Michael White's Blog, page 33
December 3, 2014
This isn’t an autumn statement, it’s an early advert for the 2015 election
• Autumn statement 2014: Osborne to miss deficit targets – live
Why are we even having an autumn statement from the chancellor today? Because we always have a half-yearly financial statement at this time of year, silly. I know, but what George Osborne has been doing is really the first stage of the Tories’ May 2015 general election campaign – an election we should have had last June.
Why so? Governments all run out of steam and need ejecting or refreshing after about four years. It’s a rough and ready measure of time, but the evidence suggests it’s about right. Americans work in a basic unit of White House four years, so do many countries. France, which also has an executive presidency, went to a seven-year term, but returned to five during the lacklustre Chirac years.
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November 28, 2014
‘Westminster’s unbeatable shadowy elite’? Don’t believe all the populism
In the noisy populism routinely distorting our public debate, there is always plenty of talk about the shadowy “establishment” and that tedious cliché, the unaccountable “Westminster elite”. So it’s worth noting, before our gnat-like collective attention moves on, just how many direct hits this supposed citadel has sustained in the past few days.
There’s Ukip’s second byelection win at Rochester, of course, and Emily Thornberry’s helpful flag tweet on polling day. Both were useful to Nigel Farage, the public school-educated, tax-efficient ex-City trader turned EU employee who claims to speak for middle England. Like Rupert Murdoch, another child of privilege whose fortune rests on the bank of mum and dad, he has craftily changed sides to lead the populist crowd.
Continue reading...November 27, 2014
Devolution: we need less haste, more coherence please
Formula One’s Lewis Hamilton isn’t the only Briton taking corners very fast. In response to the mighty jolt delivered by the Scottish referendum split, David Cameron and George Osborne are making up ramshackle constitutional reform at a dangerous speed. Today’s proposal by the cross-party Smith commission to devolve control of income tax to Scotland is another significant moment.
Where will it end? Good question. The SNP’s finance minister and (briefly) former leader, John Swinney, is already crying “we wuz robbed”.
Continue reading...November 26, 2014
Stalking the private schools is far trickier than it looks
Tristram Hunt’s modest suggestion in Monday’s Guardian that Britain’s 2,570 fee-paying schools make a larger contribution to the wider community or risk losing their charity tax rebates roused predictable fury from the usual suspects, not least in Fleet Street which, like many of our institutions, is less meritocratic than in post-war generations past.
The Daily Mail called Labour’s education spokesman “the privately educated expensively coiffed son of a baron” – Hunt’s father is a Cambridge scientist, councillor and life peer – who is also a “hypocrite”. It is a charge we can all level against each other, as Polly Toynbee briskly notes here – so Hunt Jr must be doing something right. Wednesday’s Guardian letters page says he’s not doing enough.
Continue reading...November 24, 2014
Ken Clarke on the financial crisis, the euro and the appeal of Ukip - video
November 23, 2014
Gordon Brown to quit? A career of near-greatness and fatal flaws
As a political leader, Gordon Brown came close to being a great man. He had – still has – brains, energy and high moral seriousness, all in greater quantities than Tony Blair, his protege, friend and deadly rival, who made him wait a decade for the premiership Brown wrongly thought his by right of succession. But insecurities that trigger debilitating suspicion and indecision can derail even the most formidable careers.
As chancellor, later prime minister, Brown achieved some lasting and important things between 1997 and 2010, while failing gallantly in pursuit of others, including the ending of child and pensioner poverty in Britain. When he belatedly joined the no campaign in September’s Scottish referendum – refusing to cooperate with the cross-party campaign in favour of his “Gordon to the rescue” trope – he improvised one of the finest speeches of his career.
Continue reading...Gordon Brown’s experience will be missed when he quits as MP
We can’t blame Gordon Brown if he confirms in the next few days that he will stand down as an MP at the May general election. He’s done his national service and reached the top of the greasy pole of politics. He will be 64 and has taken quite a beating, not least from himself, I suspect, since his premiership crumbled under immense pressure in 2010.
But we can and should regret his departure from the Commons. Thirty-one years an MP – he was first elected in Margaret Thatcher’s “Falklands landslide” victory of 1983 – he has vast experience, which should be on tap to guide and warn his successors. Nowadays far too many people get their hands on the steering wheel of state while still wearing their political L-plates. It shows.
Continue reading...November 21, 2014
What drives the Ukip bandwagon? Disaffection of all sorts | Michael White
A Ukip majority of only 2,920 in the Rochester and Strood byelection, eh? Not such a Tory meltdown as David Cameron must have feared. That should stop any of those would-be defectors among Tory MPs (if there really were any) from jumping ship this side of the wider contest next May. Mark Reckless, one of Westminster’s Adrian Moles, can now expect to lose the seat unless he gets lucky.
In his victory speech and elsewhere, Reckless is saying no Tory seat is safe. Nonsense. More interesting, as Patrick Wintour notes, he makes a bold (brazen?) pitch for Labour votes so that he and Nigel Farage can save Medway’s local hospital and the NHS – which Ukip’s leader wanted to privatise the other day until it proved unpopular and he rowed back.
Continue reading...November 18, 2014
Inequality is Whitehall’s fault? Don’t be ridiculous | Michael White
The rich have been getting richer during the recession while the poor get poorer. Right? Yes, indeed, it’s become a sad truism, worth repeating but hardly news. Yet Channel 4’s Dispatches programme devoted Monday night’s episode to identifying the alleged culprit. Guess what, it turns out to be the government.
To be more precise, the fault lies with the last Labour government. So said the Dispatches programme’s author and presenter, Fraser Nelson , who also happens to be editor of the Spectator during what is turning out to be one of its more ideological phases – as distinct from the High Tory scepticism of many decades.
Continue reading...November 17, 2014
We can’t blame David Cameron if the eurozone stumbles into recession again
It’s a rare treat to hear the phrase “Writing in the Guardian, David Cameron says” on the morning’s news bulletins before being told that the prime minister is warning us sandal-wearing polenta eaters of flashing red lights ahead for the global economy.
That’s not so good, but it is mostly true, as Larry Elliott explains in his analysis of Cameron’s statement.
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