Uk politics

Friday

Andrew Webster

Whom do you trust more?

From our UK edition

So, a ComRes poll for the Daily Politics has Cameron leading Brown on the issue of which party leader would be more honest about spending cuts. It echoes a poll that we conducted a few days ago; the results of which we figured we’d share with CoffeeHousers, before our work experience at the Speccie comes to an end. Basically, we hit the streets of London (avoiding Westminster and all the party hacks), and asked around 350 people: “Who do you trust more, Gordon Brown or David Cameron?” Sure, it may not be as scientific as a YouGov or ComRes poll, but the results are still striking. Cameron polled a comfortable 62.5 percent, while Brown only managed a lacklustre 37.5 percent. A massive victory for Dave, then? Well, yes – in one respect.

Peter Hoskin

The extent of Johnson’s loyalty?

From our UK edition

Kevin Maguire's Commons Confidential column in the latest New Statesman contains this intriguing little snippet: "Home Secretary Alan Johnson was a picture of innocence during the plot to oust Brown and replace him with a former postie with the initials A J. Not so his entourage. It has come to the attention of No 10 that one of his team offered a job in Downing Street to a hackette." After his article for the Indy earlier this week - and his fizzy performance in Manchester yesterday (covered by John Rentoul as part of his AJ4PM series) - you suspect Johnson is being a little more active than the Dear Leader would like.

Daniel Korski

The Lib Dems threaten to go AWOL 

From our UK edition

Though Nick Clegg has greater pre-existing international experience than either David Cameron or Gordon Brown (having worked in Brussels), he cannot help but see international affairs through a narrow political lens. Last year it was Israel's targetting of Hamas, now it is Nato's Afghan mission. Clegg wants the British troop contribution to ISAF either massively expanded or for the boys to come home. Simple enough. But it is also a sign that the Lib Dems, despite having such foreign policy luminaries like Ming Campbell on their benches, lack depth. It would be great for the number of British troop in Helmand to be expanded. But with almost 9000 troops already deployed, any uplift is likely to be limited.

Peter Hoskin

Lansley takes one step forward and two steps back on spending

From our UK edition

Although Andrew Lansley's "10 percent" gaffe may have worked out alright in the end, I can't help but think he's pushing his luck with his latest comments: Andrew Lansley has called on the Government to come clean about their spending plans after it was revealed that the NHS has been asked to plan for efficiency savings of £15-20 billion against its 2010-11 budget. The Department of Health has refused to confirm whether these savings will be available for reinvestment in the NHS - if they are not, it will equate to a real terms annual cut to the NHS budget of 2.3 per cent. Andrew, the Shadow Health Secretary, said, “NHS staff and patients have an urgent need to know whether Labour will match the Conservative commitment to real terms increases in NHS spending after 2011.

Peter Hoskin

No change on the Coulson front

From our UK edition

After the news that there won't be a new police investigation last night, the second thing the Tories feared most hasn't happened either: neither the Guardian nor any other outlet has anything to further implicate Andy Coulson in the phone-hacking scandal this morning.  Indeed, the Guardian's main story concerns how a private investigator working for the NotW collected phone messages from Sir Alex Ferguson and Alan Shearer, among others.  That deepens the media controversy, but hardly fuels the political controversy which was trying to burst into flames yesterday. I should stress - as I did in a comment yesterday - that I think phone-hacking is a disgraceful practice.

Thursday

James Forsyth

The old gray lady on Cameron

From our UK edition

Christopher Caldwell’s New York Times Magazine profile of David Cameron has finally been published; Caldwell first interviewed Cameron for it last year. I expect the Tories will see it as an important non-electoral milestone for them, a sign that the American establishment expects Cameron to be the next Prime Minister. The piece is, as you would expect with a Caldwell article, well written and, as it is written for an audience that knows little about Cameron, offers a good overview of the project. Caldwell proposes that there are two types of modernizers. “There are really two strands of modernizers in the Tory party. There are the green-friendly, diversity-oriented, welfare-state-defending ones — the ones who simply want to move the party to the left.

Peter Hoskin

Labour prime their anti-Coulson strategy

From our UK edition

Some useful insights from PR Week's David Singleton, who reveals that Labour are planning a concerted effort to paint Andy Coulson as a "sleazeball" ahead of - and perhaps during - the next election campaign.  Here's a snippet: "One senior Labour source in regular contact with Gordon Brown's inner circle told PRWeek: ‘Cameron wants to present himself as the man who's going to clean up politics. That's going to be difficult if the public think his right-hand man is a complete sleazeball.'   Another Labour insider said that senior party figures had been thrashing out a strategy to target Coulson since the news emerged yesterday. The source said the aim was have Coulson ‘wounded, but still there'.

Peter Hoskin

There could be a pay freeze, after all

From our UK edition

Over at the FT's Westminster blog, Jim Pickard picks up on an important comment from Stephen Timms, the Treasury minister, speaking at a committee meeting this morning.  Timms suggests that Treasury hasn't ruled out a public sector pay freeze, as recommended by the Audit Commission's Steve Bundred.  Here are the minister's words:   “It’s certain the case that our pay policy needs to reflect the wider economic circumstances ... we will be deciding on pay policy over the next few weeks, the policy has got to be fair to people who work in the public sector just as we have to be fair to everybody else. The suggestion by Steve Bundred has made is certainly one we will reflect on but the details on that will be made over the next few weeks.

Lloyd Evans

Cutting through the jargon

From our UK edition

There was a wonderful outbreak of wit and erudition at Parliament this morning. The sketch-writers Simon Hoggart and Matthew Parris appeared before the Public Administration Select Committee to discuss the perils of political jargon. Simon Hoggart kicked off by imagining Churchill’s war-time speeches re-written by a local government wonk. ‘We will fight on the beaches’ turned into ‘an ongoing programme of hostile engagement in littoral sectors.’ The committee chairman, Tony Wright, wondered if his anxiety about jargon was misplaced. ‘Does this drivel matter or does it just irritate us?’ Matthew Parris pointed out that jargon is attractive because it confers an aura of learning and makes idiot politicians sound like world experts.

Peter Hoskin

A headache for Cameron and Coulson

From our UK edition

So David Cameron has said that Andy Coulson's job isn't endangered by the News of the World wire-tapping allegations in this morning's Guardian, and you can see where the Tory leader is coming from.  After all, there are very few - if any - new revelations about Coulson in the Guardian piece.  We already knew that the Tory communications chief resigned the editorship of the NotW after a phone-hacking scandal involving the royal editor Clive Goodman.  And we already knew that he claimed no knowledge of the hacking but, as editor, he took responsibility for it.  No evidence has yet emerged that Coulson was more implicated than he's letting on.

Wednesday

Anjli-Shah

The consequences of Johnson’s cowardice

From our UK edition

There was great excitement here in Old Queen Street when Lord Carlile, the Government’s own adviser on anti-terror law, announced that Alan Johnson can and should help poor Gary McKinnon. McKinnon is the computer nerd who hacked into the Pentagon looking for evidence of UFOs, but who is soon to be extradited and tried as a terrorist in America. Lord Carlile – not usually a dovish man – thinks a great injustice is being done (Mckinnon might get 70 years in a ‘supermax’ prison) and has said that the Home Secretary should prevent it. So we called the Home Office to find out when Alan Johnson was planning to act. “The Home Secretary can do nothing. This is a matter for the judicial review,” said his spokesman. So why does Lord Carlile think he can?

Andrew Lilico and Helen Thomas

Rules versus discretion

From our UK edition

Today's White Paper on financial regulation avoids introducing some unnecessary regulatory changes at the expense of failing to introduce some necessary ones.  In particular, it fails to recognise the abject failure of Gordon Brown's "tripartite" framework, in which prudential supervision of the banks was taken from the Bank of England and given to the FSA. Prudential supervision is the proper task of the central bank, for only if it has oversight of banks can the central bank decide whether they should receive last resort lending when they need it.  Without prudential oversight, the Northern Rock debacle is the likely result, and the fact that we are still debating this the best part of two years into the credit crunch is a sorry indictment of UK policymaking in this period.

Fraser Nelson

Harman’s debt calculator is broken

From our UK edition

I know Harriet Harman is not supposed to be taken seriously, so I’m prepared to believe that she just struggles with numbers and didn’t knowingly mislead MPs today. But it’s worth correcting the record on one crucial point. “We have paid down debt,” she says. Actually, if you take the last Budget into account – it ranges to 2013/14 – decisions taken by her government will have increased national debt by more than every government since the Norman Conquest. Put together. If this is her definition of paying down debt, I’d hate to see her overdraft. Don’t they teach them anything in St Paul’s?

James Forsyth

The benefit of the Lords

From our UK edition

I disagree with Helena Kennedy on a whole host of issues, but her speech last night in the Lords debate on assisted suicide was fantastic. Here’s the opening section of it: “Although I am a great believer in individual liberty and in the autonomy of the individual, I also believe strongly in the symbolic nature of law. The laws of a nation say a great deal about who we are and what we value. One of the ways in which cultural shifts take place in a society is by changing law. Many of us who have argued that changes in attitude follow changes in law did so particularly around issues of discrimination. We made arguments for changes in the law on racism and other discrimination such as gender, sexuality and disability.

Lloyd Evans

The Hattie show

From our UK edition

I’d be tempted to call it listless. But everyone was reading from lists. At today’s rather sleepy PMQs I counted six MPs who recorded their sympathy for those affected by the recent tragedies in Afghanistan and Camberwell. The Speaker needs to act or these sessions will turn into Prime Minister’s Condolences. Gordon Brown’s in Italy, saving the world, so Harriet Harman took his place and gave her much-loved impersonation of a rather tetchy duchess supervising the kitchen while Cook recovers from hives. William Hague, unsurprisingly, took her to task on the government’s investment plans and invited her to ‘translate into plain English’ the Prime Minister’s claim that spending in 2013 would rise by ‘zero percent’.

James Forsyth

The Tories must be prepared to launch a reverse march through the institutions

From our UK edition

Sir Hugh Orde, the new president of ACPO, has predictably come out against elected police chiefs. Andrew Sparrow  has the key extract from his speech: “If people seriously think some form of elected individual is better placed to oversee policing than the current structure, then I am very interested in the detail of how that is going to work – and happy to have that debate. Every professional bone in my body tells me it is a bad idea that could drive a coach and horses through the current model of accountability and add nothing but confusion.

Peter Hoskin

PMQs live blog | 8 July 2009

From our UK edition

Brown's away at the G8, so it's a Harman-Hague-Cable match at PMQs today. Stay tuned for live coverage from 1200. 1202: Here we go.  Harman leads with condolences for the servicemen killed in Afghanistan over the past week.  She adds condolences to those killed in the fire in Camberwell.  The first question comes from Malcolm Wicks: would Harman agree that "we need to develop a robust social policy" which deals with the costs of an ageing population.  Harman: "We'll bring forward a Green Paper which makes sure there is choice in the provision of services ... and affordability." 1205: Stephen Dorrell stick to the same issue, asking why the Government hasn't achieved much on "long-term care.

Sam Brown

Could you stick with Gordon for 3 more years?

From our UK edition

Brace yourselves.  According to some great research by David Herdson at Political Betting, Gordon Brown could refrain from holding a general election until 2013.  The loopholes by which he could manage it are a bit arcane and convoluted – so I’d suggest you read Herdson’s post in full – but this snippet gives the idea: “The only statutory requirement to move writs for a general election is under the Meeting of Parliament Act 1694, which allows no less than three years between the dissolution and the writs being issued. In other words, technically, the election doesn’t have to be held until June 2013.

Peter Hoskin

When the cat’s away…

From our UK edition

Hm.  Seems like Alan Johnson has chosen the day that Gordon's away in Italy to write another comment piece on voting reform.  Like his article for the Times a few months ago, it pushes the AV+ version of proportional representation.  And, like his Times article, it goes out of its way to mention Brown ("I work for a leader who accepts the need for ... renewal"), but it still comes across as an attempt to grab the leadership limelight.  After all, why should the Home Secretary be reiterating points he's made before about voing reform?  Why isn't he leaving this attention-grabbing stuff for his leader who "accepts the need for renewal"?  And why now?