Politics

Read about the latest UK political news, views and analysis.

Saturday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

May Day for the Prime Minister

May 1st is becoming ever more important for Gordon Brown. Holding London and exceeding expectations in the rest of the country is the only thing that can put a stop to the increasingly frequent stories about how his government is doomed and he is the problem, see the Martin Kettle and Matthew Parris articles that Pete flagged up earlier today.  If Labour were to lose London and suffer heavy loses elsewhere, then the steady flow of stories about how the Brown government is in terminal decline will become a torrent. It is increasingly hard to see how Brown could turn things around in these circumstances. The other problem for Brown

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Curbing Iranian influence in Iraq

One of the most important things to have emerged from recent events in Basra and the testimony of General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker is that Iran has stepped up its efforts to destabilise Iraq. The crucial question is whether the Maliki government is now more prepared to confront this Iranian influence.  The signs are promising. First, Mailiki was prepared to order his forces into Basra in an effort to curb the power of the militias and the Iranian trained special groups. Second, it seems that Iran’s role in the fighting in Basra has been, as Defense Secretary Gates put it, “a real eye-opener” for  Malik. Third, the Americans—as The Washington

Peter Hoskin

Yesterday’s man?

The succession talk is chasing Gordon Brown into the weekend. Here’s Martin Kettle in today’s Guardian: “A spectre is haunting the Labour party – the spectre of Gordon Brown’s failure. Questions about Brown abound in Labour ranks. The concern is not, as far as I can tell from many conversations this week, primarily about Brown’s policies or about the changes at No 10. The question is mainly about him. Right now, the problem is Brown himself… …A lot is written about the growing fatalism in Labour ranks. It exists, but don’t exaggerate it. There is also still a hunger for re-election, especially among younger MPs. That enduring hunger is, in

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

We urgently need education reform, just ask the Coils if you doubt me

At 11am today, Radio Four looks at the Tory school reform plan – inspired, apparently, by our recent cover story on Cameron’s schools revolution. I’m on the panel of Talking Politics, Dennis Sewell is hosting and my fellow panellists are Michael White from the Guardian and Anne McElvoy from the Evening Standard. We pre-recorded on Thursday, and I found myself in the unusually position of being a cheerleader for a Tory proposal. Michael said my youthful idealism set alarm bells off with him. CoffeeHousers have made a similar point – I’m becoming “ever more messianic” said TGF UKIP. So why am I so het up?   Education stirs passions in

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

Another Voice | 12 April 2008

Boris must bore for Britain till he wins — and then shine like Tennyson’s dragonfly Boris Johnson is doing as well as I hoped and better than I expected. On this page at the beginning of August last year I was presumptuous enough to offer some advice for the man who looked certain to be the Conservative candidate for Mayor of London, but less likely than he does today to get the job. Not that he will have lost any sleep over such advice. Boris isn’t the type to pore over comment pages, thank God. He doesn’t give two hoots what people like me think. Besides, what I recommended was

The Spectator

Brown’s debt to society

A German economist visiting Britain was recently said to have declared himself baffled that a report about rising house prices was deemed to be good news. In Germany, he retorted, inflation in house prices, like inflation in food or energy prices, would be considered quite the opposite. By implication, there is an intellectually respectable case for interpreting favourably this week’s news that the Halifax house price index has plunged by 2.5 per cent, the biggest monthly fall since the depths of the last recession in 1992. House prices in Britain have been horribly overvalued for several years — by 30 per cent in the opinion of the IMF. The sooner

Friday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Hillary Surrenders on Ulster

Damnit. I’d enjoyed working up a good lather of indignation and righteous fury over Hillary Clinton’s claim, repeated ad nauseam, to have played an “instrumental” role in the Northern Irish “peace process” (see several posts collected here, for instance). And now she’s gone and spoiled it by, rather strikingly, walking back from her preposterous claims. As Toby Harnden reports: Hillary Clinton has just issued a bland statement marking the 10th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement. In it, she salutes “the brave and tireless efforts of the parties” and notes that “the real credit for peace can only go to the brave people of Northern Ireland”. She adds that “helping

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Mark Penn is the new Bob Shrum?

This doesn’t seem like a good idea. It’s true that a Downing Street spokesflunky dismissed the suggestion that Mark Penn might hop across the Atlantic to work for Gordon Brown as “codswallop” but who would choose to believe what Downing Street says? Here’s PR Weekly, reporting that Number 10 is interested in hiring Penn to be Brow’s chief pollster.  With Gordon Brown’s leadership rating falling to its lowest level yet this week, senior figures in Number 10 believe that Penn could be Brown’s answer to Philip Gould – the polling guru credited with reversing Lab­our’s declining fortunes in the 1990s. Number 10 comms chief Stephen Carter and recen­t­ly recruited director

James Forsyth James Forsyth

What if…

Another week, another PR Week story about what Stephen Carter’s new Downing Street team has planned. The frequency with which these stories are appearing is becoming really quite comic—it must be doing wonders for PR Week’s circulation in Westminster but it also seems to prove that the outsiders the Prime Minister has recruited are more interested in getting a good write up in the trade press than working away for Gordon’s greater glory. But isn’t it all a little too unsubtle? Surely if you’re a new hire from the world of PR, you’d realise that you would instantly cop the blame for any leaks to PR Week?  All of which makes me wonder

Peter Hoskin

What is Des Browne thinking?

I’ve always found it shocking that British troops are sent into combat with inadequate equipment – not least because it costs lives. That’s why today’s High Court ruling should be welcomed. Invoking the human rights of servicemen could – to some extent – safeguard against future tragedies.   Even so, Des Browne’s fighting the decision tooth-and-nail. Here’s his response:  “Our troops are very well equipped, there have been great improvements made because we found ourselves two years ago in a very difficult and changing environment.   They are as well equipped as anywhere else in the world.  This criticism is a dated criticism from a different time is not applicable to the troops currently deployed.”  It doesn’t

Peter Hoskin

Ideas for government

Frank Field’s piece for the latest issue of the magazine is well-worth reading, and fecund ground for a weekend debate.    As he sees it, Brown and Cameron have to concentrate on the “post-Thatcher question” of “How can individual freedom be extended while at the same time protecting that degree of public provision which voters believe necessary for a civilised life?”    Cameron’s ahead on this issue, at the moment. But can the Government bounce back? The article suggests they can, but only by enshrining a “wider tax contract giving individual ownership and control over state programmes”. Whether or not Brown’s prepared to do this is another matter – but Field’s detailed suggestions should

Thursday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

More bad news for Brown

I’m in the Sky News green room, preparing for an 11.30pm paper review. The front pages coming in could be straight from Gordon Brown’s nightmares.  “Consumer crunch” says The Times in huge type: mortgages up £150 a month, holidays up, petrol 107p a litre and bread up 25p in a year. Its the best way of doing a theme on all front pages: “Home loans to cost more despite rate cut by bank” as The Guardian puts it. Brown has for months been bleating on about how he is “able” to lower rates. The borrowed penny has dropped now. Bank of England rates falling does not mean mortgages falling. The

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Yet another Balls up

Ed Balls has had a rather bad week and it now appears that Jim Knight, the schools minister, has been sent to mend fences with the Board of Deputies over Balls’s attack on the admission procedures of Jewish faith schools. This whole row over admissions was concocted by Balls himself but has ended up back-firing dreadfully on him. Maybe the Prime Minister should take his protege in hand and tell him that a period of silence on his part would be most welcome.

Peter Hoskin

Video wars

How strange.  Ken’s just released a video attacking Boris’s first election broadcast.  For me, the main thrust of it seems to be: “black-and-white film = unattractive to foreign investors; colour film = attractive to foreign investors”.  Here’s the clip, so CoffeeHousers can judge for themselves: 

Peter Hoskin

A clearer position?

Recently, the Tories haven’t quite been giving us the full picture on Europe.  Sure, they’ve opposed the Lisbon Treaty, and have been pushing for a referendum on it.  But they’ve also been tight-lipped about what a Cameron Government would do should the Treaty be ratified.  Would they pull out of it?  Would they hold a retrospective referendum? etc. etc.   As Three Line Whip points out, the Tory MP David Heathcoat Amory may have made things a little clearer.  Here’s what he told The House Magazine: “The next Conservative government will renegotiate our relationship with Europe and finally the people will have a vote on this.” A party spokesman has already batted down expectations, with a coy “We’ll

James Forsyth James Forsyth

That didn’t take long, did it?

Gordon Brown has only been Prime Minister for 289 days but already The Sun  is devoting its main commentary slot to handicapping the race to succeed him. George Pascoe-Watson lists nine contenders—Ed Balls, David Miliband, James Purnell, Andy Burnham, Alan Johnson, Harriet Harman, Jacqui Smith, Jon Cruddas and Charles Clarke—giving Balls and Purnell particularly favourable write-ups. Now, you might say this is just one newspaper story on a quiet Thursday but it does show that the current chatter has broken out of the Westminster Village. If Labour takes a pasting on May 1st, then this chatter will only get louder and Brown’s authority will be diminished even further.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Was this the Straw that broke Jack’s back?

The knives are out for Ed Balls at the moment. Partly this is because, as Michael White points out in The Guardian, he is a proxy for Gordon Brown. But it is also because he’s been empire building with little thought to the feelings of his fellow ministers. One friend of Coffee House points to evidence that Balls gave to the inaugural meeting of the Children, Schools and Families Committee as a reason why Jack Straw might have felt like punching Balls: I am jointly accountable to Parliament and this Committee, with Jack Straw, for every aspect of youth justice and youth justice policy, even though most of the budget

Matthew Dancona

The schools battle

As Jonathan Freedland and Coffee House favourite Steve Richards have pointed out, the row over school admissions is turning into a proper Left-Right punch-up. And quite right, too. For much too long, the most publicly visible battle lines (expertly drawn by Gordon Brown) have been between “Labour investment versus Tory cuts” – mostly nonsense, but politically adhesive. Now, there is a different and no less rowdy argument rising in prominence: namely between the central control of the supply of public goods and the drive to make public service institutions free of central control and encourage diversity. As it happens, I rather like Ed Balls – sorry, CoffeeHousers – and, as

Wednesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Has Blair Kinda/Sorta Endorsed John McCain?

Danny Finkelstein thinks so. Noting that Blair had said that modern politics is more a matter of Open vs Closed than Left vs Right: And then I asked which politicians on the right he regarded as on his side, the open side, of the new argument. He replied:I think you can see the Republicans in the US who are on the pro-immigration side of the debate, on the pro-free-trade side, the Americans who are Democrats but protectionist. I think the thing that has come home to me most since leaving office is just the speed at which the world is opening up. Full interview – largely on Blair and his

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Brown’s Olympian confusion

Gordon Brown’s position on the Beijing Olympics is becoming more absurd by the day. He’s happy to have the Olympic flame surrounded by guards from a particularly unsavoury branch of the Chinese security services in Downing Street but not to touch it himself. Now, he’s planning to skip the opening ceremony but doesn’t want anyone thinking that he is snubbing or boycotting the event. Brown’s confused position has seen him drawn into the US presidential campaign with Hillary Clinton—who supports a boycott of the opening ceremony—praising Brown for his stance: “I wanted to commend Prime Minister Gordon Brown for agreeing not to go to the opening ceremonies of the Olympics