Politics

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

Thursday

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Dave will slay the Goliath-esque government

Clever in its lack of cleverness. Cameron’s performance today was shrewd and unexciting, a speech of nursery-school simplicity. Large bland ideas, plain language. No detail. This was certainly no masterpiece. It didn’t have to be. Cameron’s in a holding pattern. Keep circling and he’ll land safely. Before he arrived, William Hague frustrated the eager delegates with two corporate videos of more than ordinary dullness. The BBC, flouting its own policy of censoring political broadcasts, aired both of them on BBC Parliament (albeit with the sound turned down.) First, a surpise. No less a figure than Bono, the UN’s top Guilt Ambassador, spoke to the Tories about debt relief. His message

Alex Massie Alex Massie

David Cameron Prepares for Government

At first I thought it a little unfortunate that David Cameron’s peroration today unconsciously – I assume – echoed the Royal Bank of Scotland’s slogan “Make it happen”. But actually, the rise and fall of RBS is something of a template for the rise and fall of governments. Years of promise and fat and profit encourage excessive self-confidence and over-expansion that ends with a devastating, humiliating crash. That has been Labour’s experience and it will eventually be the Tories’ story too, assuming that Cameron and his pals form the next government. This was a bleak, sombre speech. Perhaps even excessively so. Listening to it you could have been forgiven for

David Blackburn

Live blog – Cameron’s speech

13:50 JF: I am in the conference hall which is already filling up. Word is that various candidates will be sitting behind Cameron. 14:02 JF: The backdrop for the speech is blue sky and fluffy clouds. Message: optimism. 14:04 DB: To emphasise an optimistic future, the Tories are playing ELO’s Hello Mr Blue Sky. What a pity New Labour monopolised Things can only get better – a mantra that has never been more true. 14:12 JF: We have the text of the speech now and it looks like Cameron will set out his vision for Britain post recovery. One thing the speech does is make clear that Fox will be

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The Cameron transcript: Part II

George Osborne has embraced the 50p tax as a central tenet of the “We’re all in this together” theme. CoffeeHousers will be aware of my deep scepticism about this. It is justified on presentational grounds: if you squeeze the rich, and their pips squeak, it will create ‘permission’(to use that Blairite phrase) to do the horrible things like deny pay rises to nurses and social workers. Ergo, presentation and economics are fused together on this issue, he says. Without popular support for the cuts agenda, it cant happen and the deficit won’t be tackled. So the 50p tax should be judged not on its own merits, but on the grounds

Peter Hoskin

A pledge which Cameron looks set to break

In its preview of Cameron’s speech, the Sun highlights the Tory leader saying that “…in a Conservative Britain, if you put in the effort to bring in a wage, you will be better off.”  The implicit reference, here, is to Labour’s combined tax and benefit system, which frequently acts to disincentivise extra work.  All too often, effort isn’t met by reward – so what’s the point? As the Centre for Social Justice’s recent Dynamic Britain report showed, this effect impinges, above all, on the least well-off in society – and with tragic consequences.  It’s all to do with effective marginal tax rates, which measure what proportion of a small rise

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The Cameron transcript: Part I

While were all waiting for the Cameron speech, I thought I’d post some of the out-takes of my interview with him last week (full text here). Many thanks for your suggestions for questions, which were disconcertingly good. When I was a trainee reporter, I went to a coroner’s court and noticed that the jury asked better questions than the lawyer. It’s often like that with CoffeeHouse comments: you guys had all the obvious and oblique angles covered. But I suspect that our little wiki-exercise forewarned Cameron a bit because he seemed to have ready answers. Every journalist leaves an interview thinking what was the top line in that? and if

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The radical plans the Tories are keeping under wraps

So what is George Osborne really up to? If Coffee Housers are feeling depressed at the paucity of ambition in his speech (his ‘cuts’ package  would shave just 1% off government spending) then take heart. In the magazine today, James Forsyth lists the far-more-radical changes that are being discussed by the Cameroons – but kept under wraps. The full piece is here, and the main points are…   1)   Corporation tax cuts. No mention was made of a growth agenda in the speech, but there are plans to cut Britain’s company tax rates quite aggressively with Ireland’s 12.5% as a lodestar. Osborne wants Britain to have the lowest corporation tax

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Who has the time to watch a weekday conference speech?

The activists here are already queuing up for David Cameron’s speech. But very few people outside of this conference centre are going to watch the whole speech: how many people have an hour free at 2.15pm on a weekday?   If we want conferences speeches to be watched by more than conference delegates, then they need to be on in the evenings or on the weekend. Just imagine how many more people would watch Cameron, or would have watched Brown last week, if the speech started at 8pm. US conventions take place mostly in prime time, with the networks being strong-armed into covering them for at least an hour a

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Dannatt, gimmicks and half-wits

Sir Richard Dannatt’s usefulness to the Conservative Party has just reduced by about ninety per cent as a consequence of his decision to accept an advisory post with the party. Henceforth, all criticisms he makes of the conduct of the war in Afghanistan will be taken with a pinch of salt, because he is now a Tory primarily, rather than an independently-minded soldier who wants only the best for his former comrades. Worse, future criticisms of the government – should there be any – from currently serving military leaders will also lose much of their potency through association: we will not know if they too are about to hop on

Peter Hoskin

Here lies the General Well-being agenda

Remember David Cameron’s General Well-being agenda? You may not. It was pretty nebulous stuff, which he deployed during the decontamination overdrive early in his leadership. We haven’t heard much about it since – probably as Cameron & Co. realised it could fuel the worst Notting Hill caricatures of them, at a time when the economy was going south and thousands of people are losing their jobs. Which is why it was striking to see “General Well-being” exumed for this Manchester conference. Yes, the press centre cafe is called the GWB cafe (picture below). Kinda tells you all you need to know about that particular Cameroonian non-starter. P.S. For any CoffeeHousers

Peter Hoskin

Contrasting Cameron and Osborne

Judging by the Independent’s preview, as well as the quotes that ConHome have managed to get their hands on, Cameron is going to do Hope ‘n’ Change in his speech today.  Yes, he talks about a “steep climb ahead,” but he adds that “the view from the summit will be worth it.” This sounds like the growth and recovery element which many thought was lacking from the Osborne speech.  As it happens, there was actually a growth section in a near-to-final draft of the Shadow Chancellor’s address, but it was taken out over concerns about timing. I suspect the double act – Osborne selling pain, with Cameron selling hope –

David Blackburn

Osborne is the key to Cameron’s success

Initially, I thought George Osborne’s conference speech was unremarkable. Osborne, the second coming of Stafford Cripps, painted the grimmest picture since The Scream. He was relentless, remorseless. in fact, the argument that the Tories ‘relish cuts’ and are out of touch almost seemed plausible, as Osborne, the heir to an Anglo-Irish baronetcy with a flair for interior design, told the nation that “we’re all in this together”.  But in the wider tactical context of securing a Conservative victory, it was a brilliant speech. Writing in the Independent, Matthew Norman concludes: ‘Adorable he will never be, and as an orator he makes the Speaking Clock sound like Cicero, but undeniably he

Wednesday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Activists for Dave

I don’t know this lady’s name, but she is a genuine example of an enthused Tory grassroots activist. She was queuing behind me in security and I noticed her bag. “It’s my own kinda Blue Peter job,” she said. What inspired her to make the design? “Because my party was going nowhere for eight years, then David came along and changed that. When your party recovers, and you know your country will, then that’s something to be pleased about.” So pleased she made this handbag. Surely Smythsons should buy the design?

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The demise of the speed camera

One of the more interesting influences on the Conservatives is behavioural economics. The book ‘Nudge’ informs quite a lot of their thinking and one of its author Richard Thaler is now an official advisor to the party; his co-author is heading up regulatory policy for Obama. One of the major British evangelists for behavioural economics and its insight is The Spectator’s own Wiki Man, Rory Sutherland. He drew this magazine’s attention to Thaler and Nudge long before people in the Westminster Village had cottoned onto it. I’m told that it was a piece that he wrote on Coffee House which inspired Theresa Villiers to announce the effective end of speed

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The Man Who Would Be a Peer: General Sir Richard Dannatt

Plenty of Tories are, it seems, cock-a-hoop about the news, still to be confirmed, that General Sir Richard Dannatt is to be elevated to the House of Lords where he will become a Tory defence adviser and, perhaps, a minister in the next Conservative government. And, in fairness, one can see why the Conservatives would be so pleased. There’s no-one on the Labour benches who brings as much firepower to the political battlefield as General Dannatt. Yet if the government’s criticisms of General Dannatt were, at times, unseemly then so too was his very public dissension from (aspects of)  government policy at a time when he was, after all, in

Peter Hoskin

Pre-Freudian slip

Theresa May is chairing a discussion with a set of Conservative PPCs on ‘job clubs’, as part of this afternoon’s focus on welfare reform.  She kicks off asking one of the Tory PPCs on the panel, Maggie Throup, to talk about job clubs in her area: “So, Maggie, tell us about…”. Problem is, May addresses her remarks at the wrong PPC, Suzy Davis. Mistake realised, she wheels round and puts the same question to the actual Maggie Throup.  Not a good start. It’s picked up since. The welfare adviser David Freud, who jumped ship from Labour to the Tories, is now on stage. And he gets a cheer when he

David Blackburn

The Culture Secretary’s loaded gun is jammed

Ben Bradshaw is in gladiatorial combat with the Beeb. Battling the BBC is an all consuming passion for BB and, like the Lone Ranger, he fights alone. With Twitter as his Tonto, he has already fired salvos of no more than 140 characters at the Corporation’s “disgracefully feeble” scrutiny of the Conservatives, and this morning he targeted the Today Programme. Outraged by Evan Davis’, I thought, appropriately pointed interrogation of George Osborne, Bradshaw tweeted: “Another wholly feeble and biased Today programme rounded off with a fawning interview with a Tory pundit!!” I will gloss over the Culture Secretary’s use of two exclamation marks because, as the Education Secretary misspells the

Peter Hoskin

Rolling in it

Well, the Tories will be pleased.  According to Channel 4’s Gary Gibbon, they’ve made a tidy £1.5 million profit from their party conference.  When you consider how much must have been spent in Manchester – it’s a very slick operation with banners, screens and corporate hospitalities everywhere – this news is yet another sign (were one needed) of the Tories’ momentum.

Peter Hoskin

Expect more “fine print” on spending soon

Sifting through this morning’s papers, you’d say that it’s mission accomplished for George Osborne’s speech yesterday. The realigned Sun demonstrates how much it has got behind the Tories, by giving the Shadow Chancellor an absolutely glowing report (“the Shadow Chancellor came of age”). He also receives good-to-medium notices in the Times, the FT and the Independent, while the Guardian is more mixed, but hardly damning. In the Mail, Quentin Letts writes that “Yesterday the Boy became Boss George”. And so on and so on. You can see where they’re all coming from.  As I wrote yesterday, there’s much that was impressive in Osborne’s speech. But there were also some weaknesses

David Blackburn

Cameron needs to tackle the expenses scandal head on

The current consensus issue in British politics is not to discuss the expenses scandal. The so-called ‘New politics’ was a brief footnote in both Brown’s and Clegg’s conference speeches, but public anger remains palpable. Daniel Finkelstein points out that the Tories stand to lose the most from sidelining the issue: continuity undoes their claim that they stand for wholesale change. That is unquestionably true. Whilst the leadership prepare us for the age of austerity, visions of duck houses, moats and servants’ wings pervade the public consciousness, even though those responsible have been disciplined. David Cameron has been at the forefront of the ‘clean-up politics’ debate: Alan Duncan’s sacking, the proposed