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Red Box

Tuesday, November 25

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Good morning,

Welcome to Tuesday's Red Box briefing with me, Philip Webster.

In today's edition

  • Labour's tax threat to private schools
  • Mixed poll news for Miliband
  • Pensioner benefits to cost extra £12bn
  • Ministers queue to leave EU
  • MI5 'faces criticism'

Any tips or feedback tweet us @TimesRedBox.

Top News
Labour leadership
Labour issues tax warning to private schools

Labour has pulled five points ahead of the Conservatives despite the weekend row over a frontbencher’s tweet about flags on a house in Rochester, according to two of the latest polls.

But the leadership is desperate to focus on policy and today Tristram Hunt (pictured) opens up a classic political dividing line. He tells private schools they could lose hundreds of millions of pounds in tax breaks unless they do more to support state schools.

The Guardian and The Telegraph lead on the shadow education secretary’s warning that every independent school will lose some of its tax advantages unless it runs summer schools, organises pupil exchanges or sponsors an academy.

The Times says those that refuse or are unable to prove that they have forged meaningful partnerships with state schools will be stripped of their right to claim back most of their business rates if Labour wins power.

Greg Hurst says the proposal stops short of a full-scale assault on the charitable status of most private schools, as some had feared, but will still heighten tensions between Labour and independent schools in the months before the election.

The Telegraph says private schools will lose £700 million in tax breaks if Labour is elected. It says the “class war” proposal could add up to £200 a year to the cost of a private school education.

Hunt writes in The Guardian that private schools with lose tax breaks unless they agree to break down the “corrosive divide of privilege” and do more to help children from state schools.

He argues that private schools have been asked politely to co-operate with the state sector, with limited effect. He warns: “The next government will say to them: step up and play your part. Earn your keep. Because the time you could expect something for nothing is over.”

Hunt has just told Today that Labour has come up with a smart, effective solution to bring out the best in state and private sectors. Barnaby Lenon, chairman of the Independent Schools Council, said: “Clawing back business rate relief on independent schools seems a very ineffective tool to improve social mobility in any meaningful way.”

Still on policy, Labour has unveiled plans to save £250 million by scrapping police commissioners and quadrupling the cost of gun licences. Yvette Cooper said the money would help protect frontline policing in the first of Labour's money-saving reviews of Whitehall departments.

Follow the latest political stories throughout the day on the Red Box website
2015 general election
Ukip ‘more in touch with working class’

What the polls give with one hand, they take away with the other. In spite of an apparent slight improvement nationally Labour gets the news this morning that most voters believe Ukip is more in touch with the views of the white working class than it is.

In a YouGov survey conducted after the “white van tweet” fiasco people were asked which party was most in touch with the views of white working-class people: 21 per cent chose Labour and 27 per cent Ukip. The margin was even greater among white working-class people themselves, at 20 per cent and 29 per cent respectively.

However there is consolation for Labour in yesterday’s YouGov poll for Red Box. People were asked to name the parties which they saw as representing “working people”. Labour came out well on top with 46 per cent, with Ukip on 24 per cent, and the Conservatives and Lib Dems trailing.

A Populus poll and another for Lord Ashcroft gave Labour with five-point leads. Ashcroft’s put Labour on 32 per cent (up two points since last week), the Conservatives on 27 per cent (down two), Ukip on 18 per cent (up two) and the Liberal Democrats on 7 per cent (down two), level with the Greens.

But the Ashcroft survey had a sting in the tail for Miliband. The Telegraph reports that only a fifth of voters believe that he will be prime minister. The polling showed that the Labour party are on course to win a majority, despite most voters believing that David Cameron will continue as prime minister after May.

The parties will make of that what they will. There is no comfort for the Lib Dems anywhere. The Times and Mail report that the man credited with building the Liberal Democrats into a national force has attacked the party’s “unacceptable” performance in Rochester.

Lord Rennard, a former strategist sidelined after being accused of sexually harassing four female activists, said that winning only 0.9 per cent of the vote had not been inevitable.

Analysis: The Liberal Democrats are trying to look less male, pale and stale post-2015
The road to 2015
Pensioner benefits to cost extra £12 billion

Policy-makers should recognise that “pensioners as a group have stopped being poor”, the director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) says in an article in The Times today.

In a wake-up call to all the main parties Paul Johnson urges greater understanding of the consequences of policies such as the “triple lock”, which guarantees above-inflation rises to the state pension, before they become politically impossible to reverse.

If not impossible it is already highly difficult for the parties to consider meaningful reductions in pensioner benefits. Quite simply, older people make up a huge part of the voting population.

The Times leads on the story and Francis Elliott reports the IFS finding that taxpayers must find £12 billion a year to fund pensioner benefits by 2020 even though most retired people are better off than when they were in work.

Johnson says “we have three choices and only three choices”: - Reduce benefits and services for the older population. - Recognise that the demands on the state have risen and therefore increase the size of the state (and taxes) - Continue to make big cuts to spending on most other things the state does.”

Comment

"I am extremely proud of her. She’s been in many ways a mentor to me and she’s an extraordinary woman and I’m very, very honoured to be here today."

- Angelina Jolie, speaking to Laura Pitel as new Tory peer Arminka Helic entered the Lords yesterday

European Reform
Ministers queue up to leave EU

The Times and The Guardian have done their sums and conclude that up to six members of the cabinet would vote to leave the EU given the chance.

Quoting a senior Tory, Sam Coates in The Times mentions Michael Gove and Philip Hammond as two who would leave without major reform. Chris Grayling, Iain Duncan Smith and Theresa Villiers are said to be leaning towards exit and Theresa May is sending out increasingly Eurosceptic signals.

In the Guardian, Nick Watt has a similar lineup. He quotes Tory sources as indicating that a growing number of ministers are prepared to speak out. Oliver Letwin, the cabinet office minister, is the latest senior minister to say Britain should be prepared to leave if the negotiations fail following the claim by Sajid Javid, the culture secretary, that Britain has nothing to fear outside the EU.

Of all of those the one who will give Number 10 the biggest cause for concern in the days ahead is May. The Mail reports that a wide ranging profile later this week will record her view that Downing Street is “incompetent”. She is alleged to have “given up” on his Number 10 operation.

The article, in Spectator Life magazine, quotes a friend of May as saying: “There was a time early on when she would want to please David [Cameron], but slowly she has seen just how incompetent that operation is. How the PM will say he will do one thing, only to be drawn in another direction. She’s given up on him.”

Let us know your views over on Facebook
Poll
Which reason best reflects your current voting intention at the general election?
2015 general election
Ideals rather than leaders decide voter choice

YouGov's Stephan Shakespeare writes:

“People choose how to vote at a general election for different reasons,” YouGov said to the public, and then asked, exclusively for Red Box: “Which of the following best reflect the reasons for your current choice?”

We are notoriously poor at understanding our own behavioural drivers and we like to seem rational, so one might have expected the highest proportion to choose “I am backing the party that offers what I think are the best specific policies” – but in fact that was the preferred option for only 19 per cent.

Overwhelmingly, 57 per cent said: “I am backing the party that best reflects my ideals and principles”.

Just 6 per cent chose “I am backing the party whose leader would make the best prime minister”; 5 per cent “I am backing a party that isn't my first choice to stop a party I dislike from winning”, 4 per cent “I am backing a party in order to send a message or make a protest”; 3 per cent “I am backing the party whose local candidate would make the best PM”.

Maybe we should take this at face value: the low ranking for “best PM” would explain why Labour, who score very badly on this, are nevertheless still doing ok in the polls, and shows why Miliband had to make the most of sacking of Emily Thornberry. Nearly all those who self-identified “protest votes” were Ukippers, for whom that option was 17 per cent. ​

YouGov
UK security
MI5 faces criticism over Lee Rigby

A parliamentary report into the killing of Fusilier Lee Rigby is set to criticise MI5 over its monitoring of one of the killers, Newsnight reported last night.

However, the intelligence and security committee is expected to add that the security service could not have prevented his death, the BBC added.

The soldier was killed near Woolwich Barracks in May 2013.

The report will come the day after Theresa May set out new powers to combat Islamic extremism and warned of the growing threat to the UK.

The prime minister will make a statement to the Commons later.

Sketch: Theresa treads the finest of lines
Red Box
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“How can Labour win the 2015 general election?”


Featuring Phil Collins, Jenni Russell, John McTernan and Tim Montgomerie

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Top News

Tuesday comment


1. Ukip is cashing in on our obsession with class
- Rachel Sylvester, The Times

2. Cameron needs to lift British politics
- Janan Ganesh, Financial Times

3. Can we stop the rise of the career politician?
- James Kirkup, The Daily Telegraph

4. Private schools have done too little for too long
- Tristram Hunt MP, The Guardian

5. Is is the end of politics as we know it? That's what the SDP thought...
- Steve Richards, The Independent
What The Papers Said

The Sun

The paper splashed on what seems to be a recording of David Mellor from last week, in which the former Tory cabinet minister describes a taxi driver as a “smart-arsed little git”. In a leader, The Sun says: “pompous Tory bigwig David Mellor outs himself as another sneering snob among the political classes”.


The Times

In today's Thunderer column, campaigner Mike Harris says that, under Theresa May, “Britain is sleepwalking into a surveillance state”.


The Guardian

In an editorial on Theresa May's anti-terror plans, The Guardian asks: “Is this a piece of wise and practical lawmaking or just a political stance? Is it, not for the first time, a politician promising what she cannot in fact deliver?”

Agenda
In the Commons
  • Oral questions – health
  • Ten minute rule motion – constitutional reform
  • Legislation – pension schemes bill

In the Lords
  • Legislation – national insurance contributions bill
  • Debate – UK's membership in the EU

Elsewhere
  • Downing Street, 9:30am: Cabinet meeting
  • Parliament, 10am: Bank of England governor Mark Carney appears before Treasury select committee
  • London: Childcare minister Sam Gyimah speaks at Family and Childcare Trust conference
  • Parliament, 6pm: Progress event featuring Labour's policy review coordinator, Jon Cruddas
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