Uk politics

Friday

James Forsyth

What Huhne’s case means for the Lib Dems

The biggest danger for the Liberal Democrats from this coming trial is that it turns the party into the butt of everybody’s jokes. Having gone into government and lost much of their original support by taking tough decisions, they have consoled themselves with the hope that they have now established themselves as a serious political party.   Their aim at the next election will be to present themselves as a credible party of government who will make the Tories more compassionate and Labour more fiscally responsible. But at the top party they are aware that there is a danger that a trial of Chris Huhne and his ex-wife Vicky Pryce

Peter Hoskin

Keir Starmer’s statement on Huhne

And here’s the full text: ‘This statement is made by the Crown Prosecution Service in the interests of transparency and accountability to explain the decisions reached in the cases of Mr Christopher Huhne and Ms Vasiliki Pryce and to explain the time taken in arriving at these decisions. A criminal complaint was made to Essex Police in May 2011, alleging that Ms Pryce had accepted responsibility for a speeding offence committed by Mr Huhne in 2003. That complaint was investigated by Essex Police and a file was passed to the CPS in late July 2011. The CPS advised that further investigations should be made, including obtaining certain material from a

Peter Hoskin

Chris Huhne charged by the CPS

The CPS was building up to a bang, not a whimper, after all: the Director of Public Prosecutions has just announced that Chris Huhne and Vicky Pryce will have criminal charges brought against them for ‘perverting the course of justice’. Both will appear in court on 16 February. We have not yet heard from the minister himself, although there are reports that he will resign to ‘clear his name’, etc. And even if he didn’t volunteer to leave, all signs are that Cameron and Clegg will act on the advice of the cabinet secretary and shunt him out anyway. And his replacement? As it stands, the Lib Dems’ Ed Davey

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The strange survival of Labour England

Any CoffeeHousers with a taste for schadenfreude should read David Miliband’s article in the New Statesman. We have to move beyond big government, he declares. We need a growth strategy. I’m not sure if any Labour leader has ever argued otherwise: maybe, as Miliband implies, it has found one now. But, as I ask in my Daily Telegraph column today, what’s worse: a party that’s stuck in 1983, or a modernising movement that’s aiming for 1987? But talk to any Tory, and it’s hard to find any who think the 2015 election is in the bag. Four factors should prevent us from writing off Labour’s chances: 1) David Cameron is

Thursday

James Forsyth

Clegg faces a potential dilemma over Chris Huhne

Neither David Cameron nor Nick Clegg is a fan of Chris Huhne. The Prime Minister would, by all accounts, shed few tears if Huhne had to step down.   But I suspect that the deputy Prime Minister will be hoping that tomorrow does not bring any adverse developments for the Energy and Climate Change Secretary. If there were to be charges, Clegg would be placed in a very difficult position. He would, despite his efforts to hide behind the Cabinet Secretary, have to decide whether the man he narrowly beat to the Lib Dem leadership could stay in post. This would be a lose-lose situation for Clegg for obvious reasons.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Bankers need to realise that things have changed

In a speech tomorrow, Ed Miliband will call for ‘one nation banking’. The Labour leader will argue that banks have to show that they are part of the society in which they operate.   But, perhaps, most interesting is Miliband’s point — previewed in the political column this week — that the behaviour and pay structures of banks are fair game for parliament because they are ‘either directly or indirectly supported by the taxpayer.’ Labour will, indeed, propose a vote on the broader bonus culture. The clear target of this motion will be Barclays and Bob Diamond.   Before the bailouts it would have been easy to dismiss all this

Daniel Korski

Don’t expect repatriation in this Parliament

When David Cameron wielded his veto at the European Council in December many Tories thought this was the beginning of a process of repatriation of powers from the EU. Myself, I thought it would be the high water mark of the government’s Euro-scepticism — and so it has proven. But things are about to get even worse for the Bill Cashes of this Parliament. In the short-term, at least.   Why so? Well, the government appears to be concluding that it will not get a receptive ear from its European partners on any repatriation bid. The other European leaders are simply too busy fixing the euro to even read any

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

CPS to announce tomorrow whether it’ll charge Chris Huhne

Keir Starmer, the Director of Public Prosecutions, will annouce at 10 o’clock tomorrow morning whether or not the Crown Prosecution Service will bring charges against Chris Huhne. If he is charged, it could spark a Cabinet reshuffle — the Energy Secretary is now odds on to be the next Cabinet member to leave, at 4/6 with Ladbrokes.

Jonathan Jones

What difference the Scottish independence question makes

A very useful contribution from Lord Ashcroft this morning, in the form of a poll he’s commissioned on Scottish independence. What sets Ashcroft’s poll apart from previous surveys is that he asks three different questions to three different sets of around 1,000 Scots.   The first is the question Alex Salmond wants on the ballot paper at the referendum: ‘Do you agree that Scotland should be an independent country?’ 41 per cent say ‘Yes’ and 59 per cent say ‘No’. The second alters the wording only slightly, to ‘Do you agree or disagree…’ and finds 39 per cent agreeing (i.e. supporting independence) and 61 per cent disagreeing. So far, fairly

Peter Hoskin

Why David Miliband’s article matters

The most curious thing about David Miliband’s article for the latest New Statesman — which is causing quite a stir this morning — is that it should appear now. After all, the Roy Hattersley essay that it purports to be responding to was published, so far as I can tell, last September. That’s five months ago. Which is fine, if it’s really taken MiliMajor that long to get around to it. But it certainly fuels the idea that he has chosen now, this moment, to make a political intervention — and Hattersley is just an excuse. And the intervention itself? Basically, Miliband warns against what he calls ‘Reassurance Labour’, a

Wednesday

Matt Cavanagh

The MoD wastes another opportunity

Today’s White Paper on defence procurement makes disappointing reading for the UK defence industry — and for anyone who believes that one of the lessons of the last few years is that we need a more active industrial policy. IPPR set out the case in a recent report on globalisation, arguing for sustained support for industries, like defence, which have high potential for growth, for exports, and for high-skill manufacturing jobs. We need robust safeguards on the sale of defence equipment to repressive regimes, as well as greater transparency on government lobbying to avoid a return to the bad old days of the Pergau Dam — or minor embarrassments like

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Labour vote to the Tories’ benefit

Labour has just marched into the trap that George Osborne set them and voted against the benefits cap — again. As one gleeful Tory says, ‘we’re going to make sure everyone in the country knows how they voted on this.’   I suspect that in every Labour-held marginal that the Tories need to win to get a majority in 2015 the benefit cap will feature prominently on Tory literature. Labour MPs will be faced with the unenviable task of explaining why an able-bodied household where no one works should receive more in benefits than the average wage.   The cap chimes with the public’s sense of fairness — as the

Matt Cavanagh

Today’s NATO leak highlights the need for more realism over Afghanistan

Today’s leaked NATO report on ‘the state of the Taliban’ has generated the predictable responses: excessive attempts by the media to hype it up, and excessive attempts by NATO and the Pakistani government to play it down. What is its true significance? It’s a good scoop, but there is little or nothing in it which really counts as ‘news’ to anyone who has been following the debate. The report is the latest in a series going back several years (I remember reading earlier versions during my time in government), which summarises thousands of interviews with captured insurgents and others, in an attempt to build up a picture of the state

Peter Hoskin

Your six-point guide to the Green Budget

As promised earlier, here’s my more detailed supplementary take on today’s IFS Green Budget. I’ve distilled it down into six points, but obviously there’s much, much more in the actual document itself. I’d recommend that you read the chapters on public sector pensions and pay, the 50p rate, and child benefit, in particular, if you’re so minded — as they’re very good summaries of some complicated fiscal areas. Anyway, here are my points: 1) The scary graph. As it does every year, the IFS has produced what I call the ‘scary graph’. It shows what our debt/GDP ratio would look like for decades hence under various circumstances. Even extending Osborne’s

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Miliband finds his niche, and leaves Cameron looking boorish

Miliband is getting the measure of PMQs. Not with respect to Cameron. With respect to himself. He’s learned that his strongest register — sanctimony — will always ring hollow unless it’s attached to a powerful cause. And his gags don’t work. So he’s ditched his team of funny men and wise-crackers and turned to his political instincts instead. Miliband’s gut worked today. He began with a question which he knew Cameron couldn’t answer. Why hasn’t the government activated the laws requiring banks to name all employees earning over a million year? The PM answered by not answering. He performed a transparent switcheroo from the particular question to the general topic.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Tories push benefit cap in PMQs, Miliband ignores it

As expected, the Tories did everything they could to make the benefit cap the subject of PMQs. One Tory MP managed to slip in a question on it just before Miliband got up, allowing Cameron to press the Labour leader on the issue even before he had started speaking. Tory MPs kept coming back to the benefit cap — there were five questions on it in all — allowing Cameron to repeatedly mock the Labour front bench for not saying what its position is. ‘Just nod — are you with us or against us?’ was one of the lines Cameron tried to goad them with. But in the main clashes

Peter Hoskin

The view from the Institute for Fiscal Studies

It’s the halftime coffee break here at the launch of the Institute for Fiscal Studies’ Green Budget, so I thought I’d send CoffeeHousers a quick update. But first, just to be clear, that’s green meaning green, not green meaning environmental. This is the IFS’s annual, different-hued version of the Treasury’s Red Book. It’s their overall take on the economy and public finances. So far, there has been little that will surprise or disconcert George Osborne as he prepares his own Budget: the picture is expectedly grim. As John Walker, chairman of Oxford Economics, put it in his warm-up routine on the general economy, 2011 was ‘disappointing’ and 2012 will be

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The battle for ‘fairness’ continues

Today’s PMQs will be another skirmish in the battle for fairness. All three parties know that there is no more potent word in British politics at the moment than fairness and they all want to be its champion. But what will make PMQs interesting today is that Cameron and Miliband each have a powerful weapon in the fairness debate, but also a vulnerability. Miliband’s weapon is bankers’ bonuses – the government’s inaction over Stephen Hester’s bonus has given him plenty of material. But he’s acutely vulnerable over the benefits cap. Cameron will be desperate to move the debate onto this territory. All the polling shows that Labour’s desire to have

Tuesday

Fraser Nelson

Freedom for Shetland!

If Scotland can claim independence — and a ‘geographical share’ of the oil regardless of population — then why can’t Orkney & Shetland? It’s the Up Helly Aa festival in Lerwick tonight, where men dress up as vikings and set a longship ablaze. Not a very Scottish festival, but when your nearest city is Bergen how Scottish do you feel? Laurance Reed, a former Hebridean resident (and ex-MP), has a piece in this week’s magazine pointing out that, by the Salmond doctrine, there is nothing to stop the Scottish islands breaking off, claiming the oil wealth and becoming the Dubai of the north. His piece is below. Freedom for Shetland!,

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Fred shredded down to size

The removal of Fred Goodwin’s knighthood serves the coalition’s political purposes. It shows them being tough on a bad banker and reminds everyone that these problems happened on the last government’s watch and that Alex Salmond was cheering on RBS’s bid for ABN Amro. There are even some in government who are up for a fight over clawing back part of his pension or past bonuses believing it would put both Goodwin and the human rights act in the dock. This is not to say that the removal of his knighthood was not merited. Goodwin didn’t do much of a service to banking, after all. There’s another lesson in this: