David cameron

Wednesday

Lloyd Evans

World battles narcolepsy as wonky Miliband opens up

Superwonk Ed was back today. For the third week running he tried to nobble Cameron at PMQs by taxing him on some miniscule detail of policy. ‘Of the 163 statutory organisations in the health service’, asked Miliband, ‘how many will be left after the government’s top-down reforms?’ Cameron hadn’t a clue. And even at this early stage a sense of resignation was settling over the watching thousands. Trying to kick the PM with a footling facticule doesn’t play with the general public. It rarely makes the news. It has commentators reaching for lines of speed to keep awake. And the only people it excites are the opposition leader’s all-star team

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Cameron tries to turn Miliband’s microscope off

Having been stumped by Miliband’s focus on detail in the past two PMQs, Cameron came prepared today. He was determined to highlight the fact that the Labour leader wasn’t asking about the big picture. So after Miliband had asked a series of questions about the nuts and bolts of NHS reforms, Cameron used his final answer to launch into Miliband. ‘He can’t ask about strikes because he is in the pockets of the union’, he started. He rattled off a series of other great issues of the day on which Miliband was silent, building up towards his conclusion with the line‘ he has to talk about the micro because he

Tuesday

James Forsyth

The government’s soft touch on the unions may need to tighten

The government is determined not to seem like the aggressor in the coming dispute with the unions. It wants to stress that it is being reasonable and David Cameron’s speech today to the Local Government Association will be a classic example of this strategy. At the same time, it is trying to put in place contingency plans so the country can carry on regardless of industrial action. Those close to the coalition’s negotiating team point to how a well developed plan to use the army in place of striking prison officers deterred the Prison Officers Association from taking industrial action over the ‘privatisation’ of a prison. The question is whether

Monday

James Forsyth

Strike Thursday nears

After the failure of today’s meeting between union leaders and Francis Maude and Danny Alexander, Thursday’s strike now seems certain to go ahead. It’ll be the biggest test so far of the coalition’s ability to withstand industrial action. The coalition has constantly emphasised that it has contingency plans in place to deal with strikes. This Thursday will show us how good these plans are. Certainly, the more schools that are kept open, the less powerful the bargaining position of the unions will be. I understand that David Cameron will use his speech to the Local Government Association tomorrow to emphasise that the deal that the government is proposing on public

Daniel Korski

Looking behind the negative aid polls

There are, as the old adage goes, “lies, damned lies and statistics”. I’m beginning to think the same about polls. Take the polls that Britons are not as keen on overseas aid as the Prime Minister. Some of the headlines attached to them are prone to exaggeration. For example, on the back of the poll, the Mail claimed that “one in four people say they will no longer give money to charities such as Oxfam and Save the Children.” People may say that but they don’t seem to mean it. For it turns out that the British public has actually increased its giving to Save the Children by nearly 10 per

Sunday

David Blackburn

Clarke’s bill still not tough enough for the Right

David Cameron made a great show on Tuesday of pledging to be tough on crime. He bowdlerised the most contentious and liberal elements of Ken Clarke’s proposals and vowed that “the right thing to do is to reform prison and make it work better, not cut sentences.”  He insisted that his change of heart was a sign of strength, but even the least cynical observer could detect a sop to the mutinous Tory right. Well, it seems that the withdrawal has not gone far enough. The Sunday Times reports (£) that several backbenchers object to the redrafted Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill, on grounds that manifesto pledges

Saturday

David Blackburn

Immigration is so much more than an electoral issue

Further to Daniel’s piece about declining immigration in Europe, it is worth highlighting this passage from Iain Martin’s column in the Mail: ‘But once in Downing Street, Cameron was confronted by research from his personal pollster, Andrew Cooper, which confirmed the true extent of public concern about high levels of immigration. Ironically, Cooper was one of the very modernisers in the Tory Party who did not want Cameron to be tainted — as he saw it — by being seen as tough on immigration in the run-up to the election. But now he has changed his tune — and taken the Prime Minister along with him. In fact, Cooper has

James Forsyth James Forsyth

A reshuffle of the whips office?

It is tempting to treat the whole circus animal affair in the Commons this week as just a big joke, the Palace of Westminster turned into the Palace of Varieties. Certainly, the sight of MPs vigorously arguing about the fate of four circus geese had a certain black comedy to it. But there might be at least one serious consequence of the vote, a reshuffle of the whips office. In Tory circles, there is a lot of chatter about a damning assessment of the state of the whips’ office penned by former Tory MP Paul Goodman for the Conservative Intelligence website, an offshoot of ConservativeHome. In it, Goodman writes about

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Tax versus philanthropy 

I was on the panel of Any Questions last night in Saltaire, the most beautiful town I’ve seen outside of the Highlands. Jonathan Dimbleby always warms everyone up with a test question, which lets the panelists make their mistakes early. The first question was this: the town of Saltaire was founded by a philanthropist, Sir Titus Salt. What can be done to make today’s rich pay their fair share? Lucky for me that it was not recorded, because I went on for ages. Sir Titus was living in an era before the welfare state, where welfare was provided voluntarily, by people in the community. Had he been alive today, the

Friday

James Forsyth

Could Warsi’s next job be High Commissioner to Pakistan?

Sayeeda Warsi’s upbraiding of Pakistan for not living up to Jinnah’s ideals is another sign of how the government believes Baroness Warsi to be uniquely able to speak to Britain’s most difficult ‘ally’. David Cameron and his circle were thoroughly impressed by how Warsi managed to cool tempers in Islamabad following the Prime Minister’s criticism of Pakistan, in of all places India, for facing both ways in the war on terror and have been using her since to speak to the country’s leadership. Given that the Tory high command does not believe Warsi to be suited to being an election-campaign party chairman or to running a department, this raises the

David Blackburn

Britain makes new senior diplomatic appointments

From the Number 10 website: The Prime Minister is pleased to confirm the following senior appointments: Sir Peter Ricketts, currently the Prime Minister’s National Security Advisor, to become HM Ambassador to France; Sir Jon Cunliffe, currently the Prime Minister’s Advisor on Europe and Global Issues, to become the UK’s Permanent Representative to the European Union in Brussels; Sir Kim Darroch, currently the UK’s Permanent Representative to the EU, to become the Prime Minister’s National Security Adviser; and Sir Peter Westmacott, currently HM Ambassador France, to become HM Ambassador to Washington. These changes will take effect from January 2012. These appointments were approved by the Prime Minister and for the appointment

Matthew Sinclair

Solving the government’s aid conundrum

Earlier this week, Jonathan Jones reported on the problems facing the government on international development spending.  Their plan to increase the DFID budget is deeply unpopular. Today we’ve released a new YouGov poll that sheds a lot more light on the situation, and suggests a way out whereby the government can still fund their most prized objectives but take the heat out of public anger on the issue. The first thing to understand is that the public doesn’t just resent any money being spent on international development. Freezing the budget is significantly more popular – with 69 per cent support and 12 per cent opposed – than scrapping it outright

David Blackburn

Cameron: no more bailouts

It’s another of those special Cameron victories in Europe: we’re in for a second Greek bailout, but not quite as much as we might have been. Britain will contribute a sum through the IMF; however, it will not be contributing to EU funds. Cameron has succeeded in ensuring that the European bailout will be conducted under the permanent European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF), to which only eurozone members are signatories. Although it should be noted that some Brussels experts doubt that the European Financial Stabilisation Mechanism (to which Britain has subscribed) could have been used in this instance, which further devalues the government’s victory. Anyway, attention now turns to Greece

Thursday

Jonathan Jones

Poll round-up | 23 June 2011

We haven’t dwelt on the polls very much on Coffee House recently, although we have flagged up some nuggets on Twitter. Here are some of the measures of public opinion that provide an interesting backdrop to Westminster’s machinations: Labour in trouble despite poll leads Two weeks ago I reported on a poll that showed the extent of Ed Miliband’s unpopularity. There have since been a few more polls to compound his unease. ICM found that he had worse approval ratings even than Nick Clegg: YouGov find that 58 per cent of the public think he’s doing a bad job, but perhaps more worrying for “Red Ed” is that he even

Peter Hoskin

Obama draws down his forces

It is as Matt Cavanagh predicted in his article for Coffee House, a few weeks ago. Barack Obama has decided to pull 10,000 of the 30,000 American “surge” troops out of Afghanistan this year. The remaining 20,000 will be outtathere by next summer. “Drawdown,” is the word that the US President used in his address last night, and it is happening at quite a pace. He presented this approach as a victory, suggesting that America has already achieved most of its goals in the country, and that “the tide of war is receding”. But there were one or two revealing notes of concession. “We will not try to make Afghanistan

Wednesday

Lloyd Evans

Miliband’s myopia

The Prime Minister declared war at PMQs today. Not once but twice in the same sentence. ‘We’re at war in Libya and in Afghanistan,’ he said, in a throwaway footnote to some ritual noises about his ‘huge respect for our armed forces.’ Until this historic moment Britain had been engaged in peace-keeping and nation-building in Afghanistan, and in civilian protection and tyrant-bothering in Libya. But now it’s official. We’re mobilised on two fronts. Ed Miliband might have made more of this but he was too busy mentally preparing himself for this week’s shock ambush. This week’s shock ambush wasn’t quite as shocking as it might have been because it had

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Devil in the detail

David Cameron is not a details man. He has always been more comfortable with the grand sweep than the nitty-gritty of policy. Ed Miliband, by contrast, is a natural-born policy wonk who is never more confident than when discussing detail.   Miliband is trying to turn this to his advantage at PMQs and, for the second week in a row, succeeded in catching Cameron out on the details of government policy in an emotive area. Last week it was benefits for cancer sufferers, this week it was the retention of DNA from those arrested for, but not charged with, rape.    The Prime Minister is a good enough performer at

Jonathan Jones

Public opinion on international aid isn’t where Cameron thinks it is

Andrew Mitchell was recently informed that the public is split 50:50 for and against increasing the international aid budget to £12 billion in 2013. A YouGov@Cambridge poll for Politics Home suggests that he should get some better advice. The poll shows that while the public is indeed split fairly evenly on the general principle of aid (41 per cent in favour, 38 per cent against), when it comes to the government’s promise to increase the aid budget by a third, those against outnumber those for by more than 2 to 1. The policy is by no means a Cameroon brainchild. In 1970 the United Nations set the target for government

Peter Hoskin

America and Britain turn their minds to the (fiscal) cost of war

Five-thousand, ten-thousand, or fifteen-thousand? That’s the question hanging in the air as Barack Obama prepares to clarify his withdrawal plan for Afghanistan this evening (or 0100 BST, if you’re minded to stay up). And it relates to how many of the 30,000 “surge” troops he will decide to release from the country this year. Washington’s money appears to be on 10,000, with half of them leaving this summer and half in December. But no-one outside of the President’s clique really yet knows. His final decision will say a fair amount about his intentions in Afghanistan, or at least about just how fast he wants to scram out of there. What’s