Politics Archives

Friday

25 Sep 2015

Steerpike

Coffee Shots: Ed Miliband’s train clash with Ukip

Since Ed Miliband stepped down as the leader of the Labour party, the Labour MP for Doncaster North has vowed to keep a low profile as a hard-working backbencher. So Mr S suspects that the former Labour leader was disappointed to discover that half of the lobby have joined him this morning on his train journey to his constituency. Several political journalists travelling up to Doncaster for the Ukip conference have reported that Miliband is also on the train: https://twitter.com/jimwaterson/status/647310773430157312 However, it’s not all bad news for the backbencher, who was snapped buying breakfast ahead of the journey, with staff in Pret a Manger claiming they once voted for him: Ed Miliband

Sebastian Payne

Which party is now more irrelevant, Ukip or the Lib Dems?

Ukip is gathering for its autumn conference in Doncaster, with Nigel Farage delivering the keynote speech later today. Unlike last year’s shindig, which saw the defection of Mark Reckless from the Tories, this year’s conference is likely to be less eventful — for one thing, the party has failed to grow its presence in Westminster. Even its members appear to be demotivated — the Telegraph reports that attendance is ‘significantly low’ and has offered cut-price tickets to entice Kippers to come along. A party spokesman acknowledged: ‘Last year conference was straight after a big election victory for Ukip so it’s not wildly surprising that numbers are down’ Now that an In-Out referendum is on

Thursday

24 Sep 2015

Tom Holland

Diary – 24 September 2015

Jeremy Corbyn has been compared to plenty of people over the past few months — a geography teacher, Michael Foot, Brian from the Monty Python film — but my favourite comparison was to a horse. Steve Fielding, professor of politics at Nottingham, declared Corbyn’s election ‘an act of political stupidity unparalleled since Caligula appointed his horse to the Roman senate’. As someone with a book just published on Rome’s first imperial dynasty, I was doubly thrilled. First, Professor Fielding had confirmed the conviction in which I had written my history of the first Caesars: that two millennia on, the West’s primal examples of political excess continue to instruct and appal.

The Spectator

Barometer | 24 September 2015

Available for parties Labour deputy leader Tom Watson said that leaving his party to join the Liberal Democrats would be like ‘leaving the Beatles to join a Bananarama tribute band’. Is there such a thing? Bananaruma is a Leicester-based band led by the head of arts at a local secondary school. They advertise an hour-long show, for which they bring their own professional PA system with full lighting show. So far they have had one booking, at the Stamford Arms in Groby on 25 July. Tickets cost £20, including a three-course meal, with a bottle of bubbly thrown in for tables of six who booked before 1 July. Sporting chances

Steerpike

Did a Downing Street official just let slip government plans to privatise Channel 4?

While luvvies have been busy worrying about the future of the BBC in recent months, it appears that Channel 4 may actually be the broadcaster in the government’s firing line. According to Steve Blacks, the Downing Street photographer, an unknown man was snapped heading into 10 Downing Street with an ‘official’ document concerning the future of Channel 4. Close up the document appears to suggest the government should consider ‘extracting greater public value’ from Channel 4 by ‘focusing on privatisation options’: @jonsnowC4 you may not be so proud of this I photographed this afternoon going into Downing St pic.twitter.com/ojxyvNsePt — PoliticalPics (@PoliticalPics) September 24, 2015 In July it was reported that

James Forsyth

Exclusive: Steve Hilton jetting in to help with Cameron’s conference speech

Steve Hilton is, I understand, returning to help with David Cameron’s conference speech. Cameron’s one time political guru is now based in California, where he has launched the US political fundraising website Crowdpac. But he has made a point of returning each year to work on Cameron’s conference speech before heading back to the US. The decision to invite him to help out this year is particularly interesting given his view that Jeremy Corbyn is being underestimated. Hilton tweeted a few days ago that ‘cynical, pompous Westminster bubble trashes #Corbyn first week because he can’t play their game. not a pretty sight’. In response to Corbyn winning the Labour leadership,

Steerpike

Kerry McCarthy defends saying that meat-eaters should be treated like smokers

Today Labour’s vegan shadow environment secretary Kerry McCarthy has come under fire for comments she has made about meat. In an interview with ‘Viva!Life’ magazine — given before she was given a role in Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet — McCarthy said ‘meat should be treated in exactly the same way as tobacco with public campaigns to stop people eating it’. Naturally this has gone down like a lead balloon with farmers, especially since she appeared to suggest people should give up meat and dairy completely: ‘Progress on animal welfare is being made at EU level … but in the end it comes down to not eating meat or dairy.’ Speaking

Isabel Hardman

Gloria De Piero interview: Labour let children like me down in the 1980s. It can’t do that again.

Gloria De Piero is one of Labour’s most confident performers: a former television presenter who is well-liked in her party for speaking ‘normal’, she rarely seems ruffled. But when we meet in her Westminster office, the MP for Ashfield seems oddly anxious. Her party has been behaving in a similarly unsettled way ever since it started facing up to the fact that it was about to elect a backbencher as its leader, so perhaps it’s not all that surprising. But De Piero has agreed to serve in Jeremy Corbyn’s Shadow Cabinet in the rather nebulous-sounding ‘Young People and Voter Registration’ brief, so she can’t be as unsettled by his victory

Sebastian Payne

Podcast: the great British kowtow and do all right wingers have bad music taste

Britain’s policy towards China appears to be quite simple: doing exactly what China wants. On this week’s View from 22 podcast, Jonathan Mirsky and Fraser Nelson discuss this week’s Spectator cover feature on George Osborne’s visit to China and our interview with the Dalai Lama. Why is the Chancellor so keen to please the Chinese government? Is David Cameron wrong to say he will never meet with the Dalai Lama again? And what does the Dalai Lama think of the Prime Minister’s position? Rod Liddle and James Delingpole also debate whether they have bad music tastes, following revelation that Delingpole enjoyed listening to Supertramp with the Prime Minister at university. Do

Fraser Nelson

The great British kowtow

Any British Prime Minister who meets the Dalai Lama knows it will upset the Chinese government — but for decades, no British Prime Minister has much cared. John Major met him in 10 Downing Street, as did Tony Blair. These were small but important nods to Britain’s longstanding status as a friend of Tibet. Of course the Chinese Communist Party disliked seeing the exiled Buddhist leader welcomed in London — but that was their problem. How things have changed. Now China is far richer and Britain is anxious, sometimes embarrassingly so, to have a slice of that new wealth. From the start of his premiership, David Cameron has been explicit

James Forsyth

Will anyone fight, fight and fight again to save what’s left of New Labour?

[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/thegreatbritishkowtow/media.mp3″ title=”James Forsyth and Stephen Bush discuss the upcoming Labour party conference” startat=1650] Listen [/audioplayer]Five years ago this Saturday, Ed Miliband was crowned Labour leader. Three days later, he had to deliver his first conference speech in that role. It was a distinctly underwhelming address. Miliband was overshadowed by his brother, who ticked Harriet Harman off for clapping. To try to give its new leader a better start this time round, Labour decided to announce the result of its leadership contest a fortnight before the party conference. But two weeks has been nowhere near enough time for Labour to come to terms with what has happened. The Parliamentary Labour

Theo Hobson

Corbyn’s salvation

On religion, Jeremy Corbyn is interestingly moderate, circumspect — not the angry atheist you might expect. In a recent interview with the Christian magazine Third Way, he said his upbringing was quite religious: his mother was a ‘Bible-reading agnostic’ and his father a believer, and he went to a Christian school. ‘At what point did you decide that it wasn’t for you?’ he was asked. He replied very carefully, even challenging the premise of the question: ‘I’m not anti-religious at all. Not at all… I find religion very interesting. I find the power of faith very interesting. I have friends who are very strongly atheist and wouldn’t have anything to

Mary Wakefield

Is my only choice to be a cynic or a sucker?

It’s all the rage to mistrust the powerful these days, to say politicians are scum, or all bankers are selfish. Journalists are considered particularly disgusting post-Corbyn, which encourages all manner of needling on Twitter: ‘I’m sorry, but if you’re a journalist you should get a better job.’ This from a Corbynite. ‘I’m sorry, but…’ — are there three more irritating words? All this sticking it to The Man. All this talk of real, kindly people versus the shifty elite. I think it’s bogus. Not because the elite isn’t greedy but because the implication is that we the people have some sort of solidarity; that we’re let down only by our

James Delingpole

The truth about me, Dave and the drugs

[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/thegreatbritishkowtow/media.mp3″ title=”Rod Liddle and James Delingpole debate if all right wing people have bad music tastes” startat=700] Listen [/audioplayer]This week I woke up shocked to find myself on the front page of the Daily Mail. Apparently I’m the first person in history to have gone on the record about taking drugs with a British prime minister. But it’s really no big deal is it? Had I thought so, I’d never have spilled the beans. In fact, I think it’s one of those perfect non-scandal scandals in which all parties benefit. Dave acquires an extra bit of hinterland and is revealed to have been a normal young man. I get

Aidan Hartley

Pigs, pranks, but no Dave

I attended the Piers Gaveston Society in the mid-1980s, when I was at Oxford in the year above David Cameron. The parties were debauched and tremendous fun. But Dave was not there. The most remarkable figure at the heart of the Gaveston was Gottfried von-Bismarck, the Iron Chancellor’s great-great-grandson who, after his untimely death at just 44 in 2007, was said by the Telegraph to have led an ‘exotic life of gilded aimlessness’. The paper’s beautifully written obituary almost paid tribute to this ‘louche German aristocrat with a multifaceted history as a pleasure-seeking heroin addict, hell-raising alcoholic, flamboyant waster and reckless and extravagant host of homosexual orgies…’ I did not

Wednesday

23 Sep 2015

Isabel Hardman

Labour would benefit from a stronger position on Europe, says former policy chief

Jon Cruddas’ speech warning that Labour is lost in England has attracted plenty of attention for that line alone. But there was another section that is worth taking note of, given the former party policy chief is keen to play such a big role in rebuilding Labour after its febrile summer. Cruddas also spoke about Labour’s challenge on Europe, arguing most significantly that the party should support two categories of EU membership and take a stronger position on the renegotiation. He said: ‘We need to strengthen our pro-European politics with a clear position. We should recognise the reservations many of our citizens have about giving up our sovereignty to Brussels

Isabel Hardman

What makes a liberal? Tim Farron doesn’t seem to know.

Tim Farron’s speech to the Lib Dem conference seems to have gone down well with those in the hall, which probably means that it did the trick, given this was his first conference as leader and the party’s first conference since its defeat. But given Farron wants to rebuild his party by appealing to those who no longer feel that Labour is their home, or those who worry that the Tories are going a bit further than they’d like, his speech wasn’t quite as effective as it could have been. Sure, he delivered it well – particularly when he was talking about housing and the refugee crisis, where he became

James Forsyth

How will Tim Farron make sure the Lib Dems are heard?

When the Liberal Democrats voted for Tim Farron as their next leader, they didn’t know that the Labour party was going to elect Jeremy Corbyn. If they had known that, they might have been more tempted to go for Norman Lamb, the more centrist candidate in the race and the one with ministerial experience. But Farron has adapted pretty well to the new, post-Corbyn landscape. His speech today contained plenty of pops at Labour for ‘abandoning serious politics, serious economics’ and choosing instead the ‘glory of self-indulgent opposition’. Farron, by contrast, tried to cast the Liberal Democrats as the party that is both competent and caring. He combined a defence

Fraser Nelson

Exclusive: the Dalai Lama lambasts David Cameron’s China policy

The Dalai Lama was in London on Monday and met his old friend (and Spectator contributor) Jonathan Mirsky. Time was when he could expect to see the British Prime Minister too – but Beijing was furious that David Cameron met him three years ago and outrageously demanded that the Prime Minister apologise for it. Cameron did what Beijing wanted. He said in public that he had ‘no plans’ to meet the Dalai Lama again. Such was his hunger for Chinese deals, which has been on full inglorious display in George Osborne’s giant kowtow in China this week. Jonathan has known the Dalai Lama for 35 years, and asked him what

Isabel Hardman

Who are Jeremy Corbyn’s outriders?

Jeremy Corbyn may have a Shadow Cabinet and a full frontbench team, but the Labour leader doesn’t have many genuine outriders even amongst those he has given jobs to. Most frontbenchers seem rather refreshed by how happy he is for them to have open discussions at meetings: yesterday’s Shadow Cabinet meeting, for instance, was quite discursive and friendly, which was quite different to its atmosphere in the Miliband years. But most of those frontbenchers have agreed to serve because they believe it is the best thing for the Labour party, not because they want to help Corbyn. Every leader needs a group of outriders around them, both frontbenchers and backbenchers, who are prepared to