Michael White's Blog, page 41

May 23, 2014

Politics Weekly podcast: Is the Ukip surge sustainable?

Michael White, James Ball and Stephen Tall join Tom Clark to discuss the local elections in England and Prince Charles's comments about Vladimir Putin Continue reading...
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Published on May 23, 2014 08:38

Faced with Nigel Farage, what would Tony Blair do?

Admit it Labour's triple election winner would have known how to handle the threat from the Ukip leader

What would Tony Blair do about the threat posed by Nigel Farage, Ukip's pub quiz champion who always sticks to his special subject? "Who cares?" is the usual answer from some grander pundits on both left and right who share an interest in denigrating Labour's triple election winner. A pity they might learn something.

Actually, we know what Blair would do because he has already done it. He would largely ignore the European issue as presented by Ukip itself. All polls confirm that it is low on the list of most voter concerns compared with bread-and-butter problems such as rewarding jobs or the state of the NHS. Europe is shorthand for alienation from the political process and dismay at the pace of change in our globalised world including immigration, carelessly handled by Blair's complacent government.

Let me just tell you, sir, and your colleagues: you sit with our country's flag; you do not represent our country's interests. This is the year: 2005, not 1945. We're not fighting each other any more. These are our partners. They're our colleagues and our future lies in Europe. And when you and your colleagues say: 'What do we get in return for what we contribute to enlargement?', I'll tell you what we get. We get a Europe that is unified after years of dictatorship in the east. We get economic development in countries whom we have championed. We get a future reform that allows us once and for all to put an end to discussion about rebates, common agricultural policy, and get a proper budget for Europe. That's what we get if we have the vision to seize that opportunity.

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Published on May 23, 2014 06:52

It's time we took Nigel Farage more seriously than he seems to take himself

Does it matter that Ukip only has one policy? Probably not its leader is the man of the moment

All my life I have been watching out warily for a first glimpse of what Americans call "the man on the white horse", the self-appointed saviour of his country with a simplistic line of plausible patter which usually ends up with a lot of dead voters. Watching Nigel Farage enjoying his overnight success in the local elections I realise I was wrong, but only slightly.

Farage isn't on a white horse, he's in the White Horse, propping up the bar, ordering another round and probably saying: "Have one for yourself, squire" to the barman because the European taxpayer may be picking up the bill. We all know Nigel in our pubs, clubs and wine bars. It's one of his strengths: he's a type, the boisterous kind that bangs on about how "it's the government's fault" until someone manages to change the subject.

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Published on May 23, 2014 02:15

May 22, 2014

Michael White's diary: AstraZeneca beware those asset strippers haven't gone away

Pfizer hasn't given up on its takeover bid

Don't sell your AstraZeneca shares just yet. Far from giving up, Pfizer is prodding fund managers like BlackRock ($4tn under its wing) to strong-arm the Anglo-Swedish board into changing its mind, if not now then in three months. Takeover rules allow asset strippers Pfizer to try again in November. BlackRock, which holds no less than 8% of AZ, is not to be confused with Blackwater (now Academi), the US private army whose mercenaries are alleged to be in Ukraine. BlackRock is the one that never shoots its targets.

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Published on May 22, 2014 15:00

May 21, 2014

Michael White's diary: Is 'progressive Scotland' a pub myth with Ukip undertones?

Alex Salmond has been bigging up Scottish diversity, but there are closet Farage-ists under the kilt

Curiouser and curiouser in Scotland, where canny Alex Salmond has been bigging up the Ukip threat in the hope of dragging some Muslims, ethnic minorities and lefties into the SNP's "progressive Scotland" camp and winning a third Euro seat in the process. Salmond's visit to a Friday mosque, in the name of "the diversity of modern Scotland", enraged Ukip, which thinks it has a monopoly on sharp tactics. Polls claim 18% of Scots would be more likely to vote for independence if Salmond-basher Farage wins the UK's Euro elections.

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Published on May 21, 2014 15:39

May 20, 2014

Michael White's diary: Cameron major and minor get personal over legal aid cuts

For QC Alexander it's a stand for legal principle. For his little brother (the prime minister), it's about busting open a lucrative closed shop

The court of appeal is on Wednesday expected to overturn the ruling of the judge who stopped a costly fraud trial. He did so after hearing from Alexander Cameron QC that coalition budget cuts on "very high cost cases" (VHCCs to m'learned friend) have made it impossible for defendants to hire expensive briefs like him to match the prosecution's expensive ones. "Equality of arms" is an important principle at the bar, as well as a lucrative form of closed shop, which Chris Grayling is undermining with a 30% cut in the VHCC budget. Militant lawyers at the Lidl end of the trade have been staging RMT-style strikes against Grayling for months. Obviously, it is in the public interest to prosecute complex fraud cases, not just benefit scamsters. But Cameron QC's grandee intervention made it personal: the cuts were instigated by his little brother, Dave.

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Published on May 20, 2014 15:00

May 19, 2014

Michael White's diary: Match of the day? Wembley's all set for a Michael Gove-Jeremy Browne love-in

The sacked Lib Dem and the Tory education chief are off to the Championship playoff final to support QPR. Will they end up off their trolley?

Tension is usually high between Tory and Lib Dem ministers nowadays wherever knife crime, academies or free school meals are found on a coalition agenda and backstairs Tory apparatchik Dominic Cummings can find space to throw a punch. It is always high when a lucrative place in football's Premier League is at stake. So Saturday's Championship playoff final between QPR and Derby is hardly the place for a Lib Dem-Tory love-in. Or is it? Despite tensions between Michael Gove and David Laws, his fastidious Lib Dem deputy at education, Gove is going to the match with a fellow QPR supporter. Step forward sacked Lib Dem minister Jeremy Browne, whose recent book compared his party to a wonky supermarket trolley that pulls to the left unless firmly controlled. He and Govey both pull to the right.

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Published on May 19, 2014 15:00

It's time for IDS to have a quiet word with his pit bull Richard Caseby | Michael White

Former News International man's decision to attack the Guardian looks reckless given that he is now a civil servant

Richard Caseby sounds like a good hater, judging by what he says in print. He has just used a guest blog in Fleet Street's trade press to attack the Guardian again for a string of "pinpoint inaccuracies" and reporting failures. He wonders if the trade's new self-regulator, the Independent Press Standards Organisation (Ipso), should allow the paper to become a member always assuming the Guardian would want to join anyway.

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Published on May 19, 2014 10:18

May 8, 2014

AstraZeneca and South Africa's election Politics Weekly podcast

Jill Treanor, Michael White, Hugh Muir and David Smith join Tom Clark to discuss Pfizer's bid for British drugs giant AstraZeneca; a predicted doubling of ethnic minorities in Britain by 2050; and the first generation to be born after apartheid in South Africa vote for the first time Continue reading...
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Published on May 08, 2014 08:08

May 7, 2014

The UK and the European Union: a very British love-hate affair | Analysis

Despite pushing for integration after 1945, the Euroscepticism of the UK let France shape the EU and Germany dominate it

A British Labour MP recalls taking some trade union colleagues to Brussels to show them how the EU's core institutions work. Being British they were sceptical and suspicious, but once they got stuck into the finer points of health and safety legislation, where MEPs strive hard to protect workers, their attitudes changed to one of enthusiasm for what the 766-strong parliament might achieve for them.

Health and safety rules are rarely popular except among those whose lives they have changed. But the story could be repeated across a host of sectors and interests where British citizens benefit from what "Brussels" and "Strasbourg" do for them from cleaner beaches and ice cream made from cream not pig fat (a famous early example) to current battles over mobile phone roaming charges and other clashes with tax-nimble global corporations that states hesitate to take on.

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Published on May 07, 2014 23:00

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