Read about the latest UK political news, views and analysis.
Dominic Grieve has kindly agreed to a Q&A session with Coffee House. So, post your questions for him in the comments section below. And, in a week-or-so’s time, we’ll pick out the best ten and put them to the shadow home secretary. He’ll get back to us all a few days later. And the commenters whose questions are chosen will all win Coffee House t-shirts and copies of the special 180th Anniversary issue of The Spectator.
The latest economic growth statistics – which show that growth in the second quarter of 2008 stood at a less-than-impressive 0 percent – deny Brown one of his proudest boasts; that the UK economy’s enjoyed “63 quarters of successive growth”. Annual growth remains positive at 1.4 percent, though, so I expect he’ll replace it with something like “Year-on-year, this country’s enjoyed continuous growth under New Labour.” That is if he’s still using the New Labour epithet. But quite aside from constraining our Prime Minister at the dispatch box, the figures are worrying in themselves. Now a recession is looking near-certain, and it seems as though it’s coming sooner rather than later. Indeed, the industrial economy is
So Britain’s soldiers, risking life and limb, fighting in the treacherous Hindu Kush, defending our freedoms and the safety of ordinary Afghans are like our Olympics athletes? Heh? That’s what the Prime Minister seems to think. On his visit to Helmand, Gordon Brown said that British soldiers “have showed exactly the same courage, professionalism and dedication” as the British Olympians. Sure, the achievements and medals of Britain’s Olympians should be celebrated. But it is absurd, insulting and inappropriate to compare their courage, professionalism and dedication to that of our men and women fighting in Afghanistan. After all, 116 British troops have lost their lives in Helmand and our forces there
Hamid Karzai, wag: Gordon Brown had to suffer the indignity of a joke about his leadership from Afghan president Hamid Karzai during a press conference in Kabul. Mr Karzai, who faces numerous challenges to his own leadership, made the quip as reporters pressed the British Prime Minister over his relationship with David Miliband. “Cabinet ministers plotting is nothing new. We have it in Afghanistan – although not my foreign minister,” Mr Karzai remarked. Brown of course also pledged to continue the futile drug war. We’ve been in Afghanistan for six years now. To what end? Or, to put it another way, what will we achieve in ten years that we
In Hollywood, there is an award called the Golden Raspberry or Razzies. The opposite of the much-desired Oscar, the Razzies go to those who have most dishonoured the acting, screenwriting or song-writing profession in the past year. If European foreign policy had a version of the Razzies, this year’s award would go to Greece for it attempts at destabilising neighbouring Macedonia and countering the EU’s Balkan policy. Since the break-up of Yugoslavia and the founding of Macedonia, Greece has had an uneasy relationship with its neighbour. At NATO’s Bucharest Summit, Greece vetoed Macedonia’s bid to join the Alliance, because of an unresolved dispute over its name. The Greek government objects
Normally foreign policy is the refuge of poll-losing leaders, who have tired of the slow pace of domestic reform and launch themselves unto the international stage in the hope of a restoration. Even if electoral rehabilitation is unlikely, the Club of Leaders is a more collegial place than the domestic political scene. Think Bill Clinton in 2000. Or the world-strutting Tony Blair. Even Gordon Brown, whose interest in foreign affairs is clearly limited, has sought to build an international profile, in part to help him at home. He hasn’t done it like Tony Blair, who would be jetting round the world trying to solve the Russian-Georgian War. But the PM
David Miliband should remember: it is still war between him and Gordon Brown. Thinks he’s Foreign Secretary? Thinks he can go around talking up Nato protection to former Soviet states in speeches like these? Well, Team Brown has something to say about it. Here is Nick Brown, deputy chief whip and Brownite muscleman in a Guardian article: “Cameron urges Nato to admit Georgia. Nato is a mutual defence pact… .Do we really mean to commit ourselves to all-out war against the Russian Federation if something like this happens again?” And this government member goes on: “If western hawks really are advocating Nato membership for every small country that borders the
Yvette Cooper on Monday revealed two parts of George Osborne’s policy of which I was unaware. The first was his secret plan for swingeing tax cuts. Next, she informs us, “by my tally, the Tories have commitments of an extra £11bn of unfunded promises”. Well by the ONS tally, revealed this morning, Labour’s unfunded spending commitments total £19.1 billion, and that’s just since the start of the financial year in April. This time last year it was £8.1 billion. This is one for ConservativeHome’s Scorched Earth Alert – vandalisation of the public finances, driving down the pound which is in turn pumping up inflation. Of course, the money will have
When, back in 2005, Michael Howard said, ‘it’s not racist to talk about immigration’, his words sounded less like a statement of the obvious than a plea for the political and media classes to cut him some slack. They didn’t, of course. The then Conservative leader was roundly chided for playing the race card, accused of giving aid and comfort to the BNP, and warned that his focus on immigration would lead to an increase in racial assaults. These days, however, everyone is thinking what Michael Howard was thinking three years ago. Gordon Brown talks about ‘British jobs for British workers’; Labour has no qualms about blowing the dog-whistle on
The final phase of preparing the country for Prime Minister Cameron is under way. Having decontaminated the brand and marched ahead of Labour in the polls, the Tories are now introducing the country to Statesman Cameron. Politics abhors a vacuum. So with Gordon Brown hunkered down planning his autumn ‘relaunch’ and David Miliband practising looking like an innocent flower while being the serpent underneath, Cameron had the opportunity to act the statesman during the Georgia crisis. He did so, even going to Tbilisi to convey Britain’s solidarity with Georgia. As one top Tory purred to me, ‘He’s combined the toughness of a Thatcher, with the tactical acumen of a Blair.’
The Prime Minister’s survival is pinned on a September ‘relaunch’ to ease the voters’ economic woes. But, says Martin Vander Weyer, each door through which Brown tries to escape his predicament slams in his face. His room for manoeuvre is negligible All this talk of Gordon Brown’s ‘economic recovery plan’ calls to mind the unhappy day, many years ago on a junior bankers’ training course, when I took part in a competitive team game which involved managing a computer model of the British economy. We were told it was a version of the Treasury’s own model. In successive rounds, each team would have the opportunity to alter tax rates, interest
Might Labour’s attack machine have come back from the dead? They have today seized – and quite rightly – on this comment in Boris Johnson’s Daily Telegraph column: “If you believe the politicians, we have a broken society, in which the courage and morals of young people have been sapped by welfarism and political correctness. And if you look at what is happening at the Beijing Olympics, you can see what piffle that is” Quite apart from Boris talking about “the politicians” as if he’s forgotten he is now one of them, there is only one party talking about a “broken society” and that’s the Conservatives. It was a theme
Great moment on the Today programme this morning when John Major – without irony – told James Naughtie how great the National Lottery was because an opera lover like him could benefit from the money poured into the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden. That deal was perhaps the most egregious example of cash transferred from poor people to rich people, but sadly typical of the regressive nature of arts funding. I can understand the logic behind supporting indigenous arts lest they die out, but why have British taxpayers subsidise the singing of songs written a hundred years ago in Italian or German? If the usually-rich people who tend to watch opera
It is common knowledge that John McCain and David Cameron get on. By convention, politicians do not enter into electoral politics in other countries, but the Conservative leader has made clear how McCain impressed him when he spoke at the 2006 Conservative Party Conference while McCain has described Cameron as a Kennedyesque figure. Their staffs are said to be in regular touch and the two men talk on the phone. At first blush, the Russo-Georgian War show how close they really are. Looking at their respective statements, it is hard to distinguish between the views of the two politicians. In response to the invasion, it was McCain who struck a
…here are some of the posts made over the weekend on spectator.co.uk: James Forsyth on who Putin is and the retreating Gordon Brown Americano on why Obama shouldn’t choose a foreign policy expert as VP nominee and how McCain has found another gear.
Here are Eric Pickles’s answers to the questions posed by Coffee Housers: Victoria Street “Devolving power downwards from Westminster doesn’t mean that the blame can always be devolved downwards. Are you prepared for the inevitable slew of critical media that is an inevitable result of letting go the reins? Can you resist the temptation to intervene? Can you take the pressure of Labour and Liberal Democrat authorities demanding central government action to pay for their local mistakes?” If we are truly to be the Party of real localism, we must trust local councillors to determine what is right for local communities and be confident that those communities will hold them
The death of John MacDougall, Labour MP for Glenrothes since 2001, will trigger yet another nightmare for Gordon Brown. No other word will do. Glenrothes in Fife is on the PM’s very doorstep and – after Glasgow East – looks distinctly vulnerable. In the 2005 general election, Mr MacDougall polled 19,395 votes, well ahead of the SNP’s John Beare on 8,731. But Labour’s majority of 10,664 accounted for only 28.5 per cent of the vote. In Glasgow East, Labour’s 2005 majority was larger in absolute terms – 13,507 – but accounted for more than 43 per cent of the turnout. In other words, Glenrothes looks like an even juicier target for
Irwin Stelzer reviews the week in politics There are several ways one might look at Gordon Brown’s leaked plan to send £150 to each of the seven-plus million families receiving child benefit. The first, and kindest, is as an attempt to ease the coming winter’s budget strain on what Sir Brian Bender, permanent secretary at the Department of Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, during a first-class train ride from Leeds to London, too loudly dubbed ‘ordinary people’ — not the needy, the more numerous ‘ordinary’. The second is as a straight-out election bribe, part of the ‘fight-back’ that the Prime Minister is planning for the autumn. Why he imagines that this
It’s been a week since we asked CoffeeHousers to put forward their questions for Eric Pickles. We’ve since picked out the best five, which have now been put to the shadow communities secretary. He’ll get back to us in a couple of days. The CoffeeHousers whose questions were chosen can e-mail me on phoskin @ spectator.co.uk to claim their t-shirt and 180th Anniversary issue of the magazine. Anyway, here are the questions: Victoria Street “Devolving power downwards from Westminster doesn’t mean that the blame can always be devolved downwards. Are you prepared for the inevitable slew of critical media that is an inevitable result of letting go the reins? Can
We’ve introduced a new feature to Coffee House – the Sunday Essay. Each Sunday, we’ll post an essay by one of our readers, on any political, cultural or sporting topic. The first of these essays appeared a couple of days ago – you can read it here. If you’d like your writing to be considered, just e-mail an article of between 500 and 1500 words to me at phoskin @ spectator.co.uk – the Coffee House team will pick out the best submission each week, and post it on the website the following Sunday. It doesn’t matter whether you’re an MP, a member of the policy wonk world, or have nothing