Fraser Nelson is a Times columnist and a former editor of The Spectator.
The champagne ban was non-negotiable: David Cameron did not want any of his aides drinking bubbly at the Conservative party conference. Not that they needed much telling. The mood was already so sombre that some Tory staffers were decanting cans of beer under the tables of the Hyatt Hotel in Birmingham to avoid bar prices;
When George Osborne went to meet Alistair Darling today, I wondered who had been lulled into whose trap. Both sides would want to be seen as the first actor here, being the first to extend the olive branch and rise above party politics etc etc etc. Yet when Osborne came out of the Treasury he
I can understand why George Osborne went back to London to see Darling, but it’s good to hear that he’s coming back to Birmingham tonight. The idea of a national government for an economic war may appeal to Brown in that it delays his meeting an electorate already strapping on its Doc Martens in anticipation
At the Spectator party last night there was an unplanned Titanic theme. The world was crashing down and here were we in an set gallery, proffering killer blue cocktails with a string quartet playing as, to borrow Bush’s argot, this sucker goes down. David Cameron and George Osborne didn’t show – ostensibly because they were
Today on Daily Politics, David Cameron was again asked about Lord Ashcroft’s tax status – is the party vice-president, the guru of the marginal seats campaign, registered to pay tax in this country? As ever, Cameron had no answer – “You’ll have to ask him about his own tax status,” he replied. He knows this reply
I’d love to be in No10 right now. Gordon Brown will simply hate George Osborne’s council tax freeze plan – it will look, smell and sound too much like one of his own scams, and he’ll be hurling staplers and barking orders at his men to shoot down this balloon before it takes off. Yet
The Bradford & Bingley bailout isn’t monopoly money. Americans lose no time translating their $700 billion bailout into a $5,000 per family figure, which I’ve heard Brits quote with a shiver in a kind of “there but for the grace of God go we” way. So just for the record, here are the liabilities run
Naively, I missed a sixth potential function of Osborne’s new Office for Budget Regulation – to protect David Cameron against Tories who want tax cuts. Here’s the theory, which I heard last night from more than a few people. The OBR is programmed with a static rather than dynamic model of tax collection – ie,
More notes on the Tory conference: 1) Boris on Fire. His speech was excellent, pledged not to increase tax, defended the City and pointed out that the Masters of the Universe may be unpopular but there are plenty other parts of the universe they can relocate to if they are over-regulated. He again almost apologised
There’s more detail about Osborne’s new Quango, the Office for Budget Regulation. As far as I can make out, it has five functions:- 1) Trashing Brown. The main point of a Never Again commission is to drive home an attack line: Brown Has Done A Very Bad Thing With All That Debt. It helps recast
Waking into the Tory conference centre here in Birmingham cheers you up immensely. I am a fan of wartime and Soviet propaganda posters, and the Tories have mocked up a bunch of them but with capitalist slogans. “Big government = big problems” says one. Then some of Cameron’s top phrases, that there is “such a
The first of the Tory financial reforms is announced in the News of the World today. There is to be an Office of Budget Responsibility to ensure government doesn’t break certain spending or borrowing limits, as part of a new “Debt Responsibility Mechanism”. As George Osborne says: “We will call time on Gordon Brown’s age
The debt Gordon Brown has saddled his country with deserves to be a top political as well as financial issue, as The Times powerfully argues in a leader today. Gordon Brown has over the last week been on a mission to airbrush Northern Rock out of the national accounts. He has claimed repeatedly—and mendaciously—that he’s taken debt
When I was at the Fabian Society debate last Sunday with Ed Balls, the subject of taxing the rich came up. I warned them they were chasing a false God, that it will result in less tax yield. The rich will have less incentive to earn more, and more incentive to dodge tax. I gave
Most paradigm shifts in politics are recognisable only in retrospect, but it’s fairly clear we’re living through one now. When you have the US seeking to nationalise $700bn of dodgy assets and the average British household now liable for £3,020 of Northern Rock debt something has changed. But what? I’ve been struggling to find a
Gordon Brown’s Baldrick-style Cunning Plan for global finance involves using the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as an “early-warning system”. Great idea. When I was a business journalist, I remember the IMF early warnings – about how Brown’s switch to debt-fuelled profligacy post-2000 would end in tears. The key misjudgement made by both Brown and Greenspan
A new Brownie was born today at 7am. Gordon Brown came on to BBC Breakfast this morning to tell presenter Sian Williams about how, as a family man himself, he sympathises with Ruth Kelly wanting to devote more time to her children. He didn’t expect to be grilled on his untrue claim that he has
So Ruth Kelly’s last act as Transport Secretary was to deny Gordon Brown the privilege of sacking her. Word of the reshuffle leaked last night – Geoff Hoon out and to succeed Mandy as European Commissioner (not a straight switch, Mandy’s there till Jun09). Des Browne to stay in Defence but (finally) cede Scotland to Paul
Fraser Nelson says that the Tory leader must not be tempted by a ‘safety first’ strategy at his conference in Birmingham. The global financial crisis has transformed the political context and left an opening for the Conservatives to promise true radicalism and to be proudly bold The Labour party conference already had an apocalyptic aura
There are two reliable tricks which can fill the room at any Tory speaking event: offer free beer, or put Michael Gove on the panel. His fusion of almost comic politeness and intellectual ruthlessness have given him quite a following, whether he’s defending neoconservatism or David Cameron. In three short years he has been propelled