David cameron

Thursday

James Forsyth

How Cameron sees the economy

Today’s speech by David Cameron is one of those ones that give you a real insight into how he sees the world. Cameron said that he wanted to see an ‘insurgent economy, where we support the new, the innovative and the bold’. He talked about the need to ‘encourage the adventurous spirits who challenge the status quo and declared that he admires ‘more than almost anything the bravery of those who turn their back on the security of a regular wage to follow their dreams and start a company’. This reveals something important both about Cameron personally and how he sees the economy. The people that Cameron respects are not

Peter Hoskin

Miliband’s proximity problem

Ed Miliband is on unusually assertive form this morning. His observation in the FT that ‘my speech to Labour’s annual conference was not — I think it is fair to say — universally well-received’ is not, I think, intended self-deprecatingly, but rather self-congratulatory, as though he were the only politician calling for a ‘responsible capitalism’ at the time. And he’s repeated that suggestion elsewhere: in a short statement for Which?, and in a Labour briefing document — entitled Who is he trying to kid? — that has been filtered around the crowd at David Cameron’s speech. Ed is trying to crash Dave’s party, and bring it crashing down. Like I

Peter Hoskin

Lansley’s health problems return

Another day, another exercise in obstructionism from the unions. Only this time it’s not Ed Miliband that they’re complaining about. It’s Andrew Lansley and the government’s health reforms. The Royal College of Nursing and the Royal College of Midwives have said that the entire Health Bill should be dropped. They have shifted, as they put it rather dramatically, to ‘outright opposition’. Which must be annoying for Lansley, given how he took time to ‘pause, listen and engage’ last summer, and adjusted his Bill accordingly. That whole process was meant to anaethetise this sort of disagreement, but the tensions clearly persist and could indeed get worse from here. It’s telling that

Wednesday

Camilla Swift

Cameron’s fight over the Falklands

Thirty years on from the Falklands War, and the hostility between Britain and Argentina persists. And it was that hostility that delivered the most striking moment of PMQs earlier. Not only did David Cameron, at the insistence of Andrew Rosindell, describe the Argentinian attitude towards the Islands as ‘far more like colonialism’ than that of the British, but he also confirmed that the National Security Council yesterday discussed the simmering situation in the south Atlantic. As he put it himself, he wants to send out a ‘strong message’ to Argentina, after the recent sabre-rattling actions of their President, Cristina Kirchner — which Daniel has blogged about here. The question that’s

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

The lesson from today’s PMQs? Unemployment makes Cameron uncomfortable

What’s the point of Ed Miliband? Does the Opposition leader have any purpose in life other than to provide ritual entertainment for the Tory wrecking crew at PMQs? Having spent the New Year listening to lethal attacks from his dearest supporters, Mr Miliband has now seen his leadership shrivel to a pair of policy statements which rival each other in desperation and barminess. The first, outlined by Liam Byrne this morning, is a fantasy tax on banking, ‘to create 100,000 jobs’. The second is Labour’s new position on the government’s austerity programme. This would baffle the dippiest and trippiest resident of Alice in Wonderland. We hate the cuts. We back

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Cameron endures his monthly unemployment grilling

Downing Street is painfully aware that one PMQs in four is going to be about unemployment. Today, with the monthly figures having come out this morning, Miliband led on the subject. The Cameron-Miliband exchanges were not particularly enlightening. Miliband said ‘it really is back to the 1980s’ and Cameron mocked Miliband for being ‘so incompetent, he can’t even do a U-turn properly’. In the backbench questions, Cameron wasn’t put under much pressure. The news of the session came when he said in response to a question from Andrew Rosindell that the National Security Council had devoted a whole session to the Falklands yesterday. At the end of the session, there

Peter Hoskin

What Boris Island tells us about Cameron

He already has his bikes and his buses, but might Boris get his island too? Today’s Telegraph reports that David Cameron is going to announce a consultation into building a new airport in the Thames estuary, as was first proposed by the London Mayor. The PM will wait until that consultation is over before making a final decision, but he’s said to be ‘provisionally supportive’ of the plan at the moment. Nick Clegg, by the sounds of it, is more provisionally negative. Even the very prospect of Boris Island is a triumph for the Mayor, and not least because Cameron and George Osborne were previously opposed to it. It also

Peter Hoskin

The new politics of leaning on business

Ed Miliband the consumer champion, the saviour of the squeezed classes. That, more or less, is how the Labour leader has always sought to sell himself — but this morning the sales pitch goes into overdrive. He has an interview with the Daily Telegraph in which he attacks ‘Rip-off Britain’. Not the TV show, mind, but those companies that hammer their customers with extra costs and hidden charges. Excessive savings fees, car-parking charges, airline levies, bank charges, consumer helpline costs and energy bills; all these should come to an end, says Miliband. And he has a few measures for achieving that. What strikes me, when reading the interview, is how this

Monday

James Forsyth

A Cameron-friendly backbench group

The 301 Group is the nearest that David Cameron has to a loyalist backbench support group; it is named after the number of seats the Tories will need at the next election to win a majority. The Times today reports the group’s concerns that the Tories are in danger of forgetting the importance of a broad agenda that goes beyond the party’s staple issues. I suspect that several people in Downing Street will nod along at these concerns. The group has certainly been encouraged by Number 10, which has difficult relations with the 1922 Committee. Its early speakers have included the chief whip Patrick McLoughlin and the vice-chairman of the

Friday

John R. Bradley

The hypocrisy of Cameron’s Saudi trip

A year ago, Tunisian strongman Zine El Abidine Ben Ali fled Tunisia for Saudi Arabia, thus ushering in the Salafi Spring. No doubt now bored out of his mind, this once stubbornly secular leader is said to have caught religion of the deranged Wahhabi variety propagated by his oil-rich hosts.   In turn, the Saudis are preparing to welcome Rachid Ghannouchi – the notoriously humble leader of the even more notoriously moderate Ennahda that now controls Tunisia’s parliament – on a state visit. This week Ghannouchi has been heaping praise on the Persian Gulf monarchies, doing us all the favour of revealing where his true sympathies lie when it comes

Douglas Murray

Hague’s misplaced optimism

William Hague has an article in the Times today arguing against what he refers to as the ‘pessimism’ of those who have expressed concerns about the direction of the ‘Arab Spring’. As somebody who cannot see the virtue of either optimism or pessimism as policy, and preferring facts to moods, I think the Foreign Secretary’s central points should be answered. Particularly as he chose so injudicious a day to publish his piece. Mr Hague’s argument against pessimism is that ‘such pessimism misses the extraordinary opportunities that popular demand for freedom and dignity bring’. Certainly the government of which Mr Hague is a part is not missing any opportunities. Today David Cameron is

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

IDS must stay the course on welfare reform

Welfare wars are erupting again, with Iain Duncan Smith’s bill amended in the Lords and more showdowns ahead. Number 10 has been completely robust, threatening to use rarely-invoked powers to overrule the Lords. In my Telegraph column today, I say why it’s so important that David Cameron does not go wobbly – as his predecessors did.   Tony Blair understood the need for radical welfare reform, especially when his idol Bill Clinton introduced it in America. Listening to his speeches in the mid-90s is heartbreaking: he had precisely the right idea, but lacked the determination to implement it. Frank Field was asked to ‘think the unthinkable’, but when disabled protesters

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Cameron hints at child benefit taper

David Cameron’s comments to The House magazine on child benefit are causing quite a stir this morning. The Telegraph splashes on the PM’s line that ‘Some people say that’s the unfairness of it, that you lose the child benefit if you have a higher rate taxpayer in the family,’ he said. ‘Two people below the level keep the benefit. So, there’s a threshold, a cliff-edge issue.’ ‘We always said we would look at the way it’s implemented and that remains the case, but I don’t want to impinge on the Chancellor’s Budget.’ I suspect that what Cameron means by this is that they are looking at a taper. When one

Thursday

Daniel Korski

Uncivil service

Political cultures differ. In Iran, for example, hyperbole is expected in all political conversations. So slogans always call for ‘Death to the US’, and nothing less. In Britain, of course, the use of language is more even-tempered, but other rules apply. Blaming the civil service for failure is considered OK, but charging an individual official, even a Permanent Secretary, for the same is considered off-limits. If a minister were to try it, then he’d be accused of trying to pass the buck on towards defenceless officials. But, as Camilla Cavendish points out in today’s Times (£), failure is often also the fault of senior officials who, despite problems in the

William Astor

Signal failure | 12 January 2012

The latest Spectator is out today, and it contains an article by William Astor that attacks the government — and, by extension, David Cameron — over their decision to proceed with HS2. Given that it’s causing quite a stir across the news agenda, we thought CoffeeHousers might like to see it for themselves:    Rail privatisation by the Major government heralded the largest growth in passenger numbers in decades. This was down to improvements in service and a timetable to suit passengers, coupled with some attractive fare offers. But future growth of rail travel is unlikely to be at the same high rate and there we have the nub of

Jonathan Jones

More Mili-woe

It gets worse for Ed Miliband in the polls today. After revealing last week that just 20 per cent of the public think he’s doing well as Labour leader, YouGov now find that only 17 per cent think he’d make the best Prime Minister. That’s his lowest score yet, and it compares to 41 per cent for David Cameron. But the way those numbers break down may be even more worrying for Ed. Only half of current Labour supporters say he’d be the best PM, and a minority — just 43 per cent — of 2010 Labour voters pick him. By contrast, Cameron has the backing of 97 per cent

Wednesday

Peter Hoskin

Why Ed Miliband’s PMQs slip-up matters

The exchange about rail fares in PMQs earlier was, it’s true, not one for the photo album. But the way it’s resolved itself this afternoon has been considerably more diverting. You see, it turns out that David Cameron was right: Labour did arrange for these fare increases when in government. And, what’s more, Ed Miliband was wrong: the coalition didn’t ‘reverse’ the cap on fares that Labour then conveniently introduced in the run up to the general election. That cap was limited to one year by the Labour government itself. It was always intended that it would expire on 1 January 2011, at which point — barring a new cap

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Ed Miliband lives to flop another day

Miliband survives! That news should steady Labour nerves. For today at least. Their leader has the knack of turning near-certain defeat into absolutely-certain catastrophe, but he bumbled through PMQs this afternoon without suffering a serious setback. He has so little ground from which to attack the government that he had to lead on a niche issue. Rail fares. He asked the prime minister why the operating companies have managed to hike prices by 11 per cent on the busiest routes. Cameron: ‘Because of a power given to them by the last Labour government.’   With that lethally terse response the PM sat down. To his credit, Miliband wasn’t rattled. But

James Forsyth James Forsyth

A fairly bland PMQs

Today’s PMQs was rather a bland affair. Ed Miliband started with three questions on train fares that David Cameron batted away, but there is a little row brewing over whether Cameron’s claim that he is simply continuing the policy of the last government is correct. Later, Miliband moved onto the safe territory of the Union and consensus broke out with only the half dozen SNP MPs dissenting from it. Angus Robertson, the SNP’s Westminster leader, then asked the PM a question that, in a preview of the SNP’s campaign tactics, was designed purely to get the words Cameron, Thatcher and Scotland into the same sentence. There were two other things