Government

Thursday

Martin Vander Weyer

Is Vadera about to resign?

If, as the Westminster rumour mill suggests, business minister Baroness Shriti Vadera is about to resign from the Government, it is a far greater blow to the beleaguered prime minister than the loss of a PPS no one’s ever heard of over the Baroness Scotland affair, the potential loss of Lady Scotland herself, or even the refusal of Barack Obama to grant him a private audience ahead of the G20 summit. Vadera has been one of Brown’s most loyal sidekicks for more than a decade, and unlike anyone else who fits that description, she is the very opposite of a spin doctor or political hack. A City financier by background,

Wednesday

David Blackburn

Government aide resigns over Scotland’s survival

Sky News reports that Stephen Hesford, who was PPS to the law officers, has resigned over the Baroness Scotland scandal. His resignation letter reads: ‘Whilst I have great personal regard for the Attorney General, I cannot support the decision which allows her to remain in office. In my view the facts of the case do not matter. It is the principle which counts, particularly at a time when the publics’ trust of Whitehall is uncertain to say the least.’ This is profoundly embarrassing for the government, who can hardly turn around and sack Scotland now. Baroness Scotland’s position is increasingly untenable. She should resign.

Tuesday

David Blackburn

Can Lady Scotland survive?

The BBC understands that the UK Border Agency is expected to find Attorney General Baroness Scotland to be in “technical breach” of the rules on employing migrant workers and faces a fine. This is a civil, not a criminal offence and a government source made it clear that the Baronesses’ resignation is not being sought. But can the government’s senior law officer, who oversaw the drafting of the very legislation that has undone her, retain her position? Her resignation may not be sought, but it’s telling that Macavity’s yet to comment on this development. I suspect that Lady Scotland will ‘consider her position’.

Friday

David Blackburn

Another calamitous set of polls for Brown and Labour

A Populus poll for The Times shows that the Conservatives are more trusted to run vital services than Labour. Here are the details: ‘The Tories are now in a strong position on most public services, which have traditionally been vote-winners for Labour. On doing the best job of improving the NHS, the Tories are on 37 per cent (up 10 points since last March) against 34 per cent for Labour (down 1 point). The Tories are in the lead on: managing the economy (42 per cent against 33 per cent for Labour); improving standards in schools (39 against 33 per cent); getting the balance right between taxes and spending (38

Peter Hoskin

How quickly things change

Spot the difference: 5 September, 2009: Gordon Brown warns G20 countries against reining in spending, The Telegraph “Britain is resisting pressure from Germany and other Euro-currency countries who are planning to moves towards an ‘exit strategy’ that would see some of the planned anti-recessionary spending programmes being scaled back to cut rising national debts.” 18 September, 2009: Gordon Brown to call for international agreement to cut public spending, The Telegraph “Mr Brown says ‘exit strategies’ from the emergency fiscal measures that were introduced to stave off the worst excesses of the recession need to be agreed by all the leading nations. The Prime Minister will tell world leaders that a

Thursday

David Blackburn

The Baroness Scotland’s housekeeper scandal exposes the mess our immigration system is in

The news that the UK Border agency will launch an investigation into allegations that the Attorney General, Baroness Scotland, employed an illegal immigrant is, obviously, highly embarrassing for the government. With his customary lack of style, the Tories’ attack-dog Chris Grayling commented: “This is a Government that says all small employers should be prosecuted if they don’t know the immigration status of their employees and yet we have senior ministers who can’t be bothered to make the checks themselves. There is a real ‘one rule for them, one rule for us’ attitude at the heart of this Government and it is a disgrace.” That overstates the case. I can’t imagine

Peter Hoskin

Why ministers block cuts

After Michael Fallon’s claim last week that the shadow cabinet hasn’t got “the faintest idea” of the commitment necessary to tackle the debt crisis, this anecdote from Benedict Brogan’s column should act as another warning to David Cameron: “Whitehall is gripped by short-termism, yet in a world dominated by the targets culture introduced by Labour, is this any surprise? When ministers themselves prioritise short-term results that can be ready for the Six O’Clock News or the autumn conference, how can the Civil Service hold out for the long view? Take the permanent secretary I know who was asked by Gordon Brown to deliver a 5 per cent real terms cut

David Blackburn

Clegg: Are you one of the millions who turned to new Labour in 1997?

Nick Clegg joins the ‘progressive’ debate with a double of salvo in The Times and in a pamphlet, titled ‘The liberal moment’, published by Demos. The philosophically anachronistic Labour party is his target. He writes: ‘The contrast between Labour and liberals is starkest in their different approaches to power. While Labour hoards at the centre, liberals believe that power must be dispersed away from government – downwards to individuals and communities, and upwards to the international institutions needed to tackle our collective problems. State-centered, top-down solutions are wholly out of step with the demands of our age. Devising a fairer tax system, protecting civil liberties, reforming our clapped-out politics, breaking

Wednesday

Peter Hoskin

All political parties must face up to the debt crisis’ severity 

The Independent’s Hamish McRae writes a superb column today on just how far the next government will have to go to tackle Brown’s debt crisis.  His main point is that unless severe action is taken over the coming years, we’ll be stuck in a perilous position by the time the next global downturn hits.  But it’s this passage which stands out: “To what extent will the deficit fix itself, and how much more needs to be done? We don’t have to do the full 13 per cent of GDP and the present government proposed in the Budget that it should cut about half, 6.4 per cent of GDP, of that

Peter Hoskin

A report that should influence welfare reform for years to come

Iain Duncan Smith’s Centre for Social Justice has released a very important report today, and one which should influence the welfare debate for years to come.  At around 350 pages, it’s a weighty enough tome, but I’d recommend that CoffeeHousers give it a flick through. Its subject is how to fix a benefits system which incentivises worklessness.  At the moment, unemployed people are eligible for so many benefits – there are 51 in total – that they can accumulate an income which rivals, or sometimes even exceeds, the wage they’d get by taking a job.  And even if they could get more money in work, the current benefits system still

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Losing perspective 

At The Spectator, we’ve been so close to the spending debate that one worries about losing perspective. But this post from Faisal Islam gives one a sense of just how important today’s revelations are: “We have never seen this level of detail on a budget situation before. Much of what was implied or left out of the budget is stated in astonishing detail here. It is a total disaster for the treasury and the government, but some will argue the Tories have taken a big risk with financial confidence in publishing it.”

Tuesday

James Forsyth

Osborne: Tories will hold emergency Budget if they win the election

George Osborne has just announced at The Spectator’s inaugural conference, Paths to Prosperity, that there will be an emergency Budget in June or July of 2010 if the Tories win the election. Osborne told Andrew Neil that the aim of this Budget would be to reduce borrowing for fiscal year 2010-11, which will already be under way at that point, and for the years thereafter. Presumably this will be done through a combination of tax rises, spending cuts and asset sales.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Ouch | 15 September 2009

From the write up in The Times of the latest Populus poll: “Almost half of voters think that anyone would do a better job than Gordon Brown as Labour leader. Nine months at most from a general election, a Populus poll for The Times suggests that 48 per cent of voters believe that “literally anyone” from Labour’s ranks could do better, without naming alternatives.”  

David Blackburn

The irrefutable fact about cuts is that they are needed now

I did Lord Myners a disservice by suggesting he’d gone off message by saying that spending would continue until recovery was “firmly rooted”. Peter Mandelson’s cuts speech yesterday supported that line, renewing the cuts versus investment dividing line. Steve Richards argues that the government’s approach is correct and Tory policy is a recipe for disaster. He writes: ‘He (Cameron) is now pledged to a revolutionary shrinking of the state without being able to specify how he will go about making the big changes. His speech last week about cutting the subsidies on meals in parliament was beyond parody. Yesterday Mandelson made use of the space that has opened up in

Monday

Fraser Nelson

Striking the right balance

How worried should we be about national debt? I just had a rather enjoyable spat with Will Hutton on Simon Mayo’s Five Live programme. The situation is atrocious, I said. And that set him off: why did I use such a word? I replied that we are spending more in debt interest than educating our children or defending the realm. That is a dismal state of affairs, and will soon become even worse. Forget about the economics, it is a moral failure to blithly keep spending now and knowingly saddle the next generation with billions upon billions of our debt to pay off. Hutton said all this was hysterical, that

Sunday

James Forsyth

The government’s latest ‘child protection’ idea is positively harmful

Alsadair Palmer neatly sums up the absurdity of the government’s new child protection plans in the Telegraph: “Once it receives your application, the ISA will invite people to submit information about you. The ISA’s officials will be looking for any claim to the effect that you have done something which might have caused “physical, emotional, financial or developmental harm” to a child. Don’t ask for a definition of such “harm”, for there is none – the term will be interpreted in any way the Government’s assessors choose. Those assessors will not be required to ascertain whether or not “harm” actually took place, nor whether you were in fact the cause

David Blackburn

Hey big spender

Perhaps Lord Myners hasn’t seen the cuts memo because he appeared on Sky News this morning trying to convince the world that Britain can and must maintain its current spending levels. Despite concerns over the budget deficit, a reality that even the Prime Minister acknowledges, Lord Myners said: “We’re keeping people in their jobs we’re keeping people in their houses we’re being sensitive to the needs of the community. That programme must not stop until the recovery is firmly rooted. “We can afford to do it and it’s quite evident from the fact that we are able to raise money in international bond market. The willingness to support us is

Saturday

James Forsyth

Can Brown make it through December?

The question of Gordon Brown’s leadership won’t go away, but there’s a feeling that nothing will happen for a while yet. Andrew Grice writes in The Independent today that the coup might come in December: “Labour’s hard left and the trade unions are the dogs that have not barked. The assumption is that they stick with him for fear of something worse, and calculate that their best hope would be to exploit a backlash against New Labour after an election defeat. I am told that their mood is now changing. Some left-wing MPs and union bosses are coming round to the view that they would have an overriding duty to

David Blackburn

John Denham’s Mosley comparison merely sensationalises race-tensions

Communities Secretary John Denham has compared the English Defence League (EDL), the group that has organised protests against what it describes as the ‘Islamification of Britain’, to Oswald Mosley’s Union of British Fascists. Whilst announcing that the government plans to re-engage predominantly white working class voters who are being seduced by the BNP, Denham said: “You could go back to the 1930s if you wanted to – Cable Street and all of those types of things. The tactic of trying to provoke a response in the hope of causing wider violence and mayhem is long established on the far-right and among extremist groups.” Denham is right to express concern that

Friday

James Forsyth

The government needs to get a grip on its CRB craziness

That the news that the government wants everyone who gives children a lift anywhere to be CRB checked broke on the same day that it emerged that Haringey council had sent a child to live with the ringleader of the airline bomb plotters is beyond satire. How have we got to a state where parents can’t team up to do a run to Cubs together without the state vetting them while simultaneously a council is sending a child off to be fostered by terrorists? As Mary has argued, CRB checks are one of the big obstacles to volunteering. If the Conservatives really do want to roll forward society, then they