Uk politics

Friday

Fraser Nelson

Brendan Barber’s champagne habit, and other stories

The Tory conference was so forgettable that it’s hard now to remember it took place earlier in the week. But, for what it’s worth, here are my conclusions from the whole conference season: 1. The search for Osborne’s growth strategy has been called off. This ‘leadership’ theme was short for ‘leadership in the crisis, which we’ve now decided is inevitable’. Printing £75 billion will be  prelude to printing £400 billion, the inflation tax is back. Osborne perhaps thinks this new magic gold will bring economic recovery. So did the Emperor in Faust, when the devil suggested that printing money would avert fiscal crisis. This scheme ended in tears in Goethe’s

Daniel Korski

Commercial quandary

Britain’s diplomacy needs to help British business. The Prime Minister made this clear soon after the coalition was formed and William Hague has followed up, reorganising the Foreign Office and putting commercial diplomacy at the top of the agenda. To some, this risked making diplomats into salesmen and there was even dark talk of “mercantilism”. Both criticisms were far off the mark – there is nothing mercantilist in trying to help British businesses. A year in, however, the policy is facing a number of other, more fundamental challenges. First, the government’s main vehicle for this policy – well-publicised, prime minister-led trade delegations – has faced criticism from a number of

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Miliband tries to re-energise the Opposition

The Labour reshuffle is an attempt to bring more energy and aggression into Ed Miliband’s top team. It is also a recognition that the party has failed to cut through on public service reform, hence new shadows at both health and education. Chuka Umunna’s rapid promotion to shadow Business Secretary will, I suspect, dominate coverage of the reshuffle. Having been an MP for less than 18 months, Umunna now finds himself up against Vince Cable. If he succeeds in this role, he’ll rapidly become the leader in waiting. But there’s also a danger that it might all be too much, too soon for him. Umunna is one of five new

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Fox under pressure

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTOskAPgL9c The Westminster Fox-hounds think they have picked up the scent this morning. Enemies of the Defence Secretary, of whom there are many, are convinced that they’ll be able to bring him to ground over his links to Adam Werrity. Werrity was Fox’s best man and is a good friend of the Defence Secretary. But the problems stem from the fact that Werrity, who holds no official position, was dishing out cards saying he was an “adviser” to Fox, arranging meetings for him and attending diplomatically important events with the Defence Secretary. Fox has tried to kill off this story by asking the permanent secretary to investigate whether he has

James Plunkett

Tories dodge a bullet on childcare

In the past year the government has proven good at cauterising self-inflicted wounds. This morning’s announcement from Iain Duncan Smith on childcare stems another potential bleeder. His department have found an extra £300 million to prevent further cuts to childcare support. It’s a welcome reversal of an ill-advised plan and a narrowly averted political foul-up. The extra money is needed because of IDS’s big welfare reform project, the Universal Credit. One of the big advantages of the UC is that it will smooth out all those ugly ‘cliff-edges’ in the benefit system, particularly rules that say you don’t get help if you work fewer than 16 hours a week. In the

Peter Hoskin

How bad is it, Mervyn?

Remember when Alistair Darling said that we faced the worst financial crisis for sixty years? Now Mervyn King has trumped that piece of doom-mongery by telling Channel 4 last night that “This is undoubtedly the biggest financial crisis the world economy has ever faced” (see video above, three minutes in). The Governor of the Bank of England saying that this is the worst crisis ever? On the day that he rushed another £75 billion into the economy? As mood music goes, it is a particularly dreadful symphony.       It is also the sort of situation that Ed Balls will relish, especially with the Pre-Budget Report approaching. And it is true:

Thursday

James Forsyth

Healey and Denham depart the shadow Cabinet

John Healey and John Denham have resigned from the shadow Cabinet ahead of Ed Miliband’s reshuffle. Healey is, officially, departing for family reasons. But I doubt that many of those closest to Miliband will particularly mind his departure. I expect that Miliband may also take this chance to move Andy Burnham, who knows the health brief from his time in government and is an effective if one dimensional media performer, from education into the health brief. These two resignations free up a couple of the big shadow Cabinet jobs as Miliband prepares to shuffle his pack. It is almost certain that the Labour leader, who has just won himself complete

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The Cabinet cat-flap continues

The Ken Clarke and Theresa May cat-flap has sparked up again this morning, with the Justice Secretary accusing the Home Secretary of using “laughable child-like examples” to attack the Human Right Act. In some ways, it’s hard to take a political row about a cat particularly seriously. But this back and forth between May and Clarke is actually exposing something very important: the Liberal Democrats are not the only brake on Tory radicalism. At the moment, lots of Tory ministers – up to and including the Prime Minister – like to imply that they’d be doing far more on Europe, immigration and the Human Rights Act if it wasn’t for

Clarissa Tan

Another round of Easing

So the Bank of England has pulled the lever on a second round of Quantitative Easing. Apparently sluggish economic growth, plus more ominous signs from the eurozone, have persuaded the central bank it can’t wait any longer to print more money. But given the evidence from QE1 – only a small boost to GDP accompanied by extra inflation – it’s a big gamble. Mervyn King & the rest of the Monetary Policy Committee clearly believe that more money in the system is what’s needed to kick-start growth. But even they admit that QE1 didn’t live up to expectations, so why should QE2? In the meantime, quantitative easing as an instrument

Will Straw

Another voice: Five lessons from Conservative party conference

Here’s the latest in our Another Voice series of posts, which give prominence to viewpoints outside the normal Coffee House fold. This time it’s the IPPR’s Associate Director, Will Straw, with his five-point take on the fringe events of Tory conference, and the lessons that might be learned from them: 1. The Tories know that winning a working majority in 2015 is no easy task. The most popular fringe event according to Fringelist.com was ConservativeHome’s event on ‘How the Conservatives can win the next election.’ Reflecting his remarks from the panel, YouGov’s Stephan Shakespeare wrote yesterday that, “today’s electoral maths makes an overall a majority a mountain to climb”.  

Wednesday

Fraser Nelson

Tory Party Conference, Inc.

The empty chairs for David Cameron’s speech said it all: the party conference is no longer a political event. This was my eleventh Tory conference, and, even in this short time, I’ve noticed a creeping corporate takeover.  The difference struck me yesterday, when I attended a packed fringe meeting in something called the ‘Freedom Zone’. It was set up to discuss banned topics: how to cut taxes, the case for a referendum on EU membership, etc. The crowd was younger, of a libertarian bent — all activists and enthusiasts of some kind, a refreshing change from the sanitised and often lifeless feel of the rest of the official conference. As

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Cameron does enough

There were three big themes to David Cameron’s speech. The first was that decline is not inevitable, an attempt to tackle the mood of pessimism that is gripping the nation. The second was an attempt to reassert the Conservatives’ compassionate credentials, hence the emphasis on how the Liberal Democrats would have cut the NHS and the section explaining why conservatives should support gay marriage. The third was leadership, Cameron’s biggest advantage over the other party leaders. The attack on the idea of Britain’s decline being inevitable was powerful in places. But because Cameron has a non-ideological approach to growth it is hard for him to make a stirring argument about

Daniel Korski

Hague’s European dilemma

William Hague’s conference speech caps a revival in his political fortunes, and it also showed how far the government has come since the pre-election period, when Tory foreign policy was indistinct. After one year in office, the government’s roster of foreign policy achievements is noteworthy. The coalition has overseen institutional innovations in the form of the National Security Council and organisational improvements at the Foreign Office. Embassies are opening, not closing. Diplomats are again being taught traditional skills, not trying to follow the latest foreign policy fad. Cooperation between DfiD and the Foreign Office is also much better than it was under Labour, with Andrew Mitchell and William Hague conferring regularly

Peter Hoskin

Cameron’s leadership pitch

Leadership, leadership, leadership. You couldn’t miss it. Leadership wasn’t just the clearest theme of David Cameron’s speech to the Tory conference just now, but also one of its most common words. By my count, it popped up around 30 times. “I’m proud to lead this party,” he said in the very first paragraph. “It is leadership we need,” he continued. The aim, I’m sure, was to paint an even stronger contrast between David Cameron the Prime Minister and Ed Miliband the Sub-Prime Ministerial. But Cameron wasn’t just talking about his own leadership. As he put it himself, “success will come: with the right ideas, the right approach, the right leadership. Leadership

Douglas Murray Douglas Murray

Why conservatives should welcome gay marriage

David Cameron just told the Tory conference that he supported gay marriage “because I am a Conservative”. In last week’s issue of the Spectator, Douglas Murray said that the best arguments in favour of gay marriage are conservative ones. For the benefit of CoffeeHousers, here is Douglas’s piece. In America a new generation of Republicans is challenging the traditional consensus of their party on gay marriage. They — as well as some of the GOP old guard like Dick Cheney — are coming out in favour. In Britain the subject is also back on the agenda with the coalition government, at the insistence of the Prime Minister apparently, planning a ‘public consultation’

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Explaining Cameron’s debt u-turn

“Millionaire David Cameron wants you to pay off your credit card – are you going to obey the Prime Minister?” asked one local BBC radio station phone-in this morning. This is not what No. 10 had in mind when releasing selective quotes from his speech last night. “The only way out of a debt crisis is to deal with your debts. That means households – all of us – paying off the credit card and store card bills.” This line in his speech is now being rapidly rewritten – and for good reason. Because the Prime Minister was in danger of making a major mistake.   The premise of the

James Forsyth James Forsyth

An order or a description?

The hours before David Cameron’s speech have been filled by a row about the pre-briefed line that: “The only way out of a debt crisis is to deal with your debts. That means households – all of us – paying off the credit card and store card bills.” This was taken by several papers as the Prime Minister instructing people to pay off their credit cards bill now, something that would have reduced the prospects for growth even further. So, the line has now been changed to show that Cameron is just describing what’s going on. It is all mildly embarrassing. But this little flurry can’t disguise the fact that

David Blackburn

Liam Fox plays his hits

The party faithful (and lobbyists) have their favourites. The conference hall rose in applause when Liam Fox sat down, having delivered his speech. This might have been a tricky engagement for Fox, who is overseeing substantial cuts to the defence budget, which might, conceivably, have angered activists. He has also been under pressure from Jim Murphy, who is described by some in government as the opposition’s ablest shadow minister. Fox, however, prevailed by giving a true blue speech aimed squarely at the audience in the hall.  The gruelling strategic defence review was necessary, he said, because deficits threaten national security – a line he’s used before. But, thanks to his management, Britain would emerge

David Blackburn

Cameron wants to offer the “right” leadership

As flat as flat champagne — that’s the verdict on this year’s Tory conference, which is ironic given that the two year ban on champagne was lifted this year. Bruce Anderson argues that the dour atmosphere is intentional. These are serious times for sombre politics, not the frivolity occasioned by a conference at a seaside resort. David Cameron’s first objective, Bruce says, is to reassure the country and present himself as a leader for a crisis. Cameron’s conference speech has been widely trailed by most news outlets this morning. Tim Montgomerie has a comprehensive overview of the speech. Cameron’s first challenge is to emote: these are “anxious times” for ordinary

David Blackburn

Grieve tucks into May

A fringe debate on the Human Rights Act hosted by the Tory Reform Group might not have been a crowd puller. But yesterday’s feline foul-up and the presence of Attorney General Dominic Grieve, a firm advocate of human rights, ensured the event was a sell-out. If Grieve had been advised against deepening internal animosity on the ‘cat flap’ furore, he ignored the direction. The TRG’s Egremont blog quotes Grieve as saying: “We need to have a rational debate. We must be more productive than just going for the ‘meow’ factor.” Then he added: “The judicial interpretation and case workload of the European Court ought to be a concern for the UK and other