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Ken leading the fight against the EU

Love this story about Ken Clarke being 'close' to reaching a deal with Europe over UK courts' ability to deport criminals. This will apparently enable judges to 'overrule' Human Rights legislation. 

While I'm sure there is much more to this than the headline on the BBC, I do enjoy the notion that the first tangible repatriation of powers from the EU to the UK could be achieved by Ken Clarke. 

Revolution in Style

You've got to respect an army which can sweep across Libya and overthrow a dictator while only ever wearing flip flops. 


photo Daily Mail/Reuters

Iran calls for 'restraint'

By far the best thing to come from the recent unrest in London has been the following quote from the Iranian Government:

Iran called for London Police to exercise self-restraint in dealing with protesters in Tottenham, north of London.

Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast referred to Saturday night massive protests in Tottenham which came following murder of a young black man by Scotland Yard Police and called for the UK government to avoid any police's harsh treatment with protesters.

He stressed return of peace and calm to London through talks and examining demands of the demonstrators.

Mehmanparast expressed hope independent human rights bodies would take measures to make clear facts behind murder of the black man soon.

This sentiment was reiterated by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who said: ‘The UN is silent. Human rights bodies are silent. If one per cent of this happens in countries that oppose the West, they scream until they are hoarse. Why is the Security Council silent?’

Why indeed?

Balls and Osborne: Entertaining? Yes. Informative? Sort of.

Today we saw the first clash at Treasury Questions between George Osborne and Ed Balls. The format of these questions always meant that this exchange was likely to be a little underwhelming, and less exciting and revealing than the battle that they'll fight in the media, and that proved to be the case. But what we did see were two MPs desperate to kick each other about at every opportunity.

Ed Balls was in his element. It's not that his questions were great - they weren't. It's that he was clearly having the time of his life. He looked totally assured, like a man who completely understands what is required of him. His questions on America and the difference in snow were always going to be weak because Cameron and Osborne have both acknowledged that the figures for the last quarter of 2010 were bad even without the adverse weather. Plus any actual comparison with America's economy is riddled with problems. His joke about a hurried mini-budget was better though, as was his pointed question about Osborne having to revise down his first growth forecast, which will be a focus of attack for Labour and is something the Tories are desperately hoping to avoid.

Osborne's approach, as ever, was marked by his usual insouciant demeanour and brutal verbal assaults. Like Balls, he doesn't get fazed. On this occasion he delivered two very good lines, the first claiming that now both Balls and the Ed Miliband know what it's like to be people's second choice. More cruelly (to Ed Miliband, at least) he asked Balls what it felt like to be working under the man who used to do his photocopying. Importantly, Osborne called Balls a 'deficit denier', a line we can expect to hear again and again from the Government.

As usual, the event was a waste of time for anyone wanting to learn anything about the economy, but then that isn't the point. These sessions are political, and that's what we saw today. Every question and every answer is designed to hammer home a message about the other sides' economic incompetence: 'The Tories are leading the country into a second recession' versus 'The Labour Party caused this mess and after a bit of pain it'l be fixed and life will be great'. This was just another small part of a debate that will run throughout this Parliament. 

Craig Oliver has his work cut out

Craig Oliver has a lot of work to do in his new role as the Tories' communications chief. Despite having ideas which could genuinely change the country for the better, No. 10 is failing to convey its messages to the public. The explanation of higher tuition fees - a policy that actually benefits the poor - was appalling. And we are seeing the same mistakes again as the Government directs too little attention to explaining NHS reforms, as well as its ongoing inability to convey the meaning of the Big Society.

The NHS reforms are suffering because Ministers consistently fail to explain them clearly. People want to be reassured that their services will not be cut. Frankly, the public does not care at all what particular structure NHS bureaucracy takes. They need to know that doctors support the proposals, and that their services will improve. To ensure the first one, the Government must get doctors - GPs in particular - on their side, and ensure that they fully understand the changes. The second will require simple and easily comprehensible messages about the future direction of the NHS. It is amazing that Andrew Lansley has been allowed to work for so long at these reforms and yet no-one has ever pressed him devise a way to encapsulate them in a simple media narrative. Hopefully this will now change.

The Big Society is an ongoing problem, which has suffered from incomprehensibility since its inception. No-one appears able to clearly explain it. And now with the Government starting to reduce the funding to local authorities it looks like a bad joke: your services will continue if you do the work yourselves. What the Big Society is about is responsibility. It's about the social networks we have - our families, our friends, our neighbours - and finding ways to ensure that all those people who live in the same area as you have help if they need it. The Government needs to move from the conceptual to the practical, and actually start to outline just how people can get involved.

So Craig Oliver will have to deal with all of this and more. Indeed, it seems that just to provoke another section of the public the Government has chosen to start a poorly explained programme to sell Britain's forests. There is not yet a coherent media narrative that explains why this is a good thing. There should be. In fact, there should have been one even before the measures were announced, because unless the public knows that a problem exists, they won't take kindly to changes to something they quite like. Craig Oliver must ensure that in the future, all announcements are solutions to clear problems, and that they can be condensed into a simple, clear message.

PMQs Review - 2nd February 2011

Well, today's session was certainly different: It was the most civilised PMQs I have ever seen. If I was being cruel, I might say that Ed Miliband has given up trying to better David Cameron, but I don't think that's the case. Of course he's not been particularly effective recently, but I think what his new approach signifies is a new approach from the Labour leader to his role.

Now that he has the economic terrier Ed Balls in the Shadow Chancellor's role and has Doug Alexander as his hyperactive media spokesman, Ed Miliband does not need to get his hands dirty fighting David Cameron. I have long been critical of Miliband's poor debating style and it seems he's found a way to overcome it, because this new approach meant that it was totally irrelevant. He's changed the game in a manner I frankly did not expect, and deserves full credit for it.

I'm not suggesting that every PMQs will be like this - today's topics of Afghanistan and Egypt are two areas where the Government and Opposition are largely in agreement - but that the shift in style is an acknowledgement that what Miliband was doing wasn't working, and that it was actually harming his image. What we saw today was an attempt to rise above the usual 'bunfight' that is PMQs and begin the era of 'new politics', which is still an often repeated but largely meaningless phrase. If Ed Miliband can create that kind of pure political image he'll be in a very strong position - although he may well find that David Cameron can play this game too.

So how on earth do you score this, given that they didn't really compete and they agreed on pretty much every point? What I think has to be noted is that this style of PMQs stemmed from a change in approach by Ed Miliband. Because of the nature of PMQs, the Prime Minister doesn't really have a chance to set the initial tone. So for creating a novel atmosphere and changing a dynamic that has not suited him, the win must go to Ed Miliband.

Remarkable Ed Miliband victory. 

Eurozone differences are still unresolved

This week Ireland had a very successful bond auction. The fact that there were €44.5bn worth of offers for €5bn worth of bonds suggests that investors have rediscovered their faith in the Irish economy, but unfortunately things are not that simple. Ireland's bonds were so popular because they are supported by the EU's new bailout fund, the EFSF (European Financial Stability Fund). And not only is this fund backed by 13 of the Eurozone members, but well over half of the €440bn that makes up the fund comes from European states which have AAA credit ratings: indeed €119bn, or 27%, comes from Germany alone. So the markets weren't really buying Irish debt – they were buying German. And they were doing it at a discount rate, for less than it costs to buy real German debt.

These problems are at the heart of the big struggle between Eurozone powerhouse Germany and the European Commission. Angela Merkel and Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso are at loggerheads over Barroso's desire to get the EFSF reformed at next Friday's EU Heads of State summit. Merkel wants to wait for two reasons: First, as the Irish bond auction illustrated, Germany is being put in a difficult position through the EFSF. It wants to wait until the next EU Heads of State summit in March to look at the issue and prepare a broader set of measures which force struggling states to agree to strict, standardised, fiscal controls. Secondly, parts of Germany are going to the polls in the upcoming months, and Merkel cannot afford to be seen to be bailing out the rest of the Eurozone and getting nothing in return.

The fundamental differences in Eurozone economies and the divide between the fiscally 'responsible' northern states like the Netherlands and Germany and the indebted southern states like Italy and Portugal have yet to be resolved. The recession and the creation of a permanent bailout fund have just brought them to the fore.

Weekly Round-up - 30.01.11

This week was dominated by figures released on Tuesday which showed that the UK economy had shrunk by 0.5% in the final quarter of 2010. Most economists had predicted 0.5% growth. Combined with December's inflation figure of 3.7% - way above the Bank of England's 2% target - and Mervyn King's warning that inflation could top 5% in 2011, it was a bad week for George Osborne. The figures were a gift to Labour but Ed Miliband failed to make the most of them at PMQs on Wednesday, as Cameron put in one of his best, and most statesmanlike performances.

The other big news this week was the belated publication of the Government's review into the UK's counter-terrorism measures. There was some good news - a reduction in the duration of detention without charge from 28 days to 14 days, curbs on police stop and search powers and measures to stop local councils using surveillance operations so much - and the review was definitely a success for Nick Clegg and the liberal wing of the Tories, but it did not go as far as some would have liked. Control Orders were replaced with TPIMs (Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures) but contain many of the same provisions, even if they are a little less stringent. The problem of dealing with these suspects outside the criminal justice system still exists though.

Elsewhere, Lord Lawson and Mark Pritchard helpfully stuck it to David Cameron by kicking up a fuss about the undesirability of coalition government. We also saw the MoD scrambling to defend itself against allegations from senior military figures that they were leaving a huge hole in Britain's defence capabilities by scrapping nine new Nimrod aircraft. And we were treated to more Eurozone grumblings as Germany continued to push for stringent budget checks across Europe rather than immediately back Commission President Jose Manuel Barosso's bail-out fund.  

Maverick CCTV employees splice Top Gun into patriotic video

For the past few weeks the Chinese Government has, to an extent, had the Americans on the back foot following revelations about its new stealth fighter. People in the West have been re-evaluating the balance of power in Asia and wondering where they got the technology from. No doubt wanting to confirm this superiority and uphold its patriotic duty, CCTV released a very impressive video of the J-10 fighter blowing up another plane. Unfortunately for CCTV it seems like they underestimated the investigative powers of Chinese internet users, who were pretty quick to point out that the scene of the plane being destroyed was first shown in Top Gun, way back in 1986. The sheer audacity just takes my breath away...

PMQs Review - 26th January 2011

My prediction that the economic figures released yesterday would dominate PMQs was borne out as Ed Miliband made the UK's 0.5% contraction the focus for has six questions. The problem was that he faced the most agile David Cameron I've seen at the dispatch box in weeks and that he was relentlessly barracked by the Government benches.

Miliband got a cheer when he rose - reflecting new found belief on the Labour benches - but his first question was predictable and weak. He asked, in the deadpan way that he always does with his first question, what the cause of the poor economic performance was: Cue dozens of Tories and Lib Dems shouting 'YOU!' at the Labour leader.

Cameron's approach clearly confused Miliband. He stepped up and said the figures were 'disappointing' even without the impact of snow. Cameron taking responsibility and bringing up the bad weather first was clearly not something that Miliband was prepared for, and it exposed Miliband's inability to adapt. He asked Cameron if without the weather growth would have been flat. Cameron simply said 'yes'.

The next exchange began with Miliband's best line of the day, when he shot back at Cameron that the PM didn't understand that without growth there would be no recovery. But he was clearly rattled and the Tory backbenches began to mercilessly mock his stuttering style of delivery. Cameron responded by quoting the head of the OECD, who had said that before the Coalition's deficit reduction plan the economy had been 'out of control'.

The following question was another example of Miliband's apparent inability to 'war game' PMQs properly. If he'd been through a preparatory dual with an aide then he would have rapidly realised that claiming that the Labour Party left a legacy of growth was a poor strategy. Cameron jumped on the 'laughable proposition' that Labour left a 'golden legacy' and reeled off a list of Labour's economic failures.

Miliband was beaten. Lost. He didn't seem to know what he was going to ask so just made some comment about Cameron being out of touch. The Tories laughed at him. Miliband went personal and attacked Cameron's 'arrogance'. Cameron made a joke - which to be frank he's already used too much in the House - about Miliband's inability to think on his feet before highlighting Labour's own deficit reduction plans, which were due to start this year.

Miliband recovered with his last question. He launched into an attack on Andy Coulson, which wasn't particularly coherent but did raise an important point. He also raised the comments by David Davis, who said that without the former NotW man Cameron's inner circle was out of touch. Unfortunately he then said the Coalition's policies were 'hurting not working'. It didn't even rhyme properly. Cameron finished him off by asking why he was claiming credit for appointing Ed Balls when he didn;t want him in the first place and by outlining the coalition's plan to deal with the deficit to ensure growth.

I said yesterday that Miliband would have no excuses for not winning today. In fairness to him, Cameron's strategy was proactive and he gave his best ever performance against the new Labour leader. But so many of Cameron's lines were easily prepared put-downs to predictable questions. And too often when put on the spot Miliband simply failed to think quickly and adapt. He almost always starts with a simple factual question, before asking a couple more and then getting confused when the course of the debate takes a different route to the one he'd prepared. With better preparation he could be so much more effective.

Solid Cameron win.  

Filibustering could hasten Lords reforms

One of the most short-sighted things about Labour's filibustering in the Lords is the long-term damage that it could do to the current structure of the Upper House. Unlike in the Commons, there are no mechanisms to restrict the length of debates in the Lords. This means that there is a risk of filibustering, but until now this has not been a problem because it was seen as poor form. It goes against the general intention of the Sailsbury Convention of 1945, which gave the Commons primacy and acknowledged that the Lords did not have democratic legitimacy.

I happen to think that, despite being obviously anachronistic and undemocratic, the Lords plays a very positive role in our legislative system. But it cannot continue as it is if the opposition party in the Commons uses its peers to filibuster Government legislation. By breaking convention Labour's actions necessitate the creation of new rules limiting debates in the Lords. And by raising the topic of reform in one area, people will naturally start to look more widely at the way the Lords operates. 

PMQs Preview - 26th January 2011

This is not going to be a long post. In fact I wrote that sentence just to beef it up a bit. Because PMQs tomorrow is only going to be about one thing: today's shock 0.5% GDP contraction. Balls has already launched a pretty effective broadside on Osborne tonight, claiming that the 0.7% GDP growth in the previous quarter was a legacy of Labour's spending plans and that these are the first set of figures that reflect the Conservatives' economic policies.

Surely even Ed Miliband can make this stick tomorrow. For all their bluster Cameron and Osborne know that the weather did not cause all this damage alone - and that blaming the snow is a line that won't play well in the House. Expect their VAT hike to take a beating. Despite this, Balls' record under Brown and the resignation of Alan Johnson late last week should give Cameron something to hold on to, even if Miliband can just point to Coulson and previous Tory calls for more financial deregulation. It should be fun... 

YouGov polls don't look too bad for the coalition

Just a quick post to highlight a few statistics from this weekend's YouGov poll. First up, we have the results of a question asking how well certain politicians are doing, which gives Cameron an approval rating of -6%, puts Miliband on -11%, and Clegg on -34%. The discrepancy with the overall voting intention is obvious: Labour are ahead on 43%, followed by the Tories on 39% and the Lib Dems on 9%. It seems that despite a steady decline since May, Cameron is still the Conservative's best electoral asset and Miliband is still failing to impress the public.

Despite Cameron's personal popularity, the Government's approval rating has fallen to -22%. But this figure won't upset the coalition too much, given that they believe that by 2013 there will be a resurgent economy and that they'll get all the credit. Based on this, the -28% rating for Miliband's ability to handle the economy, and the fact that all anyone in politics has talked about for the past two years has been recession and debt, I think the coalition will feel that if they stay committed to their deficit reduction programme they'll come out the other end in a very strong position indeed.

Weekly Round-up - 23.01.11

This week will certainly be remembered for the two dramatic resignations that came on Thursday and Friday. Alan Johnson's decision to resign, taken late Thursday afternoon, was a shock because despite his rather embarrassing inability to master his economic brief he still retained the confidence of Ed Miliband. His decision to leave for personal reasons - it appears his wife is filing for divorce -will mean that the attacks on Miliband's personal judgement which will inevitably come next week will not be as effective. But the Labour leader will still have to answer some awkward questions now that Ed Balls, the man that he deliberately snubbed last year, is his new Shadow Chancellor.

We were also treated, early on Friday morning, to the resignation of Andy Coulson, David Cameron's Director of Communications. This was not a total surprise - it had been a question of when not if - but the timing was a little unexpected. The case against Coulson personally has a lot of circumstantial evidence but has so far lacked concrete proof. He had quite accurately realised that he had committed the cardinal sin for a press officer and become the story, but that had been true to some extent since he was hired. While it was excruciating to see an opportunistic Ed Miliband question Cameron's judgement just hours after his own inept Shadow Chancellor had walked, the PM will quite rightly face some hard questions next week about his decision to hire the former NotW Editor. As a final point, it is worth noting that without question both Johnson and Coulson chose to use the appearance of Tony Blair at the Chilcot inquiry as cover for their resignations.

The rest of the week was dominated by unemployment figures that made particularly depressing reading for young people, and the official launch of Andrew Lansley's NHS reforms, which - although well-intentioned and if successful will radically improve the way the NHS operates - represent an unusual gamble by the PM.

Johnson's resignation: good or bad for Miliband?

I have long argued that Labour could make life a lot harder for the Tories if they put Ed Balls or Yvette Cooper in the Shadow Chancellor's role. Now that Balls is there, expect him to make the brief his own and really push Osborne on every decision. While the Conservatives will no doubt mock Balls's closeness to Gordon Brown and lambast Miliband for his decision to hire Johnson for a job he was never suited for, after a couple of weeks this will die down and the Tories will be left facing someone who is ruthless and totally on top of his brief.

But while it's not good news for the Tories, and it definitely is good news for Ed Balls and Yvette Cooper - who will no longer be wasted shadowing William Hague - I'm not too sure that it's good news for Ed Miliband. He didn't put Balls into that role for two reasons: they have different ideas about what Labour's economic policy should be, and Miliband thought Balls would become too powerful as Shadow Chancellor. Both of these problems still exist.

Ed Balls has a different economic agenda to Miliband. It was evident in the leadership election and it is still there now. Miliband clearly had problems controlling Johnson as well, but Balls is different because unlike Johnson, he actually has a plan of action and knows what he's doing. Johnson was never really a threat even when he disagreed: Balls could be. It's not surprising that Balls has said that he is fully supportive of Darling's deficit reduction plan, because he has to show that they're on the same team. But he will deviate soon enough.

Balls is convinced his economic approach is right, and won't be worried by Tory attacks on Labour for being unwilling to tackle the deficit. Public support for that is falling anyway, and Miliband's half-hearted attempts at moderation will disappear. 2011 will not just see the pressure increase on the coalition: there will be equally as much pressure on the Labour Party to oppose cuts everywhere: across every department and across every county. Balls will heed all these calls, and Miliband won't have the political clout to stop him.

But this isn't necessarily a bad thing for Labour. The two worked closely for a long time under Gordon Brown and will have seen the chaos that was his relationship with Tony Blair. They will work hard to avoid that happening again. Even if Miliband is initially weakened personally, the Labour Party as a whole will undoubtedly be strengthened by having a competent Shadow Chancellor in the midst of the most dramatic changes to Government in over a decade. And that in turn will strengthen Miliband's claim that the Labour Party has a plausible, alternative agenda to the Coalition and that they can win in 2015. 

PMQs Review - 19th January 2011

Bit of an odd session today, with a six-question break in the middle of Ed Miliband's questions to the PM. Even odder, however, was the huge cheer that Miliband got when he stood up to speak: for a split-second I think he thought something else was going on in the Chamber. Still, it's definitely good news for the Labour leader that his party is starting to support him.

The first question, as it tends to be with Miliband, was very simple. He asked if it was a good thing that unemployment was rising. Cameron responded very well and actually gave an honest answer, stating that he was worried about the figures but that there was some progress being made. He then, cleverly, raised the issue of youth unemployment and pre-empted the Leader of the Opposition by saying that it had increased by 40% under Labour.

And so it all started to go wrong for Ed. He clumsily read out his clearly scripted line which bore no relation to what Cameron had just said, and accused him of being complacent - Cameron's answer had been anything but. He then delivered a hopeless line about how the PM was 'rumbled' in Oldham. It made no sense. Predictably, Cameron laid into him for his inability to debate properly and his reliance on his notes, before easily swatting away his attack on the coalition's decision to scrap the Future Jobs Fund with some excellent statistics.

We then endured a 6-question interlude before Miliband got back up to ask the PM if he could guarantee that hospital waiting times would not increase. This was a well-designed question, because the PM can't guarantee it. He can't because he's abolished top-down targets, and that means that there is no longer scope for a centrally imposed guarantee. But Cameron failed to make this point, and to argue that his reforms would reduce waiting times, which was his biggest slip-up of the day. Instead he just started to attack Labour for not promising an increase in NHS spending.

Miliband then pushed him on the same point again, and made a very good point about NHS waiting times going down under Labour. Cameron made the same response as before, criticising the Labour Party for not promising to increase NHS spending and trying - pretty unsuccessfully - to paint the Conservatives as the party of the NHS.

Miliband said Cameron was taking the 'National out of the NHS', which is a nice line but didn't really reinforce the point Miliband made in the previous question. Miliband then got a little personal, and called the PM 'arrogant'. By now Cameron had got back into his swing, and he came up with a line - I've no idea why he didn't use it earlier - that the waiting list times were in the NHS constitution. He also said the reforms would save £5bn and improve the NHS.

The session started with Cameron on top and ended the same way too. Miliband made some comments about broken promises which didn't fit his earlier questions and were horrendously delivered, prompting Cameron to make yet another joke about his sub-standard debating skills.

What's most worrying for Miliband is that if he can't kick Cameron around on Lansley's NHS reforms and bankers' bonuses then what can he beat him on? These were golden opportunities for Miliband to make life very hard for Cameron and yet, aside from a couple of good questions, he has not managed to do it. So poor is his delivery and his inability to divert from his script that he's managed to make it an issue that Cameron highlights as much as Miliband picks up on dodged questions. Cameron was on better form than last week and, aside from one missed opportunity, was on top for the whole debate. So while Miliband's attacks on the NHS might play well in public, they were not good enough to save him from defeat today.

Cameron win.

Spin School 101

Daft. That's the word that comes to mind when you look at the letter Tom Baldwin, Ed Miliband's new spinner, sent to pretty much everyone in the media. First of all, he's become the story, which is exactly the opposite of what he should be doing. And secondly, he's created a situation whereby if the press do start calling the coalition the 'Conservative-led Government' then they'll look like they're taking orders from Ed Miliband's Comms guy!

I do understand what he means - even if, in the long-term, he's doing the Tories a favour. But it's an embarrassingly clumsy way to go about conveying this message to the press. A quiet word with the editors would have worked a lot better. Anyway, if you're interested, here is the letter:

As you may have noticed, we have changed our language in recent weeks to avoid describing the Government as a coalition or a partnership of equals. We believe a more accurate description is that this is a Conservative-led government.

I understand that the phrase a "Tory-led government" is two words too long to be repeated on every occasion. But I also think that you are making a choice whenever you call it "the coalition". When we were in power, no one was left in any doubt that our most unpopular decisions were those of a "Labour government". The word "Coalition" is one that avoids party labels while also suggesting a degree of inter-party harmony and co-operation which is, day-by-day and split-by-split, being shown as false.

Unless Nick Boles gets his way, "the Coalition" will not be standing for election.

Can I suggest you at least vary your description of this Tory-led government. On some occasions, you might call it a Conservative-Liberal Democrat government. On others it might be just "the government".

When you are talking about this government in a political context, I think it would be fairer to refer to it by reference to party labels.

With best wishes, Tom Baldwin,
Director of Strategy and Communications

Oldham East and Saddleworth tells us nothing new

As exciting as by-elections are, this one didn’t really tell us anything new. Labour has been steadily climbing in the polls from around 30% at the election to around 42% now, and it was always likely that they would perform better than they did in May. That the big 17% leads suggested by opinion polls before the election never materialised was expected, but a win of 10% was exactly the kind of result that Ed Miliband needed in order to calm his Party’s nerves.

Senior figures like Miliband and Yvette Cooper have stressed that while it gives Labour some momentum, the Party has a long way to go before it is in a position to win a general election. They are right to be cautious. The polls suggest that Miliband is not regarded as a great prospect and while people are now less certain that the coalition’s economic policies are the right ones, they still don’t believe Labour would be any better.

It’s also important to note that despite Labour’s claims to the contrary, this wasn’t necessarily a vote against the coalition’s economic agenda: if you add the Conservative and Lib Dem vote share it comes to 44.7%, which is more than Labour’s 42.1%.

The Lib Dems actually gained a larger share of the vote than in May: up from 31.6% to 31.9%. This was probably because of tactical voting by some Conservatives, but their effective and determined local campaign does show that the Party is still alive. Clegg will be relatively satisfied that his Party avoided a bigger defeat, and while he’ll be afraid that May’s local elections will be unpleasant, he’ll also argue that national poll ratings that have them around 10% are likely to mean nothing at the next election.

The Conservative high command will be satisfied. They decided a long time ago that this by-election was not one that they could win and that it served the long-term health of the coalition better if the Lib Dems came through unscathed. They’ve achieved this aim. Their only worry will be that their weak campaign in Oldham will simply encourage those backbenchers who are concerned that the coalition panders to the Liberal Democrats. Baroness Warsi has, perhaps unwisely, told them to shut up and stop whining, but there is little chance of that happening.

Weekly Round-up - 16-01-11

Westminster politics got underway again this week and provided us with plenty of action to kick-off 2011. The week’s most amusing story was the news that Tory MP Mark Pritchard, who is Deputy Chairman of the 1922 Committee, got into an altercation with John Bercow and ended up shouting ‘You are not fucking royalty’ at the Speaker before storming off. It’s another indication of just how much the Speaker has fallen out with his former party.

The big news of the week was, of course, the result of the Oldham East and Saddleworth by-election. Yet as exciting as it was, it didn’t really change anything. Labour, and particularly Ed Miliband, needed a comfortable win: they got it. The Lib Dems needed to show that their support had not totally collapsed and that they could still compete: they did that. The Tory high command just needed the Lib Dems to survive in order to ensure the stability of the coalition: which is exactly what happened. No party will be particularly unhappy with this result.

The story that dominated the first half of the week was bankers’ bonuses. This came to its head on Wednesday with a very competitive PMQs after Chancellor George Osborne had been called to the House for emergency questions on Tuesday. Ed Miliband – who has had a pretty good week for once – embarrassed the PM by pointing out that the Tories’ website still proudly displayed his election pledge to limit bankers’ bonuses to £2,000. Yet despite early hits, Miliband is still a PMQs’ amateur and, unwilling to depart from his prepared script, failed to kill off Cameron and let him back in to steal a draw.

The Government also managed to overcome some backbench resistance to defeat an amendment to its EU Sovereignty Bill, but left itself in an unhappy position by proposing a piece of legislation which is detested by the very people it was designed to appease. We also found out that the decision on Control Orders is to be delayed until next week because of ongoing cabinet disputes.

YouGov also released figures this week that placed The Conservatives on 36%, 7% behind Labour on 43%. While they may be an anomaly, these figures did reinforce recent ComRes figures that showed Labour with an 8% lead. Interestingly, while Labour support has risen since May it is steady around 42%, and these big leads are occurring because of a fall in Conservative support.

The big news for the economy this week came from the MPC, which decided to keep interest rates at 0.5%. It hopes that this will create the right environment for economic growth, and is choosing to focus on this rather than efforts to rein in inflation. There was also some good news from credit rating agency Moody’s, which said that the UK’s AAA rating was safe.

In Europe the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs, Baroness Ashton, suggested that the arms embargo to China should be lifted for the good of the European economy. This came after a visit by Chinese Vice-Premier – and probable future PM – Li Keqiang to various European capitals. Given the shock that reverberated around Western defence circles after new stealth fighter technology was unveiled just before US Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ trip to China, it is highly unlikely that the US and UK would be keen on such a move.

YouGov Polling 13-01-11
Conservative  41%
Labour  41%
Liberal Democrat  8%
Government Approval  -17%