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Ed misses his opportunity on Europe

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MORNING BRIEFING – By Benedict Brogan (Daily Telegraph).

Good Morning. Welcome to the 90s. The fragile Tory truce on Europe is swiftly becoming the peace that passeth all understanding. If Ed Miliband had less caution and a little more low cunning, the Conservatives would be in very troubled waters this morning. As it is, we seem to have reached a position where the Prime Minister intends to allow his flagship measure to be brought forward by backbenchers despite being left out of the Queen’s Speech. He will allow ministers to condemn his own Queen’s Speech on the basis that it does not legislate for a referendum date enshrined in law, but will not criticise it himself. As things stand, the bill will fall before a Lib-Lab coalition, but it is difficult to see how this will benefit Mr Cameron in 2015 if he does not associate himself more strongly with any attempt to bring it.

It’s hard to understand what Dave’s playing at. If the backbench bill does capture the national mood, then he has surrendered his personal association with it and the rebels get the glory. If his ministers back the bill and he does not, then his hold on the party big guns looks weak. If he doesn’t vote for the bill he looks unprincipled, and if he does vote for a bill which is almost certain to be defeated, he looks a prisoner in his own government.

It’s hard to fathom Ed’s tactics, too. A pledge to go with a referendum following the next election would remove one of Dave’s biggest vote winning weapons. Mr Cameron would then find himself in the same position as Mr Miliband, committed to defending Britain in Europe some time around 2018. Dave’s backbenchers would bay for him to go early, calmer voices would point out that there was nothing on the table as negotiations had not happened, and bingo, the fragile Tory entente over Europe which dates back to Maastricht is in play. High ability in low politics is important. It’s something Mr Tony understood when he kicked William Hague’s Euro stool away from him in the run-up to the 2001 election. Talk of predistribution is fine, but the electorate also need a solid reason not to go with the incumbent parties. Europe is an opportunity Ed may regret wasting.

Part of Ed’s problems, of course, is that his own party is also divided on the EU. Alistair Darling pops up in the Times (£) this morning defending it, while Gisela Stewart, Frank Field and others have pointed out that at present such an idea is without popular legitimacy. On the Tory side, Boris yesterday gave an all things to all people response on the issue, saying that Britain could walk away, but that he did not back it without seeing how renegotiations went. Lord Lamont also joined Lord Lawson in supporting a Brexit. Both party leaderships are clearly watching their backs while formulating EU policy. But if the Ukip surge was, in part, down to the idea that politicians had shown contempt for public opinion, neither party is adopting a stance which will remedy that situation.

WITHOUT A CLEGG TO STAND ON

That was the view of Elizabeth Truss, who appeared in the Commons yesterday to deny that there was a significant problem with the Coalition’s childcare policies following Mr Clegg’s objections. Her line was that the Lib Dems are committed to childcare reforms and this was a little local difficulty over the detail. The Independent‘s Whitehall mole seems less confident, complaining that “Clegg agreed this policy and has proved as trustworthy as on tuition fees and Europe referendums.” Labour are sitting back and enjoying the sport. As a masterclass in the Coalition’s tendency to promise first, ask questions later, this is hard to beat, and unless there is a long and inevitably costly rethink, the proposals look dead in the water. What remains is DC’s “women problem”, and Dave is finding that his Coalition spouse is rather an obstacle in his mission to reach out to other women…

BORIS BEATS DAVE TO THE PLEASURES OF THE EAST

Whatever you say about the Chinese, you cannot deny they have a fine sense of humour. Despite his protestations that there was no ban and that he would travel in Autumn, Boris has beaten him to the punch. As we report, Bo-Jo is headed out to Beijing at the head of a trade mission which departs in January. According to Boris, Dave won’t be going with him “unless he’s in the hold.” But for now, the PM’s thoughts are of the Bear, not the Dragon. Dave is in Russia today meeting with President Vladimir Putin at the Black Sea resort of Sochi. Writing for us, Con Coughlin argues that while the visit will be marked by the “mind games” of the Russian leader, there is an opportunity for the pair to hasten the end of the Syrian civil war:

“But just as Mr Putin seems impervious to criticism of Russia’s human rights record, so he is determined not to let long-standing Russian allies such as Syria fall into the clutches of his Western rivals. Indeed, given his aggressive determination to defend Russian interests at all costs, there will be many people in Britain wondering why Mr Cameron is even bothering to make the trip, irrespective of the welcome he receives. The answer lies in Moscow’s growing realisation that the crisis in Syria could have serious implications for its regional interests, particularly if Islamist elements within the rebel movement were to achieve their goal of replacing the Assad regime.”

OSBORNE FEARS IMF WMD

The data is headed in the right direction for George Osborne. Yesterday’s positive National Institute of Economic and Social Research output number came in at +0.8pc between February and April, the best return since the Olympics. On the downside, the economy will not regain 2008 levels of productivity until 2015. It has been that bad. But at least the trend is positive, and as the Mail reports, manufacturing output has experienced its first back-to-back rise for two years. If there’s a black cloud on the horizon, it is the visit of the increasingly doveish IMF. The FT (£) predicts that there will be a call for austerity to be relaxed. Don’t expect the Treasury to agree – IMF approval has been a useful figleaf until this point, but the Treasury is sold on austerity, and, more importantly, so are the public.

BORISJET RUNS OUT OF FUEL

Mayday! Mayday! Boris Island going down! What we need instead is a new runway at Heathrow, the Transport Select Committee will report today. As we note, the huge cost of providing infrastructure for Boris International has ruled it out of the running, while neither Gatwick nor Stansted is large enough to cope with the overflow from another runway. The committee chairman is Louise Ellman, a Labour MP and hardly a Dave stooge. Even so, there will be some significant brooding in City Hall today.

CHILDREN, MEET MR MURDER

Michael Gove laid into the infantalisation of history teaching yesterday in a speech to a conference of…history teachers. As we report, he cited the use of Mr Men cartoons to teach about the Nazis, and the use of Disney films to instruct children on the realities of Middle Ages life (talking bears, pusillanimous wolves – standard stuff). Unfortunately, he also hailed the achievements of Richard J. Evans, a man who had condemned Mr Gove’s reforms as “a pub quiz” in the New Statesman a while back. A for oratory, D for homework, Master Gove.

JACKSON HOLE

The expenses regulator is dragging Stewart Jackson through the courts in pursuit of the capital gains made on his taxpayer funded second home. As we report, Ipsa’s action arises following a dispute between the regulator (which has valued Mr Jackson’s home at £524,000) and the MP, who says it has declined in value since he purchased it for £470,000 in May 2005. Settlements have been reached with 70 other MPs who had been assessed for capital gains payback, 29 of whom paid back in full. Collectively, MPs have made more than £1m on capital gains from second homes since 2010, as we report, with some gaining up to £180,000.

But it isn’t just MPs at it. Following yesterday’s revelation that good typing was sufficient for a £1,000 bonus in the civil service, today sees the publication of the Tax Payers’ Alliance’s annual town hall rich list. The winner? Step forward Katherine Kerswell, a former Group Managing Director in Kent, whose £589,165 package included £420,000 of severance pay. Meanwhile Francis Maude has piled in to the mandarins he suspects of briefing Sue Cameron yesterday. He says, in a letter to us, that: “It’s not glamorous work; it’s often difficult. These hard-working civil servants deserve the support of “senior mandarins”, rather than being trashed in poisonous anonymous briefings.”

BASHING THE BISHOPS

Frank Field has called upon the Archbishop of Canterbury to give up the right of 25 bishops to sit in the upper chamber, the Independent reports. Mr Field accuses the bishops of playing “gesture politics” but seldom voting. It’s not beyond the modern Church of England to fall on its sword if a suitably Lib Dem proposal should arise, and Mr Field’s suggestion that this move would “kickstart Lords reform” is about as Lib Dem as it gets. A spokesman for the CofE, however, issued a stinging rebuke: “This article is an interesting contribution to debate but it does not look as if there is a favourable political context for returning to the subject of constitutional reform just at the moment.” Blistering.

TWEETS AND TWITS

The producers of The Politician’s Husbnd clearly got the important things right:

@PeteWishart:“Quite enjoyed the Politician’s Husband. They never quite get the feel or appearance of Parliament but liked the attempt at Stranger’s Bar.”

TOP COMMENT

In the Telegraph

Con Coughlin – A man we can do business with?

Fraser Nelson – Our universities should take a lesson from the land of the free

Jeremy Warner – Osborne is offering a hair of the dog that bit us

Dr Sarah Wollaston – We doctors worry about NHS failings, too

Best of the rest

Alistair Darling in the Times (£)- Stay in the EU. It’s clearly in our interests

Martin Wolf in the FT (£) – The time for a British decision on Europe is now

Polly Toynbee in The Guardian – Labour must stand firm: no to a referendum on Europe

James Delingpole in The Express – Why sneer at the worthy values of our middle class?

THE AGENDA

Today: Civil service strike. Members of the Public and Commercial Service union at a number of government agencies and commissions stage a one-hour strike from 11am in a dispute over pay, jobs and conditions.

11:00 am: Commons Defence Committee to publish Government response to its report on defence acquisitions.

It turns out that Hawking is no Einstein

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as Stephen Hawking really left the company of Albert Einstein, an avowed Zionist who worked to create the State of Israel, and replaced him with the august company of Elvis Costello and other Israel boycotters?

I hosted Hawking for a lecture at Oxford in 1998 where I introduced him to 1000 Oxford students. He could not have been more humble and approachable. Aside from his lecture, delivered through his voice synthesizer, on string theory – little of which I understood but which my students assured me was ‘brilliant’ – I remember his love of babies and practical jokes.

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Hawking is indeed boycotting Peres’s Jerusalem meet

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The University of Cambridge on Wednesday afternoon belatedly resolved conflicting reports surrounding Stephen Hawking’s cancellation of his scheduled participation in the fifth annual Presidential Conference in Jerusalem in June, confirming that the renowned physics professor was boycotting the event for political reasons.

“We have now received confirmation from Professor Hawking’s office that a letter was sent on Friday to the Israeli President’s office regarding his decision not to attend the Presidential Conference, based on advice from Palestinian academics that he should respect the boycott,” a Cambridge spokesperson said.

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Queen’s speech: it’s what’s out that counts

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MORNING BRIEFING – By Benedict Brogan (Daily Telegraph).

BREAKING NEWS: The omission of measures aimed at problem drinking and smoking from today’s Queen’s Speech does not mean they have been abandoned, Jeremy Hunt told the Today programme:

“Just because something is not in the Queen’s Speech does not mean the Government can’t bring it forward as law, but we have not made a decision…On plain paper packaging, if we do it we will be the first country in Europe, the second country in the world – Australia only introduced it in January. So it is a much harder job to assess the evidence as to how effective it would be. I want to make sure we do the job properly so I’ve said I will take the time needed.”

QUEEN’S SPEECH HIGHLIGHTS DAVE’S TACTICAL CONUNDRUM

Good morning. It’s Queen’s Speech day, and what’s out is just as noteworthy as what’s in. As we report, there’s some meat this morning on immigration – landlords will be made responsible for checking their tenants’ status before arranging a letting. The headline announcements we have already – an Immigration Bill which will curb access to benefits and non-emergency NHS treatment for temporary visitors, the flat rate pension scheme, a £72,000 cap on care contributions, and a paving bill for HS2. Patrick Wintour has a full list of runners and riders over at the Guardian. The speech cannot be said to be a knee jerk reaction to the local elections – for a start it needs to be written three days in advance as the ink takes that long to dry on the goat hide (h/t Nick Robinson) – but it does bear the fingerprints of Lynton Crosby. There’s meat here for the Tory backbenches if they can stop squabbling long enough to enjoy it.

What isn’t there is also instructive. Out have gone proposed measures on plain cigarette packaging and data (the snooper’s charter), suggesting Dave is weary of another fight with the malcontents. Nor is there any mention of gay marriage (actually, there was no mention in the last speech, either) except to say that it has been carried over from the last parliament. As our leader points out, that presents Dave with a messy dilemma. Assuming it comes back from the Lords having been amended to within an inch of its life, he will be under pressure to reverse those amendments in the lower chamber. Cue a repeat of the popular Tory mods v head bangers slugfest. Party unity demands he let it slip quietly into the night, but having expended so much political capital to take the bill this far, it is difficult to see how he can drop it.

Finally, there’s Europe. Dave conceded yesterday in a letter to John Baron that he wouldn’t be legislating for a vote in this parliament after all, despite several hints to the contrary. As we report, it was only last week that Downing Street was whispering that Dave would introduce legislation even at the risk of defeat, so strong were his convictions. Now, it appears that Number 10 would stop at backing a backbencher bringing a private bill which would almost certainly run out of time. Surveys in both the Sun and the Times (£) indicate that the British public is more eurosceptic and ever. Dave choosing this moment to hide his light under a bushel is hardly calculated to make him friends in the marginals.

Nothing seems to frustrate Tory MPs more than Mr Cameron’s habit of over-promising and under-delivering. Equally, though, in the context of first Nigel Lawson and then Liam Fox, it’s worth pointing out how striking it is that otherwise thoughtful, intelligent Conservatives appear to have no sense of the harm they do to the party’s 2015 chances by airing their differences with Dave. Message discipline may have a slightly Stalinist flavour, but Labour are better at it.

KIP CLIMBING ON UP THE CHARTS

Farewell Tory poll revival, we barely knew ye. The Sun‘s YouGov poll shows Labour’s lead back out at 10pts with Ukip biting a considerable chunk from the Conservative figures (Con 29pc, Lab 39pc, Lib Dem 9pc, Ukip 16pc). Eccentrically, the majority of Ukip supporters do not even cite Europe as a priority. Only 49pc select it as an issue of utmost importance to the country, compared with 90pc worried about immigration and 73pc with the economy.

That will confuse the Conservatives. Given that hardline policies on immigration and welfare abuse, exactly the issues Ukip voters prioritise, had been trailed extensively before the local elections, Dave could be forgiven for asking what it is that the party has that the Conservatives lack. Well, an increasing number of members for a start. The FT (£) reports that the party’s membership base rose by more than 50pc in the year to April, reaching 26,097 from a base of 17,220. It’s a long way short of the Tory number (which has declined from around 500,000 in the 1990s to c.130,000 today), but the respective trajectories of the parties will concern CCHQ. At least they have not lost any MPs to Ukip in this parliament. The Mail warns that Bernard Jenkin has already raised the prospect of others departing from the Tory benches to form a Ukip parliamentary delegation.

TALKING YOUR LANGUAGE

Bad news for Polly Toynbee – she’s lost Dr Liam Fox. Writing for us, Dr Fox explains that he no longer cares what was said around the Guardian columnist’s dinner table but “it should matter to [the Conservatives] what is being said in the Dog and Duck in Daventry, Darlington or Dover.” Obviously he did not have time to watch the Chancellor’s speech to warehouse workers in Kent last month. If he had have done, he’d know that nobody was employing working class idiom more effectively in the quest for a “bedder Briddain”. What Ed Miliband would give for the Chancellor’s mockney. As Mary Riddell points out, he still doesn’t speak human very well:

“Belatedly, Labour is shifting away from vague suggestions that the growth fairy would heal the broken economy. Past indecision cut no ice in Boston or elsewhere. If the days of boom have gone for ever, as some economists suspect, then the social democrats whose programmes are tailored to good times need a new story more speedily than ever. That does not mean an instant manifesto, but nor will vision suffice. Voters deserve precision and honesty, and the main parties have offered neither.”

BALLS BLASTED

As befits one of Gordon Brown’s former aides, Ed Balls has perfected the Macavity-esque trick of disappearing when turbulence hits. Now he has been told to pull his socks up, through a Peter Hain article in Progress Online . Mr Hain argues that “Labour’s Treasury team need to get out on the stump now and work even harder. It shouldn’t just be left to Ed and Harriet to carry the heavy load, whether on the World at One, the Today programme or anywhere else.” The former Welsh Secretary also argues for a defence of the position that Labour will borrow more in the short term, a point of some confusion for Red Ed in his WATO interview. Labour standing for more debt? As Fraser Nelson caustically notes in the Spectator, that’s another policy they have stolen from the Tories.

CAMERON REJECTS CHARTER DEAL

Dave will reject the proposals made as an alternative to the Government’s Royal Charter, we report. The Charter was withdrawn from the order of business for the next Privy Council meeting on May 15th in order to allow due consideration of alternative proposals by the press. A public consultation will now run until May 25th, although why, given that the Prime Minister “sticks to his position”, according to a spokesman, is anyone’s guess.

BIG TROUBLE IN GREATER CHINA

He’s coming whether you like it or not. The Chinese are warned in today’s FT (£) that they will be getting a visit from Dave in the autumn, despite sources making it clear in yesterday’s Telegraph that Sino-British relations were badly damaged by the Prime Minister’s desire to have his picture taken with the Dalai Lama. In the meantime, British ministers will decide “who they meet and when they meet them”, according to Downing Street. So there.

TWEETS AND TWITS

Lord Lawson’s comments yesterday won some praise from Austin Mitchell:

@AVMitchell2010:“Bring back Lawson as chancellor.He’s learned sense on EU and he knows how to get a boom going”

TOP COMMENT In the Telegraph

Mary Riddell – For all his proficiency on the palet, Miliband still can’t speak human

Nigel Farage – Lawson calls time on the three-pint heroes

Allister Heath – A revolution that is about to transport capitalism to a new dimension

Telegraph View – New Bills – and an old one that won’t go away

Best of the rest

Simon Jenkins in The Guardian – If Cameron had any sense, he would call a referendum now

Daniel Finkelstein in The Times (£) – Cameron needs a big tent Conservatism

Andrew Alexander in the Daily Mail – Why the Eton crew could sink Cameron

Matthew Norman in The Independent – If only the Queen would speak about a business that gambles with lives

THE AGENDA

Today: Civil service strike. Members of the Public and Commercial Service union at a number of government agencies and commissions stage a one-hour strike from 11am in a dispute over pay, jobs and conditions.

11:30 am: State Opening of Parliament. Palace of Westminster.

Nigel Lawson calls time on the three-pint Eurosceptic heroes

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It’s a lot less lonely now. When a group of unknown political players set up Ukip in 1993, the idea that the UK might someday re-establish its independence and leave the European Union was at best a minority pursuit. Now, no less a man than Lord Lawson advocates the idea, and validates Ukip’s arguments. Clearly nobody now doubts that it is a valid position. The reaction to Lord Lawson’s view has been to ask what damage it will do internally, to David Cameron’s embattled Conservative Party, and there has been speculation about the timing of the statement.

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Afghan Dad Shoots Daughter in Public Execution Ordered by Mullahs

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Islam is the Religion of Peace and Killer Whales Can Fly. All you need is a religious mystic and a box of bullets to save your honor.

In front of 300 villagers, Halima’s father shot her in the head, stomach and waist – a public execution overseen by local religious leaders in Afghanistan to punish her for an alleged affair.

Halima, aged between 18 and 20 and a mother of two, was killed for bringing “dishonour” on her family in a case that underlines how the country is still struggling to protect women more than 11 years after the fall of the Taliban.

Police in the northwestern province of Badghis said Halima was accused of running off with a male cousin while her husband was in Iran, and her father sought advice from Taliban-backed clerics on how to punish her.

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Three questions about North Korea

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im Jong-il, former leader of North Korea and, since his death in 2011, Eternal General Secretary of the Worker’s Party of Korea, was generally considered a wily, if oppressive, old fox. When, inevitably, North Korea’s communist economics periodically led to famine, Kim II would rattle his sabre just enough to prod the West to buy him off with a little aid. As weird as he might have looked and as twisted as the society he ruled may have been, Kim II could be seen in this light as a rational actor on the diplomatic stage.

As his successor, his equally funny-looking son Kim Jong-un, engages in a prolonged and particularly bellicose bout of belligerence, the first question is whether that assessment also applies to him. Is Kim III a cynic or a lunatic?

It’s a question we can ask about North Korea more generally. When Kim II died in December 2011 many in the West giggled at the bizarre scenes of hysterical grief among the citizenry captured on camera and beamed around the world. Surely, we thought as we saw North Koreans bashing themselves over their heads and howling, they were doing it for the benefit of the gun-toting guards just out of shot. Maybe they were. But there’s a scarier possibility: they actually meant it.

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