Coalition politics: double trouble
This is only the beginning of a combative period of differentiation between the governing parties
There is an old political cliche trotted out by loyal foot soldiers who don't want to admit in so many words that their government is in a terrible hole. It takes the form of a lament for the feebleness of the presentation of what might otherwise be a perfectly serviceable policy. But even those who delighted in attacking the hapless junior treasury minister Chloe Smith for incompetence after a Newsnight mauling from Jeremy Paxman, heartless hammer of the incoherent, would struggle to explain exactly why the 3p rise in fuel duty is being deferred until January, and how the £550m in foregone revenue is to be made up, and quite what that means for the coalition's founding purpose of cutting the deficit. Plenty of cheesed-off backbenchers in both parties will have looked at Tuesday's borrowing figures, £3bn higher than for May last year, and wondered why it was all still worthwhile.
The publication of the Lords reform bill, the jewel in the coalition crown for the Lib Dems, will have come as a huge relief, all the more so since it came accompanied by muscular noises-off from the prime minister addressed to potential Tory rebels, making it clear defying the whip would be an ill-advised career move.
Hints of an alliance between anti-reform Tories and Labour backbenchers opposed to this particular set of proposals have been squashed, at least for now – although the gap between the bill's publication and royal assent remains immeasurable. But this is the only event of the past week that feels as if it had made it on to the Downing Street grid through the normal planning processes. Look at the record: from Michael Gove's O-level revival to David Cameron's welfare speech and George Osborne's 11th-hour reversal on fuel duty (after a series of colleagues had been sent out to defend it), the impression at Westminster is of a government firing off with only the most random of intentions. The education secretary revealed his plan to reintroduce two-tier 16-plus exams in the columns of the Daily Mail, apparently without even discussing it with the prime minister, let alone Nick Clegg. The chancellor's announcement on fuel duty was kept from the cabinet and he left his junior ministers without a proper briefing. And the question of how the prime minister chiselled out the time in the packed Number 10 diary to make a major speech on welfare has bemused old Downing Street hands. Indiscipline or disorganisation, this sequence of events does the government no favours.
Of course, coalition is an unfamiliar political form, as much for its participants as the voters. The parties are still feeling their way. In a commentary on progress so far published this week by the Constitution Unit, it scored well on key indicators like trust at the top and capacity to take big decisions. The findings might have been more cautious after the past week. Yet the biggest challenge is party management within the coalition's confines. That's why, historically, coalitions rot from the bottom up. Prospects for this one are the more difficult because the unifying project of an economic turnaround within lifetime is in jeopardy. Analysing the seemingly unconnected announcements of the past few days in this context at least provides a pattern. So, for example, angry Lib Dem reaction to Mr Cameron's second-term welfare proposals on Monday was at least partially mollified by the suggestion that the answer to the question why this speech, now, was that it was red meat for Tory backbenchers that would help to buy off opposition to Lords reform; it was hinted that bringing back two-tier 16-plus exams was really the education secretary beginning to mark out his pitch for a future leadership contest (something Mr Gove's aides strongly reject). And by deferring the increase in fuel duty, George Osborne was not so much playing tactical politics but actually embarking on a discreet process of economic stimulus. Well, maybe. What is clear is that this is only the beginning of a combative period of differentiation between the governing parties that will make the next two years very difficult indeed.
Barclays bank: too big to obey the rules
It needs to be uncovered just how far this market-fixing went - this has all the makings of systemic scandal
What regulators appears to have uncovered is a scam at the heart of a £350tn market; one that ultimately affects how much families pay on their tracker mortgages, as well as the costs of transactions for big City institutions. It should not be settled with a fine, no matter how large, but must be followed up with a further investigation into Barclays – making public just how many employees took part (rather than yesterday's mentions of Trader C and Manager E), and how they will be punished, up to and including criminal proceedings. Not only that, but it also needs to be uncovered just how far this market-fixing went. Certainly, the clear implication of yesterday's comment from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission that Barclays' staff "co-ordinated with and aided and abetted traders at other banks" indicates that Mr Diamond will not be the last chief executive in the firing line over this issue.
Strip away the acronyms and the charges against Barclays are straightforward. Its traders and senior management are accused of tampering with two key interest rates to bolster their own profits. And they apparently did this not once, but repeatedly over four years. Indeed, the practice seems to have become so widespread that staff joke about it in emails: "Always happy to help, leave it with me, Sir."; "Done … for you big boy"; "I love you". This from the bank that earlier this year held citizenship days for its staff – and which, through state guarantees and emergency provisions of liquidity, has been supported by the British taxpayer.
There has been much talk about banks being too big to fail, or too big to bail. The picture presented by Wednesday's charge sheets is altogether simpler: throughout boom and bust, Barclays staff saw themselves as being too big to play by the rules. And the likely result is that everyone else paid millions more than necessary to borrow. What's more, they do not look like the only ones: this has all the makings of systemic scandal.
In praise of … Nora Ephron's essays
Her essays are readable three decades on - she can eviscerate and self-deprecate, but her humour always wins out
Few of the hundreds of books churned out by journos each year escape the pulp mill. That could be because they are yesterday's news. Or because there could be something even more ephemeral about the all-knowing, God-like persona too many of us adopt. Nora Ephron's essays are readable three decades on, even though their subjects are long forgotten. Name checks are few and far between for the cast of characters in Reagan's administration, let alone Richard Nixon's. But Ephron's writing lingers. She can eviscerate ("Washington is a city of important men and the women they married before they grew up"), as well as self-deprecate ("I have made a lot of mistakes falling in love, and regretted most of them, but never the potatoes that went with them"). But humour always wins out ("I always read the last page of a book first so that if I die before I finish I'll know how it turned out"). Ephron was many things, not least a great essayist.
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