The first big subject at Prime Minister’s Questions this week was Europe. Tory MP Andrew Rosindell asked if David Cameron would show “bulldog spirit” at the forthcoming summit. Later, similar points came from various Tory Eurosceptic MPs, including the Father of the House, Sir Peter Tapsell. He is always heard with great respect, despite his long-winded, rather pompous and, in this case, halting mini-speeches which have barely inquisitive constructions stuck on the end of them.
Ed Miliband started on Europe as well, asking if Cameron would fulfil his promise that treaty change might give the opportunity to “repatriate powers”. The Prime …
When it first came out Brown at 10 by Anthony Seldon and Guy Lodge was extremely well received for its authoritative detail and the revised paperback edition maintains that standard well. With Seldon being one of the founders of the modern school of contemporary history, it is no surprise that the book follows the thorough, heavily documented approach contemporary historians strive for – with over 1 million words of interviews recorded for posterity (even if many are, for the next 30 years, withheld from public view) and extensive access to private diaries.
“Too far, too fast” – until recently you could scarcely switch on a TV without hearing Ed Balls repeating his four-word analysis of the coalition’s fiscal policy. It seems to be a line that Balls and Miliband are no longer sticking to. If I were to give them more credit for economic analysis than they deserve I’d speculate that this might be because they realised it is utter nonsense. More likely, their polling showed them that the public just weren’t buying it.
And the public would be right not to believe it, because, on a key measure, the difference between the …
In my ever-earnest toil to prepare this review, this week I have been reviewing web sites which explain cricket umpire signals. I also checked the umpire signals for netball, American football and baseball.
There is no doubt about it. Ed Balls was signalling a four at Prime Ministers’ Questions. His hand was a bit lower than normal, but it would pass to signal a boundary at Morley Cricket Club.
For a change, I’m going to stand this review on its head this week and concentrate on questions from backbenchers, starting with Liberal Democrats.
He still looks like a clever sixth former to me, but it is fair to say that Ed Miliband has cracked Prime Minister’s Questions. His performance this week was excellent.
“Just a bit late” was David Cameron’s description of Miliband’s raising of the Fox affair. It is easy to understand why Miliband did not raise the subject last week. Labour played a canny game with Dr Fox. They did not call for his resignation and at the last PMQs, Miliband did not ask directly about the issue. This allowed Dr Fox to swing in the media wind, without obvious Labour encouragement. …
There’s been nothing dramatic about this conference season apart from a few gaffes, but under the surface, I think the Labour conference was significant.
While I enjoyed the Lib Dem conference, I don’t think the journalists did. Whenever I passed a well-known TV presenter, they had a face like thunder. They were looking for factionalism and controversy, but all they found was Lib Dems facing up to a difficult situation with determination and loyalty. That makes dull TV, so they must have been tearing their hair out.
The Tory conference was more entertaining.
Theresa May’s remark about cats, and the more recent
At our party Conference in Birmingham I described accelerated fiscal consolidation as pure poison: “Poison for the party, poison for the Coalition and, most important, poison for the country.”
I know that Liberal Democrats in ministerial office cannot be heard to say such things in public. But Liberal Democrats who do not have to labour under the restraints of office should be making it plain how oxymoronic ‘expansionary accelerated fiscal consolidation’ really is.
They will be in good and growing company.
The announcement of a further round of Quantitative Easing (QE) – much larger than the financial press had anticipated and a month …
By Prateek Buch
| Thu 29th September 2011 - 3:53 pm
Leading commentators on the political economy must have been flattered to hear many of their principles and policies given lip service by Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls this week in his speech to the Labour party conference. Flattered only to be deceived, sadly, as lip service is all he paid; underneath the rhetorical support for a reformed political economy promoted by the likes of Will Hutton, the Institute for Public Policy Research, Ha-Joon Chang and others, Balls’ prescription for the UK economy amounts to little more than tinkering with the same old policy levers that haven’t worked in the past.
By Stephen Tall
| Tue 27th September 2011 - 9:15 am
Mark Pack has already highlighted the pitfalls of political opponents commentating on other parties’ conferences. And he’s right of course. But it didn’t stop him, so I won’t let it stop me…
I am genuinely puzzled by Labour’s key messages based on the first two days of their conference. Day 1 kicked off with the Big Announcment by Ed Miliband that Labour is now committed to doubling tuition fees (dressed up as only The Observer could as Labour committing to ‘slashing’ fees).
There are two problems with a Liberal Democrat like myself blogging about Labour Party conference. First, as I’ve so often seen from the other side of the fence, an outside blogging about another party’s conference frequently misreads what is really happening. And second, no blogger can compete with Hopi Sen and his cat.
So caveats deployed and on to the confusion that Ed Balls’s speech today left me in. For he had two messages: first, that Labour can’t promise to undo the government’s cuts and, second, that many of the cuts are wrong. Either on its own would be a …
Even a cursory look at the state of housing in London instantly shows that something is profoundly wrong. Rents outside the social sector are racing ahead, up 17% last year. House prices defy the laws of gravity, up 5% despite national economic trends.
And the really scandalous thing is that it has been this way under both Mayors of London, with no sign of any fundamental change. That’s why I’ve been arguing we must focus above all else on getting the supply increased. Without that, solving the affordability question gets harder and harder: ever-rising housing and land costs means ever …
After last week’s Miliband success at Prime Minister’s Questions, this time we started off with Ed Miliband in softly softly mode. He asked about Libya and the service chiefs’ concern about an extended campaign. Displaying a becoming measure of gravitas, he also asked whether the defence review should be revisited in the light of the “Arab Spring” which William Hague has described as more important than 9-11. That’s a good question given that the review didn’t mention Libya, Tunisia or Egypt.
David Cameron said he has been assured by the military grand fromage that we could keep the campaign going as …
Even after last Thursday, I’ve come across very few Liberal Democrats saying, “we should have made a deal with Labour last May”. That’s not a surprise, given the Parliamentary arithmetic and also all that has come out since about just how split Labour’s negotiating team was, not to mention the almost farcical lack of preparation from Labour for talks. Peter Mandelson grabbing a quick cup of tea with Ed Balls to sort out Labour’s negotiating line before walking into the first meeting may be very English, but competent or prepared it wasn’t.
That does, of course, leave the question of whether …
1. What’s your formative political memory?
The 2005 election was the one I was probably first properly aware of as a 15/16 year-old. I remember reading the Liberal Democrat manifesto and seeing posters up in my area (mainly Labour, though I’m pleased to say that’s no longer true, and orange diamonds are now far more pervasive during election campaigns).
2. When did you start blogging?
September 2009.
3. Why did you start blogging?
I’d been reading various blogs for a while, and had previously thought about starting my own, but the catalyst was probably chatting to a number of bloggers at Lib Dem Voice’s BOTY awards at the 2009 conference.
4. What five words would you use to describe your blog?
Straightforward, rational and occasionally random.
5. What five words would you use to describe your political views?
In every possible way: liberal.
6. Which post have you most liked writing in the last year (and why)?
Attending and blogging about the court case which ultimately led to Phil Woolas being kicked out of Parliament was obviously quite an experience, and I also particularly liked writing this post on a rather daft claim by Ed Balls, which was very short and simple but which, I think, demonstrates the value of blogging as a medium.
7. Which post have you most liked reading in the last year (and why)?
I hope the rules can be bent, as this was just over a year ago, but I found this post by Stephen here on Lib Dem Voice on why Clegg should rule out a coalition (!) extremely compelling. It was faultless in its logic, and I agreed with Stephen at the time, but its arguments were based on a number of assumptions which we all made but which ultimately proved to be false (particularly that the Conservatives would never give enough ground, including on electoral reform, to ever make a coalition even remotely possible). Speculating on what might have been had the Lib Dem leadership followed Stephen’s advice is an interesting game, and I can’t help coming to the conclusion that we would now be in a (perhaps significantly) worse position than that which we are currently in.
8. What’s your favourite YouTube clip?
My Twitter followers won’t be surprised that I’ve picked this clip from the magnificent West Wing, the script-writing and acting in which demonstrate just why the show is so brilliant.
If you’re Labour, and want to be an MP in a safe seat, switching to the Lib Dems would be a bad move. Perhaps you like authoritarian policies on law and order, and prefer to avoid difficult decisions on the deficit. If so, the Lib Dems isn’t the party for you.
But maybe you think politics isn’t black and white, that there is good and bad in all the parties, and so working together is a good thing. Perhaps you think that the government should do what will work on law and order, rather than pander to the tabloid press, and …
It’s been a common political refrain: Labour planned massive cuts in public spending, Labour lost the election and but then Labour campaign repeatedly against cuts without ever saying what it would have cut.
As Caron Lindsay pointed out in her write-up of Nick Clegg’s interview with Andrew Marr yesterday morning, the question of Ed Balls’s record in government compared with Labour’s current policies is likely to become all the more pointed now that Balls is back in an economic role:
There’s no sign of timidity in the Coalition camp at the appointment of Ed Balls as Shadow Chancellor. It’s clear that no opportunity will be lost to remind people of his culpability in the current mess:
Labour never owned up to their responsibility. Ed Balls as Minister for the City was lauding light
Today’s Independent on Sunday has a long profile of Chris Huhne and his work as a Cabinet minister and including some hints of criticism of Andy Coulson:
The one time he appears to choose his words carefully is when discussing Andy Coulson. On a biting Friday morning, the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change does not yet know that the chill wind blowing along Downing Street will signal the resignation within hours of the coalition’s director of communications.
“I have no reason to doubt his position,” he says precisely, when asked if he was happy with Mr Coulson continuing in
The Lib Dem response to Ed Balls’ appointment as Labour’s shadow chancellor, replacing Alan Johnson, has been swift. Stephen Williams, Co-Chair of the Liberal Democrat Parliamentary Treasury Committee, commented:
“I wish Alan Johnson good luck for the future.
“The decision to appoint Ed Balls as Shadow Chancellor shows that the Labour Party is now determined to carry on with the Gordon Brown economic plan that caused so much trouble for this country.
“Ed Balls isn’t just a deficit denier, he’s a deficit enthusiast.”
Alan Johnson resigned earlier today, citing “personal reasons to do with my family”. He had been under pressure in …
Conservative MP Rob Wilson’s book on the formation of a coalition government in May 2010, 5 Days to Power: The Journey to Coalition Britain, plays up the drama of the events, talking of how “Gordon Brown and David Cameron were both determined to do whatever was necessary to secure the position of Prime Minister” as if the story is one of a cliff-hanging drama which could have gone either way.
Whilst the outcome is certainly significant for British political history, what the book is far less convincing on is that there was really any serious chance of a Labour – …
I’m sure many of you, like myself, watched Vince Cable’s interview on the Politics Show last week where he denied breaking any promises to oppose a rise in tuition fees, with a certain feeling of discomfort. But now I think the time has come to discuss a change in narrative.
Lib Dem MPs and Ministers (including up until now Vince Cable,) have a reputation for giving straight-forward honest answers to journalists questions without coming across as evasive or revisionist. However, with the tuition fee pledge to deny a promise was ever made and as such never broken is not a …
The more that comes out about how Tony Blair and Gordon Brown behaved (or perhaps more accurately, how Gordon Brown behaved towards Tony Blair) the more you wonder quite what world they were living in. Here, courtesy of The Guardian’s Nicholas Watt, is one of the latest revelations of the sort of behaviour that would get most people the sack but didn’t stop Gordon Brown getting the Premiership:
During tense negotiations over Britain’s EU budget rebate in 2005, the former prime minister became so exasperated with the Treasury that he kidnapped its man in Brussels.
One of the more cheering bits of Ed Miliband’s speech to the Labour party conference was his pledge that the party under his leadership would once again take seriously the issue of civil liberties, of individual rights
My generation recognises too that government can itself become a vested interest when it comes to civil liberties. I believe in a society where individual freedom and liberty matter and should never be given away lightly. … we must always remember that British liberties were hard fought and hard won over hundreds of years. We should always take the greatest care in protecting them.
By Stephen Tall
| Sat 25th September 2010 - 7:35 pm
Here are some first thoughts on what Ed Miliband’s wafer-thin election victory in the contest to lead Labour might mean…
1. He’s going to have to work hard to prove he’s his own man. There’s no doubt the right-wing press and the Conservatives will do all they can to show Ed Miliband is little more than a puppet of the unions, given he won Labour’s electoral college thanks to the votes of trade unionists, having lost the vote among party members and MPs/MEPs. The pressure will be on for him to show he can stand up to union power or risk …
By Stephen Tall
| Thu 23rd September 2010 - 7:45 am
Lib Dem Voice has polled our members-only forum to discover what Lib Dem members think of the early race for the party presidency, the London mayoral selection, Trident, and the Labour leadership. Over 400 party members have responded, and we’ve been publishing the full results.
This Saturday we find out who will be the next Labour leader. The assumption is it will be neck-and-neck between the Brothers Miliband, David and Ed. David has been the favourite throughout the summer-long contest, but in the last few weeks theres been a sense that the race has tightened with many folk now tipping …
By Stephen Tall
| Mon 13th September 2010 - 7:45 am
The weekend papers were full of speculation about the Labour leadership contest, which as it draws to a close appears to be a nail-bitingly close finish between the Brothers Miliband.
According to pollster YouGov, Ed Miliband is set to sneak victory by the closest of margins after second preferences are taken into account; though the poll didn’t appear to take into account the votes of MPs and MEPs who control one-third of Labour’s electoral college. This is not, after all, a party which believes all votes should be equal, whether in Parliamentary constituencies or in their own leadership race.
David Cameron has ‘let it be known’ (ie, his press team briefed the Guardian) that shadow foreign secretary David Miliband “poses the greatest threat to the Conservative party of all the candidates in the Labour leadership contest”.
How to interpret this? Is Dave’s backing of David a cunning bluff: the Tory leader backing the most New Labour-identified candidate to put Labour members off backing him? Or could it be an even cunninger double bluff: the Tory leader, knowing his endorsement could be read as a bluff, backing the most media-awkward candidate in the hope Labour members will vote for …
Simon Costain I'm guessing around a thousand high net worth individuals are resident on the Isle of Man for tax purposes, though others suggest up to 3,000
Low earners on ...
David Wright While Trump's "gift of the license to manufacture Patriot air defence missiles" is welcome, it won't stop a single Russian missile aimed at Ukraine this year or...
Matt Wardman Thanks for the piece, Tom.
I tend to disagree on the NATO summit. Listening to serious reports (my goto since February 2022 has been the Telegraph's Ukraine ...
theakes Considerable concern in Democratic circles that Trump will call the coming election rigged, cancel the States results won by the opposition and then impose mart...
Peter Martin @ Roland,
I'm not sure I understand your comment. Every company which is registered for VAT can reclaim VAT on purchased items. The question is whether VAT s...
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