James Forsyth

James Forsyth

James Forsyth is former political editor of The Spectator.

Thursday

James Forsyth

Things the Tories shouldn’t do

It strikes me as being in both bad taste and politically foolish for Alan Duncan to suggest that Gordon Brown is “vandalising” the despatch box when he uses a thick pen to take notes during PMQs. It is bad taste because the reason Brown uses a thick, black felt-tip because he is blind in one eye and has poor sight in the other. Whatever one’s opinion of Brown, his eye problem is not something that should be mocked. It is politically foolish because one of the themes that Labour is trying to get into the national conversation is that the Tories are a bunch of posh bullies. This kind of behaviour from Duncan plays into Labour’s hands. It is unnecessary and unpleasant.

James Forsyth

Tories move to raise the standard of teachers

Michael Gove’s speech today is another sign that the Tories are serious about raising educational standards. In it, Gove proposes a series of measures to improve the quality of teachers trained by the state. Under a Conservative government, those in state-run teacher training would not be allowed to retake the literacy and numeracy tests multipile times. Primary school teachers would need at least Bs in both English and Maths GCSEs (remember that in the state sector primary school teachers are generalists not specialists). Also, those who do post-graduate teacher training will have to have a 2.2 or better. Personally, I’m sceptical of the whole concept of teacher training. Teach First suggests that at the very least it can be radically slimmed down.

Wednesday

James Forsyth

Government loses Commons vote

The government has just lost a vote on a clause of the Parliamentary Standards Bill by 250 votes to 247. The clause would have allowed words spoken in the Commons to be used as evidence in court, undermining the independence of the legislature. The defeat of the clause is to be welcomed. There’s a real danger that some of the reforms that will be pushed through Parliament in the wakes of the expenses scandal will be a Dangerous Dogs act but with much more serious consequences.  It is also another sign of how weak the government is.

James Forsyth

The Tories’ higher goal for education

Michael Gove’s speech to the RSA yesterday was a summation of where the Tories stand on education. The new policy will, word has it, be in an announcement that Gove is making tomorrow. But the section in which Gove made the case for a classical department of education jumped out at me: “But the renaming of the old Department was no idle exercise in empty rebranding – it reflected a philosophical shift in how government sees its role. ... education has indeed been eclipsed – and the renaming of the Department is genuinely significant – we no longer have a single department of state charged with encouraging learning, supporting teaching and valuing education.

James Forsyth

A cutting intervention

Paul Waugh has a phenomenally important mini-scoop on his blog. He reports that last night, the chief executive of the Audit Commission Steve Bundred said: “Both political parties have pledged that whatever happens they will protect health and education. “I think that’s a big mistake. Health and education are the two services that have been most generously funded over the past decade but they are among the most inefficient services.” Bundred is almost certainly right: you can protect frontline services without ring-fencing the entire budget. Sadly, though, no major politician is prepared to risk the inevitable charge of wanting to shut down hospitals, sack nurses etc that would come from talking about cuts in the NHS budget.

James Forsyth

Show me the money

The story in The Times today about the row over which departments are stumping up the cash for the recently announced £1.57bn social housing programme suggests that Whitehall is in chaos at the moment. One official tells the paper, “I have never known an announcement like this where money is so off the wall.” These two quotes give you a sense of the total confusion over the funding of this initiative, which is supposed to be key to the government’s relaunch: “But the Home Office categorically denied that it would be providing £90 million — the new Treasury figure — having been told that it would have to find less than £50 million.

Tuesday

James Forsyth

The nightmare scenario

Bruce Reidel chaired Obama’s review into Af-Pakl policy which makes this piece by him explaining how jihadis could take over Pakistan worth paying attention to. Here’s his scenario for how it could happen: “Extremist forces are beginning to align. The spread of their influence could come easily. To secure power, the Taliban—currently concentrated in the tribal areas west of the Indus and all along the border with Afghanistan—would need to move east. This would take them from the Pashtun-dominated regions into the Punjabi heartland, where they need to gain significantly more support. There is good evidence this is already happening. The Pakistani Taliban is now coalescing with the Punjab-based Lashkar-e-Taiba.

James Forsyth

Comedy Central

Daniel Finkelstein highlights this you couldn't make it up answer from Ian Austin to a question about the government's mortgage assistance scheme: Ian Austin, the housing minister, promised MPs: "The impact of the scheme is accelerating." He said the number of families helped by the measure had risen from two to six during May. This kind of answer does make you thing that Bagehot is right about government ministers now living in their own parallel universe and so unaccountable for the accuracy of their statements.

James Forsyth

A shadow Cabinet member needs to call Brown on his lies

One of the urtexts for understanding Conservative campaign strategy is a 2004 Times op-ed by George Osborne on what the Tories could learn from the Bush campaign. One section of it strikes me as being relevant to the question of what the Tories should do about Brown’s lies, I’m instinctively uncomfortable with using the l word but I really don’t see what else I can call them. Osborne wrote:   “Character attacks on his opponent almost never come from the President’s own lips. They come out anonymously in TV ads or by e-mail from the campaign’s HQ in Virginia…. For Mr Bush knows that in politics the message tells you a lot about the messenger.

Monday

James Forsyth

Damning with faint praise | 29 June 2009

You’re going to have to allow me one more post on Norwich North, this quote from the vice chair of the Norfolk Labour party is too good not to pass on: “John Cowan, vice chairman of Norfolk Labour Party, said: “It's very interesting that they've opted for a male candidate, my preference was always going to be for a female candidate. “Chris is a fairly strong candidate. I worked with him during the Euro election campaign. He's obviously spent some time in Norwich at the UEA but it would've been nice to have someone a bit more local.” In other words, the only problems with the candidate are that he’s the wrong sex and not from around here.

James Forsyth

Bad signs in Norwich North for Labour

Labour high command must be rather worried that only 50 odd people turned up to the selection meeting that chose a candidate to replace Ian Gibson and stand in the coming by-election. The fact that so few people turned up to the selection meeting suggests that the constituency party is demoralised both by how Ian Gibson has been treated and the general state of the Labour party. Interestingly, the Labour candidate is not local. As the Eastern Daily Press puts it, he is a “Labour party activist from London”. One Labour fixer from that neck of the woods tells me that this won’t go down well. Indeed, the Eastern Daily Press is, so I’m told, the only newspaper that outsells The Sun in its area.

James Forsyth

Mandelson the maestro

If you have a few minutes, do read the transcript of Peter Mandelson’s exchange with the FT. Whatever you think of his politics, it is a masterclass in how to handle this kind of interview. Apart from Mandelson’s comments on spending, a couple of other things jumped out at me. Mandelson advances a new attack on the Tory policy on public services: “They seem to have entered a Faustian pact with public sector producer interests. Their message is, quote, we will spend less on you, but require you to reform less and change less…. David Cameron offers the soft option on public sector reform. This may be because they are fishing for votes, or simply because they care less about the public services.

Sunday

James Forsyth

Balls says he’s spoken to McBride

I’m not quite sure whether to give Ed Balls marks for honesty, not a phrase one writes often, for admitting that he is still in contact with Damian McBride or to say that it shows that the Brownites are loyal to each other not to any set of ideals or standards of behaviour. Certainly, Balls’ answer is more honest than his infamous attempt on the Today Programme to claim that he didn’t really know McBride any better than anyone else who had worked with him did. Ed Balls tells Gaby Hinsliff that he has ‘Of course not’ discussed policy with McBride. But then again as the Red Rag emails showed there wasn’t much policy involved in some of McBride’s political work.

James Forsyth

The great office of state

Fraser and Tim Montgomerie report this morning that David Cameron and George Osborne are considering working together from a joint office in government much as they do now in Norman Shaw South. Undoubtedly some will worry about such an arrangement, they'll argue that given the state of the public finances Osborne should be solely concerned with Treasury business. But it strikes me as a sensible idea. First, by having their staffs work in the same place they will prevent the emergence of the rival power bases that have crippled Labour for much of its time in office. Second, with the PM and the Chancellor working together their will be no distance between the two for spending ministers to exploit, This will vastly strengthen Phil Hammond's hand as he negotiates with them.

Saturday

James Forsyth

What Milburn’s departure means

Alan Milburn’s decision to step down at the next election is a sign of what will happen with the tightening up of the rules on MP’s outside interests; talented backbenchers who are attracted to business and see their party facing a spell in the wilderness will leave Parliament. Milburn says he is quitting so that he has “time to pursue challenges other than politics”. My rather unkind translation of this is that he wants to carry on with his various second jobs. When the Cabinet debated Harriet Harman’s proposal to ban MPs from having second jobs, several Ministers were unhappy about. They argued that while it would cause problems for the Tories in the short term, the shoe would be on the other foot soon enough.

James Forsyth

Nailing Brown’s lies on spending

Matthew Parris is spot on about the challenge facing Cameron from Brown’s statistical dodges on spending: “But Mr Cameron has a trickier task ahead than may be apparent. A desperate man, Mr Brown is now so entirely shameless that he’s planning to keep . . . dissimulating about “Labour investment” versus “Tory cuts” in the hope that the stupid or ignorant will believe him, and the rest will despair of pinning him down and move on. So should Mr Cameron simply hope that the Opposition have made their point, and change the subject?

Friday

James Forsyth

Cameron’s sentence

Peggy Noonan, who used to write speeches for Ronald Reagan, has a thought-provoking anecdote in her column today: “Clare Boothe Luce told about a conversation she had in 1962 in the White House with her old friend John F. Kennedy. She told him, she said, that "a great man is one sentence." His leadership can be so well summed up in a single sentence that you don't have to hear his name to know who's being talked about. "He preserved the union and freed the slaves," or, "He lifted us out of a great depression and helped to win a World War." You didn't have to be told "Lincoln" or "FDR." She wondered what Kennedy's sentence would be. She was telling him to concentrate, to know the great themes and demands of his time and focus on them.

James Forsyth

An expenses role-reversal

Michael Crick has news  that Ian Gibson may stand in the Norwich North by-election after all. So we are faced with the fascinating possibility of seeing how an MP his national party has deemed unfit to stand because of his expenses does in an election. It would be quite ironic if the result of first expenses by-election was determined by someone who his party had put beyond the pale. This development combined with the poll out today which shows the Tories ahead suggests that the Tories should win the seat with relative ease. The size of the Tory majority, though, will be crucial  in determining how the result effects the mood of the Parliamentary Labour Party. PS If Gibson does run, we could be in a situation where the anti-politics candidate is a supposed expenses villain.

James Forsyth

ShocKING remarks

Andrew Grice has a great scoop in The Independent today about tensions between Mervyn King and the government following King’s remarks about the need to get the debt down and the failure to consult him over changes to banking regulations. Grice quotes one Cabinet source as saying, "King is fighting a turf war with the FSA. The Tories are flattering him, appealing to his vanity and using him to play politics." Having reappointed King as governor of the Bank of England, the government has relatively little leverage over him. King also knows that within a year, the Tories are likely to be in government so an increasing closeness between him and them is only to be expected.