David Cameron « Labour Uncut

Posts Tagged ‘David Cameron’

Clegg blinks

10/07/2012, 07:58:41 PM

Or at least he is trying to blink. Whether his party lets him is another matter. Word reaches Uncut from the yellow side of the fence that the Lib Dem leadership are engaged a tentative operation to defuse the bomb they carefully primed, and pull back from vetoing the Tories new parliamentary boundaries.

It had been assumed that the Lib Dems would take their revenge on the Tories for sinking Lords reform by blocking the new parliamentary constituency boundaries. But, after some emollient words from the prime minister earlier in the day, a commitment to get something through in Autumn and perhaps an extra biscuit with his cup of tea, Nick Clegg wants to work it out with the Tories.

Talk of tit for tat retaliation is being played down as the Lib Dems and Tory press teams try to pin the blame on Labour before the watching gallery of aghast Lib Dem activists.

Clegg still has his eye on passing a Lords reform bill in the Autumn, either stripped down to resemble Lord Steel’s token effort at reform or potentially something more ambitious with a firm commitment to a referendum after the first election to the new chamber but before the second.

Why the emboldened Tory rebels would put down their cudgels in three months is unclear. Certainly there’s no love lost for David Cameron who was being openly ridiculed by jubilant rebels as they celebrated in the bars of Westminster.

But Clegg still thinks he can salvage his legacy with a constitutional bill that could nominally have the prefix ‘historic’ appended, and as a result, David Cameron seems to have been granted the benefit of the doubt from his junior partner yet again.

The next 24 hours will determine whether Nick Clegg can sell his conciliation to the beaten and battered Lib Dems or whether this time, there will actually be a yellow reckoning with the Tories, regardless of Nick Clegg’s dreams of the history books.

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David Cameron will fully nationalise RBS

03/07/2012, 01:36:39 PM

by Jonathan Todd

We didn’t think the reputation of the financial sector could sink any lower. The Libor-fixing scandal means it has. We may be less surprised that the government’s deficit reduction strategy continues to hurt and not work. When government borrowing jumped to £17.9bn in May, up from £15.2bn in the same month last year, this was confirmed.

These two factors make the impossible seem possible: David Cameron will seize the initiative by an audacious full nationalisation of RBS and its reconstitution as a national infrastructure bank.

The logic that leads to this implausible conclusion involves three stages to this parliament and an evolving contest for national leadership.

Stage one: Two parties together in the national interest.

This must now seem a golden age from the perspective of Downing Street. The political law of this bygone time was that Labour had made the economic mess and Cameron’s government was taking the tough actions needed, with an expectation that the economy would recover well before the general election, which Cameron would win on the back of this success.

Attempts to have Labour adjust to a reality in which fiscal credibility has an increased political salience – such as In the Black Labour – retain an important relevance to our party. But times have moved on. It is ever more obvious that the government’s tight fiscal policy isn’t working.

As the government goes to Olympian efforts to keep their omnishambles rolling, ever more eyebrows are raised, querying whether these good chaps know their apples. They lost the benefit of the doubt long before Chloe Smith spectacularly crashed into the national consciousness.

Stage two: Attacks which seek to undermine the basis of Labour’s claim to national leadership.

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Whip’s Notebook: Cameron is now more focused on party management than running the country

03/07/2012, 07:15:38 AM

by Jon Ashworth

Two weeks ago PMQs served as a reminder of what could have been for a generation of Tory MPs. With Cameron and Clegg both away it fell to William Hague, foreign secretary and also first secretary of state to bat for the government. And what a joy he was to watch. Of course I don’t agree with his answers, but his delivery was assured, witty, measured and a total contrast to the increasingly irritable, bad tempered, stroppy performance we’re now used to from the prime minister.

So far the conventional wisdom on PMQs has been that Cameron is a class act on whom its difficult to land a glove. But despite Cameron’s relative strengths compared to others on the Tory benches, its strikes me as increasingly obvious that the conventional wisdom on PMQs is wrong.

In contrast to Cameron, Ed Miliband focuses on fundamentals at PMQs whether that’s the economy, the squeeze in living standards or the crisis in confidence in the political system exemplified by a prime minister on the run who refuses to report a cabinet minister to the independent advisor on the ministerial code.

Just in the last week, Cameron dithered on whether to hold an inquiry on the Libor scandal before proposing his inadequate, sticking plaster solution of a joint parliamentary committee in response to sustained pressure from Ed Miliband.

By focusing on these big issues, people are again starting to take a look at Labour though I don’t think anyone in the parliamentary Labour party is in any doubt about how much further we need to travel. However the performance of the government is starting reinforce doubts about the Tories and the competence of David Cameron.

The economic policy of the government isn’t working with growth downgraded and borrowing up. Living standards are dropping and youth unemployment stubbornly high. It’s hurting but not working.

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Cameron’s women problems

27/06/2012, 04:32:39 PM

Treasury minister Chloe Smith last night joined an exclusive club.

No it’s not the Bilderberg Group. Not much chance of an invitation there after her disastrous appearances on Channel Four News and later on Newsnight defending the government’s u-turn on fuel duty.

No she’s just been inducted into the ex-Next Big Things club. It’s a select intake of those of whom great things were expected. But bad news travel fast in modern politics and Twitter was abuzz last night and this morning at the general awfulness of her career-limiting performances.

Of course an individual minister taking a caning in an interview is neither here nor there, but Chloe Smith’s case exposes a deeper problem for David Cameron.

In fact he has two big problems: both with women.

The first is the growing sense that the PM is a bit of a chauvinist. It’s revealed in small things like his silly put-down to Angela Eagle in the Commons (“calm down dear”) and probably not helped by leaving his daughter in the pub the other week.

These are relatively trivial offences, compared to the differential impact coalition cuts are having on women’s lives, wisely picked up early-on by Labour’s frontbench and now used to bring home the very real effects of the government’s programme to women voters bearing the brunt of unemployment, tax hikes and service cuts.

His second problem is closer to home. A government reshuffle is due soon. Unlike most other PM’s Cameron is said not to believe in regular changes, allowing ministers to get to know their briefs properly. A commendable enough sentiment, but the government is in need of fresh faces and to prune the less effective ministers.

In a bid to tackle his problem in communicating with women voters, the logical impulse is to promote more female political talent. But it’s not until you look down a list of government ministers that you realise just how few women there are.

The attendant problem is that the women ministers he currently has are among the least effective performers in the government.

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How twitter and Leveson have destroyed the government’s media strategy

01/06/2012, 07:00:45 AM

by Atul Hatwal

So he’s still got a job. Jeremy Hunt hangs on, defying political gravity. His performance yesterday at Leveson was woeful. Between the further revelations of his simpering texts to James Murdoch and near tearful demeanour, it was by any standards, a dreadful day for the Tory.

But despite all of this, thanks to some catastrophic media management choices made at the top of the government, Jeremy Hunt is still standing.

It’s almost possible to see the meeting: Craig Oliver, Gabby Bertin, George Osborne, all sat round the table at their morning huddle. Yes, it is going to be tough. Yes the evidence is damning. But the public don’t get the detail of Leveson. They just think all politicians are in hock to Murdoch and besides, as long as Hunt stays in post, he remains the story.

Which means David Cameron is not.

This was the rationale behind the PM’s decision to continue backing his critically compromised secretary of state for culture, media and sport: a whole-hearted vote of confidence in his personal, human shield.

In one sense the government media panjandrums are right. David Cameron is nowhere to be found in today’s headlines. It’s all Hunt. But everything has a price to pay, and in this case it is the collective confidence of the lobby journalists.

Although individual newspapers are no longer as influential as in the past – it’s unlikely that the Sun will ever again be the one wot won it– the club of parliamentary journalists still wields massive power when they form a common view.

On these occasions, this shared perspective becomes the lens through which all news, print, broadcast and online, is projected.

For the government, after just two years in office, such a view has formed. The leitmotif in the lobby narrative on the government’s media strategy is now incompetence.

It colours all reporting and increasingly undermines the government’s ability to run the news cycle. Positive stories are treated with suspicion, negative stories with credibility. For Labour, it took over a decade to reach this nadir.

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Could Ed Miliband become the accidental prime minister?

29/05/2012, 07:00:53 AM

by Dave Talbot

As the results of Labour’s leadership election were read out, a collective sigh of relief echoed through the Tory ranks. The prevailing thought in British politics was that David Cameron had already won the next general election.

The Labour party had been demonstrably stupid. The party that had governed for thirteen years had chosen to be comforted, rather than challenged. Ed Miliband would never walk through the door of Number 10, except only as a guest. The party, so the commentariat thought, had chosen the wrong Miliband – and would suffer the electoral consequences.

For many months the analysis held true; the public just couldn’t see the junior Miliband as PM material, the party’s economic reputation was in tatters and barely disguised mutterings of discontent began to ripple through the parliamentary Labour party.

The elephant in the room was Miliband himself. His personal ratings were absolutely dire. At one point only 4% thought he’d be good in a crisis, and 5% a natural leader. Just as Cameron had to prove that the Tories cared, Miliband needed to show he wasn’t a geeky loser. Voters told Tory focus groups that they thought the Labour leader was odd, weird and strange. More odd Ed than red Ed.

How the wheel of political fortune turns. Miliband, for so long uncomfortable in his own skin and unsure of his position, has overtaken the man seemingly born to rule. Cameron’s poll ratings have slumped alarmingly, whilst Miliband’s have increased by 22% – a dramatic shift by any standard. Having triumphed in the local elections, a consistent poll lead has also emerged. It is not quite a transformation from Wallace to Winston, but the shift is in the right direction.

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Hunt memo proves David Cameron manipulated the BSkyB bid process to favour the Murdochs

25/05/2012, 09:27:51 AM

by Atul Hatwal

Although the media focus this morning is still on Jeremy Hunt, the real story should be about David Cameron’s conduct. The reason? The already infamous Hunt memo to Cameron, from November 2010, is a game-changer.

For the first time there is clear evidence that the prime minister, as opposed to a junior cabinet minister or special adviser, directly manipulated the quasi-judicial process considering News Corporation’s bid for BSkyB, in favour of the Murdochs.

When David Cameron stripped Vince Cable of responsibility for adjudicating on the bid in December 2010, he understood he would face a problem in simply handing over the process to Jeremy Hunt at DCMS.

Hunt was well-known as an admirer of News Corporation: while in opposition he had given a breathless interview to Broadcast magazine where he had eulogised about Rupert Murdoch,

“Rather than worry about Rupert Murdoch owning another TV channel, what we should recognise is that he has probably done more to create variety and choice in British TV than any other single person because of his huge investment in setting up Sky TV which, at one point, was losing several million pounds a day”.

Shortly after Hunt became secretary of state, he had followed-up in June 2010 in an interview with the Financial Times where he speculated on the BSkyB bid,

“It does seem to me that News Corp do control Sky already, so it isn’t clear to me that in terms of media plurality there is a substantive change, but I don’t want to second guess what regulators might decide.”

Cameron knew these comments would inevitably surface and be used by Labour to challenge Hunt’s ability to manage the process impartially. The prime minister needed cover for his decision and turned to his cabinet secretary, who duly obliged.

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The Tory party: idealists welcome

21/05/2012, 01:30:53 PM

by Kevin Meagher

For JS Mill, the Tories were famously the stupid party. By the 1980s they were definitely the ideological party. But under David Cameron are they are becoming something else: the home for political idealists?

We casually think of idealism as the preserve of the Left, but the lodestar of this government is to reshape the state in as profound a way as Attlee or Thatcher managed.

From the NHS reforms to free schools. From academies to police commissioners. From the big society to big city mayors. Austerity cuts through to the massive welfare shake-ups; there is an abundance of idealism. Or ‘tip-up-the-apple-cart-ism.’

Much of it is to be regretted of course; a lot of it feels impractical, even reckless, but idealism it most definitely is. As is George Osborne’s “faith based” economic policy. In the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, he presses on.

It’s like watching one of those old bits of film of a man flapping giant cardboard wings and jumping off a pier, expecting to fly. The chancellor is the ultimate expression of optimism over reason.

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David Cameron lied to the House of Commons about Andy Coulson

11/05/2012, 07:00:07 AM

by Atul Hatwal

The reviews for Andy Coulson’s performance at Leveson yesterday might have been glowing, but he did reveal one critical fact. A fact with no caveat or wriggle room.

It came during the passage of questioning on Coulson’s vetting. When asked by the lead counsel for the inquiry, Robert Jay QC, whether he had attended meetings of the National Security Council (NSC), Coulson was unusually clear.

“Yes” he said.

There was no “maybe”, “might have” or “I can’t recall.”

It’s important because attendance at full NSC discussions requires the highest level of clearance, developed vetting (DV) so that participants can view content classified as top secret or above. As has been well established, Andy Coulson did not have this clearance.

So what you might say. If Coulson attended a meeting without the right clearance then that’s not ideal, but hardly front page news.

What elevates this from being another example of shoddy internal government process to significance is the identity of the chair of the NSC: the Rt Hon David Cameron MP.

In this context, Cameron’s reported comments to the House of Commons on Wednesday 20^th July 2011 take on a new salience. Responding to questions about Coulson’s security clearance, he stated,

“He was not able to see the most secret documents…It was all done in the proper way“.

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What the Queen’s speech tells us about this dysfunctional government

09/05/2012, 06:37:20 PM

by Atul Hatwal

One thing is clear from this derisory Queen’s speech. Underpinning the paucity of content and the laundry list quality to this rag bag of measures is a central truth: the gangrene of government has well and truly set in.

The most obvious tell-tale sign is the absence of a top-line. If the BBC is calling your programme a “hotch-potch” with “no over-arching theme”, you know something has gone wrong.

The package of 15 bills and 4 draft bills is rare in that there is virtually no truly distinctive or news-worthy initiative. All of the headlines from these proposals will be generated by the politics of their parliamentary passage, notably with Lords reform, rather than the substantive impact of their delivery.

In coming forward with a programme like this the government has ceded the news agenda. It will be pushed and pulled by the rebellion du jour from right-wing Tories or left-wing Lib Dems on a variety of amendments to Dave and Nick’s anodyne bills.

The real question that should be asked about this Queen’s speech is why? Why is there not a single bill that will draw a dividing line between government and opposition? That will draw their side together and focus the debate on a distinction with Labour. How can the coalition party managers in have been so incompetent?

The answer lies not in their political ability or ambition, but the process of government.

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