James Forsyth

It seems that the new US Commander in Afghanistan, General McChrystal, and the Obama administration might be on a collision course. The Washington Post reports today that an advisory group McChrystal set up will say that the US needs more troops on the ground in Afghanistan, something Obama’s National Security Advisor has made it quite clear he opposes. To be sure, more US troops on the ground isn’t a silver bullet. There also needs to be an improvement in both the Afghan security forces and the quality of governance. But more troops are a necessary if not sufficient condition for progress. Only with more manpower can the US hope to be able to protect the main population centers.

My old friend Allister Heath has just sent me over some stats which show that the poor pay more of their income in tax than the rich. Allister reports that “the bottom fifth of earners pay 38.7 of their gross income in total tax, the next fifth 32.7 per cent, then 34.6 per cent, 35.4 per cent, falling to 34.9 per cent for the top fifth of higher-earning households.” The reason that the poor pay more in tax than the rich is that indirect taxes, especially sin-taxes, have been so jacked up under Labour. When only direct taxes are taken into account, the bottom fifth only pay 10.8 percent and the top fifth pay 24.9 percent of their gross income in tax.

The Tories are pushing the TV debate line. They’ve just press-released a letter from David Cameron to Gordon Brown asking for a clarification on Labour’s position on the issue. It is understandable that the Tories are keen to capitalise on what appears to be a split in Labour’s high command over whether Brown would be game or not. The Tories are also keen to highlight the Cameron Brown contrast, one that undoubtedly plays to their advantage. I also suspect that they rather hope that in a debate, Brown’s temper and his evident disdain for Cameron would boil over and drag Labour down even further. But if Brown has any political nous left, he’ll say yes to the debate. .

The FT’s excellent Westminster Blog is getting rather excited by a leaked version of the Tory conference agenda which has the session on the economy featuring an ‘appearance by “Hammond and Osborne”. (Or perhaps, it is just entering into the spirit of the silly season) Jim Pickard connects this to the speculation that Osborne might not end up as Chancellor after all. But I suspect that the explanation is actually rather more mundane: Hammond will deliver remarks early in the session before Osborne winds it up with the keynote speech on the economy.   That Osborne will end up as Chancellor, is - to borrow a phrase from Daniel Finkelstein - “a nailed on certainty” barring some bizarre unforeseen event.

As Tim Montgomerie points out, David Davis’s article in The Times today, which Pete flagged up earlier, is just the latest in a string of public disagreements Davis has had with the Tory leadership. A couple of these disagreements seem to have been designed specifically to rock the boat; I’m thinking of the comments on grammar schools and today’s attack on a caricature of Tory policy on health records. The most telling thing about Davis’s article is the tone it is couched in.

In private, many Tories have whispered that the debt crisis is an opportunity to get the size of the state—which has grown faster here than in any other OECD country in recent years—back under control. Today on the Andrew Marr Show, David Cameron endorsed this analysis: “I think you know we mustn't see this effort at getting public spending down and getting the budget balance, we mustn't see it as some dreadful catastrophe. We've got to see it as a big opportunity to deliver public services in a different and a better way, and to totally reform our government and put people back in control.

Charles Moore pays David Cameron quite a compliment in his Telegraph column today, calling him the most skilful Tory leader of the opposition since Disraeli. This is high praise indeed, especially as it comes from Margaret Thatcher’s official biographer. But, as Charles goes on to say, there are still significant gaps on policy: “In 1978/9, [voters] would have known that the Tories promised something different on taxes, inflation, trade unions, and the Cold War. What do they know now? Nothing terrible, but also, nothing much. The vagueness of these impressions might not matter politically if in fact the Tories did know what they wanted to do.

The polling of the Pew Global Attitudes Project is probably the most comprehensive guide we have to global public opinion. This year’s survey is mostly attracting headlines because of the way in which Obama has transformed views of the United States; 86 percent of Brits are now confident that the US President will do the right thing in world affairs compared to just 10 percent in the final year of the Bush presidency (see table below). But interestingly a majority in pretty much every country surveyed, including Britain, disapproves of his decision to send more troops to Afghanistan. However, what really stood out to me from the report was this finding: “There is as much support for the free market in the Middle East as there is in Western Europe.