Fraser Nelson

Fraser Nelson

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

Monday

Fraser Nelson

Swedish thoughts

I’m now back from my fortnight in Sweden where I kept my word to give up Coffee House for a fortnight. There’s something about the country that makes it a lodestar for left and right, and the reasons why hit you as you travel around. Here are a few of my notes:- 1. At a café in Birkastan (an area of Stockholm, not a breakaway Islamic republic) I bumped into Johan Norberg one of my favourite writers. I urge anyone who hasn’t heard of him to read his small but powerful book In Defence of Global Capitalism. He’s been having some fun at Naomi Klein’s expense recently and his article “The Klein Doctrine” is published by the Cato Institute, where he’s now a senior fellow.

Monday

Fraser Nelson

A holiday farewell, and some thoughts about Coffee House

Many smokers I know say they aren’t addicted, they just choose not to stop. By the same token, I’m seeing if I can give up Coffee House for a fortnight as I take my summer holidays in Sweden. I was asked by a media reporter for the Sunday Herald newspaper last week if I mind when anonymous people attack my pieces online. On the contrary, I replied, it’s why I blog. When James Forsyth got Coffee House going for last year’s May elections, I had no idea I’d end up writing far more as a Coffee House barista than for the magazine. The comments are the pull. There’s something gratifying (and, I admit, addictive) about writing an idea at 2pm and having CoffeeHousers – a strikingly smart, diverse, eloquent and well-informed group of people - comment by 2.

Sunday

Fraser Nelson

Taxing alcopops: the Australian experience 

Taxing alcopops is one of Tory ideas designed to stop youth drinking. “They've done this kind of thing in Germany and Australia and it has had dramatic effects,” George Osborne told Andrew Marr last March. Just how dramatic is now clear, with the evidence now in from Australia. Jacking up pre-mixed drink prices by 70% cut their consumption by 30%, but pushed bottled spirit sales up by 46% as kids mixed their own. And - surprise, surprise - the people pour far more generous measures than they were getting with the Bacardi Breezers. Result: a sharp 10% hike in the amount of alcohol consumed in Australia, the precise opposite of what was planned. But there is some consolation for its government. The extra boozing means some A$600,000 a month extra in duties.

Fraser Nelson

How different things would be if Blair had sacked Brown

As the Blair memo shows us today, the grinning charlatan had the right idea. He stayed too long, and as a result his own popularity was destroyed. But he knew how to fight the Tories. If his “trust schools” idea had not been torn to shreds by Labour rebels (who were directed by Brown), Michael Gove would not have an education policy. If Blair had kept his nerve with welfare reform in 1998, then he would have used the boom years to do what Chris Grayling will do in office – and the Tories would not have a welfare policy. The Blairites knew (after 2001) that the country wants more power in their own hands (over health, education and, yes, tax) not a Great Helsman to lead them into a new direction.

Saturday

Fraser Nelson

‘There is nothing saying Labour will ever win power again’

The choice facing the governing party is between defeat and annihilation, says Fraser Nelson. For now, Labour is mired in ‘division without decision’ as Jack Straw, David Miliband and others wait to see who — if anyone — will wield the knife against Gordon Brown The catalpa trees in New Palace Yard are in bloom, a glorious heatwave has struck London. Yet dark despair is curling through the core of the Labour party. From Cabinet level to the rank and file, there is a hardening awareness that for Gordon Brown to fight the next election would be to court disaster. Yet no one can say with confidence how the Prime Minister might be persuaded to leave. Between the two political realities lies an abyss, into which the Labour party may tumble headlong.

Friday

Fraser Nelson

We’re hurtling over the economic precipice

Like the Road Runner’s Coyote speeding off a cliff, it will take some time before Britain looks down and realises that Brown has led us over an economic precipice. The CPI target of 2% inflation will be a joke – from now until about 2010. We’re likely to hit 5% by Christmas and stay there for a good chunk of next year. It will, quite literally, be the biggest overshoot anywhere in the world now – not just currently, but in the history of inflation targeting outside of Africa. Even the Bank of England is coming to terms with this, so we can forget a rate cut next week. Citibank thinks we’re already in recession and forecasts growth of 0.3% next year and 0.9% in 2010. Yes, you read both of those figures correctly.

Fraser Nelson

Has Brown’s reverse Midas touch upset the British Energy takeover deal?

I, for one, am weeping no tears about the collapse of the British Energy takeover deal. Invesco and Prudential - the institutional shareholders understood to have led the backout - are right to say that if energy prices are likely to be high for the foreseeable future then a greater premium should be attached to the price. They’re especially right to be nervous if the matchmaker was one Gordon Brown, who has a reverse Midas touch when making investment decisions. First came his disastrous foray into asset management, selling the nation’s gold at a fraction of today’s price (actually, it’s worth being specific: he sold our gold for $275 an ounce, against today’s $918). Last year, he sold 450m British Energy shares when the price was 490p.

Thursday

Fraser Nelson

No way back for Miliband

David Miliband has now gone so far he can't go back. But could this be his "botched election" moment? His appearance on the Jeremy Vine show went well, inasmuch as the callers lined up to denounce Brown and he seemed to engage with them well. His defence of Brown was again so weak that it would be read as a provocation. Brown was a good chancellor and has given us values we can go forward with, says Miliband, with a valedictory tone, as if to say, "go now, and go gracefully". Brown must either destroy him, isolate him or yield to him. But Miliband cannot pretend nothing has happened. He has started a war with the most ferocious street fighter in Westminster. He must either finish this fight, or be destroyed. I am told his article was intended to signal "come and get me, Labour party".

Fraser Nelson

Cameron’s secret weapon

Cameron “does” punters very well. When I’ve followed him on the campaign trail, I’ve been struck by how he has a gift whereby he can click with pretty much anyone. For those who didn’t see his interview on Newsnight last night, you can watch it again here. It was arranged by Radio One’s Rajini Vaidyanathan, who has a deadly knack of catching politicians off guard (as Gordon Brown found out). She had assembled what should, for Cameron, have been a troublesome mix of Radio One listeners. A working single mother from Gravesend who wanted to know why she should be discriminated against under the Tories, and thought Cameron as “borderline smug”.

Wednesday

Fraser Nelson

Is Salmond the real threat for Labour?

I just bumped into John Mason, the glorious victor of Glasgow East, nemesis of the once mighty Scottish Labour and trigger of Gordon Brown's leadership woes. He hardly said a word, being shown around with the demeanor of an awe-struck schoolboy who's escaped from the pages of the Beano. I have said before that he was, in my view, the weakest of all the candidates, which just underlines the power of the SNP machine. Scottish Labour remains decapitated, without purpose or direction. Whilst the Scottish Tories are wrapped up in cutting deals with the SNP. Unionist parties in Scotland have never been weaker. Should England care? Yes, and not for any love of the union.

Fraser Nelson

Something a bit dainty about the Miliband technique

David Miliband was always expected to lay out his creed somehow – the surprise is that he has done so now. Here’s my take. Straw’s move last week, with his “calm down, dear” routine, where he persuaded Labour that he was in charge, was intended to show it was him, not Miliband, that worried MPs (and, by the by, Cabinet members) were coming to for help. Miliband is left looking a bit weak – like the sort of man who goes to the pub and orders half a lager (which he does) while Straw is hinting he’d take on Brown. The News of the World headline writers put down “Alpha Male v Half a Lager” on my column last Sunday, which aptly summed up the Straw v Miliband race as I saw it. Miliband has upped the ante today.

Monday

Fraser Nelson

Is the West ready to get tough on Pakistan?

Is the next war more likely to be Pakistan than Iran? It looks more and more like that each day, especially as Barack Obama makes snarling at Pakistan the biggest plank of his foreign policy. Obama was at it again today saying that al-Qaeda and the Taliban “have got safe havens there (in the Pakistani tribal areas) that US troops can’t follow – that’s a huge problem. We’re going to need more troops in Afghanistan, but we’re also going to need more effective co-operation from the Pakistani government in rooting out these safe havens.” As I say in my cover piece of the current magazine, this has the potential to become the perfect storm. Pakistan has a tripartite government (political administration, army and intelligence service).

Fraser Nelson

Which Prime Minister has fared worse than Brown?

Bruce Anderson says if Brown went now he’d be a “strong candidate for the accolade of ‘worst Prime Minister since 1900’” and it’s got me thinking – why just a candidate? Who would compete with him for this title? My take is that in politics (as in life) you play the hand you’re dealt. The Callaghan years were a disaster, but Sunny Jim was dealt a bad hand – and, crucially, was more popular than his party. You can argue that without him Thatcher would have had a far larger majority than she did in 1979. As for Eden – as Iain Martin pointed out yesterday – he did manage to win an election. So he at least had a real success before the spectacular failure of Suez.

Sunday

Fraser Nelson

Might Brown cry off sick?

I wonder what Gordon Brown thought of the Kennedyesque overtones which Obama wanted to put on his European visit. Kennedy is Brown’s hero, of course, and he nicks hugs amounts from his speeches. As Brown paraded Obama in No10’s back yard yesterday for the cameras, waving his arms to show he was imparting his wisdom not vice versa, he will have been praying that a little of Obama’s stardust will have worn off on him. It’s a dangerous tactic for a British Prime Minister, though. In my News of the World column today I reprint a picture of the last time a British Prime Minister tried that: Macmillan with JFK himself in 1961.

Fraser Nelson

The Shadow Cabinet Rich List – Part 2

Here, as promised, is the Shadow Cabinet Rich List published in today’s News of the World – reproduced with kind permission.  You can read my introduction to the list here. 1: Lord Strathclyde: £10m 2: Philip Hammond: £9m 3: George Osborne: £4.3m 4: Jeremy Hunt: £4.1m 5: David Cameron: £3.2m 6: Dominic Grieve: £3.1m 7: Francis Maude: £3m 8: William Hague: £2.2m 9: Alan Duncan: £2.1m 10: Andrew Mitchell: £2m 11: David Willetts: £1.9m 12: Theresa May: £1.7m 13: Oliver Letwin: £1.5m 14: Caroline Spelman: £1.5m 15: Owen Paterson: £1.5m 16: Cheryl Gillan: £1.

Fraser Nelson

The Shadow Cabinet Rich List – Part 1

The Shadow Cabinet Rich List is published today by the News of the World (where yours truly is a columnist). It shows there are 19 millionaires around that table. Conservatives, of course, tend to come from a business background, whereas Labour come from public services. Wealth from previous jobs tends to be stored in the form of property – which has, of course, boomed in the last decade thus augmenting their net worth. And does all this moolah matter? I’d say so. Labour, for example, argue that the Tories can afford to be enthusiasts for cleaning up Commons expenses when they’re all minted.

Saturday

Fraser Nelson

Obama needs a history lesson

Barack Obama should learn a little more history before his next visit – history about America, that is, not Britain. “Our founding institutions were profoundly shaped by the English tradition,” he said outside No10 today. Not quite. It was profoundly shaped by the Scottish Enlightenment (see here for more) – and one of the great ironies of history is that America was moulded along Adam Smith’s lines while Scotland imported the disastrous ideas of the French Enlightenment which continue to dominate discourse today. The "answers" to society, argued Scots such as Smith, Adam Ferguson and Francis Hutcheson, are held by mankind in general - not by any elite purporting to represent "the people".

Friday

Fraser Nelson

And so it begins

Oh, joy. It has all started. I'm in the BBC News studios, reviewing tomorrow's papers - and there is plenty to savour. The Indy says Purnell has cut a deal with David Miliband not to stand. The FT has Jack Straw who is shocked - shocked - to find talk of mutiny. It emerges that "several Cabinet members and senior MPs privately urged Mr Straw to lead a coup against Brown in the autumn" but his "allies" say he loyally told them to "calm down". The object of briefing this story, of course, is to get across the point that Straw is the man to whom people are looking. Take that, Milipede! First mover advantage to Jack the Lad. The Times has a Com Res poll, giving the Tories a 22 per cent lead, and news that Brown has been given two months.

Fraser Nelson

No such thing as a safe seat

 Dunfermline, Crewe, Glasgow East – the phenomenon of safe Labour seats being upended is one that deserves a little more attention. Let’s consider that incredible turnout in Glasgow East – 42% in a seat where 48% turned up for the general. For the first time in decades, a political party (the SNP) campaigned hard there. People knocked on doors. The nationalists raised, and deployed, an army of people and asked Glasgow East voters what they thought, they engaged with them. And it worked.  Remember the BNP’s electoral successes – such as they are – come from exploiting the forgotten people in Labour’s modern-day rotten boroughs.

Fraser Nelson

Schadenfreude but not much else for the Tories

Aside from schadenfreude, there is not much in the Glasgow East result to make David Cameron smile. It reminds us that what is happening nationally is a fury directed at Labour, not Obama style enthusiasm for the Tories. I had initially thought coming third was quite a result for Cameron but went to bed before calculating voting shares. As CoffeeHousers pointed out, Cameron has made no progress in Glasgow East with his 6% voting share unchanged. And that in spite of an excellent candidate. Of course in these by-elections, voters wishing to stir things up pick the nearest stick to beat Labour with. In Dunfermline and West Fife, Brown's home seat, it was the Liberal Democrats not the SNP who trounced Labour and overturned an 11,000 majority.