Gordon brown

Tuesday

Peter Hoskin

The good and/or bad news for the Tories is that there hasn’t been a Brown Bounce

If you’re still scratching your head over the latest opinion polls, then I’d recommend you read Anthony Wells’ latest post over at UK Polling report.  In it, he outlines four potential reasons for the diminishing gap between the Tories and Labour: Cameron’s “reverse” over the Lisbon Treaty; increased economic optimism; Labour performing better; and the absence of positive feeling towards the Tories.  To my mind, it’s probably a case of “all of the above,” to varying degrees – but, as Anthony concludes, “we can’t tell for sure.” One further point that’s worth making is that the reduced gap between the parties isn’t due to a “Brown bounce”.  After all –

Peter Hoskin

Paranoia rather than camaraderie

Another one for the Brown as Nixon folder, courtesy of Rachel Sylvester’s column today: “‘It’s about style of government,’ says one senior figure due to give evidence [to the Iraq Inquiry]. ‘Blair would have a war Cabinet, but a small caucus would meet beforehand. The civil servants were frustrated. Gordon is just as bad. He gives lots of time to Peter Mandelson and Shriti Vadera and ignores the officials. There’s a darker side to the Brown machine — he’s more suspicious. It’s cliquiness driven by paranoia rather than camaraderie, but it has the same result.'”

Daniel Korski

There are troops – and there are troops

The waiting will soon be over. Later today, the President Obama is expected to order around 34,000 troops into battle, including into Helmand province. This surge will be added to the additional 500 troops Gordon Brown committed yesterday and what sources tell me are cast-iron troop offers by another eight countries, including Turkey, Australia, Montenegro, and Georgia. If all these countries do sign up to send more troops, the credit must primarily go to Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the NATO Secretary-General, who has travelled far and wide in the attempt to drum up more military muscle. No doubt Gordon Brown will claim that his two week effort was key in securing

Monday

Peter Hoskin

The doubts that remain after Brown’s Afghanistan statement

So there we have it.  Gordon Brown has confirmed what we all expected: that 500 more British troops will be sent to Afghanistan, bringing the total UK presence up to around 10,000.  The “surge” will be rounded off when Obama announces something like 35,000 extra US troops tomorrow. Although greater manpower is A Good Thing for the mission in Afghanistan – and the mission in Afghanistan is certainly an important one – I can’t help but have some qualms about the twin UK and US announcements.   For starters, there’s the simple issue of numbers.  500 more UK troops and 35,000 more US troops falls short of the bar of

Mark Bathgate

Labour’s free for all

The potentially huge exposure of UK banks in Dubai, depreciating some UK bank share prices again this morning, is a reminder of just how much UK bank lending grew in recent years. The above chart shows the growth in external claims of the UK owned banks around the world over the past decade. The sums lent almost quadrupled to nearly $4 trillion in 8 years.  Anyone interested in discovering which bubbles the UK banks (and now taxpayers) have funded can find the data on the Bank of England website – $1.2 trillion in the United States, $125 billion in Spain, $183 billion in Ireland, $50 billion to the UAE/Dubai. Bank

Peter Hoskin

Will Darling’s politicking make the Tories weaken their IHT pledge?

Ok, so the Age of Austerity means that promises made in sunnier times will need to be forestalled – or even cancelled altogether.  But it’s still revealing that Labour are thinking about reversing their plan to raise the threshold at which inheritance tax is levied. After all, this is what Brown regards as The Great Dividing Line: the Tories implementing a tax cut for their “rich friends,” on the one side, and Labour implementing policies “for the many,” on the other.  Darling’s decision to raise the IHT threshold to £350,000 for single people and £700,000 for married couples undermined that crude message.  Reversing the policy may, in Labour strategists’ eyes,

Sunday

Peter Hoskin

PBR 2008 and PBR 2009: a difference which may not make much difference

Yep, it’s that time of the year again: the run-up to the Pre-Budget Report, when we hear tales of splits between Number 10 and the Treasury on how they should approach the fiscal mess we’re in.  According to today’s Sunday Telegraph, and going off rumblings on Whitehall, Darling is pushing for a more expansive package of cuts.  Whereas Brown – and Ed Balls, natch – would prefer to emphasise all that investment, investment, investment. In which case, I was tempted to just copy-and-paste a post I wrote last year, on a similar subject, and at almost exactly the same time in the political cycle.  Its point was that stories about

Saturday

David Blackburn

A nation of property owners

An Abu Dhabian official has briefed Reuters that Abu Dhabi will rescue Dubai on a “case-by-case basis”. The official stated: “We will look at Dubai’s commitments and approach them on a case-by-case basis. It does not mean that Abu Dhabi will underwrite all of their debts. “Some of Dubai’s entities are commercial, semi-government ones. Abu Dhabi will pick and choose when and where to assist.” This is potentially bad news for the UK taxpayer, who faces the prospect of provided further cover for British banks, who invested $50bn in the region at the height of the boom. The reason we’re in the firing line? Generous though they are, Abu Dhabi

David Blackburn

Outmanoeuvred Brown endangers recovery

The Times’ Ian King writes that Dubai’s predicament presents an opportunity for the City to attract new business. There is no reason why, with attractive incentives, London shouldn’t capitalise on Sheik Mohammed’s momentary lapse of reason. However, the appointment of Michel Barnier, an evangelical protectionist who makes Joseph Chamberlain look like the father of Free Trade, as EU regulating supremo is a disaster for Britain. The appointment raises further questions about Gordon Brown’s acceptance of Baroness Ashton as the EU’s foreign minister. Michael Fallon is no doubt: “Brown has been completely outwitted. We now have none of the three key economic jobs in Brussels. This has all happened at an

Friday

Peter Hoskin

Has dead aid taken on a green hue?

We’ve got £800 million to spare, haven’t we?  Don’t be so cynical – of course we do.  After all, it’s the amount of UK cash that Gordon Brown is prepared to sign over to a new £10 billion climate change fund that he’s proposing.  The idea is that the money can be used to encourage poorer countries to move towards greener economies.  Brilliant. More seriously, I’d have thought that the money would be better spent on developing those green technologies which could create jobs and clean up the environment, both home and away.  Especially as we don’t have much money to spare, and this fund contains so much potential for

Thursday

Peter Hoskin

What Gordon thinks of London 2012

Another good quote for the Brown ‘n’ Blair scrapbook, courtesy of Ben Brogan’s column in the Telegraph: “Only once in the 20th century has a government that won the games survived to deliver them. A change of administration in the run-up to the Olympics might be expected to herald political trouble. Thankfully, David Cameron does not share Gordon Brown’s loathing of what he refers to as ‘Tony’s f—— Olympics’. He is committed to ensuring stability by protecting London 2012’s status as the Switzerland of politics, immune from partisan attacks.” Brogan’s wider argument is worth noting: that the Cameroons think 2012 could be the tonic the country – and their potential

Wednesday

James Forsyth

At last

President Obama will announce his new Afghan policy on Tuesday night at 8pm eastern time, the early hours of Wednesday morning UK time. Obama will announce a troop increase and the signs are that he will send 30,000 plus in reinforcements. This is welcome, the nearer Obama gets to giving General McChrystal the 40,000 troops he has asked for the better. But the process has done the White House little credit and shown Obama to be even less solicitous of the concerns of his allies than President Bush. Bob Ainsworth’s said yesterday that a ‘period of hiatus‘ in Washington had undercut public support for the war in this country. This

Mark Bathgate

Saving the world | 25 November 2009

Today’s revised GDP data confirms that the UK remained alone of the world’s major economies in recession in the third quarter of this year*. The fact that the UK remains mired in recession long after most economies have recovered makes clear how uniquely badly positioned the UK economy was to handle a downturn.  While some investment banks continue to argue that this performance reflects the inability of the Office of National Statistics to calculate the data correctly, there is good reason to believe that this huge underperformance is grounded in reality. Economic history teaches that bank crises are amongst the worst things that can ever hit an economy. The collapse

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

A game of chess

Fascinating details dominated PMQs today. Instead of the usual custard pie-fight this was a game of chess. Things began with talk of downpours and sandbags. Both leaders were concerned that the sodden folk of Cumbria are receiving enough hot soup and blankets. The PM reminded us that he’d recently popped up there to squelch around in his wellies shaking people’s hands and nodding sympathetically. Then Cameron pulled out a firecracker. He accused Brown of shambolic incompetence in allowing public money to flow into the hands of a front organization for Hizb ut-Tahrir, an extremist group whose constitution denounces non-Moslems in virulent terms. ‘They are combatants in the battlefield. Their blood

Tuesday

David Blackburn

Will Chilcot be any different?

The Chilcot inquiry’s precedents don’t auger well. It’s unfair to describe the Hutton and Butler inquiries as ‘whitewashes’, but their colour was certainly off-white. That said, the condemnatory characterisation of Sir John and his panel as ‘establishment figures’ is redolent of a lower-sixth common room circa 1968. Who else could conduct this inquiry? Mohammed al-Fayed? Pete Doherty? The Bishop of Bath and Wells? The Iraq controversy has not abated and a panel of angels would not be pure enough for some. But it’s absurd to suggest that anyone besides officials and foreign policy experts, with an intricate knowledge of the practices and issues concerned, should or can decide such matters.

Monday

Peter Hoskin

Dodgy expenses referred to the CPS

And so the expenses scandal rumbles on.  This morning’s Telegraph lead with home-flipping allegations against Andrew Dismore, a member of the Commons Committee on Standards and Privileges.  And now it’s emerged that the Met have referred the cases of four parliamentarians to the Crown Prosecution Service.  All of which makes Brown’s decision not to mention expenses in the Queen’s Speech seem even more unwise.

Peter Hoskin

Brown goes for growth – fails

So the dividing line persists.  Today, both Gordon Brown and David Cameron will talk about “going for growth” at the CBI’s annual conference.  But it all, more or less, comes down to the same, dreary “investment vs cuts” line that we’ve heard countless times before.  According to the Times, Brown is going to say that growth is the best way of tackling the deficit, rather than those nasty Tory cuts.  And, what’s more, “he hopes investment from China will drive the recovery”. Of course, growth will have a role to play in reducing the deficit.  A vibrant economy will have a better chance of tackling record deficits and debt levels

Sunday

Martin Bright

I Hope I’m Wrong

I can’t help thinking that the Observer’s Ipsos/Mori poll this weekend was something of a blip. What exactly has the Labour government done to narrow the gap in the last week or so? I hope I’m wrong, because I think the British people deserves a hung parliament, which would be the best result of the next election. I have been saying for some time that the Conservatives do not have the strength in depth to form a credible government and that the electorate faces the most unappealing choice since 1970. Nothing I have seen recently has made me change my mind.  Andrew Rawnsley has written the best of the political

Peter Hoskin

A fine line between love and hatred for Peter Mandelson

So far as Downing Street is concerned, this morning’s Sunday Times cover is a presentational nightmare. It reports that Peter Mandelson is calling on Brown to make him Foreign Secretary – a move which would create all kinds of internal difficulties for the PM. Sounds a little bizarre to me: we all know that Mandelson would, in theory, like the role which was once occupied by his grandfather, but would he really want it under such controversial circumstances and for what would likely be only six months? Perhaps not. But, true or no’, it still feeds into the idea that the government is divided and self-obsessed. It’s also the kind

Saturday

Peter Hoskin

Behind the closed doors of Brussels

Today’s Times carries a cracking account of all the wheeling and dealing that went on during the EU jobs fair this week.  Here are some of the most striking points that I’ve culled from it: i) Brown rejected advice from Mandelson and other ministers that he should try and secure one of the EU’s financial roles for a British candidate. ii) There are claims that Brown was “persuaded” into accepting the EU High Representative role for Britain by Europe’s Socialist leaders along with José Manuel Barroso. iii) There are also claims that Brown did a deal with the French to get Baroness Ashton appointed, by which a French MEP, Michel