Pick Of The Papers (25/11/13-1/12/13)

Woodhouse’ weekly pick of the papers is devoted to keeping A level politics students up to date with the political news and on track with the Unit 1 and Unit 2 syllabus.

1. Powerful swing voters say Labour lacks vision – and that the Tories are still nasty.

Source: The Independent

Politics Topic: Parties Policies and Ideas

Summary: Voters in four key marginals were asked about the two main parties – neither came out well. Voters believe that Miliband lacks vision to become a future prime minister as his policy of an “energy freeze” is nothing more than a “sweetener” as well as the Conservatives due swing voters believing that they “favour the rich” and are associated with “cuts”.

ALevelPolitics Help: Labour leading in YouGov poll but Cameron claims Miliband’s policies are “weak”

2. George Osborne: Boris Johnson is wrong to say low IQs were to blame for people who struggle to get on

Source: The Telegraph Party

Politics Topic: Policies and Ideas

Summary: Chancellor says he does ‘not agree’ with the comments the Mayor of London made arguing that because people have varying IQs economic equality is impossible. In a speech at the Margaret Thatcher lecture last week Mr Johnson suggested that economic equality will never be possible which some have suggested that he is Margaret Thatcher’s Heir. Mr Osborne has been the first Conservative to distance himself from the Mayor of London.

3. Cameron warned to protect green policies or risk party split

Source: The Telegraph

Politics Topic: Party Policies and Ideas

Summary: The Prime Minister has been told by a group of his own MPs that he risks division within the Conservative party if he waters down green policies to please the Right.

ALevelPolitics Help: Can Cameron claim a green government? 

4. The Lib Dems’ shift left could be more dangerous for the Tories than Labour

Source: The New Statesman

Politics Topic: Party Policies and Ideas

Summary: With the Tories his party’s main electoral foe, Clegg is seeking to woo the One Nation voters alienated by the Conservatives’ UKIP tendency. Any Labour/Lib Dem coalition after the next election is likely to be based upon common agreement in the policy areas of tax, the environment and housing. This is good news for Labour as Lib Dem voters believe that those three main areas plus jobs are the four key principles in the 2015 manifesto.

5. Tories deny seeking Big Six energy price freeze

Source: The Independent

Politics Topic: Party Policies and Ideas

Summary: Downing Street is on the back foot over Ed Miliband’s energy price freeze policy as Labour suggests that the government is in disarray over energy freezes over energy companies stating that ministers asked them to halt energy price rises as well as condemning Labour for calling for energy freezes as they are a “con”.

ALevelPolitics Help: Cameron’s Dilemma 

Kevin Augustine

Weekly Parliament Roundup: 27/11/13-4/12/13

Autumn Statement

George Osborne released an Autumn statement on which was said to concentrate on delivering a responsible recovery.  The statement aims to turn the political conversation back to the economy and to emphasise the fact that we are making considerable improvements as our growth forecast is upgrading and how we are now borrowing less.

Coalition action on Energy Bill Crisis

Recently, there have been Coalition plans to reduce energy bills by an average of £50 per year. In addition to this, the cost of insulating homes will be spread over a longer period and there are plans for a new £1000 incentive scheme given to new home buyers to help them insulate their homes. The government is hoping that this plan will turn attention away from Ed Miliband’s proposed plans to resolve the cost of living crisis which he has not failed to emphasise upon successfully for the last few months.

However, there are many rising issues associated with the plans and the most important one is that the coalition government have not yet made it clear on how these plans will be acted upon and is currently less clear compared to Miliband’s plans. Also, the £1000 incentive is apparently going to be paid off by extra tax avoidance and the £50 will still be paid by the taxpayer. If this is so, how will the government’s proposal be helping individuals if the money that will be supposedly ‘reduced’ from their bill has actually come out of their own pockets anyway?

Loveless Coalition

At the beginning of the coalition it was quite obvious that despite their differences, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats had the potential of creating an effective and stable government. The two parties have currently been letting their differences get the better of them and both parties think they’re going all the way to 2015. The Conservatives have been stressing to the Lib Dems that if they talk about what they’ve stopped them from doing and keep creating and strengthening their own agenda, the government will look weak and divided. The union that was immensely strong is beginning to break down as Nick Clegg has finally begun to stand firmly on his own two feet since he has been insisting that the Liberal Democrats crucially need to have their own agenda.

Labour’s silence on the economy

The Cost of Living Crisis has been Labour’s anthem for the last few months and Miliband has not allowed the issue from escaping the Tories’ minds. Even though the Labour party have been trying to make effective plan proposals to solve the issue, they haven’t said a word about the economy. It is hard to identify exactly why this might be but in according to David Cameron, the main reason why they aren’t talking about the economy is because it’s recovering. This might be true but it must be said that Labour has avoided being attacked by the opposition about the recovery of the economy because of their concentration on the Cost of Living Crisis. Yes it’s been like Miliband’s ongoing rant but it has worked in regards to turning attention away from the fact that the coalition government are actually improving the economy, without much of their input.

 PMQs-Liberal Democrats vs. Labour

This week’s Prime Minister Questions was answered by the Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg as David Cameron visits China. The Deputy PM faced some grilling questions from the opposition, especially from Deputy Labour leader Harriet Harman. Mr Clegg was asked by Harriet Harman this winter’s energy bills will be lower or higher and he answered that they would be higher if the coalition government didn’t take the action that they have. He also stated Harriet Harman’s party’s economically illiterate policy was ineffective and that they aren’t able to control energy prices. To add, Clegg also highlighted their inability to stand up to trade union paymasters but Harman hit back by telling Clegg to leave it to labour to handle its party members, especially since some of them used to be his.

Surprisingly, without mentioning the Conservatives, Clegg fired back at the opposition by saying that without the Liberal Democrats, there wouldn’t be a recovery and they didn’t suck up to the banks like labour did. Evidently, we are beginning to see a stronger and more independent side of Mr Clegg which is willing to stand firm by Liberal Democrat policies. However, the opposition still see him as weak and this is shown through Harriet Harman’s reference to Nick Clegg as ‘Cameron’s little helper’ on her recent website post.

Gloria Ganda

Pick Of The Papers (18/11/13-24/11/13)

 Woodhouse’ weekly pick of the papers is devoted to keeping A level politics students up to date with the political news and on track with the Unit 1 and Unit 2 syllabus.

1. Tories are in the gutter, says Ed Miliband

Source: The Independent

Politics Topic: Elections

Summary: Labour fears dirtiest Conservative campaign in 20 years, as Attorney General withdraws attack on Pakistani community. Miliband accuses Cameron of using ‘smear and character assassination’ to get the Tories back into Parliament as their main election strategy.

2. The cracks are starting to show between the Prime Minister and Chancellor

Politics Topic: Party Policies and Ideas

Summary: Far from ‘seeing eye to eye’, David Cameron and George Osborne are cut from different political cloth. Cameron is, at heart, a country Tory. Osborne is an urbanite, fond of the city’s networking opportunities, soirées and upmarket burger bars.

3. UKIP is ‘unpatriotic and betraying Britain’, Nick Clegg says

Source: The Telegraph

Politics Topic: Party Policies and Ideas

Summary: Nick Clegg says Nigel Farage’s drive to take Britain out of Europe is ‘a betrayal of the national interest’. Since Labour and the Conservatives are split and don’t know what to do, Clegg believes that it’s up to the Lib Dems to make the case to stay in the EU.

4. Labour faces cash crisis as Co-op’s new bosses move to cut funding

Source: The Guardian

Politics Topic: Party Policies and Ideas

Summary: Flowers scandal fallout ‘could cost £850,000′ in what would be a major blow for the party in the run-up to a general election. Labour MPs were told that they will slash funds due to a new review into their historic relationship.

5. Generation Ed: Is Labour winning on the battle of ideas?

Source: The New Statesman

Politics Topic: Party Policies and Ideas

Summary: The Labour leader’s on a new mission to reshape capitalism in Britain and possibly to establish “Milibandism” while a hostile media loves to portray Ed Miliband as a left-wing fanatic.

6. David Cameron’s potty mouth revealed to the nation

Source: The Independent

Politics Topic: Party Policies and Ideas

Summary: On Thursday it was reported that Mr Cameron had instructed aides to “get rid of all this green crap”, referring to the levies that some members of his party believe are unnecessarily pushing up gas and electricity bills. In other news, Mr Cameron is said to have jokingly referred to Mr Clegg as an “idle f***er”  - not such a sweet coalition bromance after all…

Weekly Parliament Roundup – 13/11/13-20/11/13

Geneva II Conference November 2013

Over the last few weeks, the Geneva conference has taken centre stage in the news, in regards to Iran’s nuclear projects. The conference was postponed to the 20^th and has resumed over the past few days. Even though definite decisions have not yet been made, following his visit to Geneva, Foreign Secretary William Hague states that Britain’s aim is to create a “Interim first step agreement with Iran that can then create the confidence and the space to then create a comprehensive and final agreement”. The main question is however, is it too late for Britain to step in and try to give Iran guidance on the decision that it should make? The country seems set on making the brave choice to go ahead with their plans without the restrictions from America. Hopefully, Hague will make an influential effort to try and impose financial and energy sanctions against Iran, with the help of other countries such as France and Germany.

Increase in Tax Thresholds

Nick Clegg has made recent proposal plans to raise the income tax threshold to £10,500 and wishes for this to be done by April 2015. The Lib Dem leader already succeeded in getting the Conservatives to increase the tax threshold to £10,000 but he claims that by raising the threshold to a further £10,500, it would mean a tax cut of around £100 a year. Mr Clegg has suggested that part of this increase might be funded by the Mansion Tax but David Cameron has not shown any support of this proposal thus far. The main reason why this might be is because there is no clarity as to where this increase will be funded and a big criticism of this proposal is that it’s an extremely expensive way to deliver a positive outcome for the poorest.

Prime Minister’s controversial trip to Sri Lanka

The Prime Minister recently returned from his trip to Sri Lanka and on Monday, he told MPs in Parliament about the outcomes of his trip. In his speech, he emphasized the fact that it was an extremely difficult trip but it had various achievements. In addition, he announced that there will be a time limit to set up an enquiry on the human rights violation allegations and if Sri Lanka’s president doesn’t set up an enquiry by next year March, Cameron will use his way with the UN to get an International enquiry set up regarding the issue. Read up on Sri Lanka’s response to Cameron’s visit

Left Wing Unity Party

There have been recent talks about the setting up of a new Left Wing Unity Party. The proposed party will differ to other left wing parties by appealing to individuals who are not involved in any kind of politics. In other words, the party will try to attract those who feel dissatisfied with current left wing parties and their policies but yet don’t want to vote right wing. For now, these plans have not been finalised and there will be more information on this topic once any Parliamentary action has been taken.

Ed Miliband’s Childcare Cost talks and PMQs

Labour Leader Ed Miliband has been stressing upon the issue of the dramatic increase of problems with child care costs.  He has even gone as far as stating that parents in England are facing a ‘childcare crunch’ and he believes that these issues need to be immediately addressed in order to reduce financial burden on parents. The main reason why there have been rises in childcare costs, he claims, is due to ‘broken coalition promises’ and he made this issue pretty clear as he intensely grilled  David Cameron during this week’s PMQs where he also mentioned about closures of Sure Start services for disabled children. The PM hit back stating that when it comes to childcare, the Conservatives have provided 15 hours childcare for every 3 and 4 year old, 3 hours of free child care for disadvantaged 2 year old children and upgraded child tax credit by £420 which is something the Labour party never managed to do.  Overall, the PMQs highlighted the growing tension between the two leaders. Click to read about how Ed Miliband vows to tackle ‘childcare crunch’

Gloria Ganda

Pick of The Papers (11.11.13-17.11.13)

 Woodhouse’ weekly pick of the papers is devoted to keeping A level politics students up to date with the political news and on track with the Unit 1 and Unit 2 syllabus.

1. Labour Six Points ahead in new poll

Source: The Independent

Politics Topic: Unit 1 Elections, Parties and Democracy/ Unit 2 PM and Cabinet

Summary: In a new poll Labour are ahead of the Tories by six clear points, yet 53% of voters cannot imagine Labour Leader Miliband as Prime Minister. Trust in Ed Balls and Miliband is at its lowest despite pledge of 20 month freeze in energy bills. Although, the Conservatives have fallen by three points 27% of voters trust Cameron and Osbourne to “make the right decisions about the economy” and 44 per cent say they “expect the UK economy will improve next year”.

ALevelPolitics Help: Click for the Shadow Cabinet role in Government OR Info on Cameron’s Labour “20 month Freeze” panic

2. David Cameron orders inquiry into trade union tactics

Source: The Guardian

Politics Topic: Party Policies and Ideas

Summary: Cameron has ordered an inquiry into the tactics of trade unions due to the consequence of an industrial dispute which almost led to the closure of the Grangemouth oil refinery in Scotland. However, a Unite spokesman said: “This review is a sorry attempt by the coalition to divert attention from the cost of living crisis. Vince Cable may not have noticed but the Grangemouth dispute has been settled. This review is nothing more than a Tory election stunt which no trade unionist will collaborate with.” There is no question that Cameron has mentioned the issue with Labours’s position towards the Falkirk investigations – check the link below for further information.

ALevelPolitics Help: The Falkirk situation explained

3. Clegg calls for £1bn income tax giveaway by 2015

Source: The Times

Politics Topic: Party Policies and Ideas

Summary: Clegg is calling out his coalition partners to give some money back to ‘the UK Economy’. The Deputy Prime Minister said that he was pressing his Conservative colleagues to agree to a £1 billion tax giveaway before the next general election and called for a further increase in the threshold for tax-free earnings, a move that would allow most workers to keep an extra £100 a year. He said he believed that a further increase in the personal allowance could be funded by a levy – such as a “mansion tax” on the very wealthiest however, the Conservatives are very much opposed to the idea.

4. Labour are cowards for racking up billions in debt, says Ken Livingstone

Source: The Telegraph

Politics Topic: Parties Policies and Ideas

Summary: The former Mayor of London criticises Labour for spending billions to avoid tax and spending cuts in the boom years and the article speaks of the repercussions of the £157 billion deficit, the Brown government left politicians to clear up. Conservative party Chairman Grant Shapps questions Miliband and Labour’s “addiction to borrowing”.

5. Northerners hate David Cameron but love his policies. UKIP will reap the rewards

Source: The Telegraph

Politics Topic: Party Policies and Ideas

Summary: David Cameron is hated in the North of England but his policies are agreed on there. Farage is going to reap the rewards. 72 per cent of Northerners think that the Conservatives do not understand their area well; 64 per cent think people from their part of the country are not well represented amongst the Tory leadership; 39 per cent say they would never vote Conservative. A quarter say they don’t know a single person who votes Tory whereas 50 per cent more Northerners think Ukip understands the North than think that the Conservatives do. Will the Northerners vote UKIP?

ALevelPolitics Help: Check out the UKIP article 

6. Apathy? Alienation? How ‘disengaged’ four in ten voters reject ALL parties

Source: The Independent

Politics Topic: Democracy and Participation/Elections

Summary: Watchdog findings pose worrying questions about future of democracy in Britain. Young adults are even more “disengaged”  from the party system, with 46 per cent of under-30s saying “none of the above” when presented with a list of the parties. Plenty of statistics and quotes to use for Unit 1 democracy and elections.

ALevelPolitics Help: Click for information on Apathy, Disengagement and General Election turnouts (Russell Brand Vs Jeremy Paxman)

Pick of the Papers (4/11/13-10/11/13)

Woodhouse’ weekly pick of the papers is devoted to keeping A level politics students up to date with the political news and on track with the Unit 1 and Unit 2 syllabus.

1.  Ed Miliband’s momentum confronts Cameron with a sharp dilemma

Source: The Guardian

Politics topic: Elections

Summary: Labour is frustrated by Conservative stalling over agreeing to the general election TV debates between the leaders, Miliband has a “boost in ratings” and “most people, including Mr Miliband, mainly attribute this to the impact of his pledge to freeze energy bills”. 80% of voters “favour the energy price freeze but only half as many think he could actually deliver it”.

ALevelPolitics help: Read the energy bill crisis article on Cameron’s dilemma

2.  Ignore Russell Brand: Vote and make MPs notice you, says think tank

Source: The Independent

Politics topic: Democracy and Participation

Summary: Parties will change their economic decisions and policies to people who actually vote, not people who do not vote. Turnout has fallen among the young and the least affluent and ”The cuts have disproportionately affected the young and the poor – precisely those groups that vote with least frequency,” says the report. “More worryingly, unequal turnout unleashes a vicious cycle of disaffection and under-representation among those groups. This downward spiral risks permanently excluding these citizens from electoral life… and thus threatens a central claim of democracy: that every citizen’s preference, no matter their status, should count equally.”

ALevelPolitics help: Read the Russell Brand Vs Jeremy Paxman article on the comedian/actor’s view on voting, apathy and indifference

3.  Has UKIP’s Nigel Farage finally grown up?

Source: The Independent

Politics topic: Party policies and ideas/Elections

Summary: UKIP, considered one of the smaller parties are on the “cusp of a national breakthrough” and are edging ahead of the Liberal Democrats in the polls. Farage’s main problems are the “squabbling” that is occurring within the party and the response to his policy on immigration.

ALevelPolitics help: Read the UKIP article on policies and elections

4.  Second witness stands by Unite vote-rigging claim: Decision piles more pressure on Miliband to reopen inquiry into the scandal

Source: The Daily Mail

Politics topic: Party policies and ideas/Judges and Civil Liberties

Summary: The mess in the Unite vote-rigging scandal puts more pressure on the Labour leader to start an inquiry into it. Conservative MP Priti Patel said the tactics of the union were unacceptable and asked detectives in Hampshire and Scotland to investigate whether they had been in breach of the law.

5.  Legalising same sex marriage was “damaging” for Tories 

Source: The Telegraph

Politics topic: Party policies and ideas

Summary: Philip Hammond says the legislation of the same-sex message was “damaging” for the Conservative party because ”it created a perception that the leadership was in a different place to the core of the party’s active supporters”. Hammond also believes that it was “pushed through too quickly” and that on a separate matter the party needs to continue in reforming its agenda (Education and Welfare state).

6. Nick Clegg is playing to his most loyal voters – the green middle-class 

Source: The Telegraph

Politics Topic: Party policies and ideas

Summary: Clegg has been tailoring his speeches to the most loyal of his voters and “pressure is growing for the Deputy PM to show that he believes in more than just stopping other parties doing things”. Clegg states he would not allow the Coalition to take its “foot off the pedal now” on cutting carbon emissions and The Lib Dem party are trying to be seen as capable of improving any government but one that shouldn’t be taken alone, therefore, supporting a future coalition.

 Kevin Augustine

The coalition has had a rough few weeks with incidents including pastygate, a charity tax, a ‘granny’ tax and Clegg taking a hit along with his beloved Lord’s reform. The makeup of the coalition however doesn’t make running the coalition any easier. On

Newsnight this Monday, political editor Allegra Stratton outlined what seem to be the two biggest fault lines within the coalition government. Read more

The ‘Quad’. How amusing, could I be talking about the Beatles, Queen, JLS? Well, near enough, the Quad is a high-level government meeting that comprises of Mr Cameron, Nick Clegg, George Osborne and Danny Alexander and is one of the coalition’s key decisions making bodies. Typically the Quad meet to ‘iron out’ matters that may be contentious between the Lib Dems and Tories prior to formal cabinet meetings. Whilst Cameron has tried to set about changing the style of his premiership from Blair’s ‘sofa government’ and has been praised by officials for his ‘return to formality and commitment to process’. Can the Quad be seen as a considerable step backwards?

Read more