James Forsyth

James Forsyth

James Forsyth is former political editor of The Spectator.

Sunday

James Forsyth

Why won’t the Tories say they favour the creation of a bad bank?

From our UK edition

In his speech earlier today, George Osborne said: ‘we must deal with the toxic debts of the banks we now own. They will be zombies until we do. Neither dead nor fully alive.’ The clear implication of this statement, and several others that Conservative spokesmen have made in the last few months, is that a bad bank is needed. But the Tories always stop short of saying that they actually favour the creation of one. I can’t see any reason—political or economic—why the Tories shouldn’t say openly that a bad bank is a necessary step for ending this crisis. It seems to be another instance where the Tories would benefit from being less cautious. The rest of Osborne’s speech was typically politically astute.

James Forsyth

Cameron appeals for patience and signals that taxes will have to rise

From our UK edition

David Cameron’s speech to Spring conference was summed up by the line, ‘In time we will set out the hard choices’. With 14 months to go until the election, the clock is ticking on this pledge. The speech did contain two important points. First, Cameron talked about what government should do when it was asking people to ‘put up with tax rises and spending cuts.’ He also, unusually, cited his own experience at the Treasury, saying that he had hated putting up taxes but it had been the right thing to do. The implicit message was that there will be tax rises under a Tory government. Second, Cameron is already appealing for patience.

James Forsyth

Pickles story takes the biscuit

From our UK edition

Eric Pickles just told a story that bears an uncanny resemblance to one of the most famous cricket sledges ever. Pickles says he was walking along Millbank when a Labour MP, who sounded like Prescott, heckled him saying "Pickles you are too fat to be party chairman". To which Pickles says he replied, "It is because every time we win a seat I eat a biscuit." This story sounds like it was inspired by the exchange between Glenn McGrath and Zimbabwe's Eddo Brandes. McGrath said to Brandes, 'Why are you so f***ing fat?' Brandes replied, 'Because every time I f*** your wife she gives me a biscuit".

James Forsyth

Not being Labour is enough to win, but not enough to solve this crisis

From our UK edition

Last night a Tory candidate was telling me what her message to voters was on the doorstep. It was a very cogent critique of Labour. But when I asked her what her positive message was, I just got the same answer back with a slightly different top on it. Her inability to set out a positive message illustrated a problem that is bedevilling the Tories at the moment: they do not have enough of a vision for the country. To be sure, Labour’s manifold failings mean that the Tories will almost certainly win the next election. But the recession and the anti-politics mood in the country, Labour’s internal polling shows that it is the expenses scandals which have done most to drive voters away, mean that the Tories won’t have a honeymoon.

James Forsyth

Reshuffle rumour of the day

From our UK edition

The Mail on Sunday reports this morning that: “One eye-catching change being mooted is the appointment of Peter Mandelson as Foreign Secretary – a job he has always coveted – in place of David Miliband, who is said not to be enjoying the brief. Mr Miliband could then be moved to the Home Office in place of Ms Smith.” My initial reaction to this story is that Brown would be unwilling to move Mandelson from his economic portfolio. He has proven an effective performer on what is bound to be the biggest issue of the campaign. But Brown might be thinking—as 50p suggests—of going down a far more populist route during the campaign in an attempt to turn Cameron and Osborne’s backgrounds against them, something Brown is obsessed with.

Saturday

James Forsyth

The Tories in Cheltenham

From our UK edition

Cheltenham The Tories are gathered here in Cheltenham for their Spring Forum. They are unsurprisingly in confident mood  but there is a real sense of worry about just what a mess they will inherit. The dire numbers in the Budget, which in reality are even worse, seems to have concentrated minds.  Caution, however, is still the order of the day. Today has been deliberatley low key. The press have even being barred from the main speeches. (Activists told me that Michael Gove’s speech on education, the area where the Tories have their most developed and best policies, went down extremely well.) Tomorrow sees speeches from Cameron, Osborne and Ken Clarke.

James Forsyth

Mandelson’s candid reflections on being the third person in Blair and Brown’s marriage

From our UK edition

Robert Crampton’s interview with Peter Mandelson in The Times magazine today is compelling reading. Mandelson talks frankly about the Blair-Brown marriage and how he ‘was the third person in the marriage. I was the casualty.’ It is this that Mansdelson thinks ‘wrecked’ his political career. Mandelson is remarkably candid about how divided things were. At one point Mandelson declares, ‘Everyone was divided, the government was divided, MPs were divided, the media was divided, into camps’. The language he uses is also strikingly emotional even apart from the marriage analogy.

James Forsyth

Blair’s friends start grumbling about the 50p top rate 

From our UK edition

Today’s Daily Telegraph contains a story that is as amusing as it is predictable: those close to Blair are grumbling about the 50p tax rate and complaining that he never would have done it. One friend of Mr Blair said: "Tony thought the original proposal to raise the top rate to 45 pence was just about saleable in the current economic circumstances. "But he believes taking 50 per cent is not acceptable. It would not have happened if he was still there. He thinks it's a terrible mistake." A 45p top rate to be introduced after the next election was good politics even if it was bad economics.

Friday

James Forsyth

Grading Obama

From our UK edition

As the 100 day landmark approaches, it is day 95 of the Obama presidency today, the punditocracy are coming up with their Obama verdicts. (You can read The Spectator’s 100 days special here). Obviously, rating a president this early is slightly absurd. At the 100 days mark, Jimmy Carter looked like he was going to be a successful president—and look how that turned out. While 100 days into the Bush administration no one was predicting what would turn out to be the defining issue of the presidency. But I think we can tell some important things about President Obama even at this early stage. On domestic policy, Obama has shown himself to be both extremely liberal and extremely cautious.

James Forsyth

The torture debate is about to become even more contentious

From our UK edition

The torture debate has been dominating American politics ever since the Obama administration released the legal opinions of the Bush administration on what interrogation techniques American operatives could use. There is little doubt that many of the techniques sanctioned would be considered torture by most people. However, Bush administration officials—most notably former Vice President Cheney—have argued that the Obama administration should now also release the memos which show that these techniques produced information which helped prevent further attacks. This news from NBC’s First Read suggests that the debate is about to move to the next level: “U.S.

James Forsyth

The headlines get worse for Labour 

From our UK edition

The Budget's press coverage, which was already pretty negative, just keeps getting worse. Today's Evening Standard headline is: "Darling's fantasy Budget exploded" The headline refers to the Office for National Statistics saying that the economy shrunk by 1.9 percent in the first quarter not the 1.6 percent that Darling predicted it would in the Budget on Wednesday. It'll be fascinating to see where the polls go in the next few weeks. Given how badly the Budget has been received, we could begin to see Labour slip further and further into the twenties.

James Forsyth

A non-denial denial

From our UK edition

Do read Andrew Sparrow's account of how the Prime Minister's official spokesman responded when asked about whether today's story about Brown's printer rage was accurate: This is what the prime minister's spokesman said in reply: I think it is the sort of unsubstantiated, unsourced nonsense that you would expect to read in Sunday newspapers, not on the supposedly respectable financial wire services. There was then a lovely moment of humour when someone else asked: "But is it untrue, though?" The spokesman said it was "the sort of nonsense that you might expect to read in diary columns" and "not an account that I recognise". But he did not actually say it was untrue.

James Forsyth

Threat perception

From our UK edition

Bruce Riedel, who ran Obama’s review of Afghanistan and Pakistan policy, makes a telling point in his interview with the Indian magazine Outlook: “It’s worth noting that the first trip abroad by the new director of the CIA, Leon Panetta, was to New Delhi. That’s a signal that the US recognises that it needs a stronger security partnership in the struggle against terrorism with India.” The US and India are natural allies in the struggle against Islamist terrorism. But the fact that Panetta went to New Delhi first is further evidence that the US regards Pakistan and the instability there as the greatest threat to American security.

James Forsyth

The 50p gimmick has done considerable damage to Labour

From our UK edition

The 50p rate is designed to cause the Conservatives problems. But it has also damaged Labour. It has reinforced the adage that Labour governments always end up breaking their promises on tax. It has also shown that when the going gets tough, Labour resorts to economically destructive class warfare: the FT and all those financiers who were so keen to bankroll Labour back in the day should remember that. But perhaps the greatest damage has been done by the fact that it has shown the commentariat that Labour is fundamentally unserious in its approach to dealing with the appalling state of the public finances.

James Forsyth

The terms of debate have changed

From our UK edition

Listening to David Cameron being interviewed on the Today Programme this morning, I was struck by how nearly all the questions came from the right. Cameron was pushed to say that more things would have to be cut, that he would scrap the 50p tax rate and that he would take the opportunity this crisis presents to be radical. These questions are a result of the positions that Cameron has taken but it is still striking that the BBC chose to ask them. There does now seem to be a general appreciation that cuts will have to be made and that the questions should be about where and how big they should be. It all leaves Yvette Cooper in an extremely exposed position when she tries to deride Cameron’s cautious approach to the cuts questions as “not just mad but dangerous.

Thursday

James Forsyth

Labour plunge 7 in YouGov’s post Budget poll

From our UK edition

The first voting intention poll since the Budget suggests that the Budget and smear-gate have hurt Labour badly. The poll has the Tories stretching their lead to 18 points with Labour dropping seven to 27 percent. With all the usual caveats, this poll implies a Tory majority of more than 150 seats after the next election—a result that would be utterly devastating for Labour. Those who want the Tories to make Brown’s gimmick of a 50p tax rate for those earning over a £150,000 the defining battle of the next 14 months before the election, should note that 68 percent of people agree with it.

James Forsyth

Labour’s shifting plates

From our UK edition

James Macintyre, who is well sourced with the Mandelson camp, has an interesting piece in this week’s New Statesman on the fight Mandelson thinks Labour should pick with the Tories. The Mandelson view is, apparently, that Labour should make cuts and emphasise that only certain things can be afforded and then challenge the Tories to say they would go further. More intriguing than this latest attempt at creating dividing lines is who reportedly supports such an approach: “In this, Mandelson has allies in James Purnell and Ed Miliband, the Climate Change Secretary, and an enemy in Ed Balls, who argues for precisely such a divide.

James Forsyth

More worrying news from Pakistan

From our UK edition

I know we are all still picking over the Budget, but this story from today’s New York Times strikes me as phenomenally important: “Pushing deeper into Pakistan, Taliban militants have established effective control of a strategically important district just 70 miles from the capital, Islamabad, officials and residents said Wednesday. The fall of the district, Buner, did not mean that the Taliban could imminently threaten Islamabad. But it was another indication of the gathering strength of the insurgency and it raised new alarm about the ability of the government to fend off an unrelenting Taliban advance toward the heart of Pakistan.

James Forsyth

It is the spending that is the problem

From our UK edition

Just to follow up briefly on Matt’s post, this from the end of Hamish McRae’s column today sums things up well: “No government for 30 years has sustained tax receipts above 37 per cent of GDP. Yet we are now proposing that spending rises to 48 per cent of GDP, almost as high as the mid-1970s when the IMF came in. It went to 44 per cent in the early 1990s. The electorate cannot have that level of spending, or anything like it, if it won't pay more tax. Governments of both parties have failed to make that clear. It is almost as through they have been complicit in the deception. Yesterday the scale of that deception became clear, and that is why it is the end of an era.” What needs to be done is a radical scaling back of spending.

Wednesday

James Forsyth

A front page monstering for the Budget

From our UK edition

Jeremy Paxman has just rattled through the front pages and they are all bad news for Labour. The Daily Mail’s headline is the rather droll ‘Alistair in wonderland’. The Telegraph blasts ‘The return of class war’. The Guardian’s has ‘Darling’s great squeeze’. The FT's is 'Darling gambles on growth'. The Sun lists the bad economic news and has a headline about how 'At least it's sunny'; appropriately it is meant to rain this Sunday. The Times has the wonderful double—or is it triple—entendre, ‘Red all over’. The Independent highlights the breach of Labour’s manifesto promise not to change income tax rates with the line ‘That’s rich!’.