James Forsyth

James Forsyth

James Forsyth is former political editor of The Spectator.

Tuesday

James Forsyth

Labour’s economically inactive support

From our UK edition

I’m fairly sceptical of polls at the moment, politics has been so unusual these past few weeks I’m not sure how worthwhile a snapshot is right now. But the breakdown of today’s numbers in The Times —Labour 30, Tories 42, and Lib Dems 19—does strike me as fascinating. Peter Riddell points out the differences between public and private sector voting intentions. Amongst private sector workers the Tories are at 45, Labour 29 and the Lib Dems 17. But with public sector workers it is Tories 38, Labour 26 and lib Dem 17. It is not that surprising that support for the party of the centre-right is higher among private sector workers.

James Forsyth

Even the BBC now thinks spending has to be cut

From our UK edition

There’s a trailer playing on Radio 4 at the moment for Decision Time. It’s a new show in which Nick Robinson looks at how tough political decisions are made. In the trailer, Nick Robinson talks about the aim of the programme and then says the first programme will look at public spending. His sign-off is: “How would you cut spending--because it does have to be cut” This strikes me as a hugely important shift in the political weather, the BBC now accepts that public spending has to be cut: not the rate of growth slowed but cut. This should embolden the Tories as it suggests that knee-jerk cries of ‘Tory cuts’ will not have the same resonance that they once did and, crucially, won’t be reported in the same way by the BBC.

Monday

James Forsyth

Making the moral case

From our UK edition

Too often, politicians on the right, wrongly and short-sightedly, cede the moral high ground to the left. Conservatives in Britain have been particularly guilty of accepting, or at least not disputing, the left’s claims to moral superiority and merely arguing that their approach is more effective. One result of this is when the left manages to look competent, as it did under Blair, voters flock to it. So it is refreshing to see Michael Gove making the moral case for the Tory’s education policies in a speech to Barnado’s tonight: “Our approach to education reform is driven, explicitly, by a sense of moral purpose. We believe education is a good in itself, the key not just to economic well-being but a richer inner life and a more civilized society.

James Forsyth

The benefits of the vision thing

From our UK edition

Amidst the torrent of bad economic news, people want to know where the growth will come from once this crisis has passed. It would be foolish to imagine that we can go back to the status quo-ante, that financial services and property can again drive the British economy as they did during the late 1990s and the early years of this century. George Osborne’s speech on Friday was the best attempt we have heard yet from a politician to answer the future growth question. Matthew Parris, not a man given to hyperbole, described it as “thrilling” and “an example of what politics should be for”. Matthew Taylor, Tony Blair’s former policy chief, has also praised it, comparing it favourably to the speeches given by government ministers on the economy.

James Forsyth

Frum, Limbaugh and catering to media audiences

From our UK edition

British Conservatives can tell Republicans at least one thing about recovering from electoral rejection: don’t believe that what makes a media product successful will do the same for a political party. For years, the Tories looked at the popularity of The Daily Mail, a brilliantly produced newspaper, and imagined that if they could ape its style, tone and positions they’d be onto a winner. But that turned out not to be the case: people wanted something very different from a potential government than they do a newspaper. Equally, a political party has to appeal to far more people—in the British context about 40 percent of the electorate, in the US one around 50 percent—than any newspaper, TV show or radio show has to.

James Forsyth

The state of education

From our UK edition

A statistic in today’s Daily Mail reveals just how badly comprehensives are failing their pupils. “They educate only seven per cent of pupils, but independent schools produce more teenagers with three A grade A-levels than all our comprehensives put together. More than 10,000 pupils at fee-paying schools achieved three As last year. But among those at comprehensives, fewer than 7,500 achieved such good results.” In his first speech to the Labour conference as party leader, Gordon Brown declared: “the reason I am here - the real reason I am here - is that I want their children and their grandchildren whom I also represent to have all the chances that were not available to my school friends when we were growing up.

James Forsyth

Will Darling bite?

From our UK edition

There’s a great scene in the BBC’s Margaret when Willie Whitelaw says after Margaret Thatcher has humiliated Geoffrey Howe, ‘Beware the fury of a patient man’. One feels much the same way about Alistair Darling. Darling might, according to Treasury civil servants, be rather out of his depth in the job but he has tried to do his best and has never been less than loyal to the Prime Minister. His reward for this is a constant whispering campaign against him from Number 10, which put him in the job in the first place, and rumours—which flared up again towards the end of last week—that he’ll be replaced by Ed Balls.

Sunday

James Forsyth

An extreme policy failure

From our UK edition

The government’s signature policy for dealing with the Islamist challenge inside Britain is the Prevent policy. But Prevent is aimed only at preventing violent extremism. For this reason, it has—as a phenomenally important pamphlet from Policy Exchange, which will be released tomorrow, argues—done little to counter extremism and in a disturbingly large number of cases actually empowered extremists. As the report puts it: “PVE is thus underwriting the very Islamist ideology which spawns an illiberal, intolerant and anti-western world view. Political and theological extremists, acting with the authority conferred by official recognition, are indoctrinating young people with an ideology of hostility to western values.

James Forsyth

Peter Hain and the coming collapse in Labour discipline

From our UK edition

Peter Hain makes a double-intervention this Sunday: an article in The Independent and an interview in The Sunday Telegraph. Both are couched in terms of trying to be helpful but—as Martin notes—they undoubtedly position Hain to the left of Brown. Hain has no intention of totally burning his bridges, he tells Melissa Kite that if “Gordon wants me to do something that really makes a difference then I would happily do that.” But Hain appears to be putting himself forward as someone who can be a substantial figure in the regeneration of the party, something that is far more likelty to happen in opposition than in government.

James Forsyth

The Labour party and the politics of immigration

From our UK edition

There’s an intriguing entry in Chris Mullin’s diaries, this Sunday sees the final part of the Mail on Sunday’s serialisation of them, from January 2004. “To the Parliamentary Party, where there was discussion about the next Queen's Speech. Ann Cryer [MP] said we needed a managed immigration policy, based on ability to find jobs; not on finding a wife or husband with a British passport, which is putting enormous pressure on young Asians. Jon Owen Jones [MP] told a story about an Algerian who had brought three people into the country by marrying and divorcing three times. It was all a scam, he said, and time we put a stop to it. Amen to that. Despite the hoo-ha over asylum, we've barely touched the rackets that surround arranged marriages. What mugs we are.

James Forsyth

In Brown’s version of reality he has nothing to apologise for

From our UK edition

The story is out. For days there’s been gossip in Westminster that the Prime Minister had a Brown out on the plane to Washington, losing it when journalists asked him if he was going to apologise for the mistakes he had made as Chancellor and Prime Minister which have exacerbated this crisis. Now, Simon Walters in the Mail on Sunday has reported out what actually happened: ‘What is it you think I should be apologising for?’ [Brown] demanded. ‘I have nothing to apologise for. You guys just don’t get it do you?’ When one reporter asked why he had let banks get out of control, Mr Brown leaned towards him and said: ‘You’re saying I got it wrong? But I didn’t.

Saturday

James Forsyth

Obama: The US is not winning in Afghanistan

From our UK edition

Barack Obama’s sit-down interview with The New York Times, the first he has granted the paper since becoming president, contains this exchange: Q. Mr. President, we need to turn it to foreign policy. I know we have a review going on right now about Afghanistan policy, but right now can you tell us, are we winning in Afghanistan? A. No. Obama goes on to talk about what needs to be done in Afghanistan before saying this: “At the heart of a new Afghanistan policy is going to be a smarter Pakistan policy. As long as you’ve got safe havens in these border regions that the Pakistani government can’t control or reach, in effective ways, we’re going to continue to see vulnerability on the Afghan side of the border.

James Forsyth

Violence in Iraq down 70 percent since last March

From our UK edition

“Attacks are at the lowest level since September 2003, falling 70 percent since last March.” So reports The New York Times in its latest piece on the situation in Iraq. The level of progress in Iraq since the US changed strategy in early 2007 and surged troops into the country has been quite remarkable. If anyone had predicted in January 2007 when President Bush announced the new strategy that the situation in Iraq would have improved so much by March 2009 they would have been dismissed for being absurdly over-optimistic.

James Forsyth

Why isn’t Balls being kicked like Harman is?

From our UK edition

I bumped into a Labour MP the other day and he asked me a good question, why is Harriet Harman the only one getting it in the neck for her leadership positioning? Several other members of the Cabinet clearly have an eye on a post-election leadership contest, notably Ed Balls, but they aren’t receiving anywhere near as much criticism. If, as Martin puts it, Harriet is at it so are several others. Some say that it is the absurdity of the idea of Harman leading the party that means she attracts so much flak. I agree that Harman would not be seen as a credible PM by the electorate, but I suspect that Ed Balls—who is a far worse media performer than Harman—might drive the Labour vote down even lower than Harman would.

James Forsyth

The workings of Brown’s brain

From our UK edition

Matthew Parris’s column brilliantly skewers the utter predictability of the policy announcements coming out of Number 10. “Much the same may be said of the problem-solving programme known as Mr Brown. Focus-grouping tells him voters are angry that top British bankers have been paying themselves fat salaries and bonuses. Key words in these reports trigger links in the Brown brain to key remedies: thus “angry about British banker's bonus” triggers “stop British banker's bonus”. “Salaries too high” triggers “curb salaries”. A cross-linking response is assembled: “control remuneration of British bankers”.

James Forsyth

More bad news for Britain

From our UK edition

Two stories in the papers today illustrate just how badly placed Britain is to get through this recession. In The Times, Patrick Hosking speculates about the possibility of Britain losing its triple A credit rating now that the Bank of England has resorted to quantitative easing. He notes that Moody’s has said that Britain’s triple A rating is now being “tested”. Other advanced economies have lost this rating before and survived, but making borrowing more expensive in the current circumstances would be yet another blow to the public finances as well as a national humiliation. Heather Stewart in The Guardian flags up an IMF report on how much of their GDP countries had spent on bailing out the banks by the middle of February.

James Forsyth

Obama could be a great ally to a prime minister — but not this one

From our UK edition

Gordon Brown has absurdly high expectations of the political boost he will get from this week’s trip to Washington and the G20 summit in London next month, says James Forsyth. It is David Cameron who stands to be the likely beneficiary of the special relationship The ‘legacy’ might be an extremely touchy subject in Downing Street these days, but the speech reflected how Gordon Brown wanted history to remember him: a consequential prime minister who helped steer the world through one of its great crises. When the senators and congressmen rose to applaud him, all the ambitions that Brown has nursed throughout his political career must have seemed within reach.

Friday

James Forsyth

Obama needs to staff up his Treasury—and fast

From our UK edition

There’s a rumour doing the rounds in Washington, which I mention in the magazine this week, that the reason Gordon Brown was invited to address a Joint Session of Congress is that the Obama administration isn’t yet ready to have a detailed conversation about the agenda for the G20. This is largely because the Treasury Department is absurdly under-staffed. The only confirmed official there is the Secretary, Tim Geithner. All the deputy and assistant and under secretary jobs are empty. Just to compound this problem, Annette Nazareth, who was expected to be the Deputy Secretary has dropped out and Caroline Atkinson, who as undersecretary of international affairs would have been key to the administration’s position on the G20, has also withdrawn.

James Forsyth

Why talk of a Cruddas Purnell ticket isn’t Balls

From our UK edition

With Gordon Brown appearing doomed the level of chatter about the Labour leadership contest that will follow the next election is increasing, Fraser did his political column on it this week.One of the more intriguing ideas out there, which Allegra Stratton floated on Tuesday, is that Cruddas and Purnell might team up on a ‘Stop Balls’ ticket. The idea would be that the presence of Cruddas on the ticket would make Purnell acceptable to the Unions and the soft-left while Purnell’s presence would allay fears that Cruddas wanted to take Labour back to the pre-Blair era. (To be accurate, Cruddas is a Blairite but an early stage one—1994 to 2000—not a late stage one.

James Forsyth

A question of identity

From our UK edition

There is a crisis in Britishness right now. Much of it has been brought about by the doctrine of multi-culturalism, you can’t have both mass immigration and multi-culturalism, so it was good to see Dominic Grieve setting out his opposition to it this week. Grieve’s views on community cohesion issues have been a cause of concern to many in the Tory party. But judging by this speech he is moving in the right direction, even if he is not fully comfortable with his new position yet. One very smart journalist friend of mine summed it up rather well when he said that the speech reads like “an other-worldly Matrix Chambers lawyer trying to offer the insights of Gove and the populism of Grayling, and not managing either.