Fraser Nelson

Fraser Nelson

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

Monday

Fraser Nelson

Will NATO split over cluster bombs?

NATO is under attack from so many forces (mainly the EU wanting a common defence policy) that it’s hard to work out what will eventually break up the alliance. But the cluster bomb conference in Dublin that starts today may be the one. No one likes cluster bombs, and we’d all like to live in a world without them. But there is a difference between smart bombs and “dumb” bombs – a difference observed by the MoD, which wants to keep using its smart munitions like the M73 and M83 which self-destruct if they don’t detonate. The Foreign Office disagrees and we’re having what Lord Malloch Brown calls an “internal discussion” – i.e. a Prime Minister who can’t decide.

Sunday

Fraser Nelson

What all MPs should read before voting on the abortion time limit

I was reviewing the papers on the Marr sofa earlier with Jane Moore, one of my favourite columnists. Next week’s abortion vote came up, and she said she is pro-choice - but was persuaded of the need to reduce the time limit from 24 weeks to 20 weeks by a letter she received from a nurse involved in the procedure. Its contents, she told Marr, were unsuitable to be discussed on air. She later told me what it was – a description of how at 24 weeks the child is often strong enough to be alive – and then must be left to die on the side of an NHS sink until breathing his, or her, last. Jane wrote about this in a column for The Sun on 23 March 2005 and I can see why it changed her mind. It's not online, but here's an edited version.

Saturday

Fraser Nelson

A by-election poll boost for the Tories

Oh dear. Rather than buy votes, Gordon Brown's £2.7bn unfunded tax cut has doubled the Tory lead in Crewe & Nantwich according to an ICM poll of the constituency for the News of the World tomorrow. Tories on 45% against Labour's 37%, suggesting a Tory majority of about 1,000 - and a 12% swing. The under-35s have turned against Brown the harshest, with 56% of them saying they will vote Tory. Some 24% say the tax bribe has made them more likely to vote against Labour and just 4% say they are more likely to vote Labour as a result. As a general rule, 4% is about the share of a Western country believing that Elvis is still alive. Brown has taxed us so much that a £250 rebate (at most) would never be that welcomed.

Fraser Nelson

Meet James Purnell: the best hope Labour has of avoiding disaster

Fraser Nelson says that the 38-year-old Work and Pensions Secretary is the best candidate to succeed Gordon Brown. Already surging ahead at his department, he has the gift of sounding like an ordinary human being — and he understands the Cameron Conservative party These days, it is scarcely possible to talk politics with a member of the government for more than ten minutes — if that — without The Question cropping up. Gordon Brown is doomed, runs the premise: he has hit rock bottom and carried on drilling. This cannot be allowed to go on. So what to do? Who is the successor? The job description is easy: someone hungry for power, undaunted by the odds, someone who could reassemble the New Labour electoral coalition. Finding the candidate is not so straightforward.

Friday

Fraser Nelson

Brown’s sermon on The Mound

Do you give in yet? Because Gordon Brown still isn't through. Another speech tomorrow, to the General Assembly on the Church of Scotland at The Mound in Edinburgh. Pointedly, it's the 20th anniversary of Thatcher's speech there - allowing Brown to contrast his mission with her wickedness. We can expect a pious regurgitation of his goals. Shame the means he chooses are inimical to those goals. Most of all, we can expect a dusting down of Brown's Son of a Preacher Man credentials. Brown has only two oratorical styles: the pulpit sermon, inspired by his clergyman father, and the statistical, rapid-fire, speak-your-weight machine. I, for one, will listen. Brown is sincere in his beliefs, as most lefties are.

Thursday

Fraser Nelson

Exam meltdown?

Could the first major league disaster of the summer be about to break? There are rumblings about problems with the computer system marking exams. It’s to do with ETS, an American company that won the contract to run English SAT exams. The BBC has the first sniff of this – a fairly innocent problem of not being able to log on to the registration system to see which papers they should have. But postings on the Times Educational Supplement website complain of far worse – “major organisational problems”. There are rumours of a collapse in the “standardisation system”, which ensures markers use the same criteria in the Key Stage 3 tests. That the system which re-assesses borderline failure has also crashed.

Fraser Nelson

Celebrity matters

We have just seen Naomi Campbell coming out of No10 – her appointment was with Mrs Brown, apparently, but she bumped into Gordon while he was there. So where does that take us in the celebrity stakes? Well, Shakira, Clooney, Beckham and Kylie have all met with our Dear Leader. This quote sprang to mind: “I think we’re moving from this period when, if you like, celebrity matters, when people have become famous for being famous. I think you can see that in other countries too. People are moving away from that to what lies behind the character and personality.” This was ahead of the publication of his book on courage. One wonders what his post-No10 biography would be called.

Wednesday

Fraser Nelson

Brown hits the airwaves

If you've had enough of Brown, stay away from television or radio tomorrow morning. No10 has been hawking him to every outlet from hospital radio upwards, and, if that's not enough, a press conference is being organised. This is the Blair run-into-fire strategy, but I suspect it won't work for Brown because the more he talks, the worse it gets for him. I don't mean that as an insult, but a serious observation. Cameron's aides take huge comfort from figures suggesting the more their man is on TV the better their ratings, while the reverse is true for Brown. This is regarded as a key factor in the Tory general election campaign: that Brown won't be able to avoid the microphone, his worst enemy. No10 evidently believe more exposure is good.

Fraser Nelson

Is this how to help low-income earners?

As if proof were needed that this government has lost its grip, the centrepiece of today's Not The Queen's Speech is a plan to lure thousands of low-paid workers into state-sponsored negative equity. The government expects the housing market to crash by up to 10%, as we know from Caroline Flint. Yet today, Brown sets aside £200m to buy unsold houses, at the top of the market. And £100m to lure first time buyers into this crashing market with a shared equity scheme - or shared negative equity, as it will be. Only open to the lowest earners, i.e .those who can least afford negative equity. From the man who sold gold at the bottom, a scheme to gave the poor buy houses at the top. You couldn't make it up. The Tories should take this idea apart.

Fraser Nelson

Can Purnell rescue Labour?

Can anyone take Labour out of this mess? I have previously dismissed the younger leaders on the grounds that they’d wait for Labour to lose, then try and get back. But with Brown’s ability to hit rock bottom and start drilling, they may be ushered forward anyway. There is never a right time, the best leaders are often decanted too early. David Cameron has grown into his job. So, too, could someone for Labour. And in tomorrow’s Spectator, we choose one: James Purnell. I can just feel the CoffeeHouser comments coming on now: he’s a spiv, more FHM than PM, A Stepford clone, a perfect example of Peter Oborne’s identikit political class.

Fraser Nelson

Brown survives PMQs | 14 May 2008

Last week, I said that Cameron should embark on a “save the Brown” exercise and be dull in PMQs, so as to cast the Prime Minister a lifeline. Perhaps he agrees. He was quite flat today, and Brown quite defiant. As always, I measure them against their usual standards – but this was not the scene of a Brown meltdown... Brown started on Burma, which – if you ask me – he should have stuck to non-stop in the last few days. “I have asked Ban Ki Moon to hold an emergency summit such as Kofi Annan held. I have asked him – and I believe he is considering this – to go there himself.” So if he does go, or if there is a summit, it can be hailed a huge diplomatic triumph for Broon! Oh dear.

Tuesday

Fraser Nelson

Darling gets Snowed under

If you missed Jon Snow monstering Alistair Darling, watch here—absolutely brilliant: and totemic. When even Mr Snow isn't buying, then Darling has been truly rumbled. Darling's answers were all nonsense, but here are the top Snow questions. 1) Just eight weeks since your last budget, what has changed in the economy to warrant this extraordinary tax shift? Deteriorating economic conditions, says Darling 2) "Suggests a cascade of events that is almost out of control" says Snow. Waffle in response. 3) "This is a political decision: it is about politics not economics. When I spoke to he PM three weeks ago, he couldn't engage with the idea that there was a problem with the 10p," says Snow. We can afford to do it this year, says Darling. [Eh?

Fraser Nelson

The start of scorched-earth policy?

So, does this make Crewe the most expensive by-election in British history? It will cost £2.7 billion for Darling's move to try win back votes lost from his 10p tax debacle - but the money isn't there. So what does he do? Blithely slaps it on the national deficit. Now and again, Labour bangs on about a "black hole" in Tory proposals of one or two billion. And yet they jack up the national debt in this way without so much as blinking. I suppose the more Brown thinks Labour will lose the next election, the more minded he will be to vandalise the public finances. This may be the start of a scorched-earth policy. We'll be watching.

Fraser Nelson

The high cost of living

In his highly entertaining press conference yesterday, Ed Balls referred to “low inflation.” Today’s inflation bombshell makes such a claim impossible. Against expectations of 2.6% CPI for April, the figure is 3% - the highest rise in six years. This is hugely political. The cost of living is top doorstep issue - so it’s important to establish why Gordon Brown speaks with forked tongue when he blames it all “global turbulence”. Today’s inflation report repays closer examination. My thoughts:- 1) Plunging pound. Since Brown took over the pound has nosedived and is now 12% weaker in general – literally Black Wednesday magnitude. Who’s to blame for that? Opec? Bush?

Monday

Fraser Nelson

Balls on everything

Good old Ed Balls. He has just given a lobby briefing attacking Tory education plans - at least that was his plan. But he ended up speaking about everything under the sun - Cherie's pregnancy, the wickedness of Frank Field, the hopelessness of Crewe, the errors of the 10p Budget, why Labour is "behind the curve" on family finances. He walked into bear trap after bear trap. The lobby loved it, unable to believe their luck. All of this eclipsed his orginal attack message. As CoffeeHousers know, I'm keen on education so I, at least, wanted to know how Balls would attack the Tory policy. He suggested teachers would get sacked in unpopular schools (no, Ed, more schools do not lead to fewer teachers), and asked who will pay for the 220,000 "additional" places the Tories envisage.

Fraser Nelson

Do taxes save lives?

I was taken aback the other day to see a Christian Aid poster about poverty, rather than their usual agenda of climate change and anti-capitalism. Then it dawned on me: it's Christian Aid week, where they put collection boxes in churches. But they could not resist a report today entitled "death and taxes" in which they say that companies reducing their tax liability - "legally or illegally" - are actually killing people in so doing. High tax, apparently, saves lives. 'We predict that illegal, trade-related tax evasion alone will be responsible for the deaths of some 5.6m children under the age of five between 2000 and 2015,' says Christian Aid director Daleep Mukarji. Problem is, companies do not pay tax. Only people do.

Sunday

Fraser Nelson

Working-class hero?

From Prescott's interview in Sunday Times news review, this description of his home jumps out. "Here is not a working-class hero... but an Englishman in his castle, complete with turrets, eight bedrooms, servants' staircases and electric gates".  This recalls what Littlejohn said a while ago: "There have been times I've regretted ever inventing the nickname Two Jags.  It helped turn Prescott into a figure of fun, disguising the fact that he is in reality a loathsome, Soviet-style political thug on the make.  The satirical version of The Red Flag — 'The working-class can kiss my arse, I've got the foreman's job at last' — could have been written for him."   The problem one has with Prescott's memoirs is believing a word he says.

Fraser Nelson

The writing’s on the wall

There is a housing development in Brockley, south east London, with an extraordinary piece of graffiti. “Thanks to Gordon Brown, I will never buy a house,” it says, and in super-large lettering no less. It is not without economic rationale. Brown’s easy-money policy at the Treasury led the Bank of England to chase a dodgy inflation measure - therefore, making credit too cheap, and, therefore, inflating an asset bubble. Also Brown’s failure to reform planning laws put an artificial restriction on supply of UK housing in the face of ever-rising demand. But is Brown entirely to blame for housing boom? Not even I would go that far. But this isn’t the point. If many people believe this to be true, it becomes in itself a feature of our political landscape.

Saturday

Fraser Nelson

The Blairites bite back

Turns out the mystery story is a Cherie Blair interview being run jointly by The Sun and The Times. The Sun promises to run the "bomshell" interview on its website at midnight. Andrew Pierce (an expert at nicking rivals' scoops) has the lowdown in the Telegraph - Tony Blair censored his wife's book, he says, so she's letting rip in an interview instead. But the extracts suggest even this is far from bilious. Knowing Cherie, all will have all come at a price - hence the expectation and secrecy. You might say: so what, we all know Cherie hates Gordon. But to my mind, there is greater significance of this in the timing. The book was't due out till Christmas - why the interview now? When Brown is so weak?

Fraser Nelson

Cameron gets ready for No. 10 — and Boris must wait his turn

David Cameron talks to Fraser Nelson about his local election triumphs, admits that he is not going to ‘agree on everything’ with the new Mayor of London, and says Boris should join the queue to become PM after him The victorious David Cameron is being driven towards Buckingham Palace, the adrenaline of election success still pumping through his veins. Crowds line The Mall, peering into the blackened glass of his limousine. But when he approaches the Palace, his car turns for the A4 and the reverie is shattered. He’s on his way to Crewe for the by-election, setting off by car because of train cancellations. The crowds were for someone else. His lunch is a cheese sandwich from an M1 service station. He is on the campaign trail, yet again.