By Tim MontgomerieFollow Tim on Twitter. Yesterday we published Mark Fox's review of the new book – Masters of Nothing – by Tory MPs Matt Hancock and Nadhim Zahawi. As Mark blogged, the book is wide-ranging in its scope but one recommendation has caused a little bit of controversy. They recommend that company boards should […]
By Matthew BarrettFollow Matthew on Twitter The Daily Telegraph reported this morning: "The Prime Minister has been warned that government plans to get people to reduce their bills through efficiency measures are likely to fail. Mr Cameron’s senior energy adviser pours scorn on claims by Chris Huhne, the Energy Secretary, that rises in gas and oil […]
By Paul GoodmanFollow Paul on Twitter We should stop fighting major wars outside the European theatre. The thrust of Bernard Jenkins's response last Friday to my article on defence the day before is that we must combat threats he doesn't name with budgets we haven't got. Since Bernard is an intelligent man, he knows that […]
By Tim MontgomerieFollow Tim on Twitter. I recently argued that this autumn would give us a very good sense of whether David Cameron was a radical or a managerial Prime Minister. In an article for the Mail on Sunday (at the bottom of this link) the Prime Minister admits that his government has been too […]
By Paul GoodmanFollow Paul on Twitter I asked yesterday: which taxes should rise if other are to fall? But there is an alternative to hiking taxes still further – namely, for the Government to cut the deficit and meet the competitive challenge of Asia by renewing its drive to reduce the growth of spending. So […]
By Paul GoodmanFollow Paul on Twitter The debate about replacing the 50p income tax rate with a new mansion tax was bubbling away when I went to France a week ago, and I found it still doing so on my return. While I was away, David Willetts lined up with Vince Cable – who also […]
By Matthew BarrettFollow Matthew on Twitter Figures released by the Treasury's annual Public Expenditure Statistical Analyses today have shown a record gap in yearly public spending on people in Scotland, and people in England. The total public spending per Scot last year was £10,212, compared to £8,588 in England. The gap is now £1,624, an […]
By Tim MontgomerieFollow Tim on Twitter. The Wall Street Journal is hailing last night's US budget deal (that still needs to be formally ratified) as the biggest victory for small government conservatives since the 1996 welfare reforms. What does the deal do? It is a two phase process; In phase one the debt ceiling is […]
Commenting on the US debt ceiling debate Vince Cable has described the US Republicans as behaving like "right-wing nutters". Ryan Streeter of ConservativeHomeUSA explains why John Boehner and other Republicans have decided to play hardball with the high-spending President Obama. The debate raging in Washington over America’s debt ceiling has generated a flurry of competing […]
By Tim Montgomerie Follow Tim on Twitter. The overall rate of unemployment in Spain is 21%. It's 45% for young people. Both add up to a deadly recipe for political unrest. The first pointers to that unrest are now clear. One pointer came yesterday when the ruling socialist government was hammered in municipal and regional elections. […]
Tim Montgomerie Many of us would have liked David Cameron and George Osborne to have set out their deficit reduction strategy in more (if not full) detail before the last General Election. My belief was that the country was ready for candour and would have voted for truth telling. Cameron and Osborne decided that it […]
Tim Montgomerie The Right has done well across the world since the economic crisis struck. The two exceptions were the USA and Australia. That's beginning to change. Earlier this month Obama suffered the worst mid-term result of any US President for seventy years. In Australia Labor became the first first-term government to lose its majority […]
One of the big implications of the rescue of Greece is electoral unpopularity for Angela Merkel. Last weekend the German Chancellor's CDU party lost power in Germany's most populous state, North Rhine-Westphalia. With many of the state's cities are the verge of bankruptcy, Mrs Merkel's federal coalition is in no position to help them – […]
ConservativeInternational last looked at Angela Merkel's fortunes at the end of January. Problems with her new FDP coalition partners were already emerging then. Her government's fortunes have got worse since. Guido Westerwelle, the leader of the FDP and her junior coalition partner, has seen his party's popularity halve since becoming German Foreign Minister. 62% of […]
“This financial crisis is for capitalist neoliberals what Chernobyl was for the nuclear lobby.” – Daniel Cohn-Bendit in 2008 This week's Economist looks at some of the reasons why the Right has actually done rather well in electoral terms (eg at last year's European Elections) over the last two years: The popular backlash against capitalism […]