Coalition

Monday

David Blackburn

Ducking the issue?

As I wrote earlier, a large proportion of Andrew Lansley’s white paper had to be devoted to accountability. Much of it is, but little is explained. Patients are central. The creation of GP consortia is for their benefit and they will hold the consortia to account by excercising choice (4:21). Choice is the tyrannical panacea that does not exist. A patient can only improve a treatment if they are given it; and many GPs are closer to Doctor In the House rather than Dr.House. GPs are independent practitioners working within the NHS framework. For example, it is impossible for the patient to make recommendations about unavailable cancer drugs. In addition

David Blackburn

A question of accountability

In theory, curbing bureaucracy in the NHS should have you reaching for the Champagne. But giving GPs control of £80bn is an enormous risk. GPs know their patients’ needs, so Andrew Lansley’s thinking is that empowering GPs will improve patient care, and therefore patient outcomes. Many GPs will be chomping at the bit to get their hands on budgets; on the other hand, many will not – it takes a certain kind of mind to be thrilled by balance sheets. Also, those that are may fight their corner rather too vigorously, which would merely deepen imbalance in the health service. The success or failure of Lansley’s initiative depends on ensuring

Peter Hoskin

Five highlights from the Mandelson serialisation

So now we know what happened during those uncertain days following the election in May – or at least we know Peter Mandelson’s side of it.  The Times begins its serialisation of the Dark Lord’s book today with a front-page photo of Nick Clegg and the legend, “Clegg the Executioner”.  And, inside, Mandelson explains how the Lib Dem leader made Gordon Brown’s departure a precondition of any coalition deal with Labour.  Not the most surprising news ever, but worth having on record nonetheless. Aside from that, there’s little of much weight in these first extracts, but plenty of titbits for political anoraks. Here are five that jumped out at me:

Sunday

Peter Hoskin

Will Labour ever start love-bombing the Lib Dems?

Let’s dwell on the Labour leadership contest a second longer, to point its participants in the direction of John Rentoul’s column today.  Its central point – that Labour should “leave a door ajar” for Nick Clegg – should be self-evident to a party which has been forced out of power by a coalition.  But, in reality, Labour seems eager to ignore it.  At best, there’s a lazy assumption that the Lib Dems will one day divorce the Tories and quite naturally shack up with the lady in red.  At worst, there’s outright hostility to Clegg and his fellow, ahem, “collaborators”.  Neither approach will do much to break the ties that

Peter Hoskin

Osborne to strengthen Parliament’s role in OBR appointments?

It may not be the sexiest story in today’s newspapers, but the ongoing Office for Budget Responsibility row is certainly among the most important.  After all, a great deal rests on how it is resolved.  Not only could we end up without a body capable of restoring trust in fiscal forecasts, but the government’s promising transparency agenda could be sunk before it has even had chance to sail.  Much will depend on how far George Osborne goes to reinvigorate the OBR’s independent credentials. In which case, it’s worth highlighting the Sunday Telegraph’s summary of Sir Alan Budd’s proposals to do just that.  The departing OBR chief is expected to outline

Peter Hoskin

Mandelson and Miliband kick open the hornets’ nest

Oh joy, Labour are at war again.  The animosities which have largely been kept in check since the election are now piercing through to the surface again – and it’s all thanks to Peter Mandelson’s memoirs.  After the ennobled one’s insights about Gordon and Tony in the Times yesterday, Charlie Whelan is shooting back from the pages of the Sunday Telegraph.  And, elsewhere, Brown is said to have told friends that “this is going to be a very difficult time for me.”  Yep, it’s just like the glory days of last summer. Amid all this, there’s a sense that Mandelson and David Miliband have coordinated their efforts to trash Brown

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Cameron’s refreshing honesty on schools

David Cameron has today told the News of the World that he is “terrified” about the prospect of sending his children to an inner-London state school. This is quite some statement, given how many tens of thousands of parents are in the same predicament. Isn’t it the classic politician’s error? To betray how his aloofness from voters by showing how he fears what ordinary parents have to put up with? That’s what Tony Blair thought – so he’d pretend to be happy with state schools while sending his kids to the ultra-selective Oratory School. That is hypocrisy. What David Cameron has said represents honesty. After all, why shouldn’t he be

Saturday

David Blackburn

The Gove fight-back begins

His apology earlier this week was a reminder of how Cabinet Ministers used to behave. Today’s cock-ups and crises have increased the pressure on the Education Secretary – two schools face cuts despite meeting the government’s criteria. Now Gove has penned a defensive article for the Sunday Express. He writes: ‘Reform is never easy, and certainly not when cash is tight… but school building will not stop under this government.’ Gove is, of course, right. Money is tight. But he must explain why reform is necessary in and of itself, and why his ideas should be adopted. There was an aloofness and arrogance about his performance on Newsnight on Monday, suggesting that Gove believes

David Blackburn

Insane culture

I’ve just flicked on the television in search of fresh disasters. The news that Raoul Moat shot himself when cornered in a kessel is still ‘breaking’. In this heat I’d be surprised if he wasn’t oozing by now, but 24 hour news doesn’t concern itself with such trivialities. The ‘Yours Concerned’ BBC reporter intoned in horror that 2 tasers had been used in the operation.  Now, I wouldn’t arm the officious clown who asked why I was carrying a bottle of Crozes Hermitage through Waterloo station yesterday evening. I oppose the adoption of tasers in anything other than extreme circumstances. But Mr Moat was fairly extreme in my book, given,

Alex Massie Alex Massie

To 2015 And Beyond

My word, the Daily Mail is a tender, easily-startled fawn. Here’s James Chapman today: The Prime Minister raised the extraordinary possibility of a non-aggression pact between the Tories and the Lib Dems at the next election as he mounted his strongest defence yet of the coalition. Well, the Daily Mail may consider this “extraordinary”; readers of this blog should not. This is both a logical and necessary step along the road to a second term. This, mind, will be difficult to achieve even with Liberal Democrat support for a second coalition: it will require nerve and guts and luck. But, perhaps, it can be done. The good news is that

David Blackburn

Sir Humphrey always has the last word

The Great Repeal Act seems to have gone the way of all flesh. Perhaps the task was deemed too cumbrous. Or perhaps the Civil Service replaced their original contrivances with a bill so convoluted that the Repeal Act itself would have to be repealed. As Alan Clark wrote: ‘Give a civil servant a good case and he’ll wreck it with clichés, bad punctuation, double negatives and convoluted apology’. I mention the civil service because the government plan to ‘cure Labour’s Health and Safety neurosis’. Lovely turns of phrase from David Cameron in interview with the Mail: concern for safety and welfare has invaded the private sphere and it will be

Friday

Peter Hoskin

Fighting talk from IDS

Iain Duncan Smith is on a roll, and the roll continues with his interview on Straight Talk with Andrew Neil this weekend. Supporters of welfare reform will hear plenty to encourage them, even if only on a rhetorical level. Duncan Smith discuses how the fiscal climate makes this a “once in a generation opportunity and chance to change [welfare] now,” and how Beveridge’s original intentions have been subverted by a system which traps people out of work. But the most reassuring segment, by far, is this: “I, well, certainly, you know, I’ll be honest with you, there was certainly a discussion about that, everything was in the discussion, but my

David Blackburn

The ’22 bares its teeth

Tim Montgomerie reports that the 1922 Committee is to launch its own inquiry into the Tories’ election campaign. This, as I understand it, is in addition to the party’s official inquiry, and therefore suggests that the backbenches want to assert their independence by criticising Steve Hilton and George Osborne’s strategy. After May’s ruptures between Cameron and the backbenches there is a chance that this story could snowball. There is a sense that some of the ’22 haven’t yet buried the hatchet. And the feeling’s mutual. Some Cameroons and modernisers are disdainful – ‘self-indulgent farts’ was how one put it. But the ’22 must assert itself and I welcome this review.

Peter Hoskin

Cable’s aspirations

“Aspiration” tends to be a convenient word for politicians, in the sense that any policy that they can’t implement now can be glossed over as something they want to do in future. But, if Vince Cable’s interview with the Times is anything to go by, it could become a troublesome word for the coalition. Speaking about the Lib Dem’s election promise to scrap university tuition fees, Cable says that: “It is an aspiration, but we’re highly constrained financially and we have got to try to work out ways of doing it. I’m not Father Christmas.” But nowhere does the coalition agreement say that scrapping tuition fees is an “aspiration”. Instead,

David Blackburn

Coalition is the making of Cameron

It’s all going swimmingly. David Cameron is almost as popular as Gordon Brown was in August 2007. A worrying omen perhaps, but for the moment the government’s honeymoon is in full swing. It’s quite a bash, and many of the coalition’s initial detractors admit to being pleasantly surprised by Cameron and Clegg. Iain Martin is positive, though he maintains a learned scepticism. Fraser Nelson can see a possible re-alignment of British party politics, and today Martin Kettle gushes about Cameron the ‘man of grace’. I’m not sure what a ‘man of grace’ is, but Cameron’s languid charm and opportunism are effective. Kettle writes: ‘[Cameron] recognises that he is delivering a

Peter Hoskin

Osborne must make the workings of the OBR even more transparent

Forget the hubbub about Gove’s schools list, the most damaging story for the government this week could well be on the cover of today’s FT.  Alex Barker does a great job of summarising it here. But the central point is that the Office for Budget Responsibility changed its forecasting methods just before the Budget, with the effect of reducing how many public sector jobs would be lost due to the government’s measures. This isn’t damning on its own: statisticians constantly tweak their forecasting methods. But when you consider that the OBR’s new methods incorporated policies which haven’t even been announced yet (including one which pre-empts the findings of John Hutton’s

Thursday

Peter Hoskin

Bring on people power – but Cameron will still need to get his hands dirty

You’ve got to hand it to him: David Cameron knows when to dish out the charm. Just days on from news about cuts to their pay-offs, he is today giving a speech to civil servants in which he purrs that they “the envy of the world”. Not that he withholds the stick, though. The meat of the speech is a series of measures designed to make the operations of Whitehall more transparent and its actors more accountable. Which, lest it need saying, is something I’m all in favour of. But it’s worth noting that much of this “post-bureaucratic” agenda will still require strong central control to work properly. Take Cameron’s

Wednesday

David Blackburn

Cameron’s intervention causes uproar

Iain Dale has news of fresh ruptures in the Tories’ controversial European grouping. Here are the details: This is an intriguing development. Perhaps the combination of being in government, the balance of the coalition and Cameron’s markedly improved relations with Merkel and Sarkozy (whose parties are aligned with the EPP) brings the need for fresh European alliances? Most of the controversy surrounding the CRG is unfounded but it certainly damaged Cameron at home and abroad. I’m told that the Tories have no intention of shifting allegiance, and that the original plan was for Kirkhope and Kaminski to share the chairmanship if possible. But even so, watch this space…

David Blackburn

The coalition must do more than blame Labour

John Redwood has written a typically thoughtful piece, questioning the government’s arch cuts rhetoric. He writes: ‘Ministers would be wise to tone down the rhetoric of massive cuts. They need to mobilise, energise and reform the public services. Labour made clear in their marathon moan in the Commons yesterday into the early hours of this morning that they are out to talk the economy down, highlight alleged huge cuts in jobs and services and campaign with the Unions against sensible change. The government needs to be smart and careful in its choice of words to bring about the improvements in quality and performance needed.’ Ministers sound terse and defensive at

David Blackburn

That’ll learn ‘em

At last, some will cry, teachers are to be given increased disciplinary powers to moderate unruly children’s behaviour. Rather than tear up the statute book, the measures aim to change perceptions and practices and redress the balance of rights in favour of the teacher. Force can be used to restrain pupils at present, but teachers rarely resort to force for fear of prosecution. The government will lessen what it terms ‘vilification’ by protecting teachers’ anonymity against complaints unless a criminal prosecution is brought. Search and confiscation powers will be extended and summary penalties imposed on transgressors. Currently, schools have to write to parents and give 24 hours notice to detain