Politics

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

Tuesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

In Praise of Minority Government.

Oh dear. I’m afraid I must take issue with Fraser. He claims that last week’s budget entertainment at the Scottish Parliament demonstrates the weakness of minority government. Maybe so, but I’d prefer to see it another way: minority government protects the public from the worst excesses of parliamentary rule. And where Fraser considers last weeks’ events  a “fiasco” and a “shambles” I see them as nothing more than politics as usual. Sure, there was some horse-trading as the SNP tried to find the 65 votes it needed to pass the budget. But this is normal. Has Fraser ever had a look at the House of Representatives in Washington? There was

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The pitfalls of a minority government

If anyone wants a taste of what Westminster would be like with a minority government, have a look at the fiasco in Holyrood. Alex Salmond’s nationalists failed to pass their budget last week, so he threatened to resign and have an election (which is automatic, if no other party can form a majority). The Greens were bribing him, asking for £22 million for some home insulation scheme, then upping it to £33 million. As always with the PR system, the tail wags the dog. Salmond refused to play ball, the prospect of an election loomed, and a massive outbreak of political self-indulgence at a time when the devolved government has

Monday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Michael Steele & Dog Whistles

Ta-Nehisi Coates is encouraged by Michael Steele’s election as chairman of the RNC: I have no idea whether Steele will be any good, but I think his selection marks the start of excising the Obama is a M00zlim contingent of the party. I am, perhaps, being too optimistic. But I maintain that you have to begin somewhere….I think Steele has a Sarah Palin problem. Remember the silly math that had Palin giving Obama fits for the votes of women? Ultimately, that line of attack fizzled because, I’d argue, a lot of women found Palin embarrassing–an obvious token who wasn’t ready for prime-time. I think Steele is twice the politician that

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Michael Phelps: Another Victim of Drug War Hysteria

So Michael Phelps smokes marijuana from time to time. Big deal. What a shame though that he’s released this statement: “I engaged in behavior which was regrettable and demonstrated bad judgment,” Phelps said in a statement released by Octagon, his management firm, and posted on his Facebook site. “I’m 23 years old, and despite the successes I have had in the pool, I acted in a youthful and inappropriate way, not in a manner that people have come to expect from me. For this, I am sorry. I promise my fans and the public — it will not happen again.” Phelps has done nothing wrong and has nothing to apologise

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Cameron may throw like a girl but his education policy is transformative

Oh the weather outside may be frightful, but David Cameron went ahead with his education speech today – a subject on which he doesn’t say enough, in my view, because there is so much to say. The policy he had to launch was a Carol Vorderman-led maths review, but there were plenty of other aspects to his speech. Extracts below, with my take after:-   DC: We envisage academy status – with all the freedoms it brings to generate success freedoms which have been used brilliantly here will become the norm for state schools. These big structural changes are crucial if we’re to have the sort of revolutionary change I

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Workers of the World: Vote in Our Poll

Just like at the mother-blog, many commenters here seem disinclined to endorse my euro-happy celebration of the freedome of movement for labour, capital and goods. ‘Tis the nature of the times, I guess. Still, to put a more professional-seeming gloss on this amateur, possibly muddled sense, why don’t you cast a vote in our exciting Spectator poll? Online Surveys & Market Research

Sunday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Brown lays the ground for recession rage

The prospect of a “British Jobs for British Workers” controversy will have haunted Gordon Brown long before he came up with the soundbite. He will have known, way before Fleet St did, that immigrants had taken (or created) 81 percent of British jobs. He’ll have known – as he paid for the bills – that at least 5m Brits have been on various out-of-work benefits since 1997 despite his claim to have tackled unemployment. While morally deplorable, this situation was politically manageable as long as there were enough jobs for those who want them. But in a recession, when Brits start to compete with the 6.2m immigrants for these jobs,

Saturday

Matthew Dancona

Labour has lost the next election already 

Predict in haste, repent at leisure is a sound maxim for all pundits. I have also long thought that there has been a bipolar quality to much writing about Gordon Brown – exaggerated savagery when his fortunes are waning and equally daft euphoria when they pick up (June 2007, September 2008). So I did not draw my conclusions in tomorrow’s Sunday Telegraph column lightly: namely that Labour has lost the election and that David Cameron is our next Prime Minister. It is not as if the Tories have been on a particular roll or Cameron more than usually to the fore. And yet the polls this week have been remarkably

Friday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

British jobs are not just for British workers. That’s a good thing.

It’s just like old times isn’t it? A Labour government, economic catastrophe and now, wildcat strikes across the country. It serves the Prime Minister right too. His demagogic promise of “British jobs for British workers” has come back to bite him. And deservedly so. Now, as it happens, I have some plenty of sympathy for the British contractors who have failed to win contracts at Total’s Lincolnshire refinery, but their anger would be more profitably directed at their own management. After all, it’s their own companies that have failed to win the work – presumably because they either can’t perform the work to the same standard or because it’s cheaper

Alex Massie Alex Massie

GOP Heads in the Sand

Oh dear. Jonah Goldberg has been in Britain and he doesn’t like what he sees. Fair enough, there’s plenty to deplore about the present government. But what Goldberg is most afraid of is that the Republican party might learn something from David Cameron’s Tories. This, it seems, is the very last thing the GOP should do. Because obviously when you’ve spent eight years trashing your own “brand” and suffering a brace of heavy election defeats, the very last thing you should do is look and learn from how conservative parties in the rest of the world are faring. (Insert standard caveat about the real and meaningful differences between American conservatism

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Scotland demonstrates the necessity of schools reform

When Reform Scotland was set up, I feared for their prospects. Although Scotland was birthplace of the Enlightenment, its new parliament has failing strikingly to produce any new ideas. It has instead proved a reactionary force, priding itself in banning things before England does and using powers to reject reform introduced by Blair in England. So what chance do new ideas have? But Reform Scotland has today  produced a proposal that has set debate aflame: why not give a £10,000 schools voucher to parents from poor backgrounds? It’s the subject of a BBC Radio Scotland phone in, which shows the paucity of the arguments on the other side. One is that private schools

Alex Massie Alex Massie

“The concept of good and bad schools is false”

Meanwhile, away from the budget ballyhoo comes a reminder of one of the problems afflicting Scotland: the teaching unions. Today sees the publication of an eminently sensible report from the think tank Reform Scotland that advocates, essentially, a voucher system that draws on Swedish and Dutch educational reforms and would, if ever implemented, dramatically increase the range of educational choices available to the poor. This is not controversial in other countries, so why is it so frightening here? Well, look at what we’re dealing with: The Scottish Secondary Teachers’ Association dismissed the report’s findings. Jim Docherty, acting general secretary, added: “The concept of good and bad schools is false. There

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Holyrood Drama? Not so fast, my friends!

Well, that didn’t last long. The entertainment (see yesterday’s post) at Holyrood seems to be coming to an end. As predicted by Jeff at SNP Tactical Voting, there seems every chance that the revised Scottish government budget will, far from precipitating the excitement of an issue-free* election, result in the budget being passed unanimously. Everyone will have extracted their ounce of flesh from the SNP (but no more than that).  The Scotsman’s headline claims all this amounts to a series of “shock” u-turns but I don’t see what’s so surprising about parties backing away from the prospect of an election few people really wanted. So Labour look like they’ll get

Thursday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Holyrood Drama! For Real!

So, what to make of yesterday’s drama at the Scottish Parliament? First things first: it’s good to have some actual drama. Secondly, the failure to pass a budget marks the first real defeat for Alex Salmond’s minority administration since the SNP squeaked a victory in the 2007 elections. Mr Salmond’s many enemies will revel in seeing him be embarrassed for once. What did it come down to? In a £33bn (itself a monstrous sum) budget the bill was lost for want of a measly £11m. The Green party – both of them – had demanded £100m a year for ten years to insulate every loft in Scotland. The SNP, not

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

How Brown’s stimulus will destroy jobs

So what will the Brown stimulus actually do? Suspiciously, we’ve never been told. In America, Obama has shown the public what they’ll get for their money – how his stimulus would boost employment and the economy. Seeing as no one in Britain has done this exercise, we at The Spectator commissioned Oxford Economics, perhaps the best economic modelers in the country, to have a look. It ran the Brown stimulus, which we define as the various measures taken in the 2008 Pre-Budget Report, through their computers – and the resultant graphs are fascinating. Here’s the first:   So, in year one, there’s an effect – but we pay for it everafter. This

Wednesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Chutzpah of the Day

Gerry Adams, writing in the Guardian: The recent assault on Gaza is a brutal reminder of the destructive power of war and of the human cost of failure. It is time all of this was brought to an end. Well he would know, wouldn’t he?

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

A buoyant Cameron gives Brown a PMQs kicking

Today’s PMQs was both tedious and fascinating. Dave marched in with a two-pronged strategy. To force the PM to call the recession ‘a bust’ and accept personal responsibility for it. He knew Gordon would refuse to make either admission so he had a statistical counter-attack up his sleeve. He quoted the definition of an economic bust given by Gordon to a select committee last year. ‘A reduction in GDP of one and a half percent.’ So would the PM concede that our economy was due to shrink by that amount, or more, this year? Would he hell. Brown loves spewing out statistics but hates it when they’re flung back at

Erica Grieder

Bush’s object lesson in gracious departure

In 2001, soon after George W. Bush’s inauguration, a bit of gossip surfaced from the White House: outgoing Clinton staffers had crept around the place taking the Ws off keyboards, phone wires had been snipped, furniture broken, glue placed on desk drawers and satirical signs hung up directing people to the ‘Office of Strategery’. Not bad as pranks go, but the country was not in the mood for laughing. The Bush presidency was already on the back foot after a botched election and protracted court battle. There was anger and resentment all around even though everyone’s official stance was grace, optimism and moving forward. The plundered Ws struck Republicans as

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The disgrace of the Lords is a parable for the end of New Labour

Fraser Nelson says that the ‘cash for amendments’ scandal dramatises the accelerating decay of the Brown regime — economic, political, constitutional. A saga that began in 1997 with grand promises of reform is entering its last bleak phase Even at the ripe old age of 79, Lord Taylor of Blackburn knows how to strike a bargain. ‘Some companies that I work with will pay me £100,000 a year,’ he told the undercover reporter posing as a lobbyist. ‘That’s cheap for what I do for them.’ What he claimed to do for them was help mould the law of the land for a fee — all, he later insisted, following the

Tuesday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Brown’s wrong-headed faith in inflation targeting

“Why did nobody notice it?” asked the Queen a few months ago, at the LSE. The simplest answer is that inflation targeting was a disaster. People wrongly thought that if you controlled the prices, all else would follow. This was wrong, hopelessly wrong, calamitously wrong. Everyone gushed about what a great idea Bank of England independence was. In fact, monetary policy management in the last ten years was a disaster. Inflation targetting was a false god. And the fact that no one says so now is a sign of just how far we are from understanding what happened in the last ten years. As Friedman taught the world, controlling the