Uk politics

Monday

James Forsyth

Mandelson’s lines to take for the press

From our UK edition

Peter Mandelson’s spat with Starbucks is clearly over. In February he went on a tirade after seeing the chairman of Starbucks talking the UK economy down on US TV: “Why should I have this guy running down the country? Who the fuck is he? How the hell are they [Starbucks] doing?" But today he is pictured on the front of G2 drinking out of a Starbucks cup. The most interesting thing, though, about the G2 interview is how Mandelson seems determined to almost write it himself, producing quotable line after quotable line. When Mandelson describes himself as a “kindly pussycat” or details how Carole Caplin converted him to green tea back in 1994 and that his “diet chiefly involves me being hungry” he knows that this stuff is too good not to use.

Fraser Nelson

Mandy’s class war avoids the real problems

From our UK edition

I don’t for a minute believe that Mandelson believes this class war nonsense, brilliantly rubbished by Melanie Phillips today. His decision to reprise the “posh unis don’t let in poor kids” theme is a more a sign that even someone as horribly powerful as Mandy feels the need to kowtow to a certain element of the Labour Party. The Sutton Trust is absolutely correct to point to social segregation as being one of the biggest problems in Britain today – but the problem lies with the schools, not the universities. The suggestion that snobbish admissions tutors are somehow to blame does the working class no favours by deflecting attention from the real problem.

Peter Hoskin

Is Brown starting to accept defeat?

From our UK edition

The FT report on how Labour MPs aren't putting themselves forward to be parliamentary private secretaries - or "ministerial bag-carriers", as they're known around Westminster - says a lot about the party's confidence in Gordon Brown.  After all, as one source tells the newspaper: "Why would you bother if you know that there is no chance of becoming a minister in the next government?" But it's this snippet from the FT's analysis which could be more noteworthy: "One Downing Street insider said the prime minister was more relaxed because he now realised that he was certain to lose the next election and was powerless to defy political gravity." Sure, another insider goes on to deny the same in the following sentence.

David Blackburn

To restore confidence, there must be an inquiry into alleged British involvement in torture. 

From our UK edition

Following Alan Johnson’s and David Miliband’s denial of British collusion in torture, Sir John Scarlett, the head of MI6, has inadvertently added a further denial. In a Radio 4 interview, recorded prior to the publication of Johnson’s and Miliband’s joint article, and which will be broadcast this morning, Sir John asserted that there has been "no torture and there is no complicity with torture.” Asked if Britain was ever compromised by its allies’, and particularly the Americans’, “different moral standards”, Scarlett replied: "Our American allies know that we are our own service, that we are here to work for the British interests and the United Kingdom.

Sunday

Fraser Nelson

Can Cameron afford Lansley?

From our UK edition

Is Andrew Lansley using his untouchable status* to bounce David Cameron into a three-year budget settlement? On the Marr sofa (or the Sophie Raworth sofa as it was today), he announced that the Tories are planning "real term increases to the NHS year on year." Well, David Cameron has only said he would protect health from cuts - but he has not specified how long for. It could be as little as one year. In my political column for this week's magazine I recommend Cameron keeps uses this to wriggle out of what is now an unaffordable promise. He should freeze NHS spending for a year, then take a scalpel to it. When Lansley first gaffed about how protecting health cuts would mean 10 percent cuts, there was a key part to this overlooked at the time.

The Spectator

Why Mandelson isn’t deputy PM

From our UK edition

As the country prepares for Peter Mandelson’s week in charge, The Mail on Sunday reports that the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Gus O’Donnell, put the kybosh on him acquiring the title of Deputy Prime Minister. O’Donnell may well have said that it was inappropriate for a peer to be deputy PM but I would have thought that Harriet Harman would also have objected. As the elected deputy leader of the Labour party, I can’t imagine she would have taken kindly to somebody else grabbing the title of deputy PM which Brown had conspicuously failed to offer her. Given all of Brown’s women trouble at the time of the mid-plot reshuffle, I doubt that he could have risked angering Harman.

Saturday

Peter Hoskin

Preparing for a lengthy presence in Afghanistan

From our UK edition

So what do we learn from the Times's interview with David Richards, the man who is set to replace Richard Dannatt as the head of the British Army?  Both a little and a lot.  Most of the piece is made up of nice anecdotes and flatering quotes about the general, and he deflects a lot of the weightier questions with utterly uncontroversial answers - i.e. declining to say whether the army is properly resourced, and adding that "our own tactics must reflect the equipment and troop numbers we have."   But some of his responses are much more eyecatching; as when he claims the "whole process [in Afghanistan] might take as long as 30 to 40 years."  Sure, that's hardly a new contention; but it's important - encouraging, even - that the incoming head of the army is making it.

Daniel Korski

How Cameron should structure his national security team

From our UK edition

Reports that the Tories are thinking about appointing a Minister for Afghanistan raise the broader question of how they should structure their national security team. Though the Tories bang on about their idea of setting up a National Security Council, there has been precious little detail given  of how it would work, how it would be different than the Foreign and Defence Policy Secretariat in the Cabinet Office and who would staff it. The National Security Council should be led by a minister, sitting in either the Commons or the Lords, who would also act as the National Security Adviser to the Prime Minister, supported by a National Security Director, from the ranks of the Civil Service.

Friday

James Forsyth

The West must prepare contingency plans to bomb Iran

From our UK edition

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

From our UK edition

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 

From our UK edition

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

From our UK edition

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

From our UK edition

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

From our UK edition

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 />

From our UK edition

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

From our UK edition

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

From our UK edition

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?

From our UK edition

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

From our UK edition

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?

From our UK edition

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.