Politics

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

Monday

Sebastian Payne

Watch: new party political broadcasts from the Tories and Labour

Lucky viewers of BBC One this evening will have seen the Conservative party’s brand new political broadcast. Entitled ‘Securing a better future for your family’ — watch above — the saccharine video is designed to soften the hearts of even the most ardent Tory haters. Loaded with messages about abolishing the deficit, cutting income tax, investing in the NHS, creating millions of apprenticeships and extending Help to Buy, the PPB is targeted at one demographic: families. The Tories are often accused of purely concentrating on the ‘grey vote’, with messages and policies designed to appeal to pensioners, who are much more likely to actually vote. But this broadcast features young

Camilla Swift Camilla Swift

Whatever happened to Larry the Downing Street cat’s increased security?

When reports emerged that a dog had allegedly been poisoned at Crufts, David Cameron appeared to be extremely worried that a similar fate might befall the Downing Street cat, Larry. Talking to Heart FM, the Prime Minister promised to ‘double the security around him and make sure he’s ok’. But this morning Larry looked far from ‘ok’ when police sniffer dog Bailey turned up on his doorstep. Perhaps the PM has more important things to think about – or perhaps police security is what Cameron had in mind to waylay any attempts on his cat’s life. But needless to say, Larry seemed seriously unimpressed by the bobby assigned to his

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Were the Tories’ dodgy figures designed to provoke Labour into making a statement?

Why are the Tories peddling what the independent Institute for Fiscal Studies has described as ‘at best unhelpful’, which is the claim that households would be hit with a £3,000 tax bombshell if Ed Miliband becomes Prime Minister? The IFS’ analysis came out earlier today, but this evening George Osborne repeated the claim, saying: ‘Well it’s based on what the Labour party has voted for and what Ed Miliband has said he will do… I am confident that that is based on what the Labour party has voted for in Parliament.’ listen to ‘George Osborne stands by £3,000 Labour tax rise claim’ on audioBoom

Steerpike Steerpike

Revealed: The mastermind behind Ukip’s foxy election merchandise

You might have thought Ukip bosses would want to distance themselves from their outspoken and eccentric candidate Winston McKenzie after he organised the disastrous ‘Carnival of Colour’ in Croydon last year before going on to declare that Farage was bigger than Jesus. However, Ukip don’t play by the usual rules. In fact senior party figures wear their allegiance to Winston on their sleeve, almost literally. At the launch of the party’s pledge card in Westminster on Monday, party chairman Steve Crowther proudly sported a handmade purple fox that looked like it might have been made by a primary school child. In fact rather than beeing the work of a seven-year-old, it was more of McKenzie’s

Steerpike Steerpike

Coffee Shots: Nick Clegg’s animal magic

Where did Nick Clegg go on the first stop of his General Election campaign tour? To visit a creature under threat. Not a Lib Dem MP struggling to hold on to a marginal seat, Lorely Burt, but a hedgehog who can only walk in circles after an injury. Of course. Mr Steerpike keeps a keen eye on the campaigning tropes of our political leaders and he is not surprised by Clegg’s prickly posing. Indeed, the Lib Dem leader seems to love campaigning with animals almost as much as George Osborne enjoys wearing totally unnecessary hi-vis jackets. There was the visit to a seal sanctuary, where Mr Steerpike was less impressed

Hugo Rifkind Hugo Rifkind

Labour’s most shameful mug? It has to be Diane Abbott

This is an extract from Hugo Rifkind’s column in the next issue of The Spectator, out on Thursday: The Labour party has put its five core election pledges on mugs. No, I don’t know why. Presumably the idea is that you buy all five, and then, when your friends come around for tea, you each drink yours out of the one featuring your favourite. Yeah, I know. As if the sort of people who’d buy these mugs would have friends. There’s an odd fuss, though, about mug four, which says CONTROLS ON IMMIGRATION on it. Quite widely, this has been perceived as a gaffe, a betrayal, a slump into Faragism,

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

All aboard the election battle bus

Now that David Cameron and Nick Clegg have had their final audiences with the Queen at Buckingham Palace, they can get on the road. Their shiny battle buses are waiting to accompany them on the campaign trail. The Lib Dems are charging hacks who want to clamber aboard their bus £750 per person per day, which is rather a lot for a bus journey, even if it does take you from seat to seat. You’d expect a champagne breakfast personally served by Tim Farron every morning for that fee. Still, the Tories have only invited certain people on their bus, and those certain people seem to be broadcast journalists rather

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Why the SNP’s Nicola Sturgeon may well win Thursday’s leaders debate

I know it’s early, but I’d like to tip a winner from Thursday’s debate: Nicola Sturgeon. SNP leader. She has just been positioned next to the Prime Minister, who’ll be on the far-right. This which will cause relief in Tory HQ who had been worried about his being flanked by Nigel Farage and Sturgeon. The lineup, from left to right, is as follows:- Natalie Bennett – Nick Clegg – Nigel Farage – Ed Miliband – Leanne Wood – Nicola Sturgeon – David Cameron Best Coconut Shy Ever: pic.twitter.com/trYzoqZY5i — Ian Hyland (@HylandIan) March 30, 2015 Sturgeon will be new to an English audience, and is certain to impress. So far, the write-ups haven’t done her justice: there have been too

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Cameron: It is me or Miliband

It is rare for politicians to mention their opponents by name – don’t give them the publicity is the normal approach. But standing in Downing Street just now to announce the start of the election campaign, David Cameron pointed at the door of Number 10 and said ‘The next Prime Minister walking through that door will be me or Ed Miliband’. There’s a method to the Tory approach. They believe that one of their trump cards in this election is that the public just can’t see Ed Miliband as Prime Minister. They want to force voters to confront the choice that one of Miliband or Cameron will be Prime Minister

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

Why is Labour making merit out of not backing an EU referendum?

Fair play to Ed Miliband for launching Labour’s business manifesto today in Bloomberg, not perhaps the party’s natural stamping ground, at least not since the prawn cocktail initiative in 1997. And it was gutsy of it too to take out a full page advertisement in the FT – they don’t come cheap – to broadcast the party’s opposition to an EU referendum. ‘The biggest risk to British business is the threat of an EU exit. Labour will put the national interest first. We will deliver reform, not exit’, it says. Granted most British businesses, especially big ones and foreign-based ones, don’t want out of the EU. But doesn’t it seem

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Miliband in the middle as TV debate line-up set

The order in which the party leaders will stand in this Thursday’s televised debate has been set as follows: Natalie Bennett, Nick Clegg, Nigel Farage, Ed Miliband, Leanne Wood, Nicola Sturgeon and David Cameron. So Ed Miliband will be in the middle, and David Cameron and Nigel Farage will be sufficiently far apart from one another to thwart Ukip’s ambition for their leader to land a good run of blows on Cameron. Still, Farage is next to Miliband, which means he’ll have a chance to land some blows on the leader of a party he’s trying to take votes from too. The standing order does matter a little, but what

Sebastian Payne

First poll of the campaign puts the Tories four points ahead

And we’re off! Today is the first day of the proper general election campaign and the rollercoaster of polls continues. ComRes/ITV News/Daily Mail have released a new poll putting the Conservatives four points ahead —  their biggest lead since September 2010 — which is the complete opposite of yesterday’s YouGov shocker. According to ComRes, the Conservatives are currently on 36 per cent, Labour has dropped to 32 per cent, Ukip is on 12 per cent, the Lib Dems on nine and the Greens on five. As with the YouGov poll, the fieldwork was conducted after the Paxman Q&A on Thursday but the numbers are favourable to David Cameron. Many of the

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Will we learn anything from this election campaign?

Will we learn anything from any of the parties in this election campaign? And will the polls tell us anything either? Yesterday Labour was excited that it had a four-point lead over the Tories in a YouGov poll. Today the Tories are excited that they’re four points ahead in a ComRes poll. The polls are certainly moving, but only like a pendulum, swinging back and forth, at present. Meanwhile Labour’s frontbenchers are struggling to explain how they’d cut the deficit, the Tories don’t want to explain how they’d cut £12bn from welfare, and the Lib Dems are still explaining why they do/don’t want a referendum on Britain’s membership of the

The Spectator

The Spectator at war: Loyal toast

From News of the Week, The Spectator, 3 April 1915: THE King has done a big thing, and done it with characteristic modesty and freedom from sensationalism. On Thursday there was published a letter addressed by his private secretary, Lord Stamfordham, to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. “The King,” says Lord Stamfordham, “feels that nothing but the most vigorous measures will successfully cope with the grave situation now existing in our armament factories.” The evidence “without doubt” points to the fact that our inability “to secure the output of war material indispensable to meet the requirements of our Army in the field” is largely due to drink. “The continuance of such a

Damian Thompson Damian Thompson

Look at this cheap trick the Tories tried to play on me

‘Mansion Tax Revaluation Information’, said the letter that came through my letterbox, in an envelope that screamed ‘council’ or ‘taxman’ or something alarming. The letter inside was carefully formatted to look official. ‘Your property has been identified as one which could be affected by Ed Miliband’s “Mansion Tax”. This could leave you with an additional bill of more than £20,000 per year.’ And then: ‘Labour has promised to introduce the Mansion Tax immediately. The Inland Revenue will send out demands for payment after the budget in June. That is three months away, are you ready and able to pay Labour’s Mansion Tax?’ You had to turn over the page for the

Steerpike Steerpike

Jim Murphy fails to mention Labour on his campaign leaflets

Earlier this month the Labour party were accused of not including pictures of Ed Miliband on campaign literature out of fear that the mere image of their party leader could scare off voters. Now Scottish Labour leader Jim Murphy appears to have gone one step further and simply not mentioned Labour at all. Ruth Davidson, the leader of the Scottish Conservatives, claims that campaign leaflets for Murphy fail to mention the Labour party once: I get @JimForScotland leaving Miliband off his leaflet but why has he left off @scottishlabour? Not a single mention. pic.twitter.com/FenbKEf774 — Ruth Davidson MSP (@RuthDavidsonMSP) March 29, 2015 With recent polling by Lord Ashcroft predicting that Murphy will hold on to his East Renfrewshire seat

Douglas Murray

Is Britain losing the war against radical Islam?

Some stories are almost too predictable. Take this one. Three schoolgirls from Britain disappear to Syria, apparently in order to join Islamic State and become ‘jihad brides’, or more precisely ‘jihad rape prizes’. There is a huge public outcry. In particular the families of the girls – and others in the Muslim communities – ask why the police did not know that these girls were planning to go to Syria. Before long Keith Vaz – never one to miss the lowest form of bandwagon – hauls police chiefs in front of his Parliamentary committee. There the police chiefs are made to apologise for not knowing the movements of the three

Sunday

Sebastian Payne

Alex Salmond invades the stage and appeals to the cultish side of the SNP

Alex Salmond has been oddly absent from the SNP’s spring conference this weekend. Although the former First Minister’s only official positions are as the MSP for Aberdeenshire East and the PPC for Gordon, it’s puzzling why one of the party’s most prominent figures wasn’t given a prime speaking slot. But that didn’t stop him from trying to steal the show. A small stage was setup in the hall for a Q&A session to promote his new book at lunchtime today. But as soon as Salmond arrived, a combination of sound issues and the ecstatic crowd led him to give up on the side stage and invade the main platform. As

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Lucy Powell confirms: debt-addicted Labour has no plan to balance the books

‘You aren’t listening to what I’m saying,’ said a rather rattled Lucy Powell, Labour’s election chief, whom the party put up for BBC Sunday Politics today. I suspect that, by now, she’ll have wished that we weren’t listening. Because in a commendable moment of candour, she admitted that the Labour Party intends to keep debt rising should it win power – and has no real deficit reduction strategy. Ms Powell dispensed with Ed Balls tricksy language and told it how it is. Here she is, talking to BBC Sunday Politics (11 mins in, after complaining about a ‘Paxo-style interview’). ‘Andrew Neil: You would borrow more, wouldn’t you? Andrew Neil: To bridge the deficit

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Stakes raised ahead of Thursday night’s debate

The stakes have been raised, at least psychologically, for Thursday night’s debate. Today’s YouGov poll has Labour four points ahead, in contrast to a two point Tory lead in their last survey. This is being seen in Westminster as a Paxman bounce for Miliband. If this Labour leads is still in place at the end of the Easter weekend, Tory nerves will begin to fray. Thursday’s debate will be a crowded affair with seven leaders on stage. Despite it being a two hour debate, there’ll only be time for four questions. As I say in the Mail On Sunday, the debate will almost certainly turn into Cameron versus the rest as they