Uk politics

Friday

James Forsyth

Cameron leaves Cannes with an IMF headache

The Cannes summit leaves the world no further forward on its quest for some kind of solution to the Eurozone crisis. Strikingly, the Germans still won’t agree — despite huge diplomatic pressure — to the ECB fulfilling the traditional emergency function of a central bank and acting as lender of last resort. This is a blow when you consider that Cameron thought there was a real possibility Merkel would budge on this after last week’s European Council meeting. It also provides Cameron with a domestic political headache. For if the ECB won’t act, the IMF will have to take more of the strain — and increasing Britain’s contributions to the

Daniel Korski

Palestine presses on in the UN

While the Palestinian bid for membership at the United Nations moved closer to rejection, it turned out that Palestine has a veto over which UN agencies the United States funds. For after Palestine gained admission to UNESCO, the US administration followed through on its threats and cut the organisation’s funding. As UNESCO is based on assessed contributions from member-states, others cannot make up the short-fall. The Palestinian Authority is now considering making applications to the WHO, WIPO and the International Telecommunications Union – technocratic bodies that actually play a large in role. For example, the WHO is crucial for dealing with global pandemics like SARS and Swine Flue. So while

Daniel Korski

Envoy for repatriation

A few days ago Douglas Carswell laid out a way for the Prime Minister to regain the eurosceptics’ trust. One of his ideas was to replace the UK’s new chief diplomat in Brussels with someone directly accountable to Parliament. This idea has a snowball’s chance in hell of succeeding. First, the PM has resisted all sorts of political appointments – he’s even limited the number of Special Advisers – and I don’t think he’s about to start. Second, doing so would upend a constitutional principle: that officials report to the government, not the legislature. For this reason even generals are not approved by Parliament, as they are in the United

Matthew Sinclair

Tax busting

Back in June 2008, when Gordon Brown’s government was young but already so weak it looked like it might not last, James Foryth wrote about one positive legacy it might leave. The Union Flag all around Whitehall on the top of public buildings. Whether you saw that cynically as an attempt by a Scotsman to win over sceptical English voters, or as a genuine attempt to support a sense of British identity, James was right and those flags are still flying. We can all debate over what the great legacy of this Government should be or will be, and only time will tell which of its most important initiatives will

Thursday

Lloyd Evans

Debate report: Britain must cut its overseas aid budget now

Last night, as we mentioned yesterday and the day before, was The Spectator’s debate on whether Britain should cut its overseas aid budget. Here, for CoffeeHousers who couldn’t attend the event, is Lloyd Evans’ review of it:   Chair: Rod Liddle Proposing: Ian Birrell, Richard Dowden, Stephen Glover Opposing: Prof Paul Collier, Alan Duncan MP, Richard Miller   Ian Birrell, former speechwriter for David Cameron, proposed the motion by likening aid programmes to helping child beggars in the third world. The gift, though well-intentioned, keeps children out of school, encourages more kids to start begging and condemns entire families to penury. If aid worked, Birrell would happily treble it. But

Jonathan Jones

A collision course with Iran?

Are we on the verge of war with Iran? The Guardian’s frontpage today suggests we might well be. Here’s a taster of the article: “Britain’s armed forces are stepping up their contingency planning for potential military action against Iran amid mounting concern about Tehran’s nuclear enrichment programme, the Guardian has learned. The Ministry of Defence believes the US may decide to fast-forward plans for targeted missile strikes at some key Iranian facilities. British officials say that if Washington presses ahead it will seek, and receive, UK military help for any mission, despite some deep reservations within the coalition government. In anticipation of a potential attack, British military planners are examining

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The euro sparks a Cabinet row

Word reaches me of a vigorous exchange of views in Cabinet this week between Chris Huhne and Michael Gove over the European question. Huhne, who has form when it comes to Cabinet scraps, launched into a polemic against Tory Eurosceptics and insisted that the coalition not be “wagged by the Eurospecptic tail”. It has, obviously, escaped Huhne’s notice that there are more Tory Euro-rebels than there are Lib Dem MPs. There then followed an even more incredible moment where Huhne implied that if he had been in power, the single currency would have worked and so it was unfair to suggest that he had been proved wrong. This was all

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The euro is destroying Europe

This week’s issue of The Spectator hits the newsstands today. Here, for CoffeeHousers, is James Forsyth’s Politics column from it: Last week’s rebellion by David Cameron’s backbenchers in support of an EU referendum ended eight years of peace in the Tory party on the European question. Now, the offer by the Greek Prime Minister of a referendum on the bailout package — designed to appease nervous Greek Socialist party backbenchers — means that the uncertainty surrounding the eurozone will drag on into the New Year. George Osborne regards the confusion surrounding the future of the single currency as the single biggest obstacle to a British economic recovery. The Chancellor and

Wednesday

Tim Montgomerie

Right to reply: Aid is one of the government’s greatest endeavours

Peter Kellner recently explained that the BBC licence fee becomes less popular if you describe it as an annual cost rather than as a daily cost. When people are told it costs £145.50 a year 27 per cent more people disapprove than approve. When they are told that’s only the equivalent of 40p a day there’s a striking turnaround: 8 per cent more people approve than disapprove. You see a similar thing with Britain’s development budget. When the aid budget is expressed in terms of billions of pounds, people object and they object strongly. When it’s presented in more human-sized ways it is much more popular. A recent ConservativeHome survey

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

PMQs or St Paul’s protest?

The Hair Shirt walked abroad at PMQs today. Those attending the Square Mile sleepover finally forced their agenda into the political mainstream. The question is, what is their agenda? A protest that doesn’t define its programme allows others to define it for them. And today both party leaders tried to harness the anti-capitalist spirit for their own political ends. Ed Miliband claimed to be scandalised by a recent, and arguable, surge of 49 per cent in directors’ pay. He demanded that the PM take action. Cameron seemed equally appalled at the news that fat cats have been getting fatter during the recession. But he wasn’t taking any sermons from Labour.

Peter Hoskin

Union bosses: Thanks for the concessions, but the strike’s still on

The TUC have just released a statement responding to the tweaked public sector pensions package that I blogged about earlier. It is, in part, fairly conciliatory; saying that the group welcomes “this movement in the government’s position”. But it does end with a warning: “unless and until further real progress is made and acceptable offers are made within those negotiations, unions remain firmly committed to continuing their preparations for the planned day of action on November 30.” Anyway, here’s the full text:    “At the meeting earlier today Danny Alexander and Francis Maude outlined a number of new proposals to the TUC negotiating team, including an improvement in the proposed

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Cameron versus Balls

The real clash at PMQs today was between Ed Balls’ heckling and David Cameron’s temper. Balls was in a particularly chirpy mood. He started off his impression of an Australian slip fielder as soon as the Prime Minister arrived at the despatch box. The flat lining gesture made an early appearance, along with his signals telling Cameron to calm down.   But the moment when Balls seemed to really get under Cameron’s skin was when he pointed at the overwhelmingly male Treasury bench as Cameron talked about the importance of getting more women on boards. Two questions later, Cameron responded to a Balls’ heckle by saying that ‘the shadow Chancellor

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The Greek land mines that Cameron must avoid

When the topic of Greece comes up at PMQs, David Cameron will need to avoid stepping on three land mines. The first task is not to say anything about what is going on in Athens, or Rome for that matter, that will exacerbate market anxieties. The second is a diplomatic challenge, to avoid anything that would sour Britain’s pitch ahead of the G20. The third, and perhaps most difficult one, is to keep his own backbenchers on side.   An ever growing number of Tories doubt that a 17 member Euro and fiscal union is in Britain’s, or Europe’s, interests. Already, some Tory backbenchers are talking about going to Greece,

Joe Stead

Right to reply: The aid debate we need to have

As Fraser pointed out yesterday, the Spectator’s debate on international aid is tonight (all CoffeeHousers welcome, tickets available here). To further set the stage for that debate, here’s a response to Fraser’s original post from the folk at Christian Aid: I’m glad that, in his post yesterday, the Spectator editor said he is in favour of aid, and that some of it is best done by governments. And, like him, I’m also in favour of aid spending being at least protected from cuts. On these two points we agree. That’s about the extent of our common ground. The British government made a commitment to devote 0.7 per cent of economic

Peter Hoskin

The pensions battle rages on

An “enhanced offer” is how Treasury types are describing the revised pensions package that will be put before union bosses today — and so it is. As far as we can tell, concessions have been made in three areas: i) the changes to public sector pensions will be spread across seven years, rather than five; ii) the accrual rate, which determines how much of a workers’ salary is notionally set aside for their pension each year, will be made more generous; and iii) the “cost ceiling,” which sets a cap on long-term taxpayer contributions, will be raised for various schemes. There could be more on offer, too. But all that,

Tuesday

Peter Hoskin

Exclusive: The BBC to apologise for wronging Tyrie

Here’s one for newswatchers: a lesser spotted on-air apology from the BBC. During the Conservative Party conference, you may remember, they purported to show footage of Steve Hilton taking Andrew Tyrie into a corner to persuade him of the government’s line. But they are about to publicly admit, during the 5pm bulletin on the BBC News Channel, that they misrepresented what actually happened — and they’re sorry about it. Peter Oborne detailed the misrepresentation in his column last week; drawing attention to the clarifying blog post that the BBC’s James Landale graciously wrote on the matter, two weeks ago. Anyway, here’s the text of the BBC’s apology: “Last month we

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The post-riots landscape

Back in August, the riots were being talked about as an event that would redefine our politics. But the economic news has been so relentless that the post-riots issues have received minimal coverage. This, though, doesn’t make them any less important. This week, we’re seeing two strands of the government’s response. First, Louise Casey starts work at the DCLG on dealing with the 100,000 problem families that the government has identified. Second, the May and IDS report on gangs comes out. So far what’s been trailed from the report is the proposal to create a new offence of intent to supply fire-arms. But what’ll be most interesting is to see

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

International aid in the dock

The pledge to almost double Britain’s international aid budget was made in the boom years, when the government actually had money. In the bust, there is something deeply strange — almost perverse — about borrowing money from China and giving it to India. It’s time to reassess Britain’s aid commitment, and The Spectator is having a debate about it tomorrow night. I hope CoffeeHousers will be able to come because it is, I think, a crucial issue. Alan Duncan is the man to thanks — or blame, depending on your point of view — for the Tories committing to spend 0.7 per cent of economic output on foreign aid. He

Peter Hoskin

Growth hits 0.5% in Q3 — a nation shrugs

The growth number for the third quarter of this year is out, and it’s a little bit better than expected: 0.5 per cent. Many economists were saying that we’d have to hit around 0.4 per cent to recoup the growth lost to the Royal Wedding and Japanese Tsunami in Q2, so we’ve managed that. But, that aside, this is not the time for party poppers and champagne corks. It may not be Econopocalypse, but it’s not Mega Growth either. We are still living in a bleak, borderline stagflationary environment. Besides, I still reckon that we oughtn’t get especially worked up about these quarterly figures anyway. For starters, the obsession over