Fraser Nelson

Fraser Nelson

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

Thursday

Fraser Nelson

Striking out

From our UK edition

I have just ran into the striking teachers, placards aloft as they try to extort even more money from the taxpayer by closing a third of English schools today. Three things struck me. 1. One placard said "2.4%=Balls. 10%=NUT". I wonder which of those two pay rise figures the public would consider more reasonable? 2. Their chant was a demand for "fair pay". Yet the gap between teachers' pay and the (lower) figure of the average worker has soared under this government to record highs. One may argue the pupils have lost out from the last ten years of Labour government. But not teachers. 3. Another placard read "tell the truth about inflation". Here they have a point.

Wednesday

Fraser Nelson

Where have all the Brownites gone?

From our UK edition

I'm just out of a More4 studio debating Brown with Francis Beckett, author of a very good (and, to my mind, under-appreciated) biography of the Dear Leader. He'll carve a niche for himself, I thought, being the talking head supporting Brown over his two remaining years in power. But even he struggled to say that Brown is cut out for office - or that he is decisive. He wanted to be supportive, but Brown as a PM? Even he didn't seem to see it. Producers who set up these TV pundit debates often moan about the problem of balancing them. It's getting harder and harder to find anyone not on his payroll saying "actually, he's a good man doing a good job". And he's not even a year into the job. Have all his supporters really evaporated so soon?

Fraser Nelson

The return of drama and rebellion?

From our UK edition

Apparently Brown (or, more likely, Carter) didn't think the PMQs performance leant itself to the right kind of footage for the evening news. So political editors are being summoned to interviews with the Dear Leader in a more respectful setting. Great atmosphere in the Commons. Labour MPs mainly relieved it's all over, some annoyed Field caved too early. But as I said earlier, now that the rebels have learned that the laddie is for turning, they will now turn him over regularly. Drama and rebellion will return to the Palace of Varieties. And not before time.

Fraser Nelson

Wednesday Whoppers

From our UK edition

Cameron said it should be called Prime Minister’s U-Turn, not PMQs. I disagree. It should be renamed Wednesday Whoppers or – as we say here in CoffeeHouse – Brownies. A new one was minted – involving a claim that 600,000 is “almost a million”. Plenty of Brownies aired. Let’s get stuck in. Brown’s PMQs now start with a Labour backbencher asking the most poisonous question of the day, in hope of denying the Opposition the chance to do it. Cameron just asks what he wants even if it is a repeat. But this lets Brown make his peace with backbenches before Cameron gets stuck in. Hilariously, Brown started by trashing the 10p tax band he introduced – unfair, he says, 85% of the benefits go to the richest.

Fraser Nelson

The 10p tax U-turn

From our UK edition

Gordon Brown doesn’t get it. Even his U-turn over the 10p tax rate (announced just time for PMQs in the form of a letter to John McFall) is devilishly complicated. There will be compensation for 60-64 year olds and low-paid workers without children. This will come in the form of winter fuel payments or new tax credits. I am sure that in a spreadsheet somewhere in the Treasury, this makes it all okay. But it won’t work outside Westminster and I’ll tell you why. I spent yesterday on the campaign trail in Greater Manchester and saw for myself the anger. Pensioners were spitting blood, shopkeepers fuming – even people who I suspected were not hit by the abolition of the 10p starting rate think they have been.

Fraser Nelson

The finishing post is in sight

From our UK edition

I don’t know a single person in Westminster willing to predict the outcome of the Mayoral election. Most people I speak to say their gut tells them Livingstone will win, but they can’t rationalise it. The bookmakers, however, are seeing a decisive shift to Boris, who has been cut from 4/7 to 1/2 by Ladbrokes. It has just released a statement saying “For every pound we're taking on Livingstone we are currently taking two on Johnson. If money talks Johnson wins."  We should also factor in a significant media swing behind Boris in the last few days, and I’ll eat my hat if Andrew Gilligan doesn’t have a nasty surprise for Ken up his sleeve in the Evening Standard. Tomorrow’s Spectator will, of course, put forward the case for our candidate.

Fraser Nelson

On the doorstep for the local elections the common refrain is: it’s time for a change

From our UK edition

Spend just a few minutes on the campaign trail for next week’s local elections and it suddenly becomes clear why Labour MPs got into such a mutinous mood. When they happily voted through Gordon Brown’s abolition of the 10p starting rate of income tax last year, it was argued that having 5.3 million pay a little more was worth it in order to be able to say that the basic rate of income tax had fallen. No one foresaw what is now clear: just how badly this ruse would go down with the public. The first half-hour I spend with Tory activists in Salford gives a taste of the anger. ‘I’m a pensioner, for God’s sake, why does he take more of what little I have?’ asks one householder.

Monday

Fraser Nelson

How the Labour government has hurt the poor

From our UK edition

Why are all these Labour MPs worried about the 10p tax? It is the least of the ways in which this Labour government has hurt the poor over its years in government. Let me count the ways – well, half a dozen anyway: 1) Sink schools. By granting LEAs monopoly control over education provision, bureaucrats have keep bad schools going by forcing children there. It’s the children of the poor, however. Reform points this out in its excellent social mobility report today (pdf, p15). While 47 per cent of students achieved five decent GCSEs last year, this was true for just 20% of those eligible for free schools meals. The inequality is getting worse, not better. To paraphrase Neil Kinnock, is this because the poor kids are thick? Nope.

Fraser Nelson

Hague talks politics & faith

From our UK edition

After hearing Tony Blair's first confession, Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor is on a roll. He landed Blair for a speech on religion at Westminster Cathedral earlier this month, and now he's lined up William Hague for another talk.  The shadow foreign secretary's lecture on Thursday, entitled "Practical politics, principled faith", has now sold out. Is our Wilberforce biographer being primed for Tory liaison officer with God? To fill that vast, half-finished building takes some doing - so Hague's done well. He'll presumably have to tone down his normal stand-up comedy routine. ("Have you lived here all your life?, I asked this voter. 'Not yet' he replied"). But perhaps the mark of these speeches is to make a huge howler - à la Tony Blair.

Sunday

Fraser Nelson

Why Brown has the ex-factor

From our UK edition

Like George Osborne, I was struck by David Miliband saying in his News of the World article that the government needs to look at things through the eyes of the voters. Right now, Gordon Brown is looking at them through the eyes of a central planner saying “you ungrateful lot, don’t you know inflation is below that of the Eurozone and America?” People don’t care about the price of sauerkraut in Munich – what matters is the price of an egg here. Brown may argue that's unfair. But this isn’t East Germany. What the voters think matters. Last week we saw a prime minister, a pope and a pop star trying to make it big in America. Two succeeded – Leona Lewis hit no1 in the US album chart and Pope Benedict filled stadium with the faithful.

Saturday

Fraser Nelson

Spelling it out to Brown

From our UK edition

Gordon Brown claims he is baffled by the suggestion that his decision to double (not abolish) the 10p starting rate of tax hurts anyone. We all have it confused somehow, he says. So this comment on The Times website may be worth repeating: "Mr. Brown. LET ME SPELL IT OUT TO YOU. I do not pay tax at 22% so the cut to 20% does not help me.  I cannot claim pension credit (which is not taxed) because my private pension puts me £2 over the cut off. (Private pension is taxed.)  State Pension £5148. Private Pension £1622. Personal Tax Allowance £5,435 Taxable income £1,335. Tax 07/08 £135 Tax 08/09 £270.  I can do the maths. Why can't you?

Fraser Nelson

Alex Salmond is nudging the English towards independence without them realising it

From our UK edition

Before the campaign for an English parliament has time to gather critical mass, its goal may already be achieved. The first vote David Cameron’s government holds on health will be a unique constitutional event: all Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish MPs will be banned from the voting lobbies. There is likely to be no fanfare, no regal presence, no Red Arrows as there were in the modern Scottish Parliament’s first sitting. But the Parliament of England — adjourned in October 1707 — will, in effect, be reconvened. Little attention has been paid to the emerging English Question which is the flip-side of Scotland’s loosening of its ties with Westminster. There is no particular clamour over it, but there does not need to be.

Friday

Fraser Nelson

A losers’ summit?

From our UK edition

Now for four words which, in my experience, CoffeeHousers hate the most: “in fairness to Brown”. Not many other national leaders could have drawn all three presidential hopefuls to meet him in one day. We teased him for having next to no coverage in the American press yesterday, and there’s plenty today. He also struck the right note over Zimbabwe. Okay, fairness over. Here’s what the Washington Post has to say about the Bush press conference: "Times are so bad, in fact, that Brown flew to America on a plane provided by the discount charter company Titan Airways. The stature of the two leaders had shrunk so much that there were empty seats in the Rose Garden yesterday, and only Fox News bothered to have its correspondent do a live report from the event.

Fraser Nelson

Cable vs Osborne

From our UK edition

George Osborne’s main opponent isn’t Alistair Darling. It’s Vince Cable. As former chief economist at Shell, he’s that rare thing – a politician who knows what he’s talking about. Today he releases an “open letter” saying what I have heard some senior Tories say in private. The charge is that Osborne has come back from Wall St having swallowed what the banks told him in his proposal that that the government should swap mortgage-based assets for government bonds. PoliticsHome has the text. An extract:- “You say the bankers agree with you.  Of course they do.  It is their job to maximise profits for themselves and lay off risks to someone else.

Thursday

Fraser Nelson

A catalogue of Stateside errors

From our UK edition

Whenever Blair didn’t like the heat in Britain he’d jet off abroad. But Brown’s trip to America seems to cast his shortcomings into even sharper relief. My thoughts on the visit so far: 1) Meeting Wall Street figures and pretending to bang heads together about the credit crunch will be recognised as a stunt in America. USA Today has a quote to this effect from Graham Wilson, a political science professor at Boston University. “I'm skeptical that any jawboning has any effect. I'm not sure Wall Street will respond to a British prime minister.” 2) Wilson also tells USA Today “If he wanted publicity in the United States, it's a rather odd time to come.

Tuesday

Fraser Nelson

Brown overlooks our allies

From our UK edition

Can someone please give Gordon Brown a crash course in recent world history? "European leadership did not support President Bush in Iraq other than Britain and one or two other countries," he tells CBS before his trip to the US . "I feel I can bring Europe and America closer together for the future." Hmmm. Only one or two countries? Spain, Portugal, The Netherlands, Hungary, Norway, Poland, Italy, Slovakia and Denmark supported the Iraq war. He would do better bringing them together if he had the faintest idea about their role in the Iraq conflict. I suppose he was so deep underwater at that stage avoiding making any supportive speeches himself that he couldn't have taken much notice.

Fraser Nelson

The Tories should reward the strivers

From our UK edition

Tory splits are rare nowadays, which is why it's good to see Lord Forsyth talking sense about tax in the Telegraph today. It is “mad” for the Tories to propose to bring back the 10p starting rate of tax (which - in his seminal tax report (pdf) - he proposed to abolish long before Brown did it in his 'tax con' budget). Instead, Forsyth said, the Tories should lift the low-paid out of tax altogether.  Ensnaring millions of minimum wage workers in the income tax system is one of the more morally deplorable acts of the Brown Treasury - as if he has any right to what little is earned by a woman who gets up at 4am to clean offices. Such "strivers" are the heroes of the British economy, and a Conservative party should salute them by letting them keep every penny they earn.

Fraser Nelson

Tax refugees

From our UK edition

Shire Pharmaceutics, a FTSE100 firm worth GBP5.5bn, is to relist its head office offshore for tax reasons. Global firms (as Shire now is) can report profits anywhere – and Shire will move to Jersey and pay tax in Ireland (where corporation tax is 12.5% for trading income, not 28%). It is a move explicitly “designed to help protect the group’s taxation position”. Shire is fearing a bid from Pfizer, and perhaps quitting the UK tax system is a form of defence. This fits a trend. Hiscox and Amlin have already switched. Amazon recently headed to Ireland.   Businesses do not petulantly say: we’ve had enough of Brown, we’re off.

Monday

Fraser Nelson

Channel 4 fact check

From our UK edition

George Osborne had a bit of a rough ride on Channel Four news at 7pm and the Labour Party has gleefully sent around a transcript. Jon Snow put to him that “the IMF says that our growth is going to be 1.6%, not only this year but next year as well, and that outstrips any other country in the whole of Europe and the United States.” Utter nonsense, of course, but Osborne did not correct him when asked to name a country that would do better. Again Snow said to Osborne that “on the IMF figures, Britain comes out on top” and later “you reject the absolutely key finding which growth which is – you swear by growth – UK growth is 1.6% which is better than anyone else in the developed world”.

Fraser Nelson

Britain is “bust” says Osborne

From our UK edition

A first for British politics – standing room only in a speech about economics. George Osborne was at Policy Exchange laying out his “alternative view” and, as he went, ticking many of the boxes I had for him. The first half of his speech was a punchy critique of Gordon Brown, pointing out times where he and David Cameron had mentioned the debt problem. He “imported deflation from Asia,” he said. – and two years ago the Tories had warned about “an economy built on debt is an economy living on borrowed time.” That phrase is very true now. Labour has repeated the mistakes of its past. Anyway, you can read the rest of the speech here.