Read about the latest UK political news, views and analysis.
Gordon Brown must be sick to his stomach about going to have to face David Cameron at PMQs today. The Tory leader, who thrashes him every week, is bound to make the case that this government is just serially incompetent and a busted flush. So the question is: can Gordon say anything to counter this? Would a very un-Gordon like, full apology do the trick? Or, would it just make him look even weaker?
Charlie Whelan takes to the Telegraph today to defend his old boss but only ends up emphasising how bad his current situation is. Whelan writes, “[Brown] also knows that there are two things that really matter. First, there is not one person in this country whose circumstances suffered in any way because there was no early election. This was no Black Wednesday, after which millions of people really suffered as a result of Tory economic incompetence. In the current volatile political climate, the polls will go up and down regularly, but, when people go to put their cross on the ballot paper, what was essentially a Westminster story will not
As Alistair Darling scurries off to the House to make a statement on the latest crisis to rock the Treasury, Martin Vander Weyer has some thoughts on the latest developments in the Northern Rock saga. As Martin argues, from a position where no was really blaming the government they have managed to land themselves right in the middle of the blame game. Back before Brown took over, it used to be the joke in Whitehall that the worst job in government would be being Gordon Brown’s Chancellor. How true that has turned out to be.
Cameron’s proposal for Swedish style school reform may not win him the next election, but if he implements it properly it will win him a second term. His speech today does what I have long hoped for: put a Swedish-style supply side revolution at the heart of Tory policy. The new schools cannot be his only proposal, hence plans for streaming by ability, reading age etc. While this will soak up today’s media attention it will be a small part of the Tory education reform now in prospect. It is hard for Britain to imagine a system where pupils choose schools and not vice versa, which is why Cameron will
As James has noted, there is a yawning gulf of ideas opening up between the Tories and Brown on foreign policy. Read this piece by David Aaronovitch in The Times today for a fascinating exploration of the subject. While I am still not sure that Gordon embraces liberal interventionism with the same ardour as Blair – for all his contempt for the EU, Brown is still a believer in rules-based internationalism – there is no doubt that the PM is closer ideologically on foreign policy to his predecessor than is Cameron, the self-styled “heir to Blair”. As was once pointed out to me by a very senior Cameroon, it is
Rachel Sylvester’s column today details how Gordon Brown is both retreating from the public service reform agenda and further into the bunker. In lots of technical ways that don’t make headlines, Brown has diluted many of the key Blairite reforms neutering their effectivemess. There is now oceans of clear blue water between the Tory education policy and Labour’s, although not that much between the Tory plans and the original intent of Blair’s education bill. However, nothing has replaced the Blairitie vision for reform. As Sylvester notes: “It’s not that Gordon is going backwards or forwards, he’s going sideways, like a crab,” one former Number 10 adviser told me. “There’s an
When Gordon Brown was riding high in the polls, the Brownites were a ubiquitous present. Now, they have gone to ground. Last night’s, Blair documentary was a reminder of just how factional the Brownites are by nature and it seems those old instincts are coming out again. Ben Brogan reports on his indispensable blog that someone called him on Sunday afternoon to sound off about David Miliband: “There’s a feeling around that he trying to rerun his leadership campaign and, fairly disgracefully, destabilise Gordon Brown. His friends believe he’ll be in a stronger position if he distances himself from Mr Brown when he’s in touble. He should remember that he
If I was a betting man, I’d fancy a sly tenner on Chris Huhne right now. Nick Clegg has failed to impress during the leadership contest and Huhne, who doesn’t worry about being boxed in if elected leader, has been pandering to the membership like nobody’s business. The heated exchanges between the two contenders yesterday over the ‘Calamity Clegg’ briefing paper illustrated the Clegg camp’s slightly ham-fisted approach. As Mike Smithson notes, talking about reporting your opponent in a leadership contest to the chief whip for being critical of you seems a little soft. It also in Clegg’s case risks playing to the idea that he is the establishment candidate
Much as I applaud the Tory education plan in general, my heart sinks when I see stories such as one on the front of The Observer that Cameron wants all kids to read by the age of six. This strikes me as the contradiction running through Tory policy: to regulate, or liberalise? The plan for pioneer / direct grant / Swedish/ voucher / whateveryouwanttocallthem schools empowers and trusts teachers. Today’s initiative seeks to do their job for them. Cameron has no expertise whatsoever in primary education, why should he be prescribing synthetic phonics or anything else to these teachers? I declare an interest in that my mother was until recently
Andrew Rawnsley has an important piece in the Observer this morning about how conflict could again break out in the Balkans. The issue this time is the final status of Kosovo. The Americans favour independence for Kosovo, the Russians oppose it and the EU is mostly for it but with conditions. As Rawnsley explains, “Time is now very short. The mandate for the EU’s peacekeeping force in Bosnia expires this week and it is contested whether it can legally continue if the Russians wield their veto. There is a 10 December deadline for agreement in Kosovo. It is almost universally expected there won’t be any agreement. Then the really scary
David Aaronovitch’s piece in The Times today based on his interviews with the former Prime Minister and his associates for his The Blair Years series on the BBC is fascinating. Once again Blair reiterates that he did Iraq because he believed that it was the right thing to do. His concluding remarks, though, are grim: “The enemy that we are fighting I am afraid has learnt . . . that our stomach for this fight is limited and I believe they think they can wait us out. Our determination has got to match theirs and our will has got to be stronger than theirs and at the moment I think
This is the text of the remarks that Matthew d’Ancona, editor of The Spectator, delivered at the Spectator Threadneedle Parliamentarian of the Year awards lunch at Claridge’s Hotel. My Lords, ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon and welcome to the 23rd Threadneedle/Spectator Parliamentarian Awards. Yes, once again, this is the big one: the Oscars of Westminster, the Booker Prize of our lawmakers, the Blankety Blank cheque book and pen of the political cosa nostra. First of all: thank you to Mark Malloch-Brown for lending us his study for the ceremony. Second: if any of you are feeling a little light-headed please don’t panic: this is due not only to fine quality
Oliver Letwin’s enemies thought they had seen the last of him at Blackpool. His idea of laying out a policy smorgasbord had almost sunk the party, they argued. Yes, there were some good ideas (mainly from Iain Duncan Smith) but having multi-millionaires like Zac Goldsmith proposing a Happy Planet Index and telling the shoppers not to use supermarket car parks was disastrous. Presenting contradictory policies to the public did not make the party look open-minded, it was argued, but downright schizophrenic. Once David Cameron fought his way out by deciding hard-headed policies for himself and announcing them at the Blackpool party conference, it was assumed he had learnt his lesson
‘The nation had the lion’s heart. I had the luck to give the roar,’ Winston Churchill said of his role in achieving victory in the second world war. The idea that the British people were united, steadfast and resolute in the face of adversity is one of the enduring themes of our island story, still cherished more than 60 years after the war ended. A central figure in this narrative of wartime glory is the Spitfire fighter, which became a much-loved symbol of national defiance through its heroic exploits in the Battle of Britain in 1940. Yet the Spitfire saga is no tale of unbroken success. The early years of
OK, this is obviously extremely odd behaviour. But where’s the crime here? There’s no victim. There’s no lewd or offensive public display. Nothing at all. And yet this poor sod is now on the Sex Offenders’ Register for three years. Madness. If they can convict you of this, what can’t they convict you of? A man caught trying to have sex with his bicycle has been sentenced to three years on probation. Robert Stewart, 51, admitted a sexually aggravated breach of the peace by conducting himself in a disorderly manner and simulating sex.Sheriff Colin Miller also placed Stewart on the Sex Offenders Register for three years.
Bob Marshall-Andrews, the independent-minded Labour MP for Medway is a Whip’s nightmare. But he’s the sort of stout citizen any parliament worth the name needs more of. Years ago, we received good value from him when we invited him to speak at my undergraduate debating society. So, it’s nice to see that he’s lost none of his waspishness. Via Iain Dale comes this assessment of our boyish Foreign Secretary: Labour backbenchers seem to be getting uneasy about David Miliband. In Quentin Letts’s Daily Mail sketch today Medway MP Bob Marshall-Andrews describes Miliband as “this pillock* on his gap year**”. Letts insists that Marshall-Andrews was sober when he said this and
Clive points to a fascinating New Statesman story by David Matthews on whether the Tories can pick up significant black support at the next election—last time out they only got 2 percent of the black vote, compared to 80 percent for Labour. As the piece points out, the Tories now for the first time have black candidates, and a black MP, who could make it to the very top. Wary as I am about talking about blocs of voters in terms determined by their ethnicity, the Tories really should aspire to a far higher proportion of the black vote; especially as their idea of allowing non-state bodies, such as faith
The Independent have launched a string of new blogs which are well worth checking out. Open House, their comment blog, looks particularly promising—anything that offers us more of John Rentoul and Steve Richards can only be a good thing. Rentoul, who is one of the great authorities on Tony Blair, flags up a rather revealing interview that the former PM gave to David Miliband’s local paper. Here’s the key passage: “Did Mr Blair ever think that the South Shields MP would be his natural heir? He glanced up at the Foreign Secretary again, asking: “Shall I answer that?” Mr Miliband nodded cautiously with his eyes closed. “I’m very proud of
Jack Straw has taken to the ceremonial trappings of his new role with a vengeance. The former firebrand NUS president never seems happier than when dressed in his finery. Now Kevin Maguire reveals that Straw has been in training for his new role, or at least the dressing-up part of it, for a lot longer than anyone had realised: Gold-coated Jack “the Lad” Straw put on a magnificent display of grovelling for the Queen, a republican reintroducing the deferential practice of walking backwards at the Ruritanian opening of parliament. The Blackburn boy looked fetching in his breeches, though not quite as charming as when he watches his local footie team
There’s just over a week to go until the Australian election and it’s very hard to see John Howard winning it from here. Though there has been a slight narrowing over the course of the campaign, all polls are still showing Labor with a landslide winning percentage of the vote, 54-55%. Thanks to favourable electoral boundaries Howard’s Liberals could probably lose the popular vote by as much as 2% and still win, but they needed to be a lot closer by now. Unfortunately everything seems to be going wrong. Last week the Reserve Bank raised interest rates for the sixth time since Howard was re-elected in 2004 with the slogan