Politics

The spending debate continues with Philip Hammond over at ConservativeHome defending his decision to sign up to Brown’s current spending plan. The 2% total ain’t that much, he says, slower than economic growth in fact. Therefore Brown is (magic phrase) “sharing the proceeds of growth” like he would.  He’s right, Brown’s spending is the tightest since 00. But within that round are strange priorities. Money is being forcefed to an NHS that shows itself incapable of digesting it. And after the dreadful PISA study showing English schools are going backwards in literacy and numeracy, I’d also question if it’s wise to keep giving the LEAs so much money to squander. 

Irwin Stelzer writes a great piece in today’s Telegraph, characterising Gordon Brown and George Bush as united by their strident belief in free trade: “Both have a relaxed attitude towards the free movement of people, and are therefore reluctant to prevent immigrants from joining their nations’ workforces. Both resist efforts to raise barriers to the free flow of goods into their countries, with an occasional politically necessitated lapse on Bush’s part. And both favour the free flow of capital and welcome the investment of sovereign wealth funds in their nations’ financial and other institutions. The British Prime Minister and the American President might be the last two men standing in the

Following Fraser’s earlier comments on Tory spending, I thought I’d point out Iain Martin’s excellent post on tax credits over at Three Line Whip.  Martin rightly characterises Brown as a “wasteful spendaholic”: “The next time the PM calls the Tories a bunch of lunatic cutters who will defile the public realm, they should call him a spendaholic who has put the bill on our, the taxpayers, account.” Just for the record, yesterday’s tax credit report isn’t the first time (or even the second – third – forth – or fifth time) that the Public Accounts Committee has accused the Labour Government of immense waste of taxpayers’ money.  And that’s before we get onto whether the massive, post-2000 taxation and spending increases have

Danny Finkelstein does me the honour of Fisking my post on Tories and spending. I’m being a little bit mischievous, he suggests, by claiming the Tories didn’t offer tax cuts in 01 and 05. And I link to media reports, he says, not original documents. This is a huge debate, as future policy is based on response to past mistakes and my “ham and eggs” analogy was used by Cameron in his leadership campaign to attack Davis’ plans for tax cuts. It comes from the theory, quite a popular (yet false) one, that electorate somehow rejected the offer of tax cuts in the last two elections. Some, like Maude, have

The parties are now on the campaign trail though there is no Super Tuesday scenario; more like a free-for-all. Adding to the chaos, election-watchers never know who is going to be harassed, killed, or arrested next. A sign-of-the times conference took place yesterday in the tribal North West Frontier Province where the safety of voters’ lives was the subject, with the Provincial Home Secretary offering up assurances on security for punters and the media. An important player in the NWFP is the MMA, (the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal group), which is made up of six religious parties including the Jamaat-e-Islami. Described as “ultra-conservative”, opposing the US presence in their country, they are

John Rentoul writes a typically-perceptive piece in the Independent on Sunday, doubting that Gordon Brown will ever seize back the political initiative.  For Rentoul, Brown’s major problem is that he’s not engaging in “the drama of a dialogue in his own defence” – mainly because he hasn’t identified a position to defend:  “If he was a ‘change’ from Blair, what had he changed to? Brown himself made a telling mess of answering that question on the BBC’s Politics Show last weekend. ‘The changes that we are making are to recognise that the world has changed over the last 10 years. We didn’t have the environmental problems we have now. We didn’t have the global

Another poll, another decreased lead for the Tories.  The latest ICM/Sunday Telegraph poll – the first conducted after both Peter Hain’s resignation and the Derek Conway furore – puts Labour on 32 per cent (down 1 from last month); the Conservatives on 37 per cent (down 3); and the Lib Dems on 21 per cent (up three). I suspect the Tories’ uninspiring poll performances are down to their complacent politics since New Year.  Now, however, there are signs that the complacency’s fading, and proactivity’s reigning once again. The Sunday Telegraph contains the double-punch of an interview with George Osborne and a comment article by David Davis.  Both pieces set out a different agenda to the Government’s. Osborne’s headline-grabber is the claim that

Party chiefs launched their manifestos at Imperial College in London this week. No slick Anglo-American electioneering with carefully choreographed speeches and prepared questions here, this was raw Pakistani politics where missiles fire unguided. The chiefs each had 15 minutes to speak and had been given specific questions to address, which they mostly ignored. They ran over time and had to be restrained. The evening quickly degenerated into a slanging match with personal attacks. A panellist mocked Imran Kahn’s political ambition, calling him a “Playboy.” His representative, Shahid Dastgir Khan, stood up and raised his hand. “I object to my leader being called a playboy!” he complained. The PML (N) representative,