Uk politics

Monday

Isabel Hardman

The government has little power over the empty seats scandal

The papers today are full of empty seats at the Olympics. This morning, a Downing Street spokeswoman tried to take a glass-half-full approach, saying the empty seats were ‘disappointing’, but adding that the Prime Minister was ‘satisfied’ that Locog was working to resolve the issue. Locog carried out a review at the weekend which found that the seats were in accredited areas rather than those allocated to sponsors. The accredited areas are set aside for ‘members of the Olympic family’, an unpleasant phrase that denotes representatives of the IOC and of the sporting federations,  as well as coaches, athletes and athletes’ families. The different options available are: – Give the

Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

Green Party Candidate: Give me more money!

As a slogan, ‘give me more money’ is an unlikely election winner. Nevertheless, Peter Cranie came close to trying it at the hustings for the leadership of the Green Party in Manchester on Friday. At the start of the above clip, a member of the audience asked what wage the contenders would take. Pippa Bartolotti purred that she wanted the Greens to spend party funds on campaigns not individuals – a sentiment to win elections with. But then it was easy for Ms Bartolotti to be selfless because she had a career in business before going into politics. Cranie was more cautious. He explained that he earned £29,000 as a

Steerpike Steerpike

Judo diplomacy

While the ladies’ beach volleyball is exciting Boris ‘glistening otters’ Johnson and the peeking Prime Minister, another event could be about to get very political. President Putin is set to arrive in town on Thursday: yes there will be bilateral meetings, but he’s really here for the judo. At a time when UK/Russian relations are particularly low, one Russian Embassy source jokes that perhaps diplomacy should be a little more hands on and that Putin should challenge fellow judo fan William Hague to a match. Sadly this will remain a pipe-dream, which is just as well – we would not want Hague’s old judo partner – Lord Sebastian Coe –

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Planning reform is an easy way of helping the economy

‘Desperate Treasury to water down planning laws,’ blasts the Telegraph today, making it quite clear that it’ll oppose any effort by the government to return to planning reform. Those Tories who were uncomfortable with the original proposals are also making clear that they haven’t changed their position. The new national planning policy framework was announced this spring. Those who helped craft this compromise are privately stressing that it is simply too early to tell whether further changes are needed. But I still think there is a good chance that the Treasury will push for more planning reform this autumn. First, it is something that it genuinely believes would help the

Sunday

Isabel Hardman

RBS next in line for Libor heat

The Guardian has published an interview on its site with Stephen Hester in which the RBS chief executive predicts his bank is facing a huge fine for its part in the Libor fixing scandal. He says: ‘RBS is one of the banks tied up in Libor. We’ll have our day in that particular spotlight as well.’ Hester can to a certain extent afford to be upfront about what is coming down the line for his bank. Even though it was clear from the start that there were other banks wading around in this swamp, Barclays took the majority of the flak as the first one to be fined. There might

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Ministers consider further planning reform

Today’s papers are stuffed full of Olympic reportage rather than analysis of the GDP figures. But down in the bowels of Whitehall, a list of policy options to try and boost economic growth are being drawn up. Decisions on what to do will be taken after the Olympics but I understand that further planning reform is currently on the list. The coalition announced a new national policy planning framework in the Spring. But it was not as radical as George Osborne and the Treasury wanted it to be: opposition from heritage groups like the National Trust and various environmental organisations led to it being watered down. With the economy shrinking

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Osborne needs to give the Lib Dems sleepless nights on supply-side reform

Ed Balls is doing very well out of the GDP figures that were released on Wednesday. The Shadow Chancellor is right to say that George Osborne is not yet doing the right thing with the economy. But that doesn’t mean Balls’ solution is the right one. Cuts should have been only one side of the deal, but as Iain Martin points out in today’s Sunday Telegraph, the other side which should have kickstarted growth – supply-side reform – is not forthcoming because Osborne and Cameron are afraid of offending the Lib Dems. Similarly, James says in his column today that too often attempts to strike a balance between the supply-side

Saturday

Isabel Hardman

Osborne seizes on S&P ratings relief

You’d think that after the bad economic news of the past week, George Osborne might have reverted to submarine mode as soon as he possibly could, moving quietly under the cover of the Olympics. But this afternoon he has stuck a periscope up with this message: the world has confidence that Britain is dealing with its economic plan. It’s a bold statement to make after Wednesday’s GDP figures, and Labour has already mocked him for doing so, but Osborne is responding to the announcement overnight by Standard & Poor’s that the UK will continue to enjoy an AAA credit rating. The ratings agency said: ‘We project that, despite recent weakness,

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Using the Olympics to turn a corner

I suspect there’s a certain relief in Downing Street today. First, the opening ceremony passed off pretty well; no one is talking about G4S this morning. Second, Standard and Poor’s has reiterated Britain’s AAA credit rating despite the negative GDP figures this week. The government is hoping that the Olympics will help it turn the corner from the negative economic news of recent months. Over the next week or so, we’re going to see what one minister described to me as ‘the government’s industrial strategy’ in action. The Global Investment Conference at Lancaster House is meant to showcase the benefits of investing in Britain for specific sectors. The aim is

Friday

Isabel Hardman

Unqualified teachers haven’t ‘irreparably damaged’ the private sector: why do state schools deserve anything different?

The furore surrounding the news – which James broke on Coffee House this afternoon – that academies will now be able to employ teachers who are not qualified was so brilliantly predictable that we could have written the unions’ press releases for them. Christine Blower of the National Union of Teachers slammed it as a ‘clear dereliction of duty’ and a ‘cost-cutting measure that will cause irreparable damage to children’s education’. Blower and her union colleagues are not clear why education will be so badly damaged by this, though. Top schools in the private sector regularly employ staff who have gone through no formal training at all. But parents have to

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Academies to be allowed to employ teachers without formal training

The pace of reform in education has been stepped up again today. The model funding agreement for all new academies has now been changed by the Department for Education to remove the requirement for all teachers to have Qualified Teacher Status. Any existing academy will also be able to change its funding agreement to include this new freedom. This change might sound technical but its importance is that it means that academies will now be able to employ people who have not gone through a year of teacher training. Previously, an academy couldn’t have employed, say, James Dyson to teach design without him having done a year in a teacher

Zac Goldsmith

Web exclusive: voters must punish the government if recall is dropped

In his first statement as Prime Minister on the steps of No10 Downing Street, David Cameron said that “One of the tasks that we clearly have is to rebuild trust in our political system… yes, it’s about making sure people are in control and that the politicians are always their servants and never their masters.” One key promise in the Coalition Agreement to achieve this was to introduce a power of recall, allowing voters to get rid of sitting MPs and force by-elections where they feel they have been let down. The Government published a draft Recall Bill in December last year, and invited a Committee of MPs to scrutinise

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Olympic Boris

Boris Johnson is one of the few politicians in the world able to clamber up on a concert stage in Hyde Park, take the mic, and whip a crowd up into a frenzy as he did last night. If you haven’t seen the Mayor of London sending Londoners wild with excitement while mocking Mitt Romney, it’s well worth watching below: It’s impossible to imagine any of the members of the Cabinet managing to carry any of this speech off with any dignity at all, let alone the panache that Boris possesses. A Ken Livingstone Olympic rally might have struck a rather different tone had London voted in a Labour mayor

Thursday

Isabel Hardman

The Romneyshambles road show

David Cameron broke with Downing Street tradition today by meeting Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. But Romney might now be wishing that, like François Hollande, he’d been snubbed by the Prime Minister until the elections were over. He started his day with forgetting Ed Miliband’s name, calling him ‘Mr Leader’ instead when the two met. That wasn’t too bad: it’s not as if British people, or indeed the media, can remember what the Labour leader is called half the time, anyway. But once in Downing Street, he decided to get out a spade and dig a rather large hole for himself in the back garden (which he accidentally described as

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The problem isn’t that Osborne is too political but that Number 10 isn’t political enough

There’s been a lot of attention over the past few days as to whether George Osborne is too political. But what should really worry Tories is not how political George Osborne is, but how unpolitical Number 10 is. There are far too many Tories who think that politics is something you do in opposition not government. This view is profoundly mistaken. As I say in my column this week, city mayors were a major plank of David Cameron’s vision for reviving England’s cities. Yet all but one of the mayoral referendums were lost. Why? Because voters were never shown that mayors wouldn’t just be another politician. The Number 10 machine

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Warsi cleared of expenses allegations

The Lords Commissioner for Standards has cleared Baroness Warsi of allegations that she wrongly claimed expenses for staying rent-free with a friend. Now that this has been cleared up, and Sir Alex Allan has already exonerated her from any allegations of impropriety for allowing a business partner to accompany her, Warsi has a clean slate to present when it comes to September’s reshuffle. The Prime Minister said that the Conservative Party co-chair would lead a ‘big summer of campaigning for the Conservative Party’ in the run-up to the police commissioner elections, but that still leaves the door open to a new task in the autumn. Paul Waugh reported yesterday on

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Lib Dems block further welfare cuts

One popular prediction swirling around Westminster this morning is that part of the Government’s response to the GDP disaster will be to cut more money from the welfare budget. After all, George Osborne told MPs in his Budget statement that there would need to be a further package of £10 billion cuts in welfare spending over the period of the next spending review, and the IMF has made similar noises, too. But I understand that this is not going to happen because the Liberal Democrats will not let it go through. Sources are emphatic that those at the top – Nick Clegg, Danny Alexander et al – have blocked the

Priti Patel

France shows up Labour’s economic plan

Yesterday’s economic news reminds us of the need for the Government to continue to focus relentlessly on getting our economy moving – dealing with the debt crisis, boosting bank lending to the real economy, and ensuring sustainable long-term prosperity through radical economic reform. One of the key planks of the Government’s reforms is to make Britain’s tax system more competitive, ensuring that Britain is open for business, that we are a dynamic and an attractive place to invest in and to work in. Cutting corporation tax to the lowest rate in the G7 is one element of this plan. Cutting the top rate of income tax to level the playing

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

The post-GDP sleeve-rolling begins

David Cameron is using the Olympics today to strike a more upbeat tone after yesterday’s GDP gloom. The Prime Minister is speaking at 10am at a global investment conference to pitch for business from 180 chief executives from around the world. Cameron will tell the conference that he is ‘determined that Britain will be on of the great success stories’ in rebuilding its economy, and will say: ‘There will be no more passionate supporter of Team GB than me. But I’ve got a job to do this summer. And a big part of that job is to get behind British business… and do everything I can to help secure the

Wednesday

Benjamin Fry

The straightforward solution for mental health treatment

Yesterday Nick Clegg published an ‘implementation framework’ for the government’s  mental health strategy. This follows his announcement in February 2011 of a ‘No Health without Mental Health’ policy, which has not been delivered and is now fragmenting under the changes being implemented to the commissioning structure of the health service. I have a special interest in this subject. About four years ago the failure of both the NHS and the private sector to deliver moderately competent mental health treatment (to me) nearly killed me; I was very ill with complex PTSD. The cost to the state of my death (in the absence of other resources and leaving behind a family