Politics

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

Thursday

Simon Hart

Pandering to animal rights extremists will get MPs rejected, not elected

The reasons why England and Wales voted so convincingly for a Conservative Government on Thursday will be debated forever, but one of the most obvious is the complete rejection of both Labour and Liberal Democrats in any constituency that has a hint of the countryside about it. This is graphically illustrated by the post-election constituency map. Actually, suggesting that the voters rejected those parties is probably the wrong way round. The truth is that those parties have rejected rural voters. In 2015 Labour’s policy offer to the countryside was little more than a series of threats about everything from gun ownership to badger culling and extraordinarily the Liberal Democrats, despite

Sebastian Payne

Exclusive: Team Farage suggests O’Flynn has had ‘personal problems’

The briefing war inside Ukip continues with the Nigel Farage camp hitting back at Patrick O’Flynn, after his remarks in the Times today. The battle is between two sides: those who are close to and work for Nigel Farage, and others in the party who are concerned about who the Ukip leader is listening to. Team Farage believe the battle is about power and influence with the leader. But the attacks are getting personal: one source close to the Ukip leader suggests that O’Flynn has had ‘personal problems and this may be the manifestation of them’. Although Team Farage failed to deliver a victory in South Thanet, those who worked on his campaign are

Sebastian Payne

Ukip wars, part 389: Patrick O’Flynn declares war on Nigel Farage

Ukip is doing a very good job of convincing voters it is not a serious party. After days of shadowboxing over the use of Short money to fund the party in Westminster, its economic spokesman Patrick O”Flynn has broken cover to attack Nigel Farage — and he certainly isn’t holding back. In today’s Times, O’Flynn says the Ukip leader has become ‘snarling, thin-skinned, aggressive’, instead of a ‘cheerful, ebullient, cheeky, daring’ politician. He goes on to describe the week of turmoil since Farage quit as leader, before withdrawing his resignation four days later: ‘What’s happened since Thursday night, Friday morning has certainly laid us open to the charge that this looks like an

Lara Prendergast Lara Prendergast

The Stepford Student – The Spectator’s gift to the world

The Stepford Student website is full of interesting articles on current affairs. For instance ‘I couldn’t give a single flying shit about electoral reform’ by Nathan Akehurst and ‘Vote for whoever the fuck you want’ by Edgar Sait-Jones. There’s something for everyone. ‘Tim Lott’s annoying but Rod Liddle is a fuckbadger’ by Ruby Lott-Lavigna, would, I am sure, amuse Rod. Tim Lott might be entertained, too, given that the author is his daughter. She has a gift for understatement: ‘Dear Tory voter: I can call you a cunt if I want’ is her latest offering. You may recognise the name of the website. The term ‘Stepford student’ was coined by Brendan O’Neill in an article published by The Spectator last year: Perhaps Brendan’s article should

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Labour must estrange its awful voters

And so now we have to suffer the epic delusions, temper tantrums and hissy fits of the metro-left. They simply cannot believe how you scumbags could have got it so wrong last Thursday, you morons. You vindictive, selfish morons. That has been the general response from all of the people, the liberal middle-class lefties, who have cheerfully contributed towards making the once great Labour party effectively unelectable. You lot voted Tory out of fear — because you are stupid, stupid people. The Conservatives ran a ‘negative’ campaign and, because you are either simply horrible human beings, or just thick, you fell for it. That’s been the subtext of most of the

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Making Labour work

[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/thelastdaysofmiliband/media.mp3″ title=”Dan Hodges and Andrew Harrop discuss the final days of Miliband” startat=34] Listen [/audioplayer]The Labour party is in a worse position today than after its defeat in 1992. Then, the electorate sent Labour a clear and simple message: move to the centre, don’t say you’ll put taxes up and select a more prime ministerial leader. This time, the voters have sent the party a series of messages, several of which are contradictory. The reasons Labour failed to win Swindon South are very different from why it lost Morley and Outwood and the reasons for that defeat are different again in Scotland, where almost all seats fell to the

Sebastian Payne

How the polls got it so wrong

Not all the pollsters got it wrong. On the morning of the election, a set of strikingly accurate predictions was slapped on David Cameron’s desk. They had been compiled by Jim Messina and Lynton Crosby, the strategists who had been running a campaign derided as dull and repetitive. But, as their research showed, it was also effective. Messina is now back in his office in Washington DC. ‘We predicted 312 seats that morning to Lynton,’ he says. This was in line with the exit poll (316 Tory seats) that shocked Westminster. Yet, every day of the campaign, the polls had the Tories and Labour neck and neck. Did he ever

Dan Hodges

Miliband’s downfall

Ed Miliband was writing his victory speech on election night when the nation’s broadcasters announced the exit poll. He remained convinced — as he had been all along — that he was destined for No.10. In his defence, most people in Westminster thought the same. But within his ranks, a rebellion had already broken out. At 2 p.m. that afternoon, a member of his shadow cabinet had resigned — fearing not defeat, but the debacle that would follow Miliband’s success. ‘I was being briefed by Ed’s team about their post-election plans,’ the shadow minister told me. ‘It was nuts. They were explaining how there would be “no concessions”, no “tacking

Bruce Anderson

Cameron’s great secret: he’s not a very good politician

This was a vital election. A Tory failure would have been an act of political treason. Five years ago, the UK was grovelling with the PIGS in the fiscal sty. Our public finances were in a deplorable state, the financial system was in crisis and growth had disappeared over the economic horizon. No one has paid enough tribute to Messrs Cameron and Osborne for the sang-froid they displayed in the face of such adversity, and for their success. Not only that: we have two long-term structural problems in this country, both of which Lady Thatcher sidestepped, both of which David Cameron tackled. The first is welfare. In its corrosion of

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

We columnists have never been more useless

It takes some agility to shoot yourself in the foot and saw off the branch you’re sitting on, while hoisting yourself with your own petard, all at the same time; but that is what I shall now attempt. In this analysis of general election commentary I shall argue that over the last two months Britain has been all but choked by a surfeit of comment and analysis on the general election. Can any reader remember when there was an election that produced so much? Or, in the end, produced it to so little useful purpose? If last Christmas Day one had fallen into a coma only to awake on 8 May, thus

Wednesday

Steerpike Steerpike

Tory MP teaches SNP MPs Westminster etiquette

On Monday when 56 SNP MPs descended on Westminster, the youngest of the new intake Mhairi Black gushed that everyone had been so nice. Two days in, and cross-party relations have begun to cool. Carol Monaghan, the MP for Glasgow North West, claims that Simon Burns, the Tory MP for Chelmsford, scolded her as well as her fellow SNP politicians for their bad etiquette: However, Burns has clarified the situation to Mr S: ‘I was giving a talk about how to debate in chamber. If you agree you say ‘hear, hear’ and I mentioned that in recent years an unfortunate habit of clapping has occurred and that is deplorable. The talk was to everyone, not just the SNP,

Lara Prendergast Lara Prendergast

Seven things we learnt about Prince Charles from his ‘black spider’ letters

Prince Charles’s ‘black spider’ letters have just been released. Here are seven things we learnt about the future monarch from the correspondence: 1) He wants consumers to buy British (from a letter to Prime Minister Tony Blair from 2004): 2) He is worried about defence spending (from a letter to Prime Minister Tony Blair from 2004): 3) He is interested in protecting architectural heritage (from a response to a letter from 2004 inviting the Secretary of State for Culture to a conference): 4) He is concerned about the ‘poor old’ albatross and the Patagonian Toothfish (from a letter to the Minister for the Environment from 2004): 5) He wants to cull badgers and thinks

Steerpike Steerpike

Time for the pundits to keep their word

There were some dangerous pledges made in the heat of the election battle from both politicians and pundits. Paddy Ashdown promised to eat his hat should the exit poll prediction bear out. It did, and he has not consumed his hat, though he did go halfway and consume a hat-shaped cake. A similarly rash exit poll reaction was had by radio’s Iain Dale back in 2010, though he has not yet come good on his promise to streak. Unlike, it seems, the Telegraph’s Dan Hodges who promised to run naked down Whitehall singing ‘Land of Hope of Glory’ if Ukip polled over 6 per cent of the vote: They did, and Hodges is standing by his

Charles Moore Charles Moore

Cameron has one chance to abolish the licence fee and this is it

As the news of John Whittingdale’s appointment as Culture Secretary came through, I happened to be sorting my pile of threatening letters from TV Licensing. It was taking me a bit of time, as there are 34 of them, accumulated over the past two years or so. Faithful readers of this column may remember that in my flat in London I do not have a television. TV Licensing, which collects on behalf of the BBC, works on the insulting assumption that everyone has a television and therefore accuses me of licence evasion, telling me that it will take me to court. I never reply to these letters, both because I

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Having a leader won’t solve all of Labour’s problems

The Labour party has decided on a medium-length campaign to elect its new leader, the Press Association reports, with the announcement on 12 September. This is slightly odd, given NEC members were still on their way to the meeting where they’ll vote on the timetable, but there you go. If that date is approved, it is a halfway house between the short campaign that some were arguing would stop the party from descending into lengthy navel-gazing while the Tories got away with introducing policies that weren’t properly scrutinised by the Opposition, and the long campaign that the unions wanted so they could sign up more members – and that some of

Tom Slater Tom Slater

‘Anti-lad’ crusaders have begun a cultural cleansing of British universities

You can’t be on a campus for more than 10 minutes nowadays without hearing about inclusivity. Universities and students’ unions are mad for it. At the University of Sussex, a statement declaring that ‘The Union is committed to providing an inclusive and supportive environment’ has to be read, aloud, before every students’ union meeting. Students who want to set up a new society at the University of Bristol must satisfactorily prove that they will ‘respect and promote the Bristol SU values of equality, diversity, safe space and inclusivity’. It’s big in America, too. Not least at the University of Delaware, where, in 2007, it was revealed that the administration was

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Are Cabinet seats being kept warm for rising stars?

The reshuffle seems to have gone down reasonably well with Tory MPs – though there is as yet still no position for Nadhim Zahawi or Jesse Norman, which some think rather odd. The pair organised the Lords rebellion and are both able and bright. But Norman in particular may be in a bit of a Kevin Pietersen-style situation in that he has, in Number 10’s eyes, blown more than one chance. It wasn’t just his organisation of the Lords rebellion but his mysterious absence on the day of the Syria vote. It may be that the Tory leadership have decided that there is a ‘trust issue’ there. This will still

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Steve Hilton returns to the British political scene

In 2012, Steve Hilton quit his role as David Cameron’s senior adviser in frustration at the compromises of coalition and the slow pace of reform. Since then, he has maintained an almost total vow of silence on British politics. He had no desire to say anything that could be turned into a tricky headline for the Tories. But with the Tories having won the election—and with a majority—Hilton is dipping his toe back in the British political water. As well as doing various events to promote his new book More Human, he is also joining the Cameroon think tank Policy Exchange as a visiting scholar. Hilton’s arrival is a coup

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

It’s Labour’s loss if they don’t take Ukip voters seriously

Almost four million people voted for Ukip on 7 May. That, in itself, is an astonishing achievement for a party which is a) newish and b) endured more vilification than even Ed Miliband had to put up with, from both the press and of course the BBC. It would be nice to think that at some point we will get over our obsession with the SNP and Nicola Sturgeon – and start taking Ukip as seriously as we do the Nats. Or, almost three times more seriously, if we wish to be properly democratic. Ukip was crucial to the Conservative victory, taking enormous numbers of votes from Labour supporters north of Watford. Labour

Peter Jones

Labour has forgotten the people the party is meant to serve

The great Robert Harris has defended the pollsters who got the recent elections so wrong by quoting Cicero on the electorate’s fickleness. Cicero certainly acknowledged the problem when he was defending one Gnaeus Plancius in 54 bc, but made a rather different point. Plancius had been accused of rigging his election to the position of aedile (a sort of joint mayor of Rome) by his rival for the post, Laterensis. But Cicero had a problem: Laterensis was a personal friend. Since Cicero could not therefore lay into him, he began by arguing that electoral rejection could happen to anyone in Rome: ‘For in elections the people do not always demonstrate