging of elite support for NATO’s Afghan mission, there is one major thing it can do at this stage: establish a British version of the Manley Commission. In Canada, ex-Deputy Prime Minister John Manley was asked by the Harper government to take a hard look at Canada’s role is Afghansistan, and lay out a clear plan. Its work effectively rebuilt Canadian support for the war effort. The Brown Government is simply not trusted to give an honest assessment of what is happening on the ground or give the military what it needs. The Defence Secretary is an unknown entity outside of Westminster (and even inside), and can hardly be expected to succesfully champion something as contentious as the war.

Peter Hoskin

Coulson in the clear?

It's worth following Andrew Sparrow's typically excellent live blog of the Commons culture committee's first public hearing into the recent NotW "phone-hacking" claims.  So far, the biggest revelation has come courtesy of Nick Davies - the Guardian journalist behind the story last week - and it's one which will please the Tories: "Davies says he has the names of 27 journalists from the NoW and four from the Sun who used a private investigator to get information. Some of the requests were legal, like electoral register searches. But many were not. Davies says he does not want to name the names. "I'm a reporter, not a police officer." But there are a number of senior editorial executives on the list. One was Greg Miskiw, the assistant editor, news, at NoW.

Fraser Nelson

Behind the swine flu panic

I am instinctively sceptical about health scare stories, so have been watching the Swine Flu story with much suspicion. We are seldom reminded that it's less serious than normal flu. Hysterically, Andy Burnham claims there could be up to 100,000 infections a day in Britain next month - the latest worldwide tally is 121,000. We are told how many die from swine flu, but not how many have also died from normal flu so we can put it in context (the DoH, remarkably, can't tell me).   Proper diagnosis is not being done by our doctors. Virtually anyone with a summer cold is being told to stay at home for seven days - result! - and prescribed Tamiflu just in case.  I went hunting for the normal flu figures, but found something else instead: that this is a London flu.

Peter Hoskin

Defending his own premiership

The Times's story of how Bob Ainsworth came to be Defence Secretary is equal parts extraordinary and disheartening.  Here are the key passages: "Mr Ainsworth’s predecessor, John Hutton, had indicated to Mr Brown in mid-May that he was thinking of leaving the Government. Mr Hutton, recently remarried, had a compelling family reason for wanting to step down. But Mr Brown, preoccupied with the elections and the possibility of a leadership challenge, appears to have spent little time thinking about the vacancy. It wasn’t until around noon the day after the polls that he began to focus on who should oversee Britain’s military and its engagement in Afghanistan.