David cameron

Friday

Fraser Nelson

Is Osborne ready for the next crisis?

There is a strange pre-Lehman feeling in the air right now: the idea that something awful is going to happen, but no one knows what or when. This is laden with political ramifications. The problem for the Tories last time was not that George Osborne had been caught aboard HMS Deripaska. The greater problem was that a crash had arrived and the Shadow Chancellor had nothing to say. Brown, at least, seemed to have an agenda, and the Tory poll lead was reduced to one vulnerable point. I admire Osborne, but he can do far better in making the case for the government’s economic strategy. If there is a second

David Blackburn

Corporatism, comms and civil servants

David Cameron renewed his calls for global action for growth last night and it seems that the work begins at home. The Times reports (£) that 50 of Britain’s largest companies will be given direct access to ministers and officials. Corporate bodies will be designated an “account director”, who, despite what that title might suggest, is a cabinet minister rather than a junior advertising exec. The scheme is not yet finalised, but it seems that the labour will be divided thus: ‘Vince Cable, the Business Secretary, will act as what officials are calling “an account director” to Britain’s oil and gas giants Shell, BP and BG. David Willetts, the Universities and

Thursday

David Blackburn

Cameron’s foreign frustrations

David Cameron’s much trailed speech to the UN is tinged with frustration. He will say, “You can sign every human rights declaration in the world but if you stand by and watch people being slaughtered in their own country, when you could act then what are those signatures really worth? The UN has to show that we can be – not just united in condemnation, but – united in action acting in a way that lives up to the UNs founding principles and meets the needs of people everywhere.” That seems to be a fairly thinly veiled reference to the global community’s indifference to oppression in Syria. The lack of action

Monday

James Forsyth

The coming row over Europe

One of the most striking things about Lib Dem conference has been how up for a scrap over Europe the party’s ministers are. Every single Lib Dem Cabinet minister has, over the past few days, ruled out any attempt to repatriate powers from Brussels. Given that the Conservative party wouldn’t forgive David Cameron not attempting to use any new treaty negotiation to try and regain control of various issues (see David’s blog from earlier), this puts the Prime Minister in quite a dilemma. Personally, I expect Cameron will go for the repatriation of powers. The AV referendum showed that when he has to choose between really angering his party or

David Blackburn

Europe looms its head to threaten the coalition and the Tories

The Telegraph’s splash on Europe indicates that the issue, which proved so toxic to the last Conservative government, has risen again. Writing a stern op-ed for the paper, serial rebel and anti-Cameroon Mark Pritchard calls for a referendum. This will have irritated Downing Street no end, which is understood to have hoped that the whip-sanctioned Eurosceptic grouping that has formed around George Eustice might have contained the party’s factious elements. But some disgruntled MPs on the right privately say that last week’s well attended meeting of Eustice’s group turned into something of a disappointment. The insistence that an exit from the EU was off-limits for the moment was apparently met

Saturday

James Forsyth

Compassionate conservatism the key to gay marriage pledge

When David Cameron spoke to the Carlton Club political dinner on Thursday night, he stressed that the Conservatives must not subcontract out compassion to their coalition partners. The Prime Minister’s desire to hold this ground can be seen at the speed with which Downing Street has briefed out that it was Cameron’s personal commitment that was key to the coalition’s decision to consult on how to introduce gay marriage. The message is clear, this isn’t just a bauble for the Lib Dems for the opening day of their conference. Personally, I think that the move on gay marriage is a welcome one. (Although, the legislation must ensure that no religious denomination

Friday

Daniel Korski

The Israel Palestine question

After a hiatus, the Middle East Peace Process is about to return to the international stage. The Palestinians are pushing at the UN for recognition. Nobody knows yet what they will actually ask for: full statehood or just upgrading their UN status to “non-member”. But, whatever the language of the resolution, the issue will be contentious. By some estimates, 126 states are poised to back the Palestinian request, including France, India, Brazil, Spain. The US will not support a Palestinian move, nor is Germany likely to. Britain remains undecided, hoping to help the Palestinians draft a resolution that other Europeans can sign up to. It’s not clear what Britain and

Thursday

Daniel Korski

Cameron’s Libyan gamble

It is conventional wisdom that David Cameron won’t get much of an electoral bounce from the Libya intervention, despite emerging as a bold and competent interventionist. People, the argument goes, are tired of warfare. A senior figure in Tony Blair’s No 10 told me yesterday that he did not think the PM would earn a lot of kudos, because with all the problems at home there is less tolerance for overseas adventurism. But this narrative overlooks a number of key points. First, the success of the operation has dealt with the charge that the government is less competent than it pretended to be. This was a serious charge, as the

David Blackburn

Sarko and Dave go to Tripoli

“This is your revolution,” said David Cameron to the mass of rapturous Libyans who welcomed both him and Nicolas Sarkozy in Tripoli this morning. Obviously this is a PR coup for the two leaders, who both face difficulties at home. But, although these were scenes of jubilation, both leaders were keen to say that the situation in Libya is still delicate. Gaddafi is still at large and there are reports that his supporters have drifted into the desert, where they are conducting a guerrilla campaign against rebel targets. This is of great concern to the National Transitional Council and its allies, who want to reopen Libya’s remote oil industry to

Wednesday

James Forsyth

Downing Street’s boundary review problem

I understand that Number 10 will lean on Cabinet ministers not to object to what the boundary review does to their seats. This is an intriguing development because at least three Tory Secretaries of State are deeply unhappy with the proposed changes to their constituencies. It’ll be fascinating to see whether Downing Street can persuade them to hold their peace on the matter. Their disquiet reflects broader grumbling throughout the Tory parliamentary party. All sorts of conspiracy theories are doing the rounds. Number 10 needs to move quickly to offer some reassurance to nervous MPs. If the boundary review’s plan is to be made agreeable to the Tory parliamentary party,

Pavel Stroilov

Cameron mustn’t fall further into Putin’s trap

“Russian democracy has been buried under the ruins of New York’s twin towers”, famous KGB rebel Alexander Litvinenko wrote in 2002. The West, he warned, was making a grave mistake of going along with Putin’s dictatorship in exchange for his cooperation in the global war on terror. He would never be an honest partner, and would try to make the Western leaders complicit in his own crimes – from political assassinations to the genocide of Chechens. As a KGB officer, Putin would see every friendly summit-meeting as a potential opportunity to recruit another agent of influence. David Cameron, whose summit-meeting with Putin coincided with the sombre jubilee of 9/11, would

James Forsyth James Forsyth

A brutal no score draw at PMQs

Cameron and Miliband went six rounds on the economy at PMQs. Miliband tried to portray Cameron as just another Tory who thinks that “unemployment is a price worth paying”. Cameron, for his part, wanted to paint the Labour leader as someone whose policies would send Britain tumbling into a sovereign debt crisis. At the end, it felt like a bit of a no-score draw. Interestingly, Cameron stressed that “every week and every month, we’ll be adding to that growth programme”. We’ll have to see whether he’s talking about more small-bore measures, or something bigger on infrastructure investment. Labour had a new tactic today, trying to fact-check all of Cameron’s answers

Monday

James Forsyth

Managing the boundary changes

MPs are queuing down the corridor on the first floor of Portcullis House as they try to get hold of a copy of the proposed boundary changes which have just been released under embargo. Boundary changes can make a huge difference to an MP, converting a marginal into a safe seat and vice-versa. Boundary reviews are a whip’s nightmare as they will set MPs of the same party against each other. The danger for the two coalition partners is that MPs’ take to rebelling on emotive issues for their parties in an attempt to win any selection head to head. This is why Cameron went out of his way to

Saturday

Siobhan Courtney

To be or not to be married?

My name is Siobhan Courtney and I am a very happily unmarried mother with a five month old son. But this week I’m annoyed – really annoyed. I and thousands of others have been given a slap across the face by Conservative ministers who have now changed their minds about giving cohabiting couples the same rights as married ones. Ken Clarke has rejected proposals put forward by the Law Commission under the last government. And it’s all pretty basic stuff. Childless couples would have been granted automatic inheritance rights if one of them died without a will, no matter how long they had been together. Couples who lived together for

Friday

James Forsyth

Cameron’s well-schooled argument

When Michael Howard offered David Cameron the pick of the jobs in the shadow Cabinet after the 2005 election, Cameron chose education. Howard was disappointed that Cameron hadn’t opted to shadow Gordon Brown but Cameron argued that education was the most important portfolio. A sense of that commitment was on display today in his speech on education, delivered at one of the new free schools that have opened this term. His defence of the coalition’s plans to make it easier to sack bad teachers summed up its refreshing radicalism. He simply said, “If it’s a choice between making sure our children get the highest quality teaching or some teachers changing

Thursday

James Forsyth

Pickles to take charge of dealing with Britain’s 120,000 “problem families”

I understand that following a meeting in Downing Street this morning, Eric Pickles, the Communities and Local Government Secretary, has been put in charge of dealing with Britain’s 120,000 “problem families”. In the aftermath of the riots, David Cameron promised to put all of these families through some a family-intervention programme by the time of the next election. This policy, though, was bogged down in the bureaucracy as it cut across so many different departments. Pickles’ department will now have sole responsibility for this commitment. It will receive extra budget, with the money coming from education and work and pensions, and staff to deal with this. As I revealed in

James Forsyth James Forsyth

How will Westminster respond to Vickers?

The Vickers’ report into banks will land on the Prime Minister’s desk tomorrow. It goes to the banks very early on Monday morning before being published later that day. The thing to watch for is how politicians react to it. We know that the report will propose some kind of ring fence. But what we do not know is how strict the ring fence will be and how quickly Vickers will want it implemented. As Robert Peston says the impact of the ring fence on the banks’ creditworthiness will be felt long before the actual ring fence comes into effect. Intriguingly, Ed Miliband is giving a speech to the TUC

Wednesday

James Forsyth

Cameron Dorries exchange the most memorable moment of a quiet PMQs

The first PMQs of the new parliamentary term was a bit of a damp squib. Ed Miliband avoided the issue of the economy, presumably because he feared being hit by a slew of quotes from the Darling book. So instead we had a series of fairly unenlightening exchanges on police commissioners and the NHS. Labour has clearly chosen to try and attack the coalition from the right on law and order and security. There were a slew of questions from Labour backbenchers on whether the coalition’s anti-terrorism legislation was too soft. But I suspect that this PMQs will be remembered for the Cameron Nadine Dorries exchange. Dorries, irritated by how

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The conference season blues

Few things irritate the Prime Minister’s circle more than the insinuation that David Cameron is lazy. So Ben Brogan’s column this morning with its slightly barbed observations about the number of box-sets that Cameron finds time to watch will have been read through gritted teeth in Downing Street. Ben argues that Cameron will have to use his conference speech to show the country what he stands for and what he wants. This is, as Ben acknowledges, said about most leaders before nearly every party conference. But I understand that preparations for this year’s Tory conference are particularly chaotic. While the work on Cameron’s own speech is proceeding apace, the rest

Tuesday

James Forsyth

Cameron faces the eurosceptics

If Tony Blair thought that a meeting with Gordon Brown was like dental surgery without anaesthetic, one wonders how David Cameron would describe being questioned on Europe by Bill Cash and Bernard Jenkin. At the liaison committee, the two veteran eurosceptics pushed Cameron on why he was supporting far greater fiscal integration in the Eurozone. Cameron’s answer was, basically, that this was the only way the Eurozone could be made to work. But one can’t help but feel that greater fiscal integration is simply storing up problems for the medium term given that it will do nothing about the divergence in competitiveness between Eurozone members. The rest of the session