Uk politics

What’s more important to Cameron: actual fairness or presentational fairness?

James has already blogged the Sunday Telegraph’s interview with David Cameron, but some other things stand out from it — and not just the PM’s unthinking attack on Ed Balls either, for which he has since apologised. Take these paragraphs on tax, for instance: ‘The Prime Minister effectively rules out any move towards a “mansion tax” — a levy on high-priced properties proposed by the Liberal Democrats — or indeed any new tax on wealth. “I don’t believe, generally speaking, we should be looking at endless additional taxes.” However, he signals that the 50p top rate of income tax, on earnings above £150,000, will remain for the time being, despite

Ed under siege — and under threat

There was a fun game we used to play during Gordon Brown’s premiership: counting the number of ‘buck up, or we kick you out’ ultimatums that Labour MPs delivered to their leader. There were, suffice to say, a lot of them. And tallying them up illustrated two things: the constant, sapping pressure that the Brown leadership was under, and Labour’s persistent inability to actually finish him off. I mention it now because of this story in today’s Mail on Sunday. It collects the increasingly public criticism of Ed Miliband by his own MPs, including Graham Stringer’s warning that ‘Ed has got to get a grip and turn it around before

James Forsyth

Cameron’s fairness agenda

The politics of the ‘undeserving rich’ is again dominating the news this morning. David Cameron tells the Sunday Telegraph that ‘The market for top people isn’t working, it needs to be sorted out’. While the Mail on Sunday reports that George Osborne is planning to create a new criminal offence of ‘criminal negligence’ that could be used against those bankers who endanger the financial system. Perhaps the most significant aspect of Cameron’s Sunday Telegraph interview, though, is his attempt to redefine ‘fairness’. Cameron has tried to do this before, arguing that it isn’t just about redistribution but about people getting out what they put in. As Matt d’Ancona notes, this

Will high-speed rail mean a new Welsh Secretary?

The decision on whether or not to proceed with the HS2 rail link is expected on Tuesday. Given all the legal issues involved, the government is not making any public comment on the matter. But all the signs are that it will get the go-ahead. There will be quite considerable opposition to the projects from parts of the Tory party. It is highly likely that Cheryl Gillan, the Welsh Secretary who represents one of the seats that will have the line running through it, will resign over the matter. If she does, expect Maria Miller to replace her. Number 10 are keen not to see the number of women in

Fraser Nelson

The Miliband puzzle

So why did Ed Miliband stop his brother being leader of the Labour Party? As each month of his uninspiring leadership passes, it becomes more of a puzzle. In today’s Guardian interview, we learn that he can solve a Rubik’s Cube in 90 seconds. Perhaps David Miliband took two minutes, leaving Ed to regard him as being intellectually inferior. The rest of the interview shows Ed trying to row back towards positions that David Miliband would have adopted from the offset: trying to claim fiscal responsibility, and credibility. The ‘In the black Labour’ movement is also an attempt to repair the repetitional damage being wreaked by Balls, whose calls for

Miliband comes out swinging

After being mostly absent in an embarrassing week, which culminates in today’s Sun headline of ‘Block Ed’ referring to the Labour leader’s Twitter gaffe yesterday, Ed Miliband has emerged with a self-assured interview in the Guardian. In parts, he is even boastful. Miliband declares himself ‘someone of real steel and grit’ and brags ‘I am the guy who took on Murdoch… I am the guy that said the rules of capitalism as played in the last 30 years have got to change’. He claims – contrary to Maurice Glasman’s criticism this week – to have ‘a very clear plan’ about what needs to change in Britain. And what is it

The scale of Clegg’s Lords challenge

Tucked away on page 15 of today’s Times, there’s an insightful story about Lords reform (£) by Roland Watson. And it’s insightful not just for the new information it contains, but also for the familiar truth it confirms: reforming the House of Lords is going to be one helluva difficult task. You see, while both halves of the coalition committed to a fully- or ‘mainly-elected’ upper chamber in their respective manifestos, only one half of the coalition is particularly eager to force it through now. As the Times story says, Nick Clegg’s proposed Bill has already endured a ‘serious re-writing’ to make it more palatable all round, but even so:

Dave talks film, finances and Europe

It was the second of the Today Programme’s New Year’s interviews with the three party leaders today; this one with David Cameron. And there was plenty to digest from it. So much, in fact, that we thought we’d bash out a transcript, so that CoffeeHousers can read it through for themselves. That’s below, but before we get there it’s worth highlighting a couple of things that Cameron says. First, his point that ‘we’ve seen a level of reward at the top that just hasn’t been commensurate with success’, which is another volley in the battle against the ‘undeserving rich’ that James mentioned yesterday. And then his extended admission, in reference

Fraser Nelson

It’s poverty, not race, that ought to concern us more

My Daily Telegraph column today is about how poverty is a greater problem in Britain than racism, which I describe as an ‘almost-vanquished evil’. This has drawn some criticism, not least from those asking (understandably) what a white guy like me can know about racism. Not much, but plenty of academics have done a hell of a lot of work into racism in Britain (including two brilliant, young academics, Matt Goodwin and Robert Ford). And their studies present a far brighter picture than we’re used to. The abject failure of the BNP is not just down to Nick Griffin being a plumb — it’s because he tried to hawk a

Murphy sets Labour’s new strategy a-rolling

A few weeks ago, a shadow minister urging Labour to avoid ‘shallow and temporary’ populism over spending cuts might have seemed like a sally against the party’s Ballsist wing. But given that Ed Balls has since said that ‘Labour will give more details of its tough spending decisions [in 2012]’, then Jim Murphy’s intervention in the Guardian today is a little less provacative than that. In truth, the shadow defence secretary’s words fit perfectly into Labour’s plan to sound more fiscally responsible this year. It is, most likely, party policy dressed up as a clarion call. What’s striking is that Murphy goes beyond this simple rhetoric, becoming the first shadow

Lord Falconer has the wrong ideas about assisted suicide

So Lord Falconer’s commission, funded by Sir Terry Pratchett, has concluded that there is a ‘strong case’ for assisted suicide, has it? Well, there’s a thing. Given their previous form and the composition of the committee, it would have been remarkable if they’d decided that, on balance, the law works perfectly well — which is what one of their witnesses, the Director of Public Prosecutions, Keith Starmer, said. On the whole, partly because some anti-euthanasia bodies refused to participate and partly because people with a blatant opposition to assisted dying weren’t invited to sit on it, the composition and conclusions of the body reflected the opinions of those who set

The debate over assisted suicide

Looking at today’s report by the Commission on Assisted Dying, the first thing that jumps out is just how comprehensive it is. They reach the conclusion that assisted suicide should be legalised — and they’ve done so after hundreds of hours of consultation with various groups and experts, as well as sifting through the evidence from countries where various forms of assisted dying are allowed. This is no rush job. Among the stand-out points from its 415 pages is that the current situation — under which anyone encouraging or assisting another person’s suicide can be punished by 14 years in prison — is both ‘very distressing for families and unclear

Why Tom Baldwin reckons Labour shouldn’t give up on Miliband

Before Christmas, The Times’s Sam Coates managed to get his hands on Labour’s ‘media grid’ for the week — and much Westminster-y fun it was too. But now he’s gone one better, by publishing a strategy memo that Ed Miliband’s director of communications, Tom Baldwin, has produced for his Labour colleagues. It’s well worth reading in full, here and here, not least because it outlines the party’s argument for the coming year. In summary, though, it’s much like Miliband’s New Year’s address: more of the same, with a side order of fiscal responsibility. Baldwin emphasises the ‘squeezed middle’ and Labour’s ‘five-point plan for jobs and growth’, but he also adds:

James Forsyth

The coming battle over the ‘undeserving rich’

Who can be toughest on the ‘undeserving rich’ is shaping up to be one of the main political battlegrounds of 2012. David Cameron and Nick Clegg’s comments today on tax avoidance are an attempt to get ahead of this debate.    Clegg, though, is keen to make this issue his own. As I say in the politics column this week, he is planning a big speech later this month on ‘responsible capitalism’. He will use it to argue that there need to be more checks and balances within companies and call for more shareholder power over executive pay. One Cleggite tells me, in reference to the Labour leader’s conference speech

Abbott’s Twitter troubles

That Diane Abbott tweet that Pete mentioned earlier (‘White people love playing divide and rule’) has made her the centre of attention this morning. She may have deleted it, and claimed that it has been ‘taken out of context’, but still the Labour Party has deemed it necessary to give her a public telling off for it. A spokesman said: ‘We disagree with Diane’s tweet. It is wrong to make sweeping generalisations about any race, creed, or culture. The Labour Party has always campaigned against such behaviour – and so has Diane Abbott.’ And Abbott herself has now apologised, although not exactly wholeheartedly: ‘I understand people have interpreted my comments

Every day, in every way, it’s getting worse for Ed Miliband

Unless one of Ed Miliband’s New Year’s resolutions was to ignore absolutely everything going on around him, I expect the Labour leader will be in a particularly glum mood this morning. And it’s not just that Maurice Glasman article — which has inspired the headline ‘Miliband’s former guru says he has “no strategy”’ on the front of today’s Guardian — either. It’s the, erm, questionable tweets from one of Miliband’s shadow ministerial team. It’s the LabourList poll that finds scant support, and much disapproval, for his leadership. It’s that John Rentoul column suggesting Yvette Cooper for the throne. It’s the Tory minister who said to Iain Martin that ‘Keeping Ed

Lord Glasman’s target is the other Ed

Maurice Glasman’s New Statesman piece on Ed Miliband is causing a bit of a stir. Lord Glasman, an academic who Miliband proposed for a peerage, writes that the Labour leader ‘has not broken through. He has flickered rather than shone, nudged not led.’ But if you read between the lines of Glasman’s article it is clear that he thinks someone is holding Miliband back and he drops very heavy hints as to who that is. For instance, the second sentence reads as follows: ‘Old faces from the Brown era still dominate the shadow cabinet and they seem stuck in defending Labour’s record in all the wrong ways – we didn’t

Gove versus the ‘enemies of promise’

Michael Gove has never been timid in confronting the education bureaucracy, but his attack on them today is particularly — and noteworthily — unforgiving. Referring to those truculent local authorities that are blocking his schools reforms, he will say in a speech that starts in about ten minutes: ‘The same ideologues who are happy with failure — the enemies of promise — also say you can’t get the same results in the inner cities as the leafy suburbs, so it’s wrong to stigmatise these schools. Let’s be clear what these people mean. Let’s hold their prejudices up to the light. What are they saying? “If you’re poor, if you’re Turkish,