Norman Tebbit

Vince Cable: exempted from Cabinet responsibility (Photo: Heathcliff O'Malley)

After the long summer recess, Parliament makes a stuttering return to business next Monday when the Commons return before adjourning again on Thursday 16 until October 11 for the party conference season. The House of Lords, taking a disdainful view of such events, stays on holiday until October 5. Quite when the Prime Minister returns from “paternity leave” and posing for family photographs to the business of running the Government, or indeed if he is already doing so by remote control of Mr Clegg, is still unclear. What is certain is that someone should be getting a grip on the business of Government.

The practice of loose talk by Ministers is growing. It needs to stop. It is no business of the Chief… Read More

The Coalition is getting in a muddle (Photo: EPA)

There are plenty of things about the Coalition which worry me, but we should not forget some of the things which may be made possible by the Lib Dem/Con alliance. There is the agreement in principle to the reduction of the budget deficit, even if not yet to the reduction of the debt mountain.

Mr Gove’s education reforms are through Parliament and they may be the first step in restoring literacy, numeracy, science and history in British schools. There can be no guarantee of that, but at least there is a chance that the educational establishment will be forced to ditch their culture of failure.

The publication of Iain Duncan Smith’s “consultation document” on welfare reform is in itself a triumph, although he has a long… Read More

Vince Cable (Photo: Heathcliff O'Malley)

It is not that often that one gets a really good laugh out of the BBC’s Today Programme, but to hear Jack Straw explaining to John Humphrys why NuLab will vote against the referendum on constitutional change was a real delight. Any attempt to reduce the number of constituencies or to equalise their electorates is, for Mr Straw, simply gerrymandering.

I wonder how he explains these figures. In 2001 NuLab won 10.7 million votes and the Tories won 8.4 million. NuLab had a majority in the Commons of more than 160. In 2010 the Tories won 10.7 million votes and Labour won 8.6million. NuLab won 258 seats and the Tories were 26 short of a majority.

That is not much to do with the sharp edge of the first past the post system. It is very largely the effect… Read More

As we come to the Summer Recess, I do not think that the LibDemCon Coalition has done badly so far. In my view the only argument for it was that it gave the Conservatives cover to prescribe economic medicine which not only NuLab but also the Lib Dems had campaigned against at the general election. That it has done – but waving the prescription is one thing, taking the medicine is another. The stress will come on through the summer and autumn, as proposed cuts become real ones.

Nor is there much doubt that some Ministers have discovered that colleagues from the other party are really quite congenial chaps. In the Lords we have long known that. I would always describe the Lib Dem leader there, Lord McNally, as a friend. It is that expression “My Noble Friend”, which denotes that one shares a political allegiance and agenda, that sticks in my throat.

I suspect that this political… Read More

I hope that the report in The Sunday Telegraph of July 18 by Melissa Kite under the headline “Cameron tried to stop election of Eurosceptic” was mistaken. It is not just that in the election in question, that of the chairman of the House of Commons European Scrutiny Committee, the Eurosceptic in question was Bill Cash, who was undoubtedly the right man for the job of giving sceptical consideration to the tidal waves of EU instruments heading across the Channel from Brussels.

The ST deputy political editor reported that not only were several Tory MPs asked by Foreign Secretary Hague to stand against Bill Cash, but that Mr Cameron tried to change the rules to allow ministers to vote in the election. Forget for the moment whether Mr Cameron was, or was not, right to want to exclude Bill Cash from the post. The even more worrying aspect of the affair would… Read More

Tributes left outside the house where Raoul Moat lived Photo: PA

Who would disagree with what the Prime Minister said on Wednesday about both Raoul Moat and those who have begun to idolise his memory? Well, to judge by the piles of flowers and the Facebook contributions, quite a lot of people would.

Ever since the death of Princess Diana there has been not so much a fashion for emotional incontinence as a glut of it looking for somewhere to happen. Scarcely a school’s pet hamster can die without children being expected to fall tearfully into each others’ arms. That lack of self-control or sense of proportionality seems to spill over into a romanticism of violence, and then uncontrolled sentimentality over its fruits.

Perhaps in my reactions to it I may be showing… Read More

Recently there have been two spectacularly clear examples of the way cause and effect seem no longer to be linked in any rational manner in our national affairs these days. One, that of the Prudential Assurance company, was in the private sector; the other, that of bonuses for returning officers at the recent general election, in the public sector.

What they had in common was that clearly identified individuals bungled their duties and were then awarded special rewards in spite of their failings.

According to the Telegraph, returning officers who are normally the chief executives of local councils (and how they have prospered since the days when they were Chief Clerks) can expect a fee for their work in overseeing elections.  In a number of constituencies, voters were turned away from polling stations despite having queued from well before the 10 pm deadline for voting, but the returning officers cheerfully pocketed rewards of over £10,000 to… Read More

Today in The Daily Telegraph Mr Clegg and Mr Cameron told us how they will “Transform Britain By Giving Power Away”. It was a touching little article, perhaps the last they will ever write under those old separate names. Soon there will be only one of them, Mr Clemeron, or perhaps Mr Camalegg. Of course, if Lord Mandelson (The Times, July 12) is to be believed, the Lib Dems were ready to enter a coalition with NuLab as their natural political partners, but Mr Clegg drew the line at entering a political civil partnership with Mr Brown, and Mr Cameron made him a better offer, including a sort of political pre-nuptial agreement it case they fell out.

It is all a far cry from what Mr Cameron (as he then was) told the Spectator on May 1. That article was headed: “The Manifesto i… Read More

In its Business News (July 7) the Telegraph questioned how well the four BP non-executive directors required to oversee safety, ethical and enviromental matters had discharged their responsibilities. At around £100,000 a year they are not badly paid. They should have been alert to the dangers of a lack of operational experience not only of their executive colleagues, but further down the line, among those more immediately assessing the quality of sub-contractors’ operations.

Old BP hands have long been telling anyone who would listen (and that certainly did not include Lord Browne) that BP was not just contracting out the operations of refineries, pipe-lines and rigs, but easing out almost anyone who had experience and knowledge in those fields.

The Mexican Gulf disaster was not the first failure at operational level in BP. The Texas City refinery and the Trans Alaska pipeline incidents should have alerted someone to a possible systemic problem…. Read More

I find that I watch less and less sport on television these days. I used to quite enjoy Wimbledon but somehow this year I found it less attractive. It was while watching a match won by Mr Lu, the Taiwanese player, that I realised why. Mr Lu did not punch the air, throw himself at the ground, snarl or scream in triumph. He was obviously pleased. He smiled and acknowledged the applause with a wave. One of the ladies, a central European, I think Bulgarian, behaved in the same way. And, mercifully, the mens’ finalists gave a pretty good example of both how to win and to lose gracefully.

The contrast with the some of the snarling, screaming, ill-mannered players could not have been greater. One hardly needs to comment on the conduct of the overpaid, underskilled footballers. It seems there… Read More