Michael White's Blog, page 12

EU referendum: why is Sturgeon crying foul over remain campaign?

It is possible Scotland’s first minister really wants the UK to leave Europe, setting up another Scottish independence referendum

Chin up, the EU referendum campaign will be all over in only 16 weeks. When genies are let out of bottles it’s hard to stuff them back. I’m already fascinated by the sheer opportunism of some arguments being deployed to cry foul before a 23 June vote is cast. Yes, Nicola Sturgeon, I don’t just mean Brexit “Baloney” Boris, I mean you too.

We can dismiss Mayor Johnson’s tirade against David Cameron’s “Project Fact” document. Boris is winging it, as he usually does. Let’s take something apparently more substantial, the complaint that Cameron is somehow breaking Whitehall rules. He’s let his cabinet secretary, Sir Jeremy “Mr Fixit” Heywood, announce that ministers who propose to campaign for a Brexit won’t get access to official papers supporting the remain campaign.

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Published on March 01, 2016 03:37

Don’t be smug, technology is eating middle-class jobs too

Warnings about the impact of tech on existing patterns of employment is an upgrade of an old story. Has the digital revolution been overstated?

“One million jobs to vanish in 10 years,” shout the Monday morning headlines just to get the week off to a good start. But it’s not another scary intervention in the referendum debate by a pro-European or a Brexiter. It’s more serious than that.

The culprit on this occasion is the British Retail Consortium (BRC), the people who speak for shops of many sizes and employ one in six of British workers, about 3 million people. They think that 900,000 of them (not quite the million of the FT’s headline) will disappear in the next decade, more in smaller businesses and poorer areas.

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Published on February 29, 2016 04:02

Errant kids used to embarrass MPs – now parents are the problem | Michael White

An unseemly spat at PMQs reminds us that today’s politicians, ever younger, are vulnerable to parental undermining

Family trouble used to be more straightforward in politics. A kinsman or woman embarrassing the leader? That invariably meant one of the kids had been getting drunk, joining street demos or denouncing mum and dad as brutes or hypocrites.

But the flipside of politicians getting younger – a trend in Britain – inevitably means they are vulnerable to undermining from a quarter that didn’t much trouble Gladstone or Disraeli: the parents.

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Published on February 25, 2016 04:23

Blair's baffled by the left because he doesn't see the bigger picture

Former PM doesn’t understand that angry activists are trying to frighten the elites who failed them in the past

So Tony Blair is puzzled about the rise of Jeremy Sanders and Bernie Corbyn as fiery leftwing candidates for high office. Excellent. The former centre-left prime minister isn’t puzzled enough, in my experience. Puzzlement might do him good; even prompt him to wonder if his own behaviour since leaving office has contributed in any way to voter disenchantment.
I say this more in hope than expectation, more in sorrow than in anger, as an admirer of Blair. A skilled and successful leader of a Britain more prosperous and content than now for a decade, he would not have got us into several of the troubles the country currently faces – in Europe and Scotland for example, though he managed one or two of his own.

But I never felt he stood back far enough to see the bigger picture. On a trip once I gave him a history book in the shaky belief that, if he ever bothered to open it, he might learn something. Fat chance. I can’t remember how often I’ve joked that Gordon Brown read books but Blair used them to keep the door open.

Instead of making himself part of the solution, Blair is now 62 and part of the problem

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Published on February 24, 2016 01:27

EU debate raises questions over power at the top of government

Confusion over who exactly is a member of the cabinet shows how our system of government is becoming more presidential

One of the odder things about the wrangle over Britain’s EU membership is that very few people seem at all worried about who exactly is a member of the cabinet. Does that matter? I fear it might because it may just be another symptom of the decay of cabinet government in favour of a more presidential system, one adjusted to the needs of TV like major sports now are.

Are there six cabinet ministers supporting the Brexit campaign, as is routinely asserted? No, there are five: Priti Patel is usually included alongside IDS, Gove, Whittingdale, Grayling and Viliiers because she ticks a couple of obvious boxes and attends cabinet, one of seven ministers of state thus favoured.

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Published on February 23, 2016 02:16

No Boris, you can't have your Brexit cake and eat it too

If Johnson thinks that siding with the leave campaign will force the EU to give him the deal he wants, he’s in cloud cuckoo land

I was wrong. Bottler Boris didn’t bottle it after all. Weeks of dithering over whether to join the Brexit campaign have finally ended. Boris has decided that a no vote is the best way to protect all he loves best about Britain: himself.

Whoops, no. Wrong again. That’s not quite what the rascal is saying in his £275,000-a-year Daily Telegraph column on Monday. He has climbed off the fence, only to climb straight back on again – one buttock, anyway. As his hero, Winston Churchill, might mockingly have said (and did say of Chamberlain), Boris is resolute for uncertainty, he is adamant for indecision.

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Published on February 21, 2016 23:53

Corbyn's intervention on Europe proves silence can be golden

The Labour leader has criticised the PM’s proposed brake on migrant benefits. Until Corbyn can square that circle convincingly, he might be wise to be quieter

Has Jeremy Corbyn’s overnight intervention on David Cameron’s EU renegotiation been helpful to Labour’s electoral prospects? Or is he helping undermine the “Yes to Europe” campaign he purports to support, cooking the prime minister’s goose and possibly his own as well as Europe’s in the process? “Contagion” is the new buzz word among nervous leaders.

I can’t confidently claim to have the answer. Corbyn rarely makes substantial policy interventions, probably because he is preoccupied with internal party affairs, trying to create unity of purpose and discipline, challenges which are new to him. I’m told he’s enjoying being unexpected leader after all.

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Published on February 19, 2016 03:57

Is the world drifting towards disaster? Maybe

Europe has grown accustomed to being babysat by the US – but profound global power shifts put us all in danger

So this is how it happens, how great states drift towards disaster. Is it happening again today? It might be. A lot of bad things are coalescing all over the place and no one seems to be in charge. A combination of opportunist ambition, of myriad weaknesses, systemic and personal, and of profound global power shifts put us all in danger.

We have been here before.

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Published on February 18, 2016 03:44

Prince William speaks out against Brexit? Rubbish

Only a fool or a rogue could interpret the Duke of Cambridge’s remarks as being in favour of remaining in Europe - or against it, for that matter

I’ve read Prince William’s speech in which he supposedly endorsed Britain’s continued membership of the EU. I’ve read it sideways and upside down.

Only a fool or a rogue could place on the lad’s remarks the construction placed on it overnight by assorted Eurosceptic hooligans and large swaths of Fleet Street’s finest. Even the FT put this phoney controversy on page one. Shame on you, Mr Editor!

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Published on February 17, 2016 04:38

Ban on Israel boycotts denies us the freedoms we say we're defending

Comparison between Israel and apartheid South Africa is distasteful, but Cameron shouldn’t follow in Thatcher’s footsteps

Watching David Cameron’s government grappling with the Israeli boycott movement reminds me of one of the brighter moments in British public life during the turbulent Thatcher years. It came when Mrs T tried to stop the Olympic squad going to the 1980 Moscow Games in protest against the recent Russian invasion of Afghanistan. The Olympic movement, including Seb (now Lord) Coe and Steve Ovett, who would both win gold medals, said no. To her credit, Thatcher did not prevent them. In this instance, Cameron is not doing as well.

Here’s the Guardian’ s account of what happened in 1980, culled years later from the Whitehall archives, complete with pressure on Coe’s truculent father and manager, Peter. It was applied by a young ministerial thruster called Douglas Hurd.

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Published on February 16, 2016 06:21