Fraser Nelson

Fraser Nelson

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

Saturday

Fraser Nelson

Poll shows Cameron on course for a 78 seat majority

The News of the World has conducted one of its marginal seat polls, in 192 Labour-held constituencies – details here. Taken Wednesday through Friday, it indicates Cameron is on course for a 78-seat majority with a 15-point lead. As is normal when a party is ahead by such a margin, the Tories are credited with better policies across the board. The Tory vote is slightly harder in the marginals – 62 percent say they’re certain to vote, v 56 percent for Labour supporters. But the good news for Brown in that only 36 percent think he should step down and 58 percent think he should carry on. No real alternate leader emerges, which I always attribute to a lack of name recognition. But this is still powerful in keeping a Labour mutiny at bay.

Friday

Fraser Nelson

Removing McBride from the front-line will leave Brown weaker

Damian McBride’s reported departure should be seen as a major part of today’s reshuffles. He has for years been Brown’s real “enforcer”, and - as Martin Bright argued - became a focal point amongst ministers who suspected he was briefing against anyone who defied his master. He was referred to as “McPoison” by none other than Peter Mandelson, so I link Mandy’s return and McBride’s departure - because Mandy knows the real power of spin doctors, would rightly see McBride as one of his major enemies and demand his head as the price of returning to government. Without McBride, Brown’s media operation will take a major hit.

Thursday

Fraser Nelson

So who will succeed Ian Blair?

It’s confirmed: Sir Ian Blair is offski. The world heard it here first at 2.10pm - we pipped Iain Dale to it by about a minute. We ran it as a rumour. The Times and The Sun followed with firmer reports about ten minutes later. See we offer it all here - the best coffee and the hottest gossip. And there’s more. Boris doesn’t have the powers to sack Blair but after today’s Daily Mail splash he applied as much pressure as he could, including threats of what would happen when he took over chairing the MPA, which he will soon. Ian Blair went running to Jacqui Smith for protection, but she told him to forget it. So now the favourites to take over: Sir Hugh Orde, currently Chief Constable at the Police Service of Northern Ireland. He’s ex-Met.

Fraser Nelson

Rumour: Sir Ian Blair to resign today

We’re picking up rumours here at Coffee House that – following the Mail’s splash about the how Sir Ian Blair awarded his mate a £15,000 “contract” to improve his image – the Met commissioner has decided to resign and may do so at 4pm this afternoon. Watch this space.

Fraser Nelson

Cameron must beware factual errors, lest they look like Brownies

Given the fun we have here in Coffee House picking Gordon Brown up on factual errors, it seems only fair to cast our eye over David Cameron’s speech. One can argue his errors are made from ignorance rather than calculation, but errors are errors and have no place in a leader’s speech. It is untrue to say – as Cameron did – “In Afghanistan the number of our troops has almost doubled but the number of helicopters has stayed just the same.” Not only are all the choppers which were there two years ago still there, but they have been joined by an additional unit of Sea Kings with new blades for the hot-and-high that cause the Chinooks problems. In total, the MoD say the number of helicopters in theatre is up 60%.

Wednesday

Fraser Nelson

Cameron’s task

While David Cameron is keeping his head over the credit crunch, Gordon Brown appears to be losing his. If he wants to “save” the Lloyds-HBOS deal he should stay well away from it. The Lloyds shareholders will see no greater sign of alarm than Brown’s endorsement. His blaming of America for the credit crunch looks desperate: if a house of cards collapses, do you blame the gust of wind, or the construction? Cameron is speaking directly to the public here, and his “decade of debt” narrative is one with which the indebted British household will be only too familiar.

Fraser Nelson

Politics | 1 October 2008

The champagne ban was non-negotiable: David Cameron did not want any of his aides drinking bubbly at the Conservative party conference. Not that they needed much telling. The mood was already so sombre that some Tory staffers were decanting cans of beer under the tables of the Hyatt Hotel in Birmingham to avoid bar prices; they were later caught by the manager. What was first intended as a celebration had become a wake, mourning the prosper-ity era which the Conservatives had originally planned for. They must now prepare for an economic war. The Pol Roger was flowing defiantly at The Spectator’s reception on Monday night, but was used mainly to treat shock.

Tuesday

Fraser Nelson

The Tories score at crisis management

When George Osborne went to meet Alistair Darling today, I wondered who had been lulled into whose trap. Both sides would want to be seen as the first actor here, being the first to extend the olive branch and rise above party politics etc etc etc. Yet when Osborne came out of the Treasury he left no doubt whose idea it was. “I am very grateful to Alistair Darling for agreeing to meet me and we had an extremely constructive meeting,” he said. Code: I called the shots here. And thing would be a lot better if I was making a daily trip up the Treasury stairs. The BBC is running on Cameron’s offer of bipartisanship, even repeating uncritically his nonsensical offer that “we cannot allow what happened in America to happen here”.

Fraser Nelson

The limits of bipartisanship

I can understand why George Osborne went back to London to see Darling, but it’s good to hear that he’s coming back to Birmingham tonight. The idea of a national government for an economic war may appeal to Brown in that it delays his meeting an electorate already strapping on its Doc Martens in anticipation of booting him out. But practically it’s a joke - under this Prime Minister anyway. If Brown won’t confide in, let alone share power with, his own Cabinet, what can Cable and Osborne do? Plus I suspect Brown won’t overcome his hatred for Osborne. It would end calamitously.

Fraser Nelson

Events overtake the Tories

At the Spectator party last night there was an unplanned Titanic theme. The world was crashing down and here were we in an set gallery, proffering killer blue cocktails with a string quartet playing as, to borrow Bush's argot, this sucker goes down. David Cameron and George Osborne didn't show - ostensibly because they were too busy, but I suspect because they knew how bad this would look for the sketchwriters. It's a dillema. Do the Tories try to insert themselves into the news story which is shunting them into the inside pages of today's press, as American parties do so successfully? Or would this be seen as cynical? Cameron's speech at 11am will be his attempt. Poor Michael Gove is on now, talking about the single best policy the Tories have. His chances of coverage are almost nil.

Monday

Fraser Nelson

More on Ashcroft

Today on Daily Politics, David Cameron was again asked about Lord Ashcroft’s tax status – is the party vice-president, the guru of the marginal seats campaign, registered to pay tax in this country? As ever, Cameron had no answer – “You’ll have to ask him about his own tax status,” he replied. He knows this reply looks shifty and evasive and the Ashcroft Problem is one which Channel Four Dispatches look at this evening. I’m interviewed as part of it. I say in the documentary that the party owes Ashcroft a great deal. He’s a billionaire who could do anything with his life. For kicks, he goes helps Tories win seats and trounce socialists, and you have to admire that - if you’re not a Labour MP in a marginal seat, that is.

Fraser Nelson

Smiling inside

I’d love to be in No10 right now. Gordon Brown will simply hate George Osborne’s council tax freeze plan – it will look, smell and sound too much like one of his own scams, and he’ll be hurling staplers and barking orders at his men to shoot down this balloon before it takes off. Yet it’s real enough. Just as last year, Osborne has identified a hugely unpopular tax (council tax), decided to freeze rather than cut it in keeping with the spirit. And he’ll pay for this by cutting something even less popular (consultants and Big Brother government advertising). And to top it off, only make the offer to councils who play ball with a Tory government in Whitehall and keep their own tax increases to 2.5%.

Fraser Nelson

Your secret £67,300 second mortgage

The Bradford & Bingley bailout isn’t monopoly money. Americans lose no time translating their $700 billion bailout into a $5,000 per family figure, which I’ve heard Brits quote with a shiver in a kind of “there but for the grace of God go we” way. So just for the record, here are the liabilities run up on behalf of the average British household.

Fraser Nelson

Osborne’s Quango could be used to counter the tax-cutters

Naively, I missed a sixth potential function of Osborne’s new Office for Budget Regulation – to protect David Cameron against Tories who want tax cuts. Here’s the theory, which I heard last night from more than a few people. The OBR is programmed with a static rather than dynamic model of tax collection – ie, it judges a reduction in a marginal tax rate as a net loss to the Exchequer, ignoring the extra industry it would unleash. So it says “no tax cuts, we must pay off debt” and strengthens Cameron’s hand against his own party. If this sounds daft, remember that the Tory party is still in therapy over the issue of tax cuts.

Sunday

Fraser Nelson

Boris on form, Tories borrowing from Obama

More notes on the Tory conference: 1) Boris on Fire. His speech was excellent, pledged not to increase tax, defended the City and pointed out that the Masters of the Universe may be unpopular but there are plenty other parts of the universe they can relocate to if they are over-regulated. He again almost apologised for describing the “broken society” theme as ‘piffle’ saying that he wouldn’t let Labour spin a split on this (Boris’ remark was mentioned frequently in Manchester last week). Boris said no matter if you call it “broken, chipped or mildly fractured” there’s plenty to fix. Cameron (“where’s Dave?” says BoJo from the stage) was chortling away in the audience. 2) Cameron on form.

Fraser Nelson

How Osborne’s new Quango will function

There’s more detail about Osborne’s new Quango, the Office for Budget Regulation. As far as I can make out, it has five functions:- 1) Trashing Brown. The main point of a Never Again commission is to drive home an attack line: Brown Has Done A Very Bad Thing With All That Debt. It helps recast the narrative of the Labour years as one of profligacy, not prudence. Brown reinvented the history of the Major years, and constantly talks about them as being some kind of Long Black Wednesday. It’s important that Cameron starts to frame the economic debate in this way. In the 2005 election, they hardly spoke about the economy – as if cedeing that Brown had done a good job. Finally, the Tories have snapped out of it. 2) Pledge to voters.

Fraser Nelson

Tory conference: first impressions

Waking into the Tory conference centre here in Birmingham cheers you up immensely. I am a fan of wartime and Soviet propaganda posters, and the Tories have mocked up a bunch of them but with capitalist slogans. "Big government = big problems" says one. Then some of Cameron's top phrases, that there is "such a thing as society; it's not the same thing as the state". The only one which struck me as a little too authentic was one saying Social Responsibility (depicted on a balloon) which sounds one of those weird phrases Soviet governments tried to promote to try and make them mean something. Didn't work then, won't now. My favourite of the Tory crop depicts an oppressing hand with "Labour" on it, its thumb squeezing the words "telling people what to do since 1997". Class.

Fraser Nelson

The first of the Tories’ financial reforms

The first of the Tory financial reforms is announced in the News of the World today. There is to be an Office of Budget Responsibility to ensure government doesn’t break certain spending or borrowing limits, as part of a new “Debt Responsibility Mechanism”. As George Osborne says: “We will call time on Gordon Brown's age of financial irresponsibility and put in place an independent system that will allow a referee, if you like, to show a yellow card to a Chancellor and Prime Minister if they are stepping out of line.” This sounds to me like the political equivalent of storing biscuits in a cupboard very high up in the kitchen because you can’t trust yourself not to eat them.

Saturday

Fraser Nelson

Indebted Britain

The debt Gordon Brown has saddled his country with deserves to be a top political as well as financial issue, as The Times powerfully argues in a leader today. Gordon Brown has over the last week been on a mission to airbrush Northern Rock out of the national accounts. He has claimed repeatedly—and mendaciously—that he’s taken debt as a share of GDP from 44% to 37%. The Times in its leader today gets it precisely right. Not only does it use the correct net debt figure – 43.3% in August – but it goes on to lambaste Brown. “This parlous financial position is a direct political legacy. A government of genuine prudence might have put money in the bank at the top of the cycle to pay for the bills at the bottom.

Friday

Fraser Nelson

Why Nigel Lawson was the most redistributive Chancellor of the Exchequer

When I was at the Fabian Society debate last Sunday with Ed Balls, the subject of taxing the rich came up. I warned them they were chasing a false God, that it will result in less tax yield. The rich will have less incentive to earn more, and more incentive to dodge tax. I gave a figure which one of those in the audience later accused me of making up. It’s pivotal to understanding how this country is financed, so here it is… The richest 1% of this country pay 23% of all income tax collected (table here) in 2008-09. The richest 5% pay 42% of the tax. These ratios should warm the heart of the most ardent redistributionist. Brown’s wise refusal to raise the top rate of tax has seen the richest shoulder a greater share of the burden. In 1999-00 these ratios were 21.