Fraser Nelson

Fraser Nelson

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

Sunday

Fraser Nelson

Gove: The full story

From our UK edition

So has Michael Gove been caught home flipping? What I heard about the latest revelations, it struck me that he mentioned his home moving in an interview with The Spectator back in September last year. The write-up is here, but in the magazine piece I left out his full explanation behind his house move. Here it is:- We lived full time in Surrey Heath and essentially the basic thing was the amount of time I had to spend with my family was so small and getting smaller that we just had to take a decision.

Fraser Nelson

The Moran doctrine

From our UK edition

How, you might ask, do these MPs with their snouts in the trough justify it to themselves? Margaret Moran, the Luton MP who has claimed for her partner's home in Southampton, gave her rationale to BBC1's Politics Show earlier. MARGARET MORAN: My partner works in Southampton.  He has done for twenty years.  If I’m ever going to see my partner of thirty years, I can’t make him come to Luton all the time. I have to be able to have a proper family life sometimes, which I can’t do unless I have, er, you know, I, I share the costs of the Southampton home with him. ANDREW SINCLAIR: Why should the taxpayer pay for your home in Southampton, when clearly you’re not using it for work?

Saturday

Fraser Nelson

Getting away with everything they can

From our UK edition

So, no Ed Balls in the Sunday Telegraph tomorrow, no Shadow Cabinet. But we do get Sinn Fein (of which, more later) as well as Kitty in the City, aka Kitty Ussher who succeeded Balls as City Minister and is now benefits minister. Anyway, she spent £22,000 of taxpayers’ cash doing up her terraced house in Brixton. A new bathroom costing £1,460, a carpet for £980 and windows costing £5,610. As she explains to the fees office: "The basic situation is that this house was relatively cheap to purchase but requires quite a lot of work." This would be the house she lived in for five years before becoming an MP. "The plumbing in the entire house is strange," she wrote, "There are pipes that are not used. Can we get them removed using the ACA?

Fraser Nelson

Labour down to a record low of 23 percent in one poll, Tories lead by 16 in another

From our UK edition

The bottom has again dropped out of the Labour party. A BPix/Mail on Sunday poll shows its popularity has slumped to its lowest level since polling began in 1943. Its 23 percent, just below the 23.5 percent it polled at Michael Foot's nadir. Meanwhile a YouGov/Sunday Times poll puts Labour down 7 to 27, yielding a 16 point lead to the Tories who are on 43 percent. My personal favourite: a healthy majority, 61 percent, say Brown has “completely lost authority”. And yes we have twelve fun-filled months of this pantomime to go.

Fraser Nelson

Politics | 9 May 2009

From our UK edition

Some secrets are too vulgar to be disclosed by any political party. Gordon Brown’s radical cuts agenda, encoded in the small print of the Budget, is one such secret. The Prime Minister doesn’t want to admit to it, as it contradicts his pious claim that ‘you can’t cut your way out of recession’. David Cameron doesn’t want to call attention to the question of cuts either, as he would be asked where, precisely, the Tory axe would fall. The Liberal Democrats, meanwhile, are against cuts, but also against more debt — a conundrum as yet unresolved. So it suits everyone in Westminster to keep quiet. The pain is scheduled to start in April 2011, to last for three years and utterly to transform British politics.

Friday

Fraser Nelson

Thought for the day | 8 May 2009

From our UK edition

Plato had it right on MPs' expenses. This from The Republic: "We also have to make sure the guardians do not become like sheep dogs that turn into wolves and abuse their power to harm their fellow citizens. Therefore the guardians will have no private property, they will live transparently, they will be provided for out of taxes, and they will live together communally. First, none of them should possess any private property beyond what is wholly necessary.  Second, none of them should have a house or storeroom that isn’t open for all to enter at will.

Thursday

Fraser Nelson

How not to respond to the expenses scandal

From our UK edition

So how damaging is the expenses scandal? Harriet Harman has told Sky that it is all within the rules, and I'm sure that's true. But that's not the point. To the public, this will look like plunder pure and simple. Straw claiming his council tax back, etc. Ministers had best calibrate their response very carefully, and here is an example in how not to respond from Sir Stuart Bell, who sits on the House of Commons Commission: "If this was received by unauthorised means, it is disgraceful that a national newspaper should stoop so low as to buy information which will be in the public domain in July. It undermines the very basis of our democracy and is against all the rules of fair play.

Fraser Nelson

The expenses are in the open

From our UK edition

Blackberies are buzzing all over London: The Telegraph seems to have got its mitts on the story everyone wants. The disc with MPs expenses is out - and finally we see the Cabinet's expenses. My favourite is that Gordon Brown has paid his brother Andrew £6,570 for "cleaning services". Second favourite that Jack Straw claimed twice the amount of council tax that he paid (although, unlike Brown, he actually apologised). Then Hazel Blears spends £5,000 on furniture on her third home in four months. Brown claimed the same plumbing twice. Oh dear. More follows.

Fraser Nelson

The poverty Brownie

From our UK edition

When JK Rowling's gives her endorsement of Gordon Brown in this week's edition of Time magazine, she writes that the Dear Leader’s policies saw 600,000 children “raised out of poverty”. This particular piece of fiction that deserves some exploring, and not just because figures out today show it’s actually 400,000 and falling. This use of language, “raised out of poverty”, is one of the most pernicious Brownies out there – and is largely responsible for the appalling lack of progress made on tackling genuine poverty during the boom. When Brown says “lifted out of poverty?” he means the number of people whose income rises above an arbitrary line - 60% of median income.

Fraser Nelson

Clueless government

From our UK edition

Joanna Lumley was late for her 4pm press conference - she apologised and explained why. 10 Downing Street had just called her and said they "had just heard" that four of the five Gurkhas have had their test cases rejected. She repeated this, with incredulity. "They had just heard. They had just heard. There seems, if I may say so minister, a gap in communications." That's one way of putting it. Another way of putting it is that British government is in utter meltdown, and there be even more stapler-sized holes in the walls of No10 this afternoon. Brown gave assurances on the matter, on the very day the Home Office rejects it - this is what passes for government. It is pure panto. And it would be funny - if these clowns weren't also in charge of the economy. Words fail.

Fraser Nelson

The Gord’s Prayer

From our UK edition

Guido has run a list of what happens when you type "Gordon Brown is" into Google. It suggests a long line of search strings based on what other people have entered. None are printable here - except the second one. "Gordon Brown is my shepherd." Now, you might ask, who on earth is searching for this? Well, it's the start to a poem that was "doing the rounds" (as Damian McBride would say), a kind of Gord's Prayer. Gordon Brown poems are a curious phenomenon, and I am sent them now and again by my News of the World readers: all hilarious, none printable. (One opened "Gordon Brown's from Scotty Town, his government's a farce..." I can leave you to guess the rest). Anyway, here is the rest of the "Shepherd" poem - this one, at least, is printable.

Wednesday

Fraser Nelson

The alarming trends surrounding quantitative easing

From our UK edition

The law of unintended consequences is one that Westminster unfailingly passes, and there are signs that the massive Quantitative Easing programme is making it harder for companies to raise money, because the government is flooding the market with its own IOU notes. The Bank of England today confirmed that less than 1% of the £44.5bn it has printed has gone to buy company loans – it had indicated that as much as a third of the £150bn pool would go to companies. Instead, it is a mechanism to help the government issue the £240bn of gilts it’s issuing this year. Why is this important?

Tuesday

Fraser Nelson

Fiscal collapse

From our UK edition

For all its faults, the European Commission is quite good at polling and economic analysis. And its diagnosis for the UK is even worse than some of the papers write up this morning. For CoffeeHousers who are sitting down, here are a few of its most depressing points. I added the OECD, which includes other developed countries which lack the EU’s problems: Brown has reached his goal, and this (for the left) is not to be sniffed at: state spending will be more than half of UK GDP. But he could not do this by increasing government revenue, as taxpayers would not abide it. So he has used borrowing instead, leaving the UK with a fiscal crisis to resolve. From the Commission’s report: And, yes, this does mean the last time Britain balanced its budget was 2000/01.

Fraser Nelson

The disconnect over Gurkhas

From our UK edition

Watching Joanna Lumley give evidence to the Home Affairs Select Committee (I haven't seen Keith Vaz so excited since he took Shilpa Shetty to Parliament), I suddenly realised what ministers don't understand. Sure, the Gurkhas understood the terms of their employment when they signed up; no agreement has been broken. Sure, they have seen action serving the people of Bosnia and Iraq rather then Britons directly. But what has changed the argument is immigration. In the past ten years it has doubled to the current staggering total of 1,500 a day. If we are to let so many settle here, why shouldn't that include veterans who have fought for our Queen and country? This question just didn't occur to Brown & Co.

Monday

Fraser Nelson

30 years on

From our UK edition

"Where there is discord, may we bring harmony. Where there is error, may we bring truth. Where there is doubt, may we bring faith. And where there is despair, may we bring hope." It was 30 years ago today that The Lady said these words at 10 Downing St. It's not quite the Prayer of St Francis of Assisi - the first line appears to have been a little improvisation. And it is the one most often quoted because it strikes such a contrast with what was to come. They are often quoted because they strike such a contrast with what was to come. She had, in fact, come to turn Britain upside down, and to do so at a frenetic pace. When speaking to the Church of Scotland nine years later, she gave a version a little closer to her gospel. The Old Testament prophets, she said: "...

Fraser Nelson

The tragedies of a wasteful system

From our UK edition

Anyone who wonders how the NHS can almost treble its phenomenal budget while its service grows worse on many measures should read The Guardian this morning for an example. The 2004 GPs’ contract – Stuff Their Mouths With Gold II – meant their pay soared to an average £120,000, but that for just a £6k salary sacrifice they could opt out of those antisocial shifts. A stupidly good offer, which nine out of ten accepted. So, as our GPs hit the golf course, the NHS often has to fly in doctors from overseas to provide cover*. The problem is, if you drag Germans straight off the plane and send them straight to a home visit, mistakes are made. This is how David Gray, a 70-year-old who spent a lifetime of taxes building the NHS, was killed by its shortcomings.

Sunday

Fraser Nelson

Blears weighs in

From our UK edition

Enter the iron chipmunk. Hazel Blears has given it straight to Gordon Brown in the Observer, including the immortal line "YouTube if you want to" - this lady is not for tubing. She's for campaigning, operating on a wavelength broadly approaching that of the British public. This shook up No10 which forced her to put out words of loyalty which (bless her) had all the sincerity of a hostage statement. "I want to make it clear that the Prime Minister has my 100 percent support," etc. So, what's cooking? With Charles Clarke sending a coded message that Ed Balls should quit, and Kate Hooey sounding off, all this can be mistaken for a coordinated attack. But if it were, Hazel would wait until after the June elections and do in in tandem with other higher-ranking rebels.

Fraser Nelson

A Laboured farce

From our UK edition

Disquiet on the Labour backbenches, calls for Brown to go, Harriet Harman calling for "unity" - ie, politician-speak for "I'm game": will Labour stage a mutiny this summer, as they failed to do last summer? Absolutely not. Tories do mutiny, and do it properly. It's House of Cards-style brutality: serious people doing serious violence to each other. With the Tories, it's a lethal drama. In my News of the World column I say what we're likely to get from Labour is a summer pantomime. A tragicomic performance with mad hatter Brown, John Prescott  returning to the stage, chasing girls and raising laughs and David Miliband whipping out another banana. And none of them taking out Brown. We saw last summer that Labour is psychologically incapable of removing a leader.

Saturday

Fraser Nelson

The tragedy of Britain’s life expectancy divide

From our UK edition

The FT Magazine has a great wee cover story on what is, in my view, the no.1 scandal in Britain today: the divergence between life expectancy in rich and poor areas. The author, Hugh Williamson, says: I’ll give him my answer. First, the richest have the best education. There is noting equal about our comprehensive system schools. The richer the area, the better the school. The government does not recognise this massive problem, which is a direct result of giving local education bureaucracies monopoly control over education. The Tory scheme of scholarships – where any indepndent school can set up in the state system and be given £5,000 a kid or even more – is the fastest way to righting this appalling and shameful injustice. Next, welfare.

Friday

Fraser Nelson

Satan, Art Laffer and John Rentoul

From our UK edition

We baristas at CoffeeHouse aim to serve all our customers, so I’m happy that I have made John Rentoul remind himself that he is “left wing really.” And why? Because in my (admittedly grumpy) write-up of Cameron’s press conference yesterday I said that using words like “Laffer” to describe the pernicious effects of high tax rates makes it sound like an obscure argument. JFK was cutting taxes for the rich and arguing that a “rising tide lifts all boats” well before Art Laffer doodled on a cocktail napkin. And it’s an ancient idea, I said, which you can trace back to the book of Deuteronomy if you want.. Uh-oh. My mistake.