Fraser Nelson

Fraser Nelson

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

Monday

Fraser Nelson

Economic inactivity and the recession

Perhaps the two most dangerous words for any Labour politician to say right now are "green shoots". Spend long enough in the economic desert and you can hallucinate, and many of the blips right now - an upturn in some property prices, a slight recovery in sterling - could be taken by anxious politicians as proof that the worst is over. But amidst these are genuine good signs. The banking system finally seems to have been stabilised (at cost, yet uncalculated, to the public purse). The fall of the pound has helped stem the fall in exports: Britain has fared better than may other European countries (the joys of a floating currency). And at a briefing with James Purnell today, I was told about another glimmer of hope: that unemployment is not yet feeding into a rise in economic inactivity.

Sunday

Fraser Nelson

Byrne backs Balls

My, how Balls is rattled. He has made Liam Byrne throw his body in front of the bullets with a statement declaring that he co-chairs those Wednesday afternoon attack meetings. Not that he'd regard them as such. Here are his words, with my thoughts: LB: “The Sunday Times' write-up of the weekly meetings I co-chair with Ed is not only inaccurate, it’s nonsensical and pretty offensive." FN: The many other details the No.10 whistleblower provided are accurate, we presume. And seeing as the nature of these meetings are so contested by No.10, what about releasing a list of attendees and isues discussed to lay the matter at rest?

Fraser Nelson

Balls contra The Truth

Is the trail leading to Ed Balls? It seems that it was more than James and myself who found his "Damian who?" interview on Radio Four outrageously implausible. It was enough to have someone inside No10 tell all to Isabel Oakshott from the Sunday Times. It was Balls, he says, who recruited McBride from the backwater of the customs and VAT division.  And Balls who started using McBride as a personal spin doctor. I say in my News of the World column that Balls would use the Thatcher Room in No10 to chair those political meetings on Wednesday afternoon, which McBride would often attend. The more Balls fakes ignorance of the dirty tricks strategy, the more people inside Labour and No10 will be inclined to tell it how he was the dirty tricks Godfather.

Thursday

Fraser Nelson

Kate Barker responds to the Spectator Inquiry

So - what went wrong with the British housing market? I interviewed Kate Barker, the economist and Monetary Policy Committee member, yesterday as part of The Spectator’s ongoing inquiry into the causes of the recession. Many thanks for your questions. As she is an MPC member, her words can come out at regulated intervals – ie, we have to run it today or not at all. So here are the top half dozen points. A full transcript follows. 1. Inflation targeting is not enough. “It happens that in the early years of inflation targeting, it did produce a stable economy. But I think it’s now clear that it can’t, by itself, produce a stable economy ... Do I think we should have perhaps looked a bit more at some of the money indicators?

Fraser Nelson

The fall of the masters of the political universe

Every financial collapse in the City you can normally be traced back to a testosterone-sodden trading floor where young men believed a little too much in their own hype. Britain is in the unusual position that both our economic and political collapse can be traced to the same gang – the ones that Gordon Brown assembled in the Treasury. In my cover piece for today’s magazine, I detail the damage they did: to our economy and to the Labour Party. At the heart of McBride’s fall was the hubris, the risk-taking. Imagine being so stupid as to put all those vile smears in an email sent from 10 Downing Street computer. But the risks the Brown-Balls-Whelan-McBride team took with the British economy were no less great. And far more significant.

Wednesday

Fraser Nelson

A load of Balls

Let's rewind back to this morning, and Ed Balls' appearance on the Today progamme.  It was such a classic demonstration of distortion and buck-passing, that we've decided to give it a fisk, Coffee House style.  Here's the transcript, with our thoughts added in italics: James Naughtie: Talking about bad behaviour, there’s been a bit of it going on in government, hasn’t there? Ed Balls: Well, I’ve, um, seen the reports in the Sunday Times on Sunday and I think those emails were vile, horrible, despicable. I think there’s no place in politics for that kind of stuff. I think it’s awful. Fraser Nelson: Balls is shocked, shocked to find it going on. JN: You must feel this quite, er, personally.

Fraser Nelson

Any questions for Kate Barker?

I'm interviewing Kate Barker at 4pm this afternoon as part of The Spectator's ongoing inquiry into the causes of the recession. She is a member of the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee, so she has to regulate what she can say and when she says it. But she's kindly agreed to be interviewed today, and we aim to publish what she says tomorrow. I hear great things about her - which makes it all the more puzzling that her 2004 review on housing concluded that supply had to be vastly increased to meet the demand. In London, sure, but in depopulating towns like Blackpool? Didn't she think there was an asset boom in place? I'd be amazed if the thought didn't cross her mind - but it wasn't anywhere in that review. Has she changed her mind in retrospect?

Fraser Nelson

Special advisers do good work too

The McBride affair may have a dangerous side-effect – and that is blackening the name of special advisers. I am in the minority position of wanting to see more of them in Whitehall, and here’s why. McBride’s problem was his behaviour, not his status. The current suggestion that the real problem is his SpAd status – and not the instructions from dhis master - is a clever piece of self-exculpatory spin from Brown. We should not fall for it. And it’s also an insult to the many other SpAds who do good, honest work. I imagine many CoffeeHousers baulked at that last bit – but “good, honest spad” is not a contradiction in terms.

Fraser Nelson

The McBride affair is a portent of the coming struggle for Labour’s soul

One can only imagine what went through Alistair Darling’s mind last weekend, as the scale of the McBride affair became evident. In his Budget next Wednesday, the Chancellor faces a political mission which was already next to impossible before the email story broke. Now his task has become downright laughable in its scale. To produce a budget with the economy in freefall is hard enough. But to do so with the government disintegrating all around you is scarcely worth attempting. In theory, Damian McBride’s resignation was simply the departure of a spin doctor, already relegated to a ‘back-room’ role. But nobody with the slightest knowledge of the Brown court believes that for a second. This is a moment of deadly, perhaps terminal, peril for the Labour government.

Tuesday

Fraser Nelson

Watson denies knowledge of the smear emails

Well the "statement" is in - not so much from Tom Watson as from his lawyers, Carter-Ruck, who are complaining about Iain Dale's article in the Mail on Sunday which claimed that Watson was copied into those emails. Here is the statement: "We have today been instructed by government minister Tom Watson, MP for West Bromwich, in connection with allegations concerning him and the emails exchanged between Damian McBride and Derek Draper relating to a proposed website entitled 'Red Rag'. We have today written to the editors of the Mail on Sunday and the Daily Mail to complain about the publication of the false allegation that our client had knowledge of, and participated in, Mr McBride's actions.

Fraser Nelson

BREAKING: Tom Watson to make a “personal statement”

I hear Tom Watson is about to make a "personal statement" which should clear up how much he knew about Red Rag and Damiangate. Last time I looked, Guido didn't have any crosshairs trained on him - but we'll see.  UPDATE: He isn't going to resign, I'm told. But expect a statement tonight.

Sunday

Fraser Nelson

Has the damage limitation worked?

So, has the spin operation worked? McBride's quick depature had three objectives. 1. Close down the story. This seems to have worked: today's news doesn't have many more developments. If tomorrow's papers have nothing new, then Damiangate may not last until Wednesday. This would be, in the circumstances, the best possible outcome for Brown as there is a far more dangerous aspect to this story as yet unwritten: how the tactics exposed by McBride's emails (ie, character assassination) were the weapon used by Team Brown to take out his potential rivals for No.10. This time, the Tories were the target - but similar tactics were used to destabilise a long line of former (and some serving) Cabinet members. 2. Position McBride for quick return.

Saturday

Fraser Nelson

McBride: Blame Guido, not me

McBride's resignation statement is in, and true to character he has decided not to skulk off home apologetically. It was all the wicked Guido, he says. 'All I was doing was having a bit of a laugh with my mate Derek. As an upstanding member of the community, I am morally sickened that the wretched Guido has publicised these malicious rumours about the nice Mr Cameron...’ In fact, my paraphrasing doesn't do justice to his real words. Here they are:- “I am shocked and appalled that, however they were obtained, these emails have been put into the public domain by Paul Staines.

Fraser Nelson

The smears that backfired

So what was Damian McBride planning in those emails? I can give you a glimpse of what the News of the World* has tomorrow - it's an outline of the various dirty tricks discussed by McBride and Derek Draper, and it was far more developed than what has so far been claimed. The smears - and they are just that or, as the NOTW calls them, "false malicious stories" - include: 1) That David Cameron has some embarrassing illness. 2) A smear about Frances Osborne, wife of the shadow Chancellor 3) That a certain Tory MP used his position to get publicity for a lover’s business 4) That Cameron has been accommodating Osama bin Laden in his basement. Okay, I made the last one up. But the first three are genuine - that is, genuine figments of McBride's imagination.

Fraser Nelson

McBride quits

So, it's happened. The News of the World has confirmed that Damian McBride has quit - and I understand that it will tomorrow publish the emails at the centre of the storm. The logic for the resignation is clear. McBride broke two cardinal rules for spin doctors: 1) Never become the story, and 2) Never, ever screw up during a bank holiday because the story just mushrooms - there's nothing else to fill the news pages*. Damiangate had, through the course of today, taken on its own, awesome momentum. The options for No10 were clear: if McBride stayed, then tomorrow's newspapers (and Monday's, and Tuesday's) would be choc full of grim stories about black arts, smear tactics, hit men - a real diet of super-ugly news.

Fraser Nelson

What McBride tells us about Brown

I woke up to a text message this morning from a friend in Whitehall. “I see Mc**** is in the doodoo”. An expletive preceded by “Mc” can only refer to one person – and indeed, as James and Pete have blogged, Damian McBride is back in the news with his redoubtable emails. I said a couple of years ago that McBride should be banned from electronic communication. Email is as proving as good for McBride’s career as it was for Oliver North’s. Here are two other things that strike me about the affair. 1. Brown’s Black Arts Strategy. His skill lies is attack, not persuasion. He bullied and plotted his way into No10. No one outside Fife has ever cast a vote for him: he has become PM by destroying potential rivals.

Fraser Nelson

Politics | 11 April 2009

The old wartime poster ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ has been reprinted recently and is turning up in the strangest places around Westminster. I have seen it on an MP’s desk and emblazoned on the cufflinks of a Treasury civil servant. It certainly captures the sense that we are undergoing an economic blitz, and acknowledges implicitly the temptation to panic. But at a time when Cabinet members are describing International Monetary Fund bailouts — quite extraordinarily — as ‘a kind of spa’, the case for keeping calm looks increasingly flimsy. The main question at the heart of the Budget on 22 April is not who will receive what, but how close the nation is to bankruptcy.

Thursday

Fraser Nelson

Barclays’ latest big deal leaves a bad taste in the mouth

What's the difference between a banker and a pizza? A pizza can feed a family of four. So ran one of Vince Cable's jokes when he presented the British Press Awards last week - but there is a crucial flaw. He reckoned without the financiers running an exchange-traded business fund named iShares. It is a subsidiary of Barclays and is 4.5% owned by senior Barclays staff. It has today been sold to CVC Capital, a private equity firm for $4.4bn - most of this money borrowed from, erm, Barclays (no difficulty finding credit there!). Result: payday for the lucky few with equity in iShares - about £1.6 million each - and £10 million for Bob Diamond, president of Barclays (who made £21m in 2007). All this leaves a rather bad taste in my mouth.

Fraser Nelson

The truth about conservatives and laissez-faire

Was it remarkable that George Osborne rejected laissez-faire economics in his speech yesterday? A CoffeeHouser, Marcus Cotswell, asks why I didn't pick up on it in my summary yesterday. It is a very good point, and perhaps one worth addressing in a post rather than a comment. The Tories have never, ever believed in laissez-faire - this was a Liberal policy, a product of late Victorian politics. But the phrase is now said to caricature and attack the right (like "trickle-down economics" and "Washington consensus" etc). As Adam Smith observed, businessmen tend to collude with each other - you need laws and regulations to stop them. It's a basic tenet of functioning capitalism. And as for Conservatism? This is one of Thatcher's favourite topics, so I'll yield the floor to the Lady.

Wednesday

Fraser Nelson

Osborne stands up for capitalism

So, whither Tory economic policy? It was George Osborne's turn to discuss it today, and, overall, it’s very good news. The shadow chancellor's speech appears to be a rejection of Brownite rules-based economics. Inflation targeting was not enough to prevent the crash, and Osborne appears to say he’d empower the Bank of England governor to take a free view to regulating the City. But, as with a lot of Tory speeches at the moment, the desire to devolve power clashes with the desire to tinker. So Osborne proposes greater freedom of regulatory powers, but he’d like the banks to be smaller. Anyway, his full speech is here. My ten-point take below: 1) SMALL BANKS The headline proposal is Osborne saying he wants small banks. I’m sceptical: Canada had large banks.