Politics

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

Friday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Blairism Eclipsed

Danny Finkelstein’s typically excellent column (£) this week argued that Blairism is dead and buried in the Labour party, not least because none of Blair’s followers remain in any position of authority in the party. Blair, he suggests, was a one-off and the party leadership contest has been, if not a sprint, then a trundle to the left. I think there’s a good deal to that. Indeed, it’s startling how Blair has been excised from the party’s memory. Startling, but not, perhaps, entirely surprising. Faced with a centrist government, it’s easy to see why the Labour party has shifted to the left, if only because a) a smaller parliamentary party

James Forsyth James Forsyth

What to do with the defeated?

One of the challenges facing the next Labour leader will be what to do with Ed Balls. Balls, as he demonstrated in the last few months, has the right mentality for opposition. Labour will need his appetite for the fight in the coming year. But if a new leader makes Balls’ shadow Chancellor, he’ll have a shadow Chancellor whose position on the deficit is simply not going to seem credible to the public; Balls has already said that he thinks the plan Labour went into the election with for the deficit was too ambitious. The Tories are convinced that if Balls is shadow Chancellor, they’ll have the dividing lines they

Peter Hoskin

Was Labour’s spending irresponsible?

An eyecatching claim from Ed Miliband, interviewed by Channel 4’s Krishnan Guru-Murthy: “I don’t think our spending was irresponsible.” And here’s a graph in response: I’ll let CoffeeHousers draw their own conclusions.

Peter Hoskin

What can Green achieve?

Handbags across Whitehall this morning, as Vince Cable responds to the government’s appointment of Sir Philip Green as an efficiency adviser in a disgruntled, if evasive, manner. He tells City AM: “There’s a lot I could say on this, but I’d better miss this one out … I’m tempted to comment, but I think I’d better not.”   And it’s clear why the Business Secretary, and many others, might be a little peeved. A hard-partying, perma-tanned, rotund and ostentatious figure, with question marks hanging over his tax status, Sir Philip is simply not designed for this age of austerity. He is nothing like the cadaverous technocrats who usually sift through

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The Fall and Rise of the Brownites

At Labour Uncut, Dan Hodges has written a very good, very interesting piece on the demise of the Brownites and how, when the end came, Brown was compelled to rely upon Peter Mandelson and Alistair Campbell to scramble a strategy by which Labour might miraculously cling to power. As Hodges portrays it: As the battlements yielded, what of his own praetorian guard? Where were his champions, his own retinue of advisors? The collapse of the Brownite inner-circle, as a political event distinct from the fall of Brown himself, is one of the strange untold stories of the Labour government.  If, as is generally perceived, Gordon was one of the two 

Thursday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The Uselessness of Meaningless Polls

Sunny Hundal says this YouGov approval tracker is “the graph that has the coalition worried”. Up to a point. It would be worrying if there were an election this autumn. But there isn’t and there won’t be. If, as the coalition hopes, we’re four and a half years away from an election then this polling, while momentarily diverting, is essentially meaningless. And while a +1 approval rating is hardly a matter for rejoicing one could argue that it’s surprising the government remains in the black given the sloppiness of much of its political – as opposed to policy – operation. Eventually these numbers will slip into the red but I

Peter Hoskin

David Miliband reinforces his monetary advantage

I can’t work out what’s stranger: that anyone, let along the author Ken Follett, should donate £100,000 to Ed Balls’ leadership campaign, or that the Liverpool footballer Jamie Carragher (“Mr Liverpool”) should give £10,000 to the devoted Evertonian Andy Bunrham. Either way, they’re probably the two stand-out entries in the latest list of Labour leadership donations. But the real story is the same as the last time the donations were published: David Miliband’s monetary advantage. Even with Ed Balls raising £103,000 in July, the elder Miliband brother still comes out on top with £138,835 – adding to an overall war chest which dwarfs those of all the other contenders. The

Peter Hoskin

Cameron devolves the tricky issue of alcohol pricing

Politicians often get nervous around alcohol – and not just because, in these straitened times, a glass of champagne can broadcast the wrong image. No, the real concern is the more basic, fiscal one: how should it be taxed and priced? There’s a difficult trade-off involved. Pushing up the cost of alcohol could halt the staggering advance of binge drinking and all its associated social and medical ills. But, depending on what booze is targeted, it could also hit the least well-off harder than anyone else. And who’s to say whether the effect on drinking habits would be that substantial anyway? The trickiness of the situation was clearly demonstrated by

Wednesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Prime Minister Tony Hayward?

How many Americans know anything about David Cameron? Well, back in early July not many of them – or at least not many of those sampled by Pew – could identify the Prime Minister of Great Britain*. On a multiple choice question. When the other choices available were: Richard Branson, Tony Hayward or Angela Merkel. Only 19% selected Dave… Yes, yes, it’s meaningless. But it’s August people. This is the time for meaningless nonsense. *It’s not impossible that if the question had been about the “Prime Minister of England” a few more people might have come up with Cameron’s name. Then again, looking at the cross-tabs, only 38% of college

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Jack Straw backs David Miliband

The Labour party’s very own Vicar of Bray has made his choice. Jack Straw is backing David Miliband for leader. Straw is a politician who has always had a canny sense of which way the wind is blowing. Barbara Castle, who Straw worked for as a special adviser, once famously said that she hired him for his ‘guile and low cunning’. Straw’s move from the Blair camp to the Brown one was a sign that Blair was running out of road. Say what you like about Straw—Tony Blair was once caught calling him a ‘tart’—but he has a record of picking winners in Labour contests.  His endorsement of David will

David Blackburn

To Labour’s successors…

Following this morning’s coalition press conference, the Tories’ have released this video: Labour’s Legacy. It’s effective, especially in view of Labour’s continued refusal to acknowledge that Gordon Brown did to Britain what Peter Ridsdale did to Leeds United, albeit on a grander scale.

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Jimmy Reid, 1932-2010

  If Jimmy Reid, who died overnight aged 78, hadn’t existed he might have had to be invented. For 40 years now he has been the image of a certain Scotland. The “dignity of labour” is a much abused phrase that often drips with sentimentality, but you didn’t have to share Jimmy Reid’s political views to recognise his virtue*. Nor did you need to be there at the time to appreciate, even all these years later, that there was something noble about the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders work-in back in 1971. The work-in and Reid’s famous speech have assumed almost mythic status, representing all that was best about the Scottish, and

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The coalition gets political

The joint Tory Lib Dem press conference to attack Labour’s legacy was a sign of how comfortable the two parties are becoming together. Chris Huhne and Sayeeda Warsi’s message was that the ‘unavoidable cuts that are coming are Labour’s cuts’ and that Labour is ‘irrelevant’ until it admits its responsibility for the deficit. The message was essentially the one that Chris Huhne and Michael Gove set out at the political Cabinet at Chequers last month. In a move that is bound to generate some headlines, Warsi has written to those Labour leadership contenders who were ministers asking them to forfeit their severance pay and to ask the ex-ministers supporting them

Tuesday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

IDS’ resignation would be a catastrophe

If Iain Duncan-Smith resigned from the government, the coalition would be in trouble. If Vince Cable is the coalition’s left tent peg, IDS is the right one: his departure would leave the coalition’s right side dangerously open to the elements. Which prompts me to oppose Ben Brogan’s blog saying that the coalition would not suffer much if IDS walked. If IDS left, the Cabinet would be dangerously unbalanced. There would, in these circumstances, be only two people in it who the Tory parliamentary party considers to be on the right, Liam Fox and Owen Patterson. The right, as the Liberal Democrats seem to appreciate, would in these circumstances demand far

Peter Hoskin

Ominous signs in the housing market – but Osborne must remain undaunted

Are we on the verge of a double-dip in housing? The graph above, courtesy of Citi, certainly looks ominous enough. The blue line is a Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors metric for the balance of surveyors reporting rising house prices – and, last month, it slipped into negative territory for the first time since July 2009. The pink line is the rise in house prices, year on year – and it’s heading downwards too. At first glance, the picture looks a lot like the peak which preceded the crash in 2008. The question is whether we’re going to plumb a similar trough. Citi, it must be said, are fairly sanguine

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Is the United States Senate Broken?

In one sense, yes it is. The Senate may be the world’s most exasperating deliberative body. As with it’s Roman counterpart there’s a growing sense that the Senate has outlived its usefulness, that it can no longer function effectively and that there’s no reason to suppose anything will change for the better. In Washington folk connected to the House of Representatives point out that their enemy is the Senate, not the opposition party. That’s what happens when you have a Republic, not a Democracy. And, as George Packer’s excellent New Yorker article amply demonstrates, the Senate is a ridiculous, infuriating place filled with puffed-up mediocrities unfit to inhabit offices once

David Blackburn

Season’s greetings | 10 August 2010

David Cameron’s just launched his benefit cheat crackdown (Con Home has a little footage). There were two notable occurrences. First, Cameron agreed that tax evasion was as serious as benefit fraud and vowed to tackle it – this defused the slightly absurd criticism from the left about not challenging tax avoidance whilst hitting benefit cheats – tax avoidance is legal, benefit fraud and tax evasion are not. Tom Harris attacks his party’s attempt to draw any equivalence between tax evasion and benefit fraud, saying it misses the point: tackling fraud is to the benefit of all. Second, a Mancunian woman called Sharon Reynolds has a crush on our Dave, a

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Alex Salmond’s Women Problem

No, not that kind, the vote-winning kind. Despite the fact that the party itself has honoured or at least admired warrior queens (in the members’ estimation) such as Winnie Ewing, Margo MacDonald and even Nicola Sturgeon, the fact remains that women are much less likely to support the SNP than men and, furthermore, this gender gap causes the party some problems. As Lallands Peat Worrier reminded us: On the constituency ballot, 41% of the male electorate supported the SNP, compared to only 32% of women voters.  On the list, 35% of men voted for the SNP, but only 27% of women. That’s a significant gap. Jennifer Dempsie, a former Salmond

David Blackburn

Downing Street extends a tentacle

Following the milk fiasco, No. 10 plans to tighten its control over Cabinet Ministers. The Times (£) has the details. To paraphrase, No.10 holds the egregious Andrew Lansley responsible for not recognising that Anne Milton’s proposals were politically untenable. Cameron has ordered a political review of Cabinet Minsters’ proposed cuts to minimise embarrassments ahead of October’s spending review. Understandably, Cameron is keen to insulate himself against inevitable negative publicity. But there is a danger that a hands-on Downing Street will become publicly embroiled in Whitehall spats. Vince Cable, Liam Fox and IDS are fighting to protect their budgets from George Osborne’s axe, and their tactics aren’t pretty – Cable current

Monday

Peter Hoskin

Cable’s 50-50 warning

As compliments go, there’s something slightly backhanded about Vince Cable’s claim that, “Having worked with [the Tories] at close quarters, I’ve been pleasantly surprised that they’re not as I’d envisaged them.” And that’s just one of the little nuggets embedded within his interview with Decca Aitkenhead this morning. The Business Secretary touches on everything from what he thinks of George Osborne (“he’s clearly able”) to his own ability to craft a joke (“I’m actually quite good at one-liners”). If you want a sense of where Cable is at, then Aitkenhead’s piece is worth a quick read. But if you’re stuck for time, then – as George Eaton notes over the