Janet Daley

The IMF has joined the burgeoning party of those urging the government to acknowledge what all sensible people know: the way to stimulate real and lasting (as opposed to phoney and temporary) growth in the economy is by cutting taxes. And some of the taxes that could be most fruitfully reduced are those which inhibit the spending of ordinary households.

There has been much rancour expended over the question of whether to remove the 50p tax rate on the highest earners who are likely to be precisely those people who create jobs in their small businesses and invest in British enterprises. But at least as important to the future vitality of the economy is the spending power of the middle-income consuming classes. If people cannot buy goods and services – or if their consumption of those things is depressed by cuts in their disposable income… Read More

The risk of public interrogation is always the unintended consequence: a demonised key suspect will be revealed to be – a human being. First the Murdochs, and now Rebekah Brooks who were previously almost entirely unknown as individuals outside of their own private and professional circles, are seen responding with patience and respect to the probing questions of their interrogators.

The human dimension is everything in these encounters – at least as far as public opinion is concerned. It is very difficult to maintain a demonic view of someone who seems willing to comply courteously to the relentless, dogged (and in some cases openly hostile) demands of a roomful of inquisitors. The MPs who are confronting Mrs Brooks face a real dilemma: the more aggressive they become, the more they are in danger of looking like a pack of hounds. But if… Read More

Tom Watson, Brownite loyalist

Rupert Murdoch is an old man. Indeed he has been described as “old for eighty” – which is something of a testimony to how our expectations of age have changed. Seeing him harried persistently by that loyal Brownite MP Tom Watson has achieved what would not have seemed possible a day ago: he looks like the victim of a bully.

In spite of his son’s increasingly desperate insistence that he, James, as the head of NewsCorp’s British businesses would be the more appropriate respondent to the questions at hand, Mr Watson persisted in demanding that Murdoch Senior account for his “failure of corporate governance” in allowing the criminality of News of the World activities. Seeing the struggle of an elderly man to reply to questions that seem more designed to humiliate him than… Read More

Neil Kinnock – the Gob who keeps on giving – may have embarrassed his party’s leadership by demanding enforced “balance” in newspapers. (At least, I hope they were embarrassed.) The sky is now falling in on him for his terrifyingly stupid remarks. But what nobody has mentioned is that George Eustice, now a Conservative MP but formerly David Cameron’s press secretary, said almost exactly the same thing on Newsnight last week.

It was time for us to consider, he observed gravely, regulating the press in the same way that we regulated broadcasting. Which is to say, presumably, enforcing the kind of “balance” and “neutrality” among newspapers that now prevails, by statute, among television news providers. Thus bringing to an end the tradition of liberty which began with the 18th Century pamphleteers,… Read More

Early in Tony Blair’s prime ministerial career, he had a really, really bad stumble. The Ecclestone Affair was thought at the time to be so damaging to the perception of his probity that (it easy to forget now) obituaries were being written on his premiership not just by Conservatives but by the Left of his own party which still regarded his New Labour confection as a betrayal of tradtional Labour values.

The charge against him was much more damaging than the one now being made against David Cameron which, except in the most hysterical circles, is simply of “bad judgment” in employing Andy Coulson. What Mr Blair was accused of was outright corruption: that he had done a major favour (with significant commercial repercussions) for Bernie Ecclestone by exempting Formula One from the ban on tobacco advertising that was to be applied to all other sporting events, in return for Ecclestone’s large contribution to his campaign funds.

I… Read More

John Whittingdale, chairman of the Commons Culture Committee

John Whittingdale, the mild-mannered chairman of the Commons Culture Committee, had been inclined to take a characteristically laid-back view of the problems at the News of the World – and a particularly tolerant one of the ramifications those problems might have for the future of News Corp.

Back in February, he reported with what now seems startling complacency that tabloid phone hacking no longer happened and therefore, by implication, it was little more than an unhappy chapter in the ancient history of the British press. And as recently as earlier this month – even after the Milly Dowler revelations – Mr Whittingdale was still maintaining that “you can’t necessarily condemn the entire NewsCorp organisation just because of the actions of some individuals in another part of the organisation. News International is a… Read More

There is an interesting sub-text in James Forsyth’s interview with Ed Miliband in this week’s Spectator. Miliband the Lesser makes it clear by implication that he never had a hope of getting the support of the Murdoch press. Its newspapers had not only endorsed his brother David for the Labour leadership but had made no secret of the fact that they regarded the junior brother as inseparable from the Brown coterie which they clearly loathed.

Ergo: Mili had nothing to lose in this head-on collision with Murdoch. Far from being a brave, kamikaze mission in which personal safety would be sacrificed in the name of the greater good, this was a strategic no-brainer. By attacking Murdoch and his media interests in such uncompromising, personal terms, Miliband was disarming any future attacks on him by the Murdoch organs. Any criticisms that the Sun or even The Times and Sunday Times made of him in future could be dismissed… Read More

Ed Miliband watches one of the PM's responses (Photo: AP)

Ed Miliband is gloating about the extent to which David Cameron apparently now agrees with him: fair enough. The change in Cameron’s tone from last week is pretty startling on Rebekah Brooks, the BSkyB bid and, most notably, his support for Andy Coulson. But is this triumphal tone really justified? What Mr Cameron has really done is effectively shot Mr Miliband’s fox. By promising to do everything that Labour has called for, Mr Cameron has left them pretty bereft of complaint.

Interestingly, by offering an amendment to alter the ministerial guidelines which would require all meetings between ministers, and their special advisers, to report all meetings with media owners, managers and editors, Mr Cameron is probably giving less than he seems. There… Read More

Many years ago, when mobile phones were the size of bricks and the internet was the province of IT engineers, I wrote a column (for another newspaper) attacking a peculiarly repugnant piece of tabloid journalism. The story which had aroused my indignation was a front page splash on the tragic death of a policeman who had been killed in the line of duty.

The piece began by painting a picture of the brave officer’s last morning at home – how he kissed his wife good-bye in the early hours when she was still scarcely awake, and looked in on his sleeping baby before taking his leave of their home. It even gave us a view of the private, contented thoughts of this family man as he departed for what would be his last day alive. All of this extraordinary description was, of course, made up.

How could anyone -… Read More

Grant Shapps has responded to the predictably hysterical criticism of the Government’s proposed cap on housing benefit with a clear and unequivocal statement of principle -  which is something we could do with a bit more of from Conservative ministers.

What he has said is that this is not a simply a question of the need for “cuts” in the welfare budget: housing benefit as it stands is outrageously unfair. And he uses that word in the sense that most real people (as opposed to political axe-grinders) use it: “..it’s not right”, he says, “that people have to go out and work hard day in, day out to pay their taxes in order to find that they’re supporting other [non-working] people to receive benefits to live in places that they couldn’t possibly afford to live in themselves…I think that’s a very basic tenet of fairness.”

Yes indeed, it is. The logic of that succinct statement… Read More