Politics Archives

Monday

19 Oct 2015

John McDonnell doesn’t give a fig about Teesside’s steel industry

John McDonnell has accused me of telling an untruth. Yes, I know, worse things have happened. But still. His accusation refers to the closure of the Redcar SSI steel plant. Mr McDonnell claimed that a visit to the area, where he met with tearful workers, prompted him to do a u-turn on supporting the Conservative plan to balance to budget. I said on Question Time last week and again in The Sunday Times this Sunday that this was utter cant. A charge I will cheerfully repeat now. It is utter cant, McDonnell. The shadow chancellor made his commitment to abide by Osborne’s budget surplus proposal at the Labour conference on 28

Isabel Hardman

Osborne’s enemies use tax credits row to undermine Chancellor’s leadership bid

Few Conservative MPs are expected to rebel on tomorrow’s Opposition Day motion on tax credits, mainly because defying the whip to vote with Labour on a motion that is non-binding on the government is pretty pointless. But that doesn’t mean that the internal Tory revolt on the matter isn’t building. More and more big names are speaking out on the matter, and the Chancellor opponents now see the cut as an ideal way of undermining his bid to be leader. They want to make it about his personal judgement and awareness of the struggles that ‘hardworking people’ face. One of those who would rather George Osborne doesn’t succeed in his

James Forsyth

David Cameron’s EU renegotiations appear to be underwhelming his own MPs

David Cameron has just delivered a statement to the House of Commons on last week’s European Council meeting. Cameron stressed that any visa liberalisation programme for Turkey would not apply to Britain as this country is not part of Schengen. He also reiterated his condemnation of President Assad and accused the Russians of predominantly striking other rebels groups in Syria not Isil; he said that only 20 per cent of Russian strikes in Syria had been directed against Isil. But the most politically significant part of the statement came when Cameron again set out his renegotiation demands. Tellingly, as Cameron outlined his four main aims — an opt-out from ever

Isabel Hardman

David Cameron expected to give eurosceptics their free EU vote – after letting them put up a fight

Will David Cameron allow senior ministers to take whatever side they wish in the EU referendum? There are reportedly six Cabinet Ministers pushing for a free vote on the matter, and today Liam Fox added his voice to the calls, telling the Daily Politics that even if the Prime Minister refused an official suspension of collective responsibility, ministers would find other ways of making their views heard. He said: ‘Ultimately the legitimacy of the result will depend on whether the voters think they have heard all the arguments openly and fairly and I think any attempt by any side to restrict people’s voice in that debate will limit how people

Sunday

18 Oct 2015

Melanie McDonagh

Cameron should listen to Syrian bishops, not the Anglican ones

Well, it’s something, I suppose, that the Archbishops of Canterbury and York didn’t sign that ill-advised letter last month from 84 CofE bishops to the PM calling for the Government to take in 50,000 more Syrian migrants; Justin Welby and John Sentanu do have some redeeming sense of caution. Meanwhile the 84 are still waiting for a proper answer from the Home Office, apparently, which seems to be why they’re sharing their pique with The Observer today. Quite the most devastating critique of that letter came, in fact, from a man who was rather grateful for them for their “love and their charity”. It was the Archbishop of Aleppo (the

Fraser Nelson

Has Nicola Sturgeon found a verbal formula to disguise SNP’s failure of poor students?

At the SNP conference the First Minister and her deputy, John Swinney, both had precisely the same thing to say about university. Here’s Swinney: “Students from a poorer background have never had a better chance of a place at university than under the SNP”. And Nicola Sturgeon: “More students from poorer backgrounds are now going to university”. More. That’s the test they set: if more poor students are going to uni then the SNP is succeeding. They both talk about “university,” as distinct from other forms of further education. Yes, the ratio of poor kids at uni is rising in Scotland – but shamefully, it’s half the level of England. Worse, the gap is growing (see chart,

Saturday

17 Oct 2015

Ross Clark

North London will be boosted by HS2 – but the North won’t be

Futurology is a cursed science, but just occasionally I feel I can already write a news story years into the future. Watch out about the year 2040 for a headline: ‘Building HS2 wasn’t worth it, ministers admit.’ It gave a us a gleaming new Euston station, it will go on to say, and regenerated the once depressing Euston Road into a desirable suburb. But as for the rest of the country? There are a few signs of regeneration at one or two points along the route, but there is really not much to see. How can I be so sure? Because, swap Euston for St Pancras and HS2 for HS1

Isabel Hardman

Nicola Sturgeon: the SNP would welcome uncomfortable scrutiny

Nicola Sturgeon spoke at the open and close of the SNP conference, and her speech today transposed the key themes of the short address she gave on Thursday morning. She attacked Jeremy Corbyn for disappointing her ‘high hopes’, saying ‘so far, Jeremy Corbyn isn’t changing Labour – he’s allowing Labour to change him’. And she talked about independence, though in this speech the First Minister didn’t talk about when, but how. Her first speech had acknowledged that the party couldn’t commit to another referendum until there was evidence a majority of Scots were now in favour of leaving. Today she argued that ‘if we want Scotland to be independent –

Alex Massie

The Age of Nicola: Sturgeon maps out the road to independence

The problem with Nicola Sturgeon is that she is, by the standards of contemporary politics, unusually straightforward. There is little artifice and even less deceit about Scotland’s First Minister. What you see is what you get; what she says is what she mostly means. That is, even when she’s sidling past the truth it’s clear what she really means. And so, there it was, out in the open at last: a clear confirmation that Jeremy Corbyn and his Labour party are Nicola Sturgeon’s useful idiots. Sure, there may not be any need for another referendum on independence before 2020 – not least because, as matters stand, that referendum might, like

Steerpike

Nicola Sturgeon parties with the Daily Mail

Nicola Sturgeon and the Daily Mail hosted a drinks reception for journalists last night. The unholy alliance included speeches from the First Minister and Scottish Daily Mail political editor Alan Roden. Roden recounted a fashion show he had covered at the Scottish parliament which had involved Sturgeon as one of the models, and two Mail correspondents covering it, while Sturgeon teased the journalist for asking so many questions about her shoes that she had begun to wonder whether he was less interested in writing about them and more interested in buying them. She then handed Roden a sewing kit so he could fix a pair of split trousers. ‘Can you

Isabel Hardman

The strangest thing about the SNP conference is how normal it is

The SNP conference has had to get bigger as the party has grown. Those who’ve been coming for years are a tad unsettled by quite how big and slick this event is. The exhibition hall is much bigger and is packed with lobbyists and big corporate stands, including a McDonald’s stall. The hall is bigger, the fringe events organised by lobbyists, too, and at first glance, it looks rather like a mainstream party conference: not one packed with eccentricities like the Ukip or Lib Dem conferences. That’s unsurprising given the SNP is a party of government and given it has a chunk of MPs in Westminster. But all of the

Friday

16 Oct 2015

Steerpike

SNP conference 2015, in pictures

This year’s SNP conference has proved to be a somewhat tame affair with Nicola Sturgeon playing down talk of a second independence referendum. While hacks hoping to meet the party’s army of cybernats have so far been left disappointed, Mr S has compiled a selection of photos showcasing the slightly stranger elements of this year’s conference:

Isabel Hardman

Angus Robertson: Older voters took longer to persuade in the referendum than we predicted

The SNP didn’t win the independence referendum, but is still talking about the lessons it can learn from what happened a year later. That’s because it wants to win the next one – and everyone at this conference believes that the next referendum only has question marks about when, not if, it will happen. SNP Westminster leader Angus Robertson suggested at a fringe organised by The Times this lunchtime that two major lessons he’d learned from last year’s result were that older voters would not be persuaded to vote ‘Yes’ as easily by younger generations than he had imagined they would be, and that the ‘Yes’ campaign failed to communicate

Kate Maltby

The Tories can’t allow Corbyn a monopoly on morality

Amber Rudd will be keeping a low profile this weekend. The sight of a working mother on Question Time, tearfully confronting the Energy Secretary over cuts to working tax credits, won’t have made easy viewing for the Tory press machine. Earlier this month, at Conservative Party Conference, George Osborne reiterated again and again that core Tory message, so ardently championed by Harlow MP Robert Halfon and groups like Bright Blue: this is the (real) party of hard-working people. So last night’s former Tory voter was heavily on message, until suddenly, she wasn’t. ‘I work bloody hard for my money to provide for my children, to give them everything they’ve got…

James Forsyth

The Tory party is now at ease with Margaret Thatcher

Last night, George Osborne interviewed Charles Moore to mark the publication of the second volume of Charles’s magisterial biography of Margaret Thatcher. You can watch the whole thing on the Policy Exchange website but one of the most striking things about the event, apart from Charles’s subtle needling of the Chancellor, was the questions that Osborne felt able to ask. He raised the issue of Thatcher’s legacy for the Tories in the north and Scotland, the poll tax and the question of when she should have gone. Even a few years ago asking these questions would have prompted a row, or at least some disquiet in the audience which had

Isabel Hardman

Labour whips persuade Corbyn to keep them

The Labour leadership has abandoned plans to effectively neuter the party’s whips office after realising it is quite useful, Coffee House has learned. I understand that John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn had considered making the whips’ office more of an administrative entity which didn’t try to herd MPs into the right lobby. There had also been plans afoot to get rid of Rosie Winterton, the party’s chief whip, as she had initially been identified as someone hostile to a Corbyn leadership who represented the old way of doing things. But the vote on the fiscal charter this week was much less troublesome than the Labour leadership had anticipated, thanks to

Sebastian Payne

Nicola Sturgeon explains how a second independence referendum could be ‘unstoppable’

Nicola Sturgeon has a plan about how to achieve another independence referendum, even if there won’t be a pledge for one in the SNP’s next manifesto. On the Today programme, Sturgeon pointed the finger at the Tories in Westminster — the bogeymen she believes will help the nationalists make the case for independence: ‘I think we do what we have done over a period of years: we continue to make the argument for the economic and social and political case for Scotland to be independent country and I believe very strongly the onus is on those who support independence to do that. I also though happen to think that there will be things our opponents

Thursday

15 Oct 2015

Isabel Hardman

SNP toys with Labour by announcing troublesome Trident vote

The SNP are very, very happy that they now have 56 MPs in Westminster. But to listen to their conference in Aberdeen today, you’d think they were happiest that Labour is having a miserable time in the House of Commons. It wasn’t just Nicola Sturgeon’s speech, covered here, that showed their joy. It was also the ‘Westminster Hour’ session that the party ran later in the day, featuring a number of newly elected MPs, and the party’s Westminster group leader Angus Robertson and finance spokesman Stewart Hosie. Angus Robertson in particular gave the impression that he was enjoying the misery of the Labour party and the SNP’s hand in that

Sebastian Payne

The first big EU referendum battle: Will Straw vs. Dominic Cummings

The two major EU referendum campaigns have gone public over the last week: ‘Vote Leave, Take Control’ and ‘Britain Stronger In Europe’. Both camps have formidable campaigners at the helm: Dominic Cummings for Vote Leave and Will Straw for Stronger In. They both passionately believe in their causes and are prepared to do whatever it takes to win. Cummings is renowned for his tenure as Michael Gove’s special adviser, where he successfully took on the education ‘blob’, the Whitehall machine and some in his own party. Straw founded the Left Foot Forward blog, before working at the IPPR think tank. He also stood as the Labour candidate in Rossendale and Darwen at the last general election. Many are wondering what

Melanie McDonagh

The EU is sucking up to Turkey to help reduce migration – but it could seriously backfire

You might have thought, mightn’t you, that a million arrivals in a year to a single European country, Germany – well, more than 800,000 and counting – would be enough to be going on with, wouldn’t you? After that, you wouldn’t actually be going out of your way to solicit more incomers into Europe in the long term, even if you were going to be sensible about the influx and were admitting refugees on a purely temporary basis until they could safely return home? But that’s not how the EU works. Turkey at present hosts about two million refugees, mostly from Syria. EU governments would obviously prefer them not all