Politics Archives

Thursday

3 Dec 2009

How will Labour try to soak the rich?

Brace yourselves. According to today’s Daily Express, Alistair Darling is under pressure to introduce a new 70 percent tax rate for high-earners in next week’s Pre-Budget Report. I repeat: s-e-v-e-n-t-y percent. To be honest, I can’t see the Chancellor doing it. Leaping from 50p to 70p would be regarded as far too incendiary, not to mention fiscally insane, even for this government. But I can still see them introducing a fair handful of soak-the-rich measures, if only to strengthen their reinvigorated attack line against the Tories. In which case, I refer you to Polly Toynbee’s column from a few months ago, in which she recommended that the 50p rate start

David Blackburn

Sarko pulls it off

The news that Nicolas Sarkozy has cancelled a proposed flying visit to London, in order to smooth over the fall out from his attack on the City, has got tongues wagging. Adam Boulton reports: ‘It’s claimed Sarkozy asked for this week’s meeting to patch things up. So by implication their (his Westminster sources) argument goes – if it isn’t happening it’s because Brown is snubbing Sarko and not the other way round.’ This line doesn’t convince. According to the Elysee’s diary, Sarkozy is otherwise engaged tomorrow, so the finance cordiale will now take place at…wait for it… the European Council meeting in Brussels next week. Why would Brown give away

Peter Hoskin

The choice facing the Tories

If you’d like a step-by-step preview of Labour’s next election campaign, then do read Alastair Campbell’s latest blog post. All of Brown’s attacks from PMQs are in there, and then some: “tax cuts for the rich”; a lack of “policy heavy lifting” on Cameron’s part; the Tories “haven’t really changed”, etc. etc. The spinmeister has been in closer contact with Downing Street recently, and it shows. It’s all gone a bit bar-brawling. The Tories now face a choice between, broadly speaking, three different responses: i) Ignore Campbell. Even though James was right to highlight the differences between now and the Crewe & Nantwich byelection – which I wrongly skipped over

Wednesday

2 Dec 2009

Alex Massie

The New Class War

James argues, quite correctly in my view, that it is now clear that Gordon Brown is preparing to run a campaign arguing that, as Brother Forsyth puts it, “a Cameron government will be a government of the rich, by the rich, for the rich.” Ben Brogan makes the same point in his column today: In a fight to the death, there is no longer any point pretending to govern in the national interest. As it was in the beginning for Labour, so shall it be in the end: class war, plain and simple. Soak the rich, crow about it, and damn the consequences. It’s true that this is red meat

James Forsyth

Might there be some fight left in the class war after all?

The Tories are in mild shock following PMQs, they never expected Cameron to get clunked like that. Brown is clearly going to try and use Tory inheritance tax policy to ram home the message that a Cameron government will be a government of the rich, by the rich, for the rich. But the Tories are taking comfort from their belief that Brown’s ugly class war politics won’t work, pointing to how they failed in Crewe and Nantwich. But the attacks on Edward Timpson backfired, at least in part, because Timpson was a bad target. It is hard to portray someone as an out of touch, uncaring toff when their family

Peter Hoskin

Graph of the day

Here’s a neat little graph from PoliticsHome, which plots the three main parties’ opinion poll ratings alongside their “party morale rating” from the PHI100 tracker. As PolHome put it, it kind of tells us what we know already: that party morale more or less correlates with poll position. But, given how so many politicians deny that they’re fussed about polls, it’s still good to see it in black and white:

Lloyd Evans

Etonians and Bolsheviks

A terrific PMQs today. This exchange had it all. Noise, laughter, rhetoric, anger, humiliation, jokes, and dramatic swings in the balance of advantage. We even had a sighting of that great Westminster rarity – a fact. Cameron’s first question elicited simple information. Would our troops start returning from Afghanistan in 2010 or 2011? Brown didn’t quite answer it but said that by 2011 the combined forces, including Afghans, would number 300,000, by which point the military burden ‘will start to change’. Cameron clarified. ‘That sounds more like 2011.’ Brown didn’t demur. Turning to the economy Cameron asked why Britain is the last G20 country to come out of recession.Brown:

Peter Hoskin

A PMQs to damage Brown?

A quick tour around the political blogoshpere, and it seems everyone is saying Brown came out on top in today’s PMQs. For what it’s worth, I’d agree with them – but only to a point. On the one hand, Cameron was unusually clumsy, which allowed Brown to land some pretty decent blows. But, on the other, I suspect some of those blows won’t play well on TV later. And, let’s not forget, the entire point of PMQs, from the leaders’ perspectives, is to score some coverage on the Ten ‘O’ Clock News. It all depends on what the broadcasters pick up on. If it’s Brown’s gag that the Tories’

David Blackburn

PMQs Live Blog | 2 December 2009

Stay tuned for live coverage from 1200. There’s a lot riding on this session – the NHS, the troop surge, Iran, Copenhagen, financial regulation and the still ailing economy. It’s a particularly important session for Cameron, who needs a strong performance to regain momentumk following a series of bad polls. 12:01: We’re away with the Buthcer’s Bill. 12:03: Labour MP Doug Naismith asks about the NHS cancer report. Brown points to independent regulators will mean that incompetent managers have no place to hide. 12:05: Here’s Cameron – will the US troop surge mean that British troops can concentrate rather than extend their operations, a prelude to withdrawal no doubt. Brown

David Blackburn

Diplomacy in action

It’s obviously excellent news that the five British sailors incarcerated by Iran on Monday night have been released without incident. Exacerbating already strained diplomatic tensions would have been an enormous temptation to the Iranian regime and David Miliband is right to commend their “professional” conduct in this matter. Miliband said: “The Iranian authorities gave us every indication that they wanted to deal with this in a straightforward, consular way. It was never a political matter and I welcome the fact they have dealt with it in this professional way.” The Foreign Secretary added, “it proves that diplomacy can work”. Well yes, but there is a world of difference between Iran

James Kirkup

The Foreign Office’s new green orders

Pity the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO). Once supreme in Whitehall, King Charles Street is now a frail and damaged place, bleeding power and purpose from multiple wounds. It is emasculated by the interference of No. 10 and the drift towards a common EU foreign and security policy while the sun sets on our time as a first-rank power-projecting country. All this leaves the FCO seeking a raison d’être. But in climate change, it may have found one. The political orthodoxy on the environment has now been woven into the very purpose of the Foreign Office. In the peculiar dialect of management-speak employed in Whitehall, its work is defined and

Christina Lamb

Meet the Brit in charge of the Af-Pak ‘kill list’

No one has followed the Taleban and al-Qa’eda more closely than Richard Barrett, head of the United Nations monitoring mission. He tells Christina Lamb why Obama’s reinforcements won’t scare the fundamentalists away It’s known as the ‘kill list’. The world’s biggest directory of bad guys — the 1267, as it is officially called after the United Nations resolution which voted it into force — has long been essential kit for Special Forces scouring Afghanistan and the tribal badlands of Pakistan for al-Qa’eda and Taleban. From Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar down, finding or eliminating these baddies will be crucial to the success of President Barack Obama’s much awaited Get

Andrew Gilligan

The minister for Hizb ut Tahrir

By one of those bizarre coincidences, I bumped into Ed Balls, the Schools Secretary, on Tuesday night, just after I had accused him in print of being ‘the minister for Hizb ut Tahrir’. Quite extraordinarily, Mr Balls has spent much of the past seven days defending two primary schools run by supporters of this deeply nasty, racist and segregationist group after the Tories attacked his department’s decision to give them £113,000 of public money. As you might expect, our meeting was brief. Mr Balls said I was disgraceful. I said I fully reciprocated the charge: Minister for Hizb ut Tahrir, while harsh, was entirely justified by the facts in this case.

Tuesday

1 Dec 2009

James Forsyth

Testing times for the Tories

The opinion polls are continuing to feed the story that the Tories are in trouble. Tonight’s Politics Home data which shows Cameron’s personal ratings dropping 15 points in the last 10 weeks follows a string of polls where the Tories have failed to break through the forty percent mark. Tory morale has been a bit shaken by these polls; Cameron could do with a decisive win at PMQs tomorrow to gee up the Parliamentary party. But turning these numbers around is, I suspect, going to require some policies that show us what David Cameron’s irreducible core is. Oddly enough, I don’t think these policies have to be particularly popular but

David Blackburn

Love and marriage

It’s all a bit of a puzzle. How will David Cameron incentivise marriage? In an interview with the Mail, Cameron dismisses IDS’s transferable tax allowance scheme. “It would be wrong to say that they are Conservative Party proposals.” Considering the scheme will cost £4.9bn, the pro-cuts Tories can ill-afford an incentive that would benefit the middle class in the immediate term. Cameron and Osborne are searching for a cheaper way to honour the pledge. Pete and Fraser debated whether marriage should and could be financially incentivised. On balance I side with Pete, marriage should not be financially incentivised. I’ve nothing to add to Pete’s analysis except that I

Peter Hoskin

Burnham enters the fray

Oh dear. The Labour leadership speculation is back in full effect, thanks to Paul Waugh’s scoop in the Standard. According to Paul, Andy Burnham is “prepared to throw his hat into the ring” to succeed Gordon Brown, should it all go wrong for Labour in the next election. Apparently, he’s even lined up Tessa Jowell as his campaign manager – although, naturally, the Health Minister is downplaying the claims. One thing’s for sure: this story is badly timed for Labour – with their recent progress in the polls – and Brown could well do without another bout of leadership wrangling to undermine his premiership. But what about Burnham – has

Peter Hoskin

The good and/or bad news for the Tories is that there hasn’t been a Brown Bounce

If you’re still scratching your head over the latest opinion polls, then I’d recommend you read Anthony Wells’ latest post over at UK Polling report. In it, he outlines four potential reasons for the diminishing gap between the Tories and Labour: Cameron’s “reverse” over the Lisbon Treaty; increased economic optimism; Labour performing better; and the absence of positive feeling towards the Tories. To my mind, it’s probably a case of “all of the above,” to varying degrees – but, as Anthony concludes, “we can’t tell for sure.” One further point that’s worth making is that the reduced gap between the parties isn’t due to a “Brown bounce”. After all –

Peter Hoskin

Paranoia rather than camaraderie

Another one for the Brown as Nixon folder, courtesy of Rachel Sylvester’s column today: “‘It’s about style of government,’ says one senior figure due to give evidence [to the Iraq Inquiry]. ‘Blair would have a war Cabinet, but a small caucus would meet beforehand. The civil servants were frustrated. Gordon is just as bad. He gives lots of time to Peter Mandelson and Shriti Vadera and ignores the officials. There’s a darker side to the Brown machine — he’s more suspicious. It’s cliquiness driven by paranoia rather than camaraderie, but it has the same result.'”

Alex Massie

Why are the Tories so Miserable?

My excellent chum Iain Martin observes that seven of the ten most recent polls have put the Tories below the “magic figure” of 40% support. The latest ComRes survey has them on 37%. Perhaps, he wonders, some of the core vote has been scunnered by the Lisbon Treaty shenanigans or perhaps some floating voters are concerned by a perceived Tory zeal for cutting public spending and, hence, they feel, services. A bit of both, I’d hazard. But, as I’ve argued before, there’s something more than just these elements. Frankly, if you were to take Tory rhetoric at face value the only sensible course, for those with the means to take

Alex Massie

What if the Lib Dems are right?

James is right to say that the Lib Dems’ commitment to increase the tax-free personal allowance to £10,000 trumps any obvious campaigning soundbite the Tories can offer. Isn’t that a problem? Or, to put it another way, what if the Liberal Democrats are right? On balance, I think they are. Whatever one thinks of the inheritance tax brouhaha or the 50p rate for the super-wealthy and no matter how counter-productive one thinks those notions may be, the fact remains that Tory policy, in the case of the former, and Tory preferences, in the case of the latter, impact a tiny number of people. Important people, in some cases, given their

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