Uk politics

Sunday

Peter Hoskin

What’s Ed Miliband playing at?

There’s that prism I mentioned: Ed Miliband writes an article for the Observer, which ostensibly backs Gordon Brown in the first paragraph, and it’s written up as the first, tentative step on his own leadership campaign.  Thing is, that’s probably also true.  The clue is in how far he steps off his ministerial beat*, to deliver an overall prospectus for the Labour Party: “Let’s start, as our manifesto will, with what the country needs in the coming five years. It can’t be about business as usual. We need to rebuild our economy in a different way from the past, with more jobs in real engineering not just financial engineering. This

Peter Hoskin

A tale of two interviews

So, at the end of a hyperactive week in politics, we’ve got a pair of interviews with Brown and Cameron.  The PM chats with the News of the World, while Cameron appeared on the Marr sofa earlier. One general similarity between the two interviews stands out: neither is particularly confrontational. Rather than chiding Labour after Alistair Darling’s admission yesterday, Cameron adopted a more conciliatory tone, saying things like: “If [the government] … set out reductions that we think make sense we won’t play politics with it, we’ll say yes.”  And, for his part, Brown only nods towards the “big choice” to be made at this year’s election, and doesn’t mention

Saturday

David Blackburn

The NHS is unfair, why should it remain sacrosanct?

I’ve just heard a truly shocking story. A neighbour, left brain damaged by a haemorrhage, arrived at St Richard’s hospital in Chichester on Tuesday afternoon for her check-up. She was discharged at 2 am. No beds or ambulances were available and she was sent out into the night, and of course a blizzard.   One shouldn’t extrapolate that this represents standard NHS care; it doesn’t. But care is hindered by a lack of resources and facilities. Despite throwing money at the NHS, vast areas of the country remain ill-equipped, and not merely at Britain’s rural extremities. For example, there is no specialist cardiac unit between London and Portsmouth. Feel your left arm

Daniel Korski

Security and Defence Review 101

Defence geeks are waiting to see how the Conservative Party intends to conduct a Security and Defence Review, if they are elected. By the time a new government comes to power, the Ministry of Defence will in all likelihood have produced a Green Paper, setting out initial thoughts on the future of the military, which is meant to lead on to a more substantive Strategic Defence Review.  But if the Tories want a process (and ultimately plans and ideas) that encompasses not only the MoD, but also the Foreign Office, DfiD, the security services and even parts of the Home Office, then a new kind of institutional vehicle will have

Peter Hoskin

Darling’s honesty is good news for the country – but tricky news for Labour

Well, well, well – Darling’s Times interview, which James reported earlier, sure is a significant moment, and one which more than deserves a place on the spending cut timeline which I put together last week.  In fact, let’s see what it would look like alongside a few of the most recent entries: 9 December 2009: Pre-Budget Report 2009 forecasts Public Sector Net Borrowing of £176 billion, and Public Sector Net Debt of £986 billion, in 2010-11. 10 December 2009: Alistair Darling puts in a bizarre performance on the Today programme, claiming that the PBR implies that departmental budgets would remain “pretty much flat.” 10 December 2009: The IFS works out

Friday

James Forsyth

More trouble lies in wait for the government

Labour lost the first week of the long election campaign. The Hoon and Hewitt plot and the late and tepid endorsements of Brown from key members of the Cabinet have highlighted the divisions within the Labour party. Hoon and Hewitt were right that stories about these decisions will not go away. They will run and run right up to polling day. The weekend papers will also not be good for Labour. To compound Labour’s woes, it looks like the big political story of early next week will be Alastair Campbell’s testimony to the Iraq inquiry, which threatens to dredge up memories of spin and Iraq. It should be remembered, though,

Peter Hoskin

Gordon Brown on fighting and winning…

Ok, I know Labour circulars will always fly the party flag – but the email that’s just gone out in Gordon Brown’s name has to win some sort of prize for sheer party political effrontery.  With the subject line “When we fight we win,” here’s how it begins: “If there’s one thing that our recent by-election successes and this week’s coverage about the £34 billion credibility gap in the Tories’ spending plans shows us, it’s that when we fight, we win. I know that despite the icy conditions, so many of you are preparing to go out campaigning this weekend. That, for me, says it all about the spirit of

Peter Hoskin

Is it the leadership or nothing for David Miliband?

A cracking post from Paul Waugh on the prospect of shadow cabinet elections for Labour.  For those who can’t remember the last time they took place (14 years ago), they’re the annual elections which Labour MPs hold, when in Opposition, to help determine who gets to sit on the front bench.  The party leader and deputy are immune from the process, but everyone else is subject to the whims, fancies and dispositions of all those backbenchers. In which case, Paul’s observation about David Miliband is worth noting down: “Word is that David Miliband and Douglas Alexander would do disastrously, given their reputation for aloofness and failure to gladhand in the

Mark Bathgate

Brown’s next worry: the Gilt markets

With inflation continuing to “surprise” on the upside, how long can the Bank of England keep justifying printing money? Now we learn that the Bank of England had printed £193.5 billion to finance government spending by the end of last week. So we are only four weeks to the next MPC meeting – but there is only £6.5 billion of new money left for them to pump out before they hit their £200 billion limit. Then we enter the scary territory I outlined in an earlier post.  And Brown is still left needing around £15 billion of Gilt sales a month to finance his fiscal debauchery. The Gilt market was

Peter Hoskin

Brown’s only strength is the weakness of his rivals

So who got what? Today’s Times has a great summary of the concessions and promises that Brown has had to make to keep his Cabinet colleagues on side, including: “In a series of negotiations: — Harriet Harman demanded and received a promise to have more day-to-day control over the election campaign. Labour’s deputy leader also demanded to be treated with more respect from Mr Brown’s staff. — Jack Straw told Mr Brown that he must not rely solely on a “core vote” strategy aimed at shoring up Labour’s heartland support. — Alistair Darling urged the Prime Minister to be more honest about the cuts in public spending needed to pay

Daniel Korski

In preparing for war, the Tories differ from Labour in one respect – they would be prepared

In today’s Times, and on the occasion of George Osborne and William Hague’s visit to Helmand, the Tories are publishing proposals for how to improve the Government’s approach to post-conflict operations. Their central idea: to create a stabilisation force in the military, complete with the necessary expertise, training and so on to win the peace after combat. If it was not already abundantly clear, the Iraq Inquiry has shown how ill-prepared the British state – civil service, military and government – was for post-combat reconstruction. Though much has changed since the Iraq War – e.g. a dedicated department, the Stabilisation Unit, has been set up in Whitehall, and General David

Thursday

David Blackburn

The House of Lords at its exceptional best

Archbishop George Carey has his detractors, but his article in the Times is a candid explanation of the ills that unfettered immigration is causing this country. The tone is so frank it shocks; the title reads: ‘Migration threatens the DNA of the nation’. Carey, of course, is not inciting anything as palpably evil as eugenics or as unworkable as uniformity between different ethnic and regional groups; he refers merely to the essence of Britain’s political, religious and social institutions. Society is determined by the health of its institutions, and ours have disintegrated through apathy. Society is broken, though not in the manner that is often assumed. Political Correctness declared discussing

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

What’s it all about, Dave?

This morning, I drove past one of the Cameron adverts – “I’ll cut the deficit, not the NHS” – and that Bacacharch & David song came into my head: “What’s it all about, Alfie?” It’s been in my head, in fact, ever since his Oxford speech last weekend. Just what is the Big Idea? We seek to answer the question in this week’s magazine with four pieces. James Forsyth says that any hunt for Cameron’s ideology will be in vain, because he doesn’t really have one. He doesn’t like –isms and there will never be a Cameronism. David Selbourne, one of Britain’s leading political philosophers, has written a scathing piece.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The plot’s gunpowder is extinguished

The atmosphere is flat in Westminster today. The plot finally fizzled out this morning but not before having highlighted how little support in the Cabinet Brown has. It was telling that it was Shaun Woodward, not anyone more high profile, who turned up on the Today Programme to defend the PM. Plots that wound but do not kill Brown are perfect for the Tories. They make the voters see Labour as divided and add to the mood that it is time for a change. This one also had the benefit of being ideally timed from a Tory perspective, obscuring a week which had seen Cameron make a rare blunder. YouGov’s

Peter Hoskin

Compare and contrast | 7 January 2010

After June’s rebellion, it’s thought that Brown made a promise to his Cabinet colleagues: “…that cabinet ministers such as Alistair Darling will not again find themselves briefed against. There was deep anger in cabinet when Darling found himself being referred to in the past tense by Brown earlier in the week.” But in today’s Guardian: “The Downing Street spin machine knew something bad was afoot on Tuesday, but did not know precisely what was coming. So like any good media management operation, they tried to flush out enemies by briefing that Tessa Jowell, the Cabinet Office minister, was set to quit.” If I were Jowell – and if that’s what

Peter Hoskin

Brown has survived, for the moment

Whatever took place yesterday – and there was certainly more to this plot than met the eye – the immediate danger to Gordon Brown seems to have fizzled out this morning.  Here’s what David Miliband has just told the cameras: “No member of the government was involved in the letter – we are all determined to win the election under Gordon’s leadership.” Which is a good deal less ambiguous than the message he put out yesterday.   Now, there are two ways of looking at all this.  First, that there’s enough Cabinet disatisfaction with Brown that another coup attempt has to be on the cards; that the revelations we’ve heard

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Brown weakened by friend who became foe

Intriguing post from Iain Martin, who is well sourced in the Darling camp, about what might have been said between the Prime Minister and the Chancellor yesterday: “I’ve heard from two Labour sources now that the conversation was very difficult and that Darling raised the possibility of Brown going, but the PM resisted. It would be taking it too far, says a well-placed MP, to say that the mild-mannered Darling told his old friend turned foe to call it a day. He said it was more that Darling floated the possibility of a swift departure for the sake of the party.” Whatever was said between the two men yesterday, the

Peter Hoskin

So what now for Brown?

Well done, Gordon.  You seem to have survived another attempted coup.  And not just any old coup, either.  This one may have been particularly badly organised and executed, but it was also – probably – the last one you’ll face between now and the election; the last one you’ll ever face in your political career.  If yesterday came with a sense of “now or never,” then the tea leaves now read “never”.  Bravo. But, hang on.  This is hardly good news for our PM.  His authority is, pretty obviously, diminished.  If Hoon and Hewitt didn’t manage to achieve that by themselves, then the ambiguous support from his Cabinet colleagues did

Wednesday

James Forsyth

This isn’t over until David Miliband offers clear support to Brown

David Miliband has learned a lot since last June. Then, he was bounced by Peter Mandelson into declaring his support for Brown within an hour or so of James Purnell’s resignation. Today, he waited hours to release a statement and then when he did it could hardly have been less supportive. Tonight when challenged by TV crews outside his home, he said with a straight face that his position is ‘entirely clear’ when it is anything but. Until he comes out unequivocally for Brown this ain’t over. The other news of the night is Eric Joyce’s claim that two Cabinet ministers had told Hoon and Hewitt they would resign and back

James Forsyth James Forsyth

David Miliband barely offers Brown support

On a day where statements of support for the Prime Minister from key Cabinet colleagues have been notable for how lukewarm they ware, David Miliband’s takes the biscuit: It is hard to see how this could be a weaker statement of support. There is no word of praise for Brown, no claim that he is best man for the job, just a declaration that he backs Labour’s re-election. If I was one of Brown’s henchmen, I would feel far from reassured by it.