Politics

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

Sunday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Nicola Sturgeon sets out roadmap to a second referendum

Most politicians are having a miserable election, but not so Nicola Sturgeon. Her party is terrifying Labour in Scotland, she has put in very strong performances in the TV debates, and whoever is in government in Westminster from May will face trouble from Sturgeon. The forecasters now put the SNP on course to win between 40 and 50 of Scotland’s 59 seats; Scotland is on the cusp of the sharpest change of political direction in her democratic history. But in order to sustain that momentum to polling day, Sturgeon needs to reassure nervous former ‘no’ voters who are considering voting SNP in order to exert the sort of left-wing pressure on Labour

Saturday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The coming battle for legitimacy

Jonathan Freedland has written a compelling column on the challenge that Ed Miliband will face to establish his legitimacy if he becomes Prime Minister despite Labour not having won the most seats or votes. But I suspect that whoever becomes the government after May the 8th will have difficulty in persuading everyone that they have a right to govern. The Tory-Liberal Democrat coalition could claim that 59 per cent of voters had backed its constituent parts. It also had a comfortable majority in the House of Commons with 364 out of 650 seats. Now, unless something dramatic happens, no governing combination is likely to have anything like that kind of

Steerpike Steerpike

Tories are left playing by Aussie rules

Tory campaign boss Lynton Crosby invited the former Australian Prime Minister John Howard into Conservative Party HQ on Thursday afternoon to give staff and ministers a mid-campaign pep talk. Firing up his audience with tales of beating Labour down under, Mr S hears the bit where Crosby’s one-time client lost both the 2007 election and his own seat, did not make it into the speech. After the Conservatives manifesto cover was lifted from the Aussie Liberal Party – another Crosby client – MPs are wondering what else will be ‘borrowed’ by the antipodean guru. ‘He’ll have us in cork hats by polling day,’ sighs one member of the old guard.

Lucy Vickery

Spectator competition: Nigel Farage’s Desert Island discs (plus: a politician’s take on Kipling’s ‘If’)

The latest challenge was to suggest suitable Desert Island discs for a historical figure, living or dead. Your choice of castaways was somewhat narrow — Richard III, Henry VIII, Tony Blair and Jeremy Clarkson popped up again and again. This meant a fair amount of repetition: King Richard was the most popular and his selections more often than not included ‘Dem bones’ and ‘Two Princes’ by the Spin Doctors. Several entrants thought that ‘Don’t Cry for me, Argentina’ might make Jeremy Clarkson’s playlist. Chris O’Carroll chose Joni Mitchell’s ‘Both Sides Now’ on behalf of Tony Blair; while Peter Skelly went for Dire Straits’s ‘Money for Nothing’, along with several other

Steerpike Steerpike

Who would have thought the Greens would be so rubbish with rubbish in Brighton?

On Thursday Natalie Bennett spoke during the BBC Challengers’ Debate of the positive change Caroline Lucas has brought to British politics since she was elected as the MP for Brighton Pavilion. However, word reaches Steerpike that not everyone in Lucas’s constituency is so enamoured with the Green politician’s work. Several Brighton residents have taken to Twitter to complain to Lucas along with the council’s recycling and refuse service that their rubbish is not being collected on time: We’re now clearing other’s #waste in front of our home @RecyclingRefuse thought was job of @BrightonHoveCC #rubbish pic.twitter.com/jiAxY3lxVg — mel poluck (@melpoluck) April 13, 2015 @RecyclingRefuse why no recycling collection on friar road for last 3 weeks? Recycle

Friday

Mark Gettleson

No. That poll didn’t put Ed ahead in the Prime Minister stakes.

An hour and a half watching Ed Miliband debate four people who are not going to be Prime Minister. That is the ordeal you had to go through in order to be qualified to answer Survation’s post-debate poll, which included the ‘sensational’ result that respondents preferred Ed Miliband to David Cameron by 45% to 40%. The figure set some even seasoned commentators agog at Ed’s miraculous turnaround on the preferred Prime Minister stakes, following years of languishing twenty or so points behind the Conservative leader. Everyone should hold their horses. People who watch debates are, at the best of times, the electorally aware and highly partisan, largely tuning in to

Julia Hartley-Brewer

45 million reasons why donations to political parties are dodgy as hell

If I had a spare £1 million swashing about in my bank account or down the back of the sofa, I am pretty sure I could come up with, give or take, a million different and better ways of spending it other than donating it to a political party. A children’s cancer charity, for instance. Or, if I’m feeling a little less altruistic, a nice yacht maybe. Clearly, Richard Desmond, the owner of Express newspapers, couldn’t think of any better way to spend his hard-earned dosh so he’s decided to give his spare £1.3million to Ukip to help fund their general election campaign. This comes on top of an earlier £300,000 donation. Cue

Sebastian Payne

Jim Murphy, Douglas Alexander and Charles Kennedy set to lose seats as SNP march continues

Labour’s efforts to stem the nationalist tide in Scotland aren’t working. Lord Ashcroft has polled eight marginals north of the border and the results confirm that the SNP is on course to conquer Scotland. In three Labour-held seats — East Renfrewshire, Glasgow South West, Paisley & Renfrewshire South — the SNP is set to take the seats with double digit swings. The Nats are 11 points ahead in Paisley, previously held by Douglas Alexander. In Jim Murphy’s seat of East Renfrewshire, a one point Labour lead in February has turned into a nine-point SNP lead. The news isn’t much better for the Liberal Democrats. The party is set to lose all four

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

How Ukip plans to boost its national campaign

What will Ukip do with the £1.3 million donated by Express chief Richard Desmond? The party cannot plough the money directly into its fight in South Thanet because strict spending limits apply on fights in seats during the short campaign. But it can spend it in other ways to promote the party, and of course to promote Nigel Farage. The plan, sources tell me, is to buy more billboard posters and other national advertising slots, as well as being up Ukip’s social media presence. The Tories have been spending hundreds of thousands of pounds each month on this, so Ukip will never match them – but the party benefits not

Steerpike Steerpike

‘Naughty’ Nicola Sturgeon reveals the saucy portrait that hangs in her home

Nicola Sturgeon’s style transformation over the past decade has been well-documented. The Mail on Sunday journalist Liz Jones went so far as to suggest that she had gone from being a woman with a ‘Krankies haircut and orthopaedic shoes’ to a ‘golden halo of Princess Diana-like loveliness’. However, Mr S suspects that such naysayers may think differently about Sturgeon in her formative years if they take a glance at a portrait of her dating back six years. Speaking to Sky’s Kay Burley, the First Minister of Scotland revealed that she has a saucy painting of herself hanging in her home. The oil painting of Sturgeon is by the French artist Laetitia Guilbaud, and went up

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Don’t try and bring race into the voting booth. It has no place there

The voting booth is, to borrow a fitting phrase from history, the great leveller. Outside the voting booth, you might be a blinged-up billionaire with more yachts than most people have shoes, but inside you’re the same as everyone else. In that booth the billionaire becomes indistinguishable from the poor woman who shines his silver: both have the exact same power to determine the future of Britain. One cross for the billionaire, one cross for the silver polisher. For a moment, she’s as powerful as her boss. It’s the most magnificent thing about democracy: it takes no heed of wealth or race or sex and instead treats us as human

Ross Clark Ross Clark

It’s time to put all our MPs on ‘flexible-hours contracts’

I agree with much of what Iain Duncan Smith said on Sky TV this morning: that zero-hours contracts should be rebranded ‘flexible-hours contracts’, that they are good for work-life balance and are often very popular with those who are employed in this way – who are, as a result, able to do such things as combine working with studying. But IDS would have a much easier job of convincing the electorate on this had he gone further and recommended that one particular group of workers was switched to the contracts: MPs. I am not trying to belittle the job of being a parliamentarian, nor try to assert that it is

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

UK jobless rate now heading to a 40-year low

The jobs miracle continues – two million new jobs have now been created since David Cameron took over. The Tories are rightly boasting about all of this today, even if they’re keeping quiet about the fact that half of those new jobs have gone to foreign-born workers. Over the last five years, Cameron has overseen more job creation than any other peacetime Prime Minister, as the above chart shows. And he did this in a bust, not a boom. He cut taxes for employers, and for employees. He reformed welfare. Result: the greatest job-creation boom in UK history. Employers are so keen to hire that there are now more job vacancies

Steerpike Steerpike

Matthew Hanc**k’s election leaflets send out the wrong message

Earlier this year Mr S revealed how plans for a set of campaign posters for the Conservative candidate Flick Drummond had to be revised after the Tories realised that from a distance the poster could be misread as another word starting with F. Now Matthew Hancock has fallen victim to an unforeseeable error in his own campaign literature. A Lib Dem supporter has noticed an unfortunate fault that occurs on folding the Tory MP’s campaign leaflet: Mr S hopes no one gets the wrong idea.

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

The BBC debate confirmed some unhelpful female stereotypes

If I were a nicer person, I suppose I’d have been rather more moved by what the Independent called the moment that summed up last night’s leaders debate, the ‘beautiful group hug’ by the three women leaders at the end while Ed Miliband looked on.  Rather, it summed up for me what I felt about the entire event, that it was a slightly embarrassing affair for women whose approach to politics is anything other than the sort of thing espoused by Greece’s radical left-wing party Syriza. If you take seriously the notion that the deficit is something to be addressed rather than put on hold, that the national debt is something to be talked

Jonathan Foreman

Why do our leaders continue to squander money on overseas aid?

One of the more bizarre mysteries of contemporary British politics is the ironclad, almost fanatical intensity of the government’s commitment to foreign aid spending and the activities of DFID, the Department for International Development. The Times reveals today that Britain is paying professional aid staff up to £1,000 a day to work in Africa and Asia as part of a spending ‘frenzy’ to meet a government target. It is bizarre because the Prime Minister talks about foreign aid as if it’s all about famine relief and saving children’s lives. But he and his Cabinet are intelligent, worldly people and they know that the real world of aid rarely resembles the one

Sebastian Payne

Campaign kick-off: 20 days to go

The third week of the election campaign looks set to end with a day of reflection. Last night’s opposition leaders’ debate provided plenty of things to ponder, not least how messy any post-election coalition negotiations will be. To help guide you through the melée of stories and spin, here is a summary of today’s main election stories. 1. Nicola + Ed According to the snap poll, Ed Miliband ‘won’ last night’s TV debate, followed closely by Nicola Sturgeon and then Nigel Farage. That says all you need to know about where the action was. As James Forsyth summarised last night, Miliband’s gamble paid off. For the most part, he came across as statesmanlike; he

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

The Tories have fallen for their own spin on Miliband

Believing your own hype is a dangerous thing in politics (and elsewhere). So is falling for your own spin. Spin is a message you craft that bears a tenuous link to the truth but is the line you want others to believe. You say it because something else is true, but it doesn’t suit you. You hope that the people you’re directing your spin at pick up at least some of its thrust and start seeing things the way you want them to be seen. If the Tories fail to make it back into government after this general election, one of the things they will have to come to terms

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

My decision to vote Labour – a further explanation

Missing from my column this week, for reasons of space etc, was this simple point: I am a Socialist. I am not a liberal. Liberalism, or what it has become, makes me heave; I loathe it. More often than not, liberalism is economic self-interest cloaked in faux concern. I do not mean the economic liberalism of Margaret Thatcher (although I’m not keen on that either. Her foreign policies, yes. Her domestic agenda, no.) I mean the totalitarian political correctness and acquired victimhood of the London pretend-left. Yes, that idiotic Thornberry woman and Harman and maybe Ed Miliband included. But that doesn’t quite negate Labour as a party for me. I