Fraser Nelson

Fraser Nelson

Fraser Nelson is a Times columnist and a former editor of The Spectator.

Thursday

Fraser Nelson

Gove’s ‘free schools’ will be able to profit

In all the excitement, I forgot to flag up to Coffee Housers a fact that we dropped in the leader column of today’s magazine. Michael Gove’s new Swedish schools will, it seems, be allowed to make a profit. I said in the editorial that: “Crucially, it now looks likely that the new schools will be able to run for profit — as Anders Hultin, the architect of the Swedish system, argued in this magazine last week. This may come in the form of a ‘management fee’. But if this happens, then Britain’s obsession with the quality of schools could blossom into an education industry.” Hultin’s article was picked up by The Daily Telegraph. Profit, he says, means Britain would have an education industry.

Fraser Nelson

Cameron’s revolutionary speech

This was one of the best speeches I have heard David Cameron give. It may not have been a masterpiece of oratory, he may have read from notes, left too make lulls lulls inspiring only a few standing ovations.  But it was packed with mission, seriousness, vision, principles – and, most of all, a real agenda.   Just as last year’s conference speech laid out a Conservative defence of the free market, this year’s laid out a vision of the conservative society. That is to say: one which hands back power to communities, which trusts people and places huge emphasis on social mobility.   First, he positioned the Conservatives squarely in the fight against poverty – on the explicit grounds that Labour has lost that fight.

Fraser Nelson

The Cameron transcript: Part II

George Osborne has embraced the 50p tax as a central tenet of the “We’re all in this together” theme. CoffeeHousers will be aware of my deep scepticism about this. It is justified on presentational grounds: if you squeeze the rich, and their pips squeak, it will create ‘permission’(to use that Blairite phrase) to do the horrible things like deny pay rises to nurses and social workers. Ergo, presentation and economics are fused together on this issue, he says. Without popular support for the cuts agenda, it cant happen and the deficit won’t be tackled. So the 50p tax should be judged not on its own merits, but on the grounds of its ability to unlock the ability for deeper cuts to be made.

Fraser Nelson

The Cameron transcript: Part I

While were all waiting for the Cameron speech, I thought I’d post some of the out-takes of my interview with him last week (full text here). Many thanks for your suggestions for questions, which were disconcertingly good. When I was a trainee reporter, I went to a coroner’s court and noticed that the jury asked better questions than the lawyer. It’s often like that with CoffeeHouse comments: you guys had all the obvious and oblique angles covered. But I suspect that our little wiki-exercise forewarned Cameron a bit because he seemed to have ready answers. Every journalist leaves an interview thinking what was the top line in that? and if your subject is slick enough, there normally isn’t one.

Fraser Nelson

The radical plans the Tories are keeping under wraps

So what is George Osborne really up to? If Coffee Housers are feeling depressed at the paucity of ambition in his speech (his ‘cuts’ package  would shave just 1% off government spending) then take heart. In the magazine today, James Forsyth lists the far-more-radical changes that are being discussed by the Cameroons – but kept under wraps. The full piece is here, and the main points are…   1)   Corporation tax cuts. No mention was made of a growth agenda in the speech, but there are plans to cut Britain’s company tax rates quite aggressively with Ireland’s 12.5% as a lodestar.

Wednesday

Fraser Nelson

Activists for Dave

I don’t know this lady’s name, but she is a genuine example of an enthused Tory grassroots activist. She was queuing behind me in security and I noticed her bag. “It’s my own kinda Blue Peter job,” she said. What inspired her to make the design? “Because my party was going nowhere for eight years, then David came along and changed that. When your party recovers, and you know your country will, then that’s something to be pleased about.” So pleased she made this handbag. Surely Smythsons should buy the design?

Fraser Nelson

Champagne breakfast

Now, this one you can't blame me for. On my way to breakfast this morning I passed Osborne perched in front of a camera waiting to be interviewed. Then, walking towards him, a waiter in a bow tie, with a tray and two glasses of champagne. It was, I will wager, Her Majesty's Daily Mirror on a stunt, and only two metres from success. Osborne's aides looked stunned: what to do? I was just passing the "waiter" myself at this point, and was tempted to swipe a glass - hair of the dog - but one of his press people had done just that. He was followed by cameramen, all asking "why have you just stolen that champagne?"  But, no fear, the waiter had another glass. A second Osborne aide goes to nick the tray. Undaunted, the "waiter" picks up a glass and heads towards Osborne.

Tuesday

Fraser Nelson

Gotcha!

When David Cameron turned up to The Spectator’s party last night, I thought it only decent to ply him with a glass of fizz. After all, a magazine whose motto is “champagne for the brain” can hardly begrudge champagne for the guests. And what’s the harm, I thought – there were no photographers at the party. Right? Wrong. The picture is now on the front page of the Evening Standard – with yours truly beside Cameron having just plonked it in his hand a few seconds earlier. I promise, it wasn’t a set-up: we thought we’d cleared the place of photographers.

Monday

Fraser Nelson

Tory welfare plan is welcome but does not go far enough

The Tories new welfare plan is, it seems, their old welfare plan – with a more ambitious timeline. It’s to be welcomed, but this is not the step change that you’d expect. In Jan08 Chris Grayling broke new ground when he proposed diagnosing all 2.7m on incapacity benefit for what work they could do (as opposed to the ‘ill’ or ‘sick’ binary distinction). Today, they express an ambition to get this done in three years. Set aside questions as to whetehr you can find enough doctors to do 2,500 “capabilty asssessments” every day – all this means is going a little faster on the original Freud proposal. There is a welcome move towards benefit simplification, but I have to agree with the conclusions of James Purnell on Open Left.

Fraser Nelson

James Forsyth is the new Political Editor of the Spectator

The white smoke lasted all of a few seconds: from the moment I became editor I knew who I wanted to succeed me as political editor. In what few discussions I had about it, the same name was clearly ahead. And reading the comment threads, you guys knew it too. But today it’s official: James Forsyth, whose political analysis you have been following for so long, will be the new political editor of The Spectator. Coffee House is one place where he really does need no introduction. James has done more than anyone else to establish this blog’s reputation for political analysis: writers, like me, follow the template he set. Its an incredible achievement which, if I were him, I’d brag about a lot more than he does.

Fraser Nelson

The Tories in the stocks

Here’s something new for party conference season: real people. About 200 of them. Firemen. Unemployed. And, yes, workers. They are brought to you courtesy of Victoria Derbyshire’s Five Live show, where I am sitting at the back listening to this mass focus group session. It has become (for me, anyway) an unmissable feature of the party conference season – a welcome injection of real life into the all-too-myopic conferences. Cabinet and Shadow Cabinet members turn up knowing that this session will be about all the normal, disinterested person will hear about the conference. Now and again, she asks them to clap or boo depending if they agree or disagree. It’s fast-moving, and very much to the point.   One point has jumped out at me immediately.

Fraser Nelson

Straight talk on Lisbon?

I have just been on a phone-in with Five Live, and heard Greg Clark getting into a fix over Europe. “Are you going to do some straight talking with us tonight?” asked Steven Nolan. Yes, he replied. What will the Tories say if Lisbon is ratified, then? Wriggle wriggle wriggle. “We don’t deal in hypotheticals” Clark said – the worst possible answer in my view. Any question starting in the word “if” is a hypothetical, and politicians answer them all the time. To claim otherwise insults the intelligence of listeners. But what other option did Clark have? I can’t understand why the Cameroons don’t say that there is no point in a post-ratification referendum. Who would they be upsetting?

Fraser Nelson

A festival for the political class

When you get on a train on a Sunday and find First Class is more full than the cheap seats, it can only mean one thing: a political party conference is starting. The Tories starts tomorrow – but still, folk travel up today. Why a Monday start? And why Manchester? The seaside resorts were chosen when party conferences were rallies of the grassroot members, and venues were chosen for their supply of cheap (usually B&B) accommodation. Now, most people who attend are the new breed of political professionals who are not paying their own hotel bills. Lobbyists, quangocrats, NGO advisers, journalists, the whole lot. And they come to meet each other, not really watch what’s going on.

Sunday

Fraser Nelson

Signs of the changing political landscape

So how radical is David Cameron? I  was on a Radio Four panel yesterday for “Beyond Westminster” (now online) where, for once, I was not the only token right-winger. It was presented by Iain Martin and had Bruce Anderson, who wrote this week’s cover piece about Cameron, and Jackie Ashley. I was begging Iain to introduce her as being from “the left-wing Guardian” to repeat the intro that the BBC so often gives the “right-wing” Spectator (“Warning: the views you are about to hear are not from the consensus”). Iain asked me if I thought Cameron had the courage and the character needed to transform Britain. I concluded with words of endorsement that had TGF UKIP choking (on another thread). In spades, I said.

Saturday

Fraser Nelson

Time to start banging on about Europe

It’s not yet official, but everyone is couning on a big “yes” from Ireland – to the tune of about 64% says The Guardian. I say in my News of the World column tomorrow that this is far from a disaster for the Conservatives. It works well for them, in fact: it isn't nerds who want a UK referendum but any fair-minded person who has just witnessed the way Brussels bullies, bribes and cajoles to get its way. Tony Blair was the one who reneged on his promise of a rederendum – something which, in my opinion, should be a criminal act (but, as Stuart Wheeler tested, is not technically breach of contract). And who is to be EU President? Blair himself. It will be dawning on Cameron, fairly soon, why Europe is important.

Friday

Fraser Nelson

Rod on Rod

The Spectator’s role is to inform, entertain and – quite often – infuriate our readers. But does Rod Liddle go too far? One of the many joys of being editor is receiving letters from readers saying that he does. For every one of those, I get four saying he’s a national treasure (which is my firm opinion). Today, in the Evening Standard, we have... Rod on Rod. Or, rather, an interview with Viv Groskop where he discusses his article opening “So - Harriet Harman, then. Would you? I mean after a few beers obviously, not while you were sober.” Rod does regret it a little, he tells her – and Groskop seems to quite enjoy his contrition. My favourite line: “He draws on another fag, wafting the smoke away in a pseudo-gentlemanly way.

Wednesday

Fraser Nelson

Cameron: ‘What you need is thoughtful radicalism’

Lord Mandelson is outside David Cameron’s office when I go in for my interview. Not in person, alas, but boxed in a small television set giving his speech to the Labour party conference, to heckling from those gathered around it. A few days ago, the noble lord had suggested he would serve in a Tory government, and Mr Cameron has already thought of a role. ‘He can chair a truth and reconciliation commission on New Labour,’ he says, laughing. ‘I think that would be a very good opening job. Perhaps when he has done that and atoned for all his past sins, we could find him another.’ If Mr Cameron wins the election, he will have no shortage of very bad jobs to offer.

Tuesday

Fraser Nelson

It’s game over for Labour in Brighton

It feels like an Irish wake here at Labour party conference. People are happy to see each other, but sad at the circumstances of the gathering. I'm blogging this from the reception of Brighton Grand Hotel - the designated conference hotel is always the main venue for getting bladdered, and for nursing a morning hangover. It seems that every third person is a journalist. Ministers, who would once pass journalists aloofly, now stop to say hello. This is how oppositions behave. Talk turns quickly to the post defeat leadership election and the nightmares that await. I featured in a "meet some evil right wingers" freak show fringe meeting, chaired by Polly Toynbee, which was packed in a way it wouldn't have been even last year.

Monday

Fraser Nelson

Either debt goes up, or goes down. It really is that simple.

Last night, I appeared on an hour-long phone in on Five Live listening in amazement as Angela Smith and Barry Gardiner defended Brown. You’d be amazed the lines the Labour MPs are being sent out with: that the shallow media is personality-based, but real people know that Brown did a great job on the economy. Seriously. That Brown’s fiscal decisions have somehow saved us all – rather than bankrupted us all. They are suggesting that the idea of 9% Labour cuts was a Treasury speculation, when it is a hard plan contained in the Budget.

Sunday

Fraser Nelson

Straw: Labour’s choice to take on Nick Griffin

Jack Straw has announced that the BNP edition of Question Time will be aired on 22 October and that he will be Labour's choice to take on Nick Griffin. Great news for the BNP. Labour should have sent a street fighter, not a desk general. Jon Cruddas is far and away the best BNP baiter in the Labour party, touring Dagenham council houses and talking voters out of supporting Griffin's party. Straw has in the past been accused of bending brutish foreign policy to assuage Muslims in his Blackburn constituency, and the closest he gets to BNP fighting is writing pieces for his local newspaper telling Muslims not to wear the veil when visiting him in his constituency office.