Politics

Read about the latest UK political news, views and analysis.

Friday

Ed West Ed West

It may actually be in Ukip’s interest to lose the EU referendum

Will the country be torn apart by the EU referendum? That’s the argument made by Chris Deerin on the capitalist running dog website CapX. Deerin, a Scottish Unionist, says it’s now Great Britain’s turn to go through the same painful and divisive process that Scotland endured last year. Personally I doubt that will happen, although it’s possible that a slender vote in favour of remaining in the EU may in the long term be divisive. The main problem with the analogy is that there is just no Ukip equivalent of the aggressive Scottish nationalists who shouted at Jim Murphy. There is a Kipper version of the Cybernats, but even online

Sebastian Payne

Gordon Brown has a brass neck to blame the Tories for tearing apart the Union

Gordon Brown has popped up in the Guardian today to warn that the evil Tories are going to destroy the Union. The former Prime Minister laments in an op-ed the government’s attitude towards Scotland and calls for a ‘constitutional convention’ to figure out the ‘rights and responsibilities of citizens’ in different parts of the Union. If we don’t, Brown warns, the Union is in big trouble: ‘No union can survive without unionists and, after an election in which, to head off Ukip, the Conservative and Unionist party presented itself as the English Nationalist party, it is clear that the union is on life support … It is London’s equivocation over Scotland that is becoming

Steerpike Steerpike

Ed Vaizey offers the BBC a survival tip

Given that John Whittingdale once described the licence fee as ‘worse than the poll tax’, the BBC were reported to be less than thrilled when David Cameron appointed the Tory MP as Culture Secretary ahead of the corporation’s charter renewal next year. However, should the BBC be concerned about the impending decision, culture minister Ed Vaizey has at least offered an early pointer about the type of programmes the corporation ought to be commissioning. Vaizey took to Twitter to praise his old chum Andrew Roberts on his Napoleon documentary for the BBC. He says that it is ‘just the kind of programme’ the BBC ‘should be making’: Furthermore, the ‘great review’ he links to is written by none other than

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The SNP, which would impose eye-watering austerity on Scotland, remains immune to the laws of politics

David Mundell, the somewhat improbable Secretary of State for Scotland, had at least one good line yesterday: “The SNP are asking for something they don’t really want, but of course they will complain if they don’t get it.” It being our old chum Full Fiscal Autonomy (or Responsibility) for Scotland. Now if the ordinary rules of politics still applied you might think a party might pay some price for bitterly complaining about a £100m cut to the Scottish block grant while also advocating measures that would require some £7 billion in additional tax increases or spending cuts would be laughed at. But the ordinary rules of politics no longer apply and no-one

Sebastian Payne

The Lutfur Rahman era is over. Now John Biggs has to rebuild trust in Tower Hamlets

Occasionally, there are moments when politicians of all persuasions welcome a result. As David Cameron noted at PMQs this week, Naz Shah’s victory over George Galloway in Bradford West was one of these moments. This morning’s news that Labour’s John Biggs has been elected Mayor of Tower Hamlets is another. Biggs won decisively, with 32,754 votes (including second preferences) to 26,384 votes for the independent Rabina Khan, a former member of disgraced mayor Lutfur Rahman’s cabinet, who stood as an independent. There was clearly tactical voting, with Biggs taking an impressive 90 per cent of the second preferences. This result will hopefully mark the end of the toxic Rahman era. After the

Thursday

The Spectator

Barometer | 11 June 2015

Forty years on The forthcoming EU referendum has rekindled memories of the in-out Common Market referendum of 1975. But it seems a strange looking-glass world now. — Mrs Thatcher was a keen ‘yes’ campaigner, sporting a jumper with the flags of EC member states. Neil Kinnock campaigned for a British exit. The SNP and Plaid Cymru campaigned to leave the EC, the former calling it a ‘dangerous experiment in gross over-centralisation’. — The worry then was that England would vote to stay while Scotland and Wales would vote to leave. — But the most surprising supporters now seem the Daily Mail and the Daily Express, the latter declaring after the

The Spectator

A lot to ask

David Cameron is now facing the biggest challenge of his leadership: how to renegotiate Britain’s membership of the EU without destroying his party. His dilemma mirrors the situation of Harold Wilson 40 years ago this month. So far, the old Labour man looks the better strategist. Wilson, who had a majority of three, avoided mass resignations from his cabinet by suspending the convention that members of the government must back its entire programme in public. Of his 23 cabinet ministers, seven joined the campaign for Britain to leave the EU. They didn’t win the argument — but they ensured that the question was properly debated, and settled for many years

Steerpike Steerpike

Jacob Rees-Mogg asks Gove for a Magna Carta

Jacob Rees-Mogg told the House on Thursday that his favourite activity is making speeches on Europe and ‘if the House isn’t sitting, I do it at home’. That’s not the only place he opines on the subject. Mr S was enjoying some supper at the Savile Club on Wednesday evening, with his comrades from ‘Conservatives for Liberty’. The noble sounding group is made up of your average Tory boys, with facial hair that would not have looked out of place in the Continental Army circa 1776. While the evening was meant to be a celebration of the Magna Carta, with David Davis and John Redwood in attendance, the conversation in the room kept going

Sebastian Payne

Ukip sources hit back at Raheem Kassam’s comments on plots and money

Raheem Kassam has blown open the doors on the mad world of Ukip in an interview with The Guardian’s Rowena Mason. A former aide to Nigel Farage, Kassam was the Ukip leader’s righthand man during the election campaign and still remains very close to the leader. But during the briefing wars following Farage’s ‘unresignation’, Kassam became a lightening rod for criticism and eventually left the party. The interview offers his honest take on what’s been going on in Ukip and where the party needs to change. But some Kippers are disputing his characterisation of recent events. The first point of contention is over whether there was a plot to oust Farage as leader. As the Guardian article says: Kassam claims that even

Sebastian Payne

John Prescott: David Miliband should ‘shut up’

David Miliband is falling rapidly out of favour with his former colleagues, thanks to his constant critique of Labour. John Prescott spoke for many in the party on the Daily Politics today, where he described Miliband’s interjections on Labour’s future as ‘terrible’: ‘He should shut up. We’ve gone through that period. The Miliband period is now gone. We’re not looking to a period where he now emerges now as another Miliband interpretation; I don’t think that’s possible. ‘He did shut up during the elections though there was enough hints to say that he wasn’t happy. I’m not happy! He’s now become a Blairite, but when he was with me he didn’t want

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Despite winning a majority, Cameron will be remembered for how he handles Europe

At 6.30pm on election-day, the Cameron invited their guests out into the garden for a drink. It was a very English occasion. Everyone was in their coats, huddled on the patio trying to pretend it was 10 degrees hotter than it actually was as they sipped their glass of wine. The mood was, understandably, nervous. The prospect of defeat was on everyone’s mind. David Cameron even read out his resignation speech to the assembled gathering. I’m told that the reaction as he did so showed that many of those present feared he would be doing it for real in less than 24 hours time. Now, obviously, things turned out very

Sebastian Payne

Tony Blair takes a dig at chillaxing Cameron

Tony Blair popped into King’s College London this morning to discuss ‘how to run a government’ with his former adviser Michael Barber. Amongst other things, the former Prime Minister discussed David Cameron’s efforts to remodel No.10 to make it more Blair like, as James reveals in his column this week. But he made no attempt to disguise the fact that he thinks structures are no substitute for the ‘guy’ at the top being on the case 24/7 when looking to deliver change: ‘It works when you have the clearest possible sense of priorities and what you want to achieve … you’ve got to have the Prime Minister’s authority behind this all the time. ‘My

Steerpike Steerpike

Revealed: the lords who haven’t paid their bar tabs

Members of the House of Commons were reprimanded in the media for splashing out £11,000 in just one week in Parliament’s subsidised bars. Still, credit where credit is due, at least the politicians paid for their drinks. This is more than can be said for some members of the House of Lords. Despite the restaurants and bars in the House of Lords being so heavily subsidised that champagne is cut-price and lobster a mere £10 in the Barry Room, a Freedom of Information request shows that some members aren’t paying up. As of 8 April, there was an outstanding bill of over a month for £500 worth of food and drink ordered by members of the

Steerpike Steerpike

Farage’s former aide lets rip about working for Ukip: ‘I totally regret it’

The Ukip civil war may be over for now but that doesn’t mean its casualties aren’t still reeling in the aftermath. Nigel Farage’s former aide Raheem Kassam has carried out a ‘tell-all’ interview with the Guardian, after he was forced to step down last month. Speaking about his time working for Ukip, Kassam offers some parting shots against those who crossed him, saying he ‘totally’ regrets the experience: ‘I don’t mean it was a horrible experience. But I’ve taken a big hit for nothing. The only good thing that’s come out of this are friendships … But have I got anything else apart from looking at much of Ukip and thinking you

Sebastian Payne

Podcast: The Last Christian and David Cameron’s solemn election night

Will 2067 mark the point when Christianity dies out in Britain? In this week’s View from 22 podcast, Damian Thompson and Freddy Gray discuss this week’s cover story on the crisis facing Britain’s churches. Is the rise of secularism a problem for just Anglicans, or all Christian denominations in Britain? Is the Church of England particularly to blame? What comparisons are there to what is happening with religion in America? And if these projections are correct, will Christian values continue to underpin British society, long after the religion itself disappears? James Forsyth and Fraser Nelson reveal what David Cameron did on election night. Although the Tories are revelling in their victory, it is clear that neither

The Spectator

The Spectator at war: Paying for the politicians we want

From ‘Cabinet Salaries and Cabinet Pensions’, The Spectator, 12 June 1915: THE National Government have very wisely taken a step which we strongly urged upon the late Government on February 28th, 1914, and again on July 4th of the same year. They are going to pool their salaries just as we then recommended, and make all holders of Cabinet rank, whatever their office, the recipients of £4,246 a year. The only exception is the Prime Minister, who is very properly to keep a salary of £5,000 a year—that is, £754 more than the rest of his colleagues. As the plan of a standard salary for Cabinet Ministers has been so

Damian Thompson Damian Thompson

Crisis of faith

It’s often said that Britain’s church congregations are shrinking, but that doesn’t come close to expressing the scale of the disaster now facing Christianity in this country. Every ten years the census spells out the situation in detail: between 2001 and 2011 the number of Christians born in Britain fell by 5.3 million — about 10,000 a week. If that rate of decline continues, the mission of St Augustine to the English, together with that of the Irish saints to the Scots, will come to an end in 2067. That is the year in which the Christians who have inherited the faith of their British ancestors will become statistically invisible.

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

Ed’s campaign was fine. The problem is his party

Patrick Wintour is one of the best political editors around. For the Guardian he’s been for decades a cool and well-sourced voice: even-handed, informed, interesting but in the best sense dry. So when I heard he’d written the most comprehensive behind-the-scenes account yet of Labour’s failed general election campaign I hurried to read it. I was not disappointed. ‘The undoing of Ed Miliband, and how Labour lost the election’ is an insider account of a chapter of accidents, starting with Mr Miliband’s memory lapse about the deficit during Labour’s last party conference. Apparently he shut himself in his hotel room afterwards and wouldn’t come out. The story takes us through to

Wednesday

Christopher Snowdon

Vapers deserve to be angry – they are under attack

There is a perception – on Twitter at least – that vapers are angry and abusive. Ben Goldacre recently described ‘e-cigarette campaigners’ as ‘vile… obsessive, vindictive, abusive, and to an extent that is clearly dubious’. This inevitably led to a string of replies from bewildered vapers that may have confirmed his view, although the vast majority were polite. From what I’ve seen, vapers are no more likely to be offensive than any other punter on social media, which is admittedly a low bar. After the referendum on Scottish independence and the general election, not to mention the periodic bursts of outrage for which Twitter is notorious, I have seen much worse

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

PMQs sketch: Dave gloats in front of Saint Hattie

Poor old Labour. They’re still so crushed by the election result that they put up dead-parrot Harriet Harman against Cameron every Wednesday. Why not let the leadership candidates use him for target practice instead? PMQs is sometimes a contest of ideas and sometimes a contest of insults. Today it was a contest of moral registers. Harman asked about the EU referendum and Cameron scoffed at her colleagues for voting en bloc for a referendum they’ve opposed for five long years. ‘The biggest mass conversion since that Chinese general baptised his troops with a hose pipe.’ Harman was off. She scrambled to the top of Sanctimony Hill and delivered a sermon on the