Uk politics

Friday

David Blackburn

The audacity of hope

70 years ago today, Winston Churchill and Charles de Gaulle delivered two of the most important speeches of the 20th Century. Against the odds and common sense, both urged their respective nations to fight on against the tyranny of Nazi Germany. Today is a reminder that France is one of Britain’s oldest and closest allies, a point that the Times expresses this morning. Their words merit revisiting. Here is Churchill’s timeless address: ‘However matters may go in France or with the French Government or with another French Government, we in this island and in the British Empire will never lose our sense of comradeship with the French people. If we

Thursday

James Forsyth

The Big Society reincarnated

The Big Society is a great idea. But its problem has always been that it lacks definition; voters and even some Tory MPs aren’t quite sure what it means. But an idea being floated today gives you a sense of its practical and political potential. It is being suggested that the community right to buy, the idea that the community should have first refusal on any asset being sold off, should be applied to the port of Dover. The last government wanted to privatise the port but the new MP for Dover, a Tory called Charlie Elphicke has proposed that a community trust be allowed to buy the port and

David Blackburn

Worrying developments

Paul Waugh has news that the Treasury asked a broadcaster to sign a written legal agreement that they would not ask any questions about the OBR’s announcement. Well, some of the figures embarrassed Osborne but surely it wasn’t that bad? As Paul notes, this may be a case of the Civil Service taking advantage of ministers’ inexperience but even so. Equally, the government has adopted the practice of its predecessor and issued statements to the press before stating them to the House. Carry on like this and we’ll join the axis of evil. New politics please. UPDATE: Turns out not to have been so worrying.

David Blackburn

The euro crisis is an opportunity for Cameron

Gerard Baker has written the cover piece for this week’s magazine and it’s a must read. In it, he explains why ‘closer fiscal union’, as Rompuy terms it, is not to Germany’s advantage: ‘Any attempted fiscal union might well yield to Germany the biggest single vote in how much to raise in taxes and how to spend it. But it could still be outvoted by an alliance of smaller countries. Such a set-up would become an institutionalised mechanism by which German taxes will be siphoned off permanently to weaker European states. The nightmare for Germans is that an unholy alliance of Spanish, Greeks, Italians and Portuguese will be able to

David Blackburn

The coalition is edging the public spending debate

Danny Alexander acquitted himself effectively this morning. The restructuring of government spending has gone beyond bland clichés about ‘efficiencies’; with care, the government is dismantling Labour’s unfunded spending projects. £8.5bn in unfunded projects signed-off since 1 January 2010 are on a stay of execution until the autumn; £1bn of unfunded projects signed-off before 1 January 2010 are also on their way to the block. £2bn will be saved almost immediately with the cancellation of the 2 year jobseekers’ guarantee, the young person’s guarantee, CLG regional leader board, the local authority business growth incentive and the county sports partnerships. Controversially, the government has also cancelled the Sheffield Forgemasters’ fund and the

Peter Hoskin

Cameron’s European balancing act

So David Cameron strides onto the European stage today, with his first EU summit since becoming Prime Minister. And early signs are that it’s going to be a peculiar day for him. As Ben Brogan writes in the Telegraph, Europe seems to be liking the (liberal-democratised) Tories more than they thought they would. Sarkozy is, apparently, “smitten” with our PM, while Angela Merkel “has come to admire his directness”. So after pitching himself against the Lisbon Treaty, and broadly selling himself as a eurosceptic over the past few years, Cameron now faces the prospect of cuddles over the coffee and croissants in Brussels. Like I say: peculiar. I suspect Cameron

Peter Hoskin

Osborne gets upfront about our debt burden

A couple of weeks on holiday, and there’s plenty to catch up on.  First, though, George Osborne’s speech to Mansion House yesterday evening.  In terms of substance, it was fairly radical stuff.  And it’s encouraging that so many of the Tories’ solid plans for reforming the financial regulatory system have survived the coalition process.  But, really, it was one simple, little sentence which jumped out at me.  This: “Debt [is] set to still rise even at the end of this five year Parliament.” “So what?” you may be thinking, “we knew that already.”  Ah, yes, but we’ve rarely heard a politician be quite so upfront about our debt position before

Wednesday

Fraser Nelson

Scotland deserves better

I knew it was time for me to leave the Scottish Parliament press corps when I was in Deacon Brodie’s Tavern one night and pulled into a game of “name the top ten sexiest MSPs”. On my first day there, September 2000, the journalist next to me was in trouble for headbutting a politician in the pub the night before. It’s an unusual place with antics that make Westminster look like a nunnery: I remember one set of political awards where a Labour MSP drunkenly set fire to the curtains and was imprisoned. I feel sorry for the poor members of the general public who come into contact with these

David Blackburn

The waltz never got going

I was expecting drama when the Labour leadership circus called at Newsnight yesterday. Alas, the show whimpered and wheezed to a halt. A contest to determine the party’s future continues to gaze into the past. Assessing failure is essential to renewal, but the candidates are yet to offer anything substantively new.   Ed Balls and David Miliband shared one telling exchange. Balls has presented himself as the traditional candidate, and he would have you believe he speaks the language of Mrs Duffy. Gordon Brown’s hideous solecism in Rochdale revealed that he and his government were out of touch on issues such as housing and immigration. David Miliband is the centrist

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Hark! A human at the dispatch box

After years of fury and rancour in the chamber, the mood at PMQs was sober and rational today. (Personally, I hope it hots up again soon but the armistice certainly made a change). Under no pressure whatever, Cameron roamed at will over the full spectrum of government policy and gave intruiging hints about future priorities. Tory backbencher Philip Davies urged him to cancel the subscriptions of 4000 convicts signed up for Sky TV. The PM didn’t seem bothered by this. They may not get the vote but they’ll carry on getting Adam Boulton. Cameron is more concerned by the 40 percent of prisoners who celebrate the end of their sentence

David Blackburn

Darling pulls a fast one

Alistair Darling has just forced George Osborne to the dispatch box to explain the regulatory measures that he will announce at Mansion House later today. Osborne confirms that some powers will return to the Bank of England and that an independent commission, under Sir John Vickers, will take into account competing views on capital, leverage and liquidity requirements. Retail and investment banking will be split under the new arrangements. This is effectively the end of the tri-partite system. Alistair Darling defends the tri-partite system in its entirety, arguing that no one will understand from ‘this dog’s breakfast’ who now regulates the banks – talk about undermining confidence, which the opposition

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Why the Bloody Sunday soldiers must not be brought to trial

In The Times today, Danny Finkelstein eloquently sums up why it would be so wrong for any of the soldiers involved in Bloody Sunday to be prosecuted given all that has happened in the peace process: “To stop the killing, we sacrificed principles that should stand above everything. We sacrificed the rule of law and the principle of one law for everybody. We sacrificed justice and accountability to the courts. We bought peace but there is a bill to pay. And today we must pay it.” I must admit to sometimes wondering if the price we have paid for peace in Northern Ireland is too high: that too many victims

Patrick Nolan

Spending cuts must start with welfare

The new and independent Office for Budget Responsibility estimated that interest payments on public debt are set to rise to £67 billion a year by 2014-15. The hole in the public finances is so deep that every cut in spending that can be made should be made. Few commentators have grasped that tinkering around the edges, such as with “efficiency gains,” will not be enough. The only way to eliminate the deficit and to begin the task of repaying public debt is through making deep cuts in spending and for people to take more responsibility for themselves.   Cuts must start with welfare. The UK government spends more on welfare

Tuesday

David Blackburn

The Labour leadership contest waltzes onto Newsnight

With ill-repressed horror, James Macintyre reports that the remnants of New Labour fear that Diane Abbott might win the Labour leadership, courtesy of the preferential vote. Mildly amusing I suppose. If Ed Balls would be a catastrophe of Footian proportions as leader what would Abbott be? There are no historical parallels.   I can’t see this latter day Rosa Luxemburg enticing Labour members. But if she does, then David Miliband, that auteur of absurdity, is to blame. Abbott’s weapon is communication. Unlike her four opponents, she doesn’t sound like an under-manager at Furniture Village. She is accessible, particularly on television – and the hopefuls will be up before Paxman tonight.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Cameron is dignified in trying circumstances

As David says, the conclusions of the Saville Inquiry make for grim reading. One person with close links to the services who served in Northern Ireland just told me, ‘it is far worse than we expected.’ In the House, David Cameron’s statement on it was heard in subdued silence. It would be remiss not to say that David Cameron dealt with this situation as well as anyone could. There was no equivalent to Jonathan Powell’s disgraceful statement that ‘the war against Irish terrorism was not our war’. He pointed out the context of the event and the fact that it was very much the exception rather than the rule of

David Blackburn

Lord Saville eviscerates the British army

David Cameron has just told the House of Commons: ‘There is no doubt, there is no equivalence. The events of the 20th January were in no way justified…You do not honour the British army by excusing the unjustifiable.’ He apologised for the atrocity and the Wigery report. According to Lord Saville, there was no conspiracy or pre-meditation, but soldiers of Support Company 1 Para entered Bogside in Derry and opened fire without provocation from the victims or nationalist paramilitaries – though Martin McGuiness ‘was present, probably armed with a Thompson sub-machine gun’. Lord Saville concludes that the testimony of many soldiers was false. Cameron did not rule out independent criminal

David Blackburn

How Hughes will play the coalition

Simon Hughes is an experienced campaigner, whose reputation is deservedly blemished by a handful of duplicities – Peter Tatchell, denying a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty and the like. Hughes has just appeared on the Daily Politics and, very subtly, split the Lib Dems from the Tories. It was very simple: the Tories are responsible for all that’s bad and the Liberal Democrats are benevolent. First, Hughes dissociated the Liberals from tax rises: “I hope that the chancellor’s hearing the voices that says VAT is not the right tax to change in the budget next week.” Those voices are, of course, his ‘colleagues in the Treasury’ – an enlightened check

James Forsyth James Forsyth

McGuiness, culpability and atonement

I wish that every time Martin McGuinness offered commentary on the Saville Inquiry, it was pointed out that he admitted to the inquiry that he was the IRA’s second in command in Derry. We should never forget that the IRA has more to apologise and atone for than any other group that played a role in the Troubles. The idea that the RUC or the British military and the IRA are all equally guilty is the worst kind of simplistic moral relativism. McGuinness is now deputy first minister of Northern Ireland and drawing a handsome salary as part of the peace process. If he expects his—far more morally dubious—past to

David Blackburn

Sacking the nanny

Theresa May has halted the national database of adults who come into contact with children. The innocent and law abiding majority can now volunteer without having to complete an extensive anti-pervert course – a heavy-handed and expensive bureaucratic requirement, typical of New Labour’s ‘nannying’ days. May acknowledges that acquiring the ‘Not A Known Pervert Badge’ discouraged vital volunteer work, which could effect social dislocation. May pledges to remodel the scheme, which is presumably why the Independent Safeguarding Scheme remains in place. Writing for ConHome, Alex Deane calls for the abolition of this scheme. I’ll wait for May’s recommendations, but bald reform is needed to ensure children are safe and receive

David Blackburn

A day that re-opens old wounds

Building on a peace process of compromises, Tony Blair called the Bloody Sunday inquiry to placate nationalists in Northern Ireland. But I wonder if he ever intended its findings to be published? The Saville Report was only ever going to re-open old wounds. With the greatest respect to Lord Saville, who is a distinguished lawyer, this report cannot dispense justice. Establishing the facts is impossible 30 years after the tragedy, and the punishment can only be collective. Yet the political dictates of peace mean that the British army must be blackened. The soldiers who beat both sets of paramilitaries to the negotiating table will be branded as criminals. Whatever their impulse,