Boris and Cameron at war, again

The two biggest beasts in the Tory jungle clashed yesterday over their own spending cuts. War broke out after Boris Johnson warned David Cameron he would not tolerate “Kosovo-style social cleansing” caused by axing housing benefits. The London mayor said: “The last thing we want is the less well-off pushed out to the suburbs. “I’ll emphatically resist any attempt to recreate a London where the rich and poor cannot live together. We will not see and we will not accept any kind of Kosovo-style social cleansing of London. “On my watch, you are not going to see thousands of families evicted from the place where they have been living and have put down roots.” The extraordinarily provocative remarks echo the horrific “ethnic cleansing” of thousands of Albanians in the Balkan wars of the 90s. And they sent the Prime Minister – Mr Johnson’s old rival from Eton and Oxford – into a fury. – The Mirror

Boris Johnson provoked fury in Downing Street yesterday as he warned that Coalition reforms of housing benefit would lead to a ‘Kosovo-style social cleansing’ of the poor from city centres. The Tory London Mayor tore into ministers’ plans to cap housing benefit payments at £400 a week, insisting he would ‘emphatically resist any attempt to recreate a London where the rich and poor cannot live together’. ‘What we will not see and we will not accept [is] any kind of Kosovo-style social cleansing of London.  On my watch, you are not going to see thousands of families evicted from the place where they have been living and have put down roots,’ he declared on radio in the morning. – The Daily Mail

Make no mistake about it, Boris Johnson’s rhetorical assault on the coalition’s housing benefit plan is a direct challenge to David Cameron’s authority. The two best-known Conservatives in the country are now involved in a battle that only one of them can win. Boris told BBC London this morning: “What we will not see and we will not accept any kind of Kosovo-style social cleansing of London. “On my watch, you are not going to see thousands of families evicted from the place where they have been living and have put down roots.” What is infuriating the Tory machine is not only Boris’s criticisms, but the language that he is used—which makes Labour’s talk of social cleansing sound positively moderate. The mayor has clearly decided that he needs to be seen to be standing up for Londoners on this issue. I also suspect that he might have decided that there will have to be concessions to appease the Lib Dems and that he wants to be in a position to take credit for them. – The Spectator

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PMQs

MPs ask each other: “How’s Ed Miliband doing?” “Better than we expected,” says a worldly Tory. “So far I’ve not heard a single moan about him, though there is no Blair-like adoration either,” admits one Labour ex-minister. “He’s not doing spectacularly, but he’s certainly holding his own,” reports a nationalist. It could have been a bad moment for the new Labour leader. One month into the job, he faced his third session of PMQs with an advisory memo from party HQ (“mocking humour is particularly useful here“) leaked to the Times to embarrass him. Up to that point Miliband hadn’t actually read it properly, but privately told colleagues later that it was rather good. He duly held his own again against David Cameron, focusing on one policy theme (housing benefit cuts) and showing sufficient brevity and spontaneity – real or contrived – to persuade sceptical Labour colleagues they picked the right brother after all. Most think Miliband has won two out of three PMQs so far – not last week’s on the economy. Polished performer though he is, Cameron has sounded a bit rattled. Miliband’s voice still lacks weight. – The Guardian

Ed Miliband decided to preach to the converted at Prime Minister’s Questions today. He asked about housing benefit. And he won the debating-society points. He had better jokes, an old line about why he asks the questions (“the clue’s in the title”) and won on the substance. David Cameron replied to repeated questions about whether it was right to cut housing benefit by 10 per cent for people who have been out of work for a year by saying that it was fair to limit housing benefit claims to £20,000 a year. – The Independent

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Tories and Lib Dems face backlash over housing benefit cap

A planned housing benefit cap could hit London hard and the MPs are alarmed that they will suffer from the fallout. It has been estimated that some 200,000 people could be forced to move out of London because they would no longer be able to afford their rents if housing benefit is capped. Labour accused Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, of “sociologically cleansing” poorer citizens out of London through the policy, which was announced last week as part of the spending review. A dozen London Tory MPs met to decide to push Iain Duncan Smith, the Work and Pensions Secretary, for an exemption or the imposition of a higher cap than the £400-a-week one currently planned. But there appears little chance of a concession according to senior Government sources. – The Telegraph

Nick Clegg reacted with fury yesterday to accusations that ministers were “sociologically cleansing” the poor out of parts of London with planned cuts to housing benefit payments. A visibly angry Deputy Prime Minister told Chris Bryant, Labour’s shadow minister for constitutional reform, that his comments were “outrageous” and “deeply offensive to people who have witnessed ethnic cleansing”. Last night Mr Bryant said he stood by his remarks on the Coalition’s plans to cap housing benefit at around £400 a week for a house rented in the private sector. Critics say this will force up to 80,000 families out of London and other major metropolitan areas because they will no longer be able to afford their homes. “Personally I prefer to live in cities which are not ghettos,” he added. – The Independent

The government may have to amend its plans for a cap on housing benefit payouts, the BBC has learned. The proposed cap could force people out of cities where rent is higher, some MPs and charities have argued. But Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said people living in areas that many working families could not afford should not expect to be subsidised. A Whitehall source said the Work and Pensions Secretary, Iain Duncan Smith, was listening to MPs’ concerns. The coalition’s plans include capping housing benefit at around £400-a-week for a four-bedroom home, and cutting the benefit for anyone on jobseeker’s allowance for more than a year by 10%. – BBC

Flagship Tory Council spends more than saves

It was billed as Britain’s first “easyCouncil”, a flagship for the government’s town hall spending cuts and a model of no-frills prudence. But it has emerged that the London borough of Barnet is spending more trying to find efficiencies than it is actually saving. The Conservative-controlled north London council has committed to spending £1.5m this financial year on a much-hyped reform programme to help close a yawning budget gap, but it is on course to recoup just £1.4m in savings in the year.The programme is budgeted to deliver savings of £13m a year by 2014, about a third of the total cuts planned by the council. It had been projected to save £3m by the end of the financial year, but Lynne Hillan, council leader, has now admitted the savings will be less than half of that. News of the shortfall emerges days after Eric Pickles, the communities secretary, named Barnet as a pilot for the government’s “community budget” system to hand councils control of all spending in their area free of conditions from Whitehall. – The Guardian

Questions over licence fee deal

The shadow culture secretary, Ivan Lewis, has demanded an urgent parliamentary inquiry into the BBC licence fee settlement following thehastily negotiated deal agreed with the government last week. Lewis has written to John Whittingdale, the Conservative MP who chairs the Commons culture, media and sport select committee, asking him to hold an investigation into the six-year deal. His request follows the agreement last week between the government and the corporation that will see the BBC licence fee frozen at £145.50 for six years until 2017. The settlement was announced by George Osborne in last week’s comprehensive spending review. Lewis wants ministers and BBC executives to give evidence to MPs about how the deal was reached and answer questions about its implications for the corporation’s services. He described the settlement as a “dodgy deal” in parliament this week. – The Guardian