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The real question raised by Suzanne Moore’s latest impassioned piece for The Guardian is whether the coalition government likes young people at all, or even gave them a thought when considering their cuts-reform double whammy. Here’s the rub: “There are no jobs. The most beautifully manicured CV will not get you a minimum-wage job
…although this one is over in Ireland. After a turbulent week, Brian Cowen has stood down as leader of Fianna Fail, yet he staggers on as Taoiseach until the general election on 11 March: Channel 4 have a useful summary of the contenders to replace him.
Courtesy of the ConHome tag team of Paul Goodman and Tim Montgomerie, two articles that are worth adding to your Saturday reading list. Both capture why Andy Coulson’s resignation matters, if not to the general swell of British politics, at least to internal operations in Coalitionville. The wider argument of Paul’s article for the Guardian
After the gales of recent weeks, the past few days must have been relatively blissful for the Lib Dems. No fake constituents with hidden dictaphones. No massive student protests. No especial focus on their opinion poll ratings. But, instead, a mephitic heap of problems, or at least embarrassments, for Labour and the Tories. Warsi, Johnson,
No need to explain why we’re looking back on the resignation of Alastair Campbell for this week’s entry from The Spectator archives. The piece itself is merciless stuff from the pen of Stephen Glover. Alastair Campbell’s redtop values have contaminated our politics, Stephen Glover, The Spectator, 6 September 2003 When I learnt of Dr Kelly’s
Here is a selection of posts made at Spectator.co.uk over the past week. Fraser Nelson warns against under-estimating the two Eds, and watches the inflation crisis deepen. James Forsyth says that appointing Balls as Shadow Chancellor is a gamble on Miliband’s part, and reflects on a bad morning for the government. Peter Hoskin asks if
The more you read, the more you discover that it was Blair – entirely alone in the country – who wished to invade Iraq in 2003. The cabinet didn’t want to, even Blair’s cabal didn’t want to. Even Alastair Campbell had grave reservations. Everyone around him thought it wrong, or illegal, or both. And watching
So, who’s next after Andy Coulson? This question is oddly important, and will certainly influence the direction of his government. It shouldn’t, but you have to understand the way the Cameron operation works – and of how life looked before George Osborne persuaded Coulson to come on board (hoodie hugging, husky-riding, etc). Coulson was an
Of the two resignations of the past 24 hours, it is Alan Johnson’s that will change the contours of politics. The appointment of Ed Balls makes the dividing line on the economy far starker. But the Coulson resignation is still a highly significant moment. Those Tories who worked with Coulson are downcast today and will
Here’s Andy Coulson’s resignation statement: “I can today confirm that I’ve resigned as Downing Street director of communications. It’s been a privilege and an honour to work for David Cameron for three-and-a-half years. I’m extremely proud of the part I’ve played in helping him reach No 10 and during the coalition’s first nine months. Nothing
Andy Coulson has resigned today. David Cameron has issued a statement paying effusive tribute to his departing communications director. But there will be questions asked about his judgment in appointing Coulson after he had resigned from the editorship of the News of the World over the phone hacking scandal.
More soon
The timing could hardly have been more resonant. On the day that Tony Blair is paraded, once again, in front of the Iraq Inquiry, Team Brown is firmly back in charge of the Labour party. For, I’m sure you’ve noticed CoffeeHousers, three of the four great shadow offices of state are occupied by former members
Both The Mail and The Sun are running on their front pages that Alan Johnson’s wife is allegedly having an affair with his bodyguard. There are, though, other rumours referenced in other papers. The Tory view this evening is that they now face a tactically harder fight but a strategically easier one. They fully expect
One thing worth noting before we discuss Balls’ appointment is that the reasons Johnson have resigned are personal. It is not about his competence or otherwise. The Tories are wasting no time in getting stuck into Ed Balls. One just said to me, ‘the man who created this economic mess is back. He designed the
Balls is back. The author of Gordon Brown’s economic policies for 15 years. The man who bears more responsibility for anyone else – other than Brown – for the asset bubble and the consequent crash. But I suspect that, right now, Theresa May is doing cartwheels and George Osborne cursing. Balls, for all his many
Ed Miliband has just taken the biggest risk of his leadership in appointing Ed Balls as his shadow Chancellor. Balls’ is not a man who take orders and his view on the deficit is noticeably different from Ed Miliband’s. He is also the person most closely associated with Gordon Brown’s economic record. George Osborne will
James Kirkup is reporting a rumour that Alan Johnson is to resign. More to follow. UPDATE: He has resigned. Sky News is reporting that Johnson has gone for personal reasons. That may be so – and because of the timing (the government was having the day from hell until ten to five this evening) I
Most of my 2010 predictions did not come to pass; and many of the ones I made a few weeks ago for 2011 might not either. But one seems to have been a good bet. I wrote: “Liam Fox will come under renewed pressure when it becomes clear that the defence budget cannot afford both
Sources inside Number 10 tell me that while there was a ‘general awareness’ that Baroness Warsi was to give a speech on faith, they did not know the specifics of what she was going to say. They say that no text was cleared by Downing Street. They claim that the first they knew of the
This morning has not been a good one for the government. There’s been an embarrassing admission that 28 days detention will simply lapse on Monday, the Conservative party chairman is delivering a speech that the vast majority of Conservatives think is muddle-headed at best, and the Prime Minister finds himself in a public debate with
An ingenious man, John Hirst. First he achieved the considerable feat of committing manslaughter with an axe; and he has since proceeded to cause governments no end of trouble. The prisoner voting saga is nearing its end and a fug of ignominy is descending on the government. The BBC reports that the coalition is to
“We will want to prevent EU judges gaining steadily greater control over our criminal justice system by negotiating an arrangement which would protect it. That will mean limiting the European Court of Justice’s jurisdiction over criminal law…” That was David Cameron a year ago when he presented the Tories’ EU policy ahead of the General
As ever, the headlines are more sensational than the speech, but marginally so in this case. Baroness Warsi has asserted that Islamophobia is rife and socially acceptable in Britain. It is a peculiarly crass statement for an ordinary politician to have made, but, then again, the gabbing Baroness is a very ordinary politician. Some of
Andy Burnham crossed a line today in using Sarah Vine, Michael Gove’s wife, to take a pop at the Education Secretary. Burnham, mockingly citing a recent Vine column, argued that the fact that the Goves have a cleaner ‘raises further questions about whether he is living in the same world as the rest of us.’
Michael Gove has reignited talk of a Tory Lib Dem pact by urging people in Hull to vote Lib Dem to keep Labour out at the local elections. Gove’s intervention was not planned but it does reveal how he thinks. Gove’s department is the most coalitionised. Not only is there a Lib Dem minister there
Mark Littlewood is Director General of the Institute of Economic Affairs and contributed an article to the recent collection Big Brother Watch: The state of civil liberties in Britain. He summarises his argument here. It’s not fanciful to argue that the formation of a Liberal-Conservative coalition government last May was helped by the fact that
Labour are on the up. They strolled Oldham. They’ve recruited great armies of Clegg’s defectors. And they’d win a majority if a general election were held tomorrow. There’s been a lot of excited talk in Westminster about Tom Baldwin, Labour’s new communications attack-dog, coming in with his fangs bared and sharpening up their tactics. Well,
An interesting story on local government reform in the Daily Mail: Nick Clegg is demanding councils be given the power to impose a massive range of new local taxes. Among the levies he suggests are for fuel, alcohol, office parking, landfill and even speeding. But the Liberal Democrat Deputy Prime Minister is being blocked by
One of the reasons I don’t run a bed and breakfast establishment is that I cannot imagine approving of any of the sort of people who would stay in it. I would sit downstairs in the kitchen seething knowing that upstairs fundamentalist Christians, or homosexuals, or cabinet ministers and their secretaries, estate agents or people
VERDICT: No winners, and no real losers, from this week’s PMQs. Miliband’s questions were insistent and straightforward. Cameron’s answers were forceful and, in themselves, fairly persuasive. A no-score draw, then, if you want to look at it like that. There were one or two worrying leitmotifs for the coalition, though. First, the PM’s tendency towards
The good news is that most people in Britain think that people in their local area mix pretty well regardless of differences in race, religion and the rest of it. According to the latest Citizenship Survey from the Department for Communities and Local Government for April-September last year, about 85 percent of people think that
Today’s political news is brought to you by the letters E, M and A. Eeeema. While the political establishment debates the abolition of EMA – the Educational Maintenance Allowance – inside Parliament, campaigners will be protesting against it on the streets outside. The police, who are used to these things by now, have already set
As you know, I’m not much of a Fianna Fail fan. But if there’s any Irish institution that outperforms the ghastliness of the Soldiers of Destiny it’s the Catholic Church. Here’s the latest reminder of that: A letter to Ireland’s Roman Catholic bishops has been revealed by the broadcaster RTE that contradicts the Vatican’s frequent