Home office

The British Crime Survey is published today and the Home Office had prepared for the worst. For months now, figures close to Theresa May have been expressing their fear that the combination of Ken Clarke’s liberal prisons policy and economic hardship would cause a rise in crime for which the Home Office, graveyard for so many political careers, would be blamed. Today’s figures will have eased their disquiet somewhat, insulating them from Labour’s critique that police cuts are endangering society. The headline is that crime in England and Wales has remained stable over the last year, except for a 14 per cent spike in domestic burglaries according to the British

The less we hear from Theresa May, the more I worry about the Home Office budget. I’m hearing rumours of her taking a 30 percent cut, which I first dismissed as a piece of expectations management. But now I’m beginning to wonder. We know that defence is settled – about an 8 percent real-terms cut. The NHS, which absorbs a quarter of government spending, will have real-terms increases (something even the left-leaning IPPR doesn’t back). The schools budget has escaped relatively unscathed, we read. So what’s left? Again, there’s so much deliberate misinformation out there that I hesitate to give a rumour round-up. But here goes.   One major victim

One of the challenges facing the next Labour leader will be what to do with Ed Balls. Balls, as he demonstrated in the last few months, has the right mentality for opposition. Labour will need his appetite for the fight in the coming year. But if a new leader makes Balls’ shadow Chancellor, he’ll have a shadow Chancellor whose position on the deficit is simply not going to seem credible to the public; Balls has already said that he thinks the plan Labour went into the election with for the deficit was too ambitious. The Tories are convinced that if Balls is shadow Chancellor, they’ll have the dividing lines they

Should the Tories talk about immigration? This will bring back a lot of bad memories for the modernisers, who believe that this hurt them in 2005. But, as Tim Montgomerie says over at CiF today, the picture has transformed since then. The total number of immigrant workers has risen 25 per cent, to 3.5 million. And nationally, immigrants now make up a remarkable 15 percent of the workforce (see graph below) – which puts us up there with America. Except our immigration is handled in a haphazard way that creates plenty of bad feeling. Talk to a Tory candidate and they will say there’s only one issue that gets cut-through

Yeah, I know: 4,500 words of Brown’s rhetoric is too much for most CoffeeHousers to bear.  So I thought I’d read his “speech on crime and anti-social behaviour” on your behalf, and highlight three things which jumped out at me.  Here goes: 1. Taking on the Tories over DNA retention. Paul Waugh has already blogged on what may turn out to be the most significant passage of Brown’s speech – at least so far as the cut ‘n’ thrust of the election campaign is concerned.  In it, Brown highlights the case of Jeremiah Sheridan, who raped a woman some 19 years ago, but was caught last year thanks to DNA

Plenty of CoffeeHousers are mentioning the Andrew Neather revelations in various comment sections.  If you haven’t seen them yourself, the story is that Neather, a former government adviser, wrote a comment piece claiming that New Labour’s immigration policy was “intended – even if this wasn’t its main purpose – to rub the Right’s nose in diversity and render their arguments out of date.”  Many reports since have taken this as confirmation that Labour’s policy was exclusively politically-motivated.    In which case, it’s worth highlighting Neather’s latest column for the Evening Standard, in which he claims his comments have been exaggerated and misinterpreted.  Here’s the key point it makes: “As a

The Express’ William Hickey column reports that David Davis, not Chris Grayling, will serve as Home Secretary should the Tories win the election. Here’s what Hickey heard: ‘I’m now told there have been mounting whispers among MPs that Grayling could lose out to David Davis for the Home Secretary’s job should the Tories win the general election. Only this week Davis, who stood down from the shadow post last year in order to champion civil liberties at a by-election, signalled he was ready to return to frontbench politics if offered a “proper job”. A colleague tells me: “David has never really been part of Cameron’s inner circle but many of

Chris Grayling’s reputation as a one-dimensional attack-dog was accentuated by his ill-judged comparison of Britain with Baltimore. The argument laid against Grayling is that he shouts about the government but provides no more than a whisper about policy. However, Grayling shows deep and nuanced consideration of policy when interviewed by Martin Bright in the Jewish Chronicle. Grayling’s subject is extremism and failing multi-culturalism. I apologise for its length, but here is the key section: ‘“I think the government has to make it absolutely clear that anyone in our country who espouses violence is not going to be able to do business with the government of the day and in many

Ok, let’s get the hard, grim facts out of the way first: Jacqui Smith was an ineffective Home Secretary whose expense claims were dubious, to say the least, and who rightly lost her job in government.  But – having said that – it’s hard not to feel slightly sorry for her as she discusses the embarrassment caused by her husband’s porn rentals in an interview with the Guardian today.  The whole piece is a remarkably candid exchange: she also discusses how she “did wrong” with her expenses, and how she’d “definitely” be voted out “if the general election was tomorrow”.  But this passage struck me more than any other:      “[Smith]