What the weeklies are saying about politics

In this week's spectator Irwin Stelzer writes of a flaw in the government's energy policy.Specifically the building of new nuclear power stations

ignores the billion-dollar question: will the private sector provide the capital to finance this replacement-and-then-some of the nation’s nuclear plants?

and adds

there is the small matter of whether these massive, capital-intensive stations will be economic, without government subsidies

. given that

if we know anything about nuclear power plants, it is that their cost always exceeds estimates.

The Economist is rather scathing of the Chancellor

IT TAKES special ineptitude to cheapen a principle without getting anything much in return. But this week, in a do-nothing budget devoted to plastic bags and cavity-wall insulation (see article), Alistair Darling, Britain's hapless chancellor of the exchequer, showed he is equal to the task

And he fares no better in the Spectator,Fraser Nelson saying

for all the Chancellor’s advertised dullness, he has adopted a strategy of deception which his predecessor would be proud of (and probably authored). It can best be compared to the technique of professional magicians. Before any trick, they perform what is called ‘the pledge’ — whereby the audience is shown something normal: a pack of cards, which someone will inspect to check it’s normal. Of course, it is not. Once a fake backdrop is established, a magic trick is fairly easy to engineer.

In the New Statesman, Donald Hirsch asks For ten years, Labour has been shifting resources to the least well off. Why are the poor still with us?

Ten Budgets, one Chancellor and three New Statesman editors later, I am still writing about Labour's efforts to divert resources to poor families. The continuity of this underlying theme is remarkable, backed by a main delivery method introduced in 1998. This is to give tax credits to selected low-income groups, at a favourable rate compared to money spent on benefits.

Bagehot in the Economist says

Three different kinds of inequality have survived or arisen under Labour; more than fiscal abstractions, these three inequalities are shaping public perceptions of the government's economic record.

Finally the New Statesman's leader believes that Europe could give Labour a new sense of purpose

Britain has to reassert its position within Europe, embracing the benefits it could win for British people - from protection of workers to the upholding of universal human rights. Such a purpose could provide the bold and optimistic vision that Labour so desperately needs