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November 19th, 2011

Crocodile tears over youth unemployment, a call to end all-male panels and game, set, match to capitalism: round up of political blogs for 14 – 19 November

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Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

Blog Admin

November 19th, 2011

Crocodile tears over youth unemployment, a call to end all-male panels and game, set, match to capitalism: round up of political blogs for 14 – 19 November

0 comments

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

Chris Gilson, Amy Mollett and Paul Rainford take a look at the week in political blogging.

The economy and the Eurozone crisis

Stephanie Flanders ruminates over a tale of two crises in the UK and the Eurozone and Left Foot Forward takes a look at how the bond markets have shackled European democracy. The Economist’s Bagehot suggests that German ambitions for a treaty change are putting David Cameron under serious pressure.

Robert Peston wonders whether the new Virgin bank will be able to challenge the big players on the high street as thetorydiary notes that taxpayers have lost over £400million on the sale of Northern Rock. Paul Waugh asks why – despite all the rhetoric of the big society – the state owned bank wasn’t mutualised.

Left Foot Forward highlights the fact that the ongoing woes in the British economy mean that Osborne’s plan is set to end up borrowing billions more than the Darling plan would have done, and Hopi Sen ponders whether Liberals are embracing a policy of cheap money and inflation as a way out of the debt crisis. Faisal Islam dismisses the idea that the financial crisis indicates the death of capitalism – rather capitalism has won out game, set and match.

Hopi Sen reckons the government’s Plan B, a £50billion infrastructure growth boost and set of tax cuts, will help the UK but won’t be enough to stop disaster, while Liberal Conspiracy argues that the UK’s slow growth is not the fault of the EU and asks how much longer Labour can be blamed for the cuts. The Staggers’ George Eaton thinks that Britain is in Europe’s slow growth lane.

Youth unemployment

Labour List provides the headline statistics on unemployment and Political Scrapbook counts down the hours of silence from the government on these dire developments. Larry Elliott at the Guardian’s Business Blog holds the coalition squarely to blame for this crisis.

George Eaton at The Staggers worries of a ‘lost generation’ of unemployed young people, while Natan Doron at Left Futures critiques the idea of minimum wage as ‘red tape’ holding back youth employment.

The parties

The TUC’s Touchstone blog discusses Ed Miliband’s speech at the Social Market Foundation in which he set out his ideas on employee voice and a new economy, while The Coffee House suggests that ‘responsible capitalism’ requires deregulation. The Green Benches argues that Labour supporters do the party harm every time they predict that Osborne will miss his deficit reduction targets.

Samira Shackle at The Staggers says that the Conservative MP, Patrick Mercer may be considering legal action against newspapers which reported alleged critical comments about David Cameron, while The Coffee House believes that the PM cannot simply shrug this story off. Thetorydiary reports that Boris Johnson and the Government are again at odds, as Johnson calls for the Eurozone to break up and notes Cameron’s “most Eurosceptic speech of his time as Tory leader”

The Liberal Democrats fall to 7 per cent in polls and The Staggers wonders if they might be overtaken by UKIP.

Immigration row

Mike Smithson at politicalbetting.com wonders who people will believe over the UK Borders fiasco – Theresa May or ex-director of border control for the UKBA, Brodie Clark. Alex Hern at Left Foot Forward says that the Home Secretary is ‘looking shoddy’, but is not yet at the point of resignation, and, following her select committee appearance, Guido thinks that she is in the clear.

And finally…

The Staggers argues that the coalition’s U-turn on NHS waiting lists shows that they are finally waking up to how hard it is to get things done in government.

The F-Word Blog looks at a recent call to boycott events with all-male panels and False Economy warns that financial cuts are turning back the clock on gender equality.

Liberal Conspiracy highlights a strategy problem for OccupyLSX, and notes that it now costs less to purchase a round-the-world plane ticket than a London travelcard.

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This work by British Politics and Policy at LSE is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported.