Politics Archives

Tuesday

9 Jun 2015

Cameron on Europe: the anatomy of a U-turn

How did David Cameron get into such a mess on Europe so quickly? For those whose heads are still spinning (and this probably includes the Prime Minister) over what on earth just happened to upset the Tory party so much and force Downing Street into a frenzied climbdown, here’s the anatomy of David Cameron’s European U-turn. 4 January 2015 David Cameron says there will not be a free vote on the referendum during an interview with Andrew Marr. Here is the transcript of the Prime Minister’s answers: ANDREW MARR: Would you give cabinet ministers and other Conservatives who want to campaign for an out, the freedom to do so in such

Sebastian Payne

Tristram Hunt backs scrapping GCSEs and urges Labour to be more radical on education

Tristram Hunt’s education policy was assumed to be a victim of Ed Milband’s straitjacket. But now, the shadow education is free to speak his mind about where Labour went wrong and his actual thoughts on education policy. On the Today programme this morning, Hunt explained why he was sticking the boot into Miliband for the second time in 24 hours: ‘It’s right that every shadow cabinet member reflects on their area of policy. We suffered a crushing defeat and we need to know what went right and what went wrong. One of the frustrations of the election campaign is that many of the public’s priorities on education — smaller class sizes, better apprenticeships, better qualified teachers

Steerpike

Cameron’s former speechwriter Clare Foges launches attack on Tories

David Cameron’s recently departed speechwriter Clare Foges earned the affectionate nickname ‘the Prime Minister’s Larynx’ for her work assisting Cameron with his public speaking, so her Times column today will make for some interesting reading for her former colleagues in No. 10. Despite the Tories winning a majority in the election, Foges, who used to work as an ice cream driver, has offered the Conservatives a shopping list on how they can ‘reset their image’ and shrug off their ‘nasty party’ tag. The poet, who has been working for Cameron since 2009, calls for the Department of Health to be made a cross party department – presumably by appointing both Burnham and Hunt,

Monday

8 Jun 2015

Sebastian Payne

Gloria de Piero becomes 35th MP to back Liz Kendall — putting her on the ballot paper

Liz Kendall is now on the ballot for Labour leader, thanks to the support of Gloria de Piero. The shadow minister for women and Ashfield MP has announced her support for Kendall in tomorrow’s Daily Mirror. As another shadow cabinet minister backing Kendall, it’s a good boost for her campaign on the eve of the nominations opening. Similarly to Kendall, de Piero believes Labour needs radical change: ‘We need someone from the new generation of Labour MPs to be making the case for change in the Labour Party. Liz is asking the really tough questions that we need to ask. She’s recognised the scale of the defeat, that we lost and lost

Isabel Hardman

Wikipedia reprimands editor who accused Grant Shapps of ‘sock puppet’ edits

It is probably reasonably cold comfort to him, given he’s already lost his Cabinet job, but Grant Shapps has today seen a Wikipedia administrator who accused him of editing his own page and those of other ministers reprimanded. Wikipedia conducted an investigation, which concluded there was no evidence Shapps was connected to an account called Contribsx which made edits to his profile. It said the administrator in question, who operated under the name ‘Chase me ladies, I’m the Cavalry’ (but whose real name was Richard Symonds), ‘struggled to provide an accurate timeline’ on blocking the account and coverage of the account in the Guardian. The site’s Arbitration Committee said Symonds

Isabel Hardman

Miliband’s policy chief: the party is making the same mistake as it did in 2010

Everyone in Labour is having their say about where the party went wrong in the run-up to the election. But what if it’s still making the same mistakes as it tries to elect a new leader? At a seminar on Friday on Labour’s defeat, Ed Miliband’s policy chief Jon Cruddas fretted that the way the party was running its leadership contest was giving the Tories the same advantage they were handed by the same sort of contest in 2010 He said: ‘Last time round we embarked on… a leadership election which worked through the summer and allowed our opponents to redefine the terms of debate that were locked in for

Isabel Hardman

‘Careless talk costs lives’: Cameron angers MPs as he insists he was ‘misinterpreted’ on EU vote

It’s not clear who David Cameron is trying to annoy more: his party or the press pack following him at the G7 summit in Bavaria. But what is clear, at least in the Prime Minister’s mind, is that he has been misinterpreted on the issue of a free vote in the EU referendum. Not over-interpreted, as Number 10 said this morning. ‘It’s clear to me that what I said yesterday was misinterpreted,’ he said, explaining that he was referring to the renegotiation: ‘I was clearly referring to the process of renegotiation. But the point is this. I have always said what I want is an outcome for Britain that keeps

James Forsyth

Labour’s role in the EU referendum campaign dominates party hustings

‘There’s a sense that no one is hitting it out of the park right now’, commented one Labour MP after this lunchtime’s Parliamentary Labour Party hustings. I’m told that all the candidates had their moments at the behind closed doors event, but that no one truly dominated. Liz Kendall continued with her role as the teller of hard truths. She warned the assembled MPs that nothing else would matter if people still don’t trust Labour with their money in 2020. Andy Burnham struck a different tone. He stressed that on inequality, Labour must not distance itself too much from the last five years. However, interestingly, he argued that Labour should not abolish right to

Isabel Hardman

Liam Fox interview: Tories have to get a free vote on the EU ‘in the end’

Liam Fox started his political life under a majority Conservative government, and finally he’s back under one. He was elected in 1992 after John Major’s surprise election victory, and is enjoying the surprise of his colleagues once again after David Cameron’s surprise win last month. But the former Defence Secretary is not personally enjoying the spoils of majority government: he has not been promoted to a ministerial post, even though there are more spaces free following the exit of the Lib Dems. He was rather stung to have only been offered a lowly minister of state job in the last reshuffle, and turned it down. But while he says rather pointedly

Sebastian Payne

Will Ukip and Tory campaigners for a Brexit manage to co-exist?

Ukip continues to talk up a big role for itself in the Out campaign. As Britain’s most Eurosceptic party, it is eager to dive into a referendum it has been waiting almost a quarter of a century for, but the extent of its involvement is not clear.The kippers believe that their ground operation will be vital to the Out campaign — one Ukip source points out that all of Ukip’s 45,000-odd members are gearing up for the fight of their lifetime and it’ll be hard for Conservatives to match this. Therefore, if the Brexit campaign has any hope of success, Ukip would argue it has to play a prominent role. And

Isabel Hardman

Number 10 rows back on EU vote threat

So after a few hours of outrage in the Tory party, David Cameron’s aides have announced that he didn’t say ministers would have to support his stance during the EU referendum or leave government. Number 10 has clarified the Prime Minister’s remarks, saying they only apply to ministers’ stances during the renegotiation, not the period of campaigning leading up to the referendum. The Prime Minister’s official spokeswoman said: ‘The PM was clearly talking yesterday about the position on collective responsibility during the renegotiation, a position that the PM has set out previously, including in the House during the Queen’s Speech debate, a position that, I think, has been over-interpreted by

Ed West

A course in Dangerous Ideas would be the perfect tonic for our dull universities

There have been a number of articles recently by American liberals warning about the intolerance of academia, in particular pointing to the dangers of a generation who’ve never had their views challenged. The latest is by an academic using the pseudonym Edward Schlosser, who writes in Vox last week: Things have changed since I started teaching. The vibe is different. I wish there were a less blunt way to put this, but my students sometimes scare me — particularly the liberal ones. I once saw an adjunct not get his contract renewed after students complained that he exposed them to ‘offensive’ texts written by Edward Said and Mark Twain. His response,

Alex Massie

Even if he wins his EU referendum campaign, David Cameron will be the loser

I suppose David Cameron had little choice but to offer a referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union. How else could he have held his party together? Indeed, it is possible that he owes some part of his small majority to that promise. Nevertheless, it will all end badly. I think there is no plausible scenario in which it can end well for Cameron. Indeed, it is entirely possible that having begun this parliament with a majority he – or, rather, his successor – will end it leading a minority administration. The most important thing to remember is that perhaps a quarter of his backbenchers actually want the Prime

Molly Guinness

There’s nothing ‘normal’ about turning down a pay rise

The MPs grandstanding about how they’ll give any salary increase to charity should all be ashamed of themselves. The entire point of the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority is to take away self-regulation from politicians. It’s frankly none of their business to decide how much they’re paid, and the cries of protest are specious anyway given that IPSA has said the pay rise won’t cost taxpayers anything because it’s basically just a restructuring of how they’re paid. Politics has a terrible image in this country and rather than chorusing ‘we’re not worth it’, it’s about time someone mounted a robust defence of the whole system. The expenses scandal didn’t help, but

Isabel Hardman

How David Cameron could still avoid a bitter Tory row on Europe without a free vote

David Cameron’s indication that his ministers will have to follow the position of the government on the EU referendum or leave the government has caused some consternation in his party. David Davis has just warned on the Today programme that the Prime Minister risks ‘turning a decent debate into a bitter argument’, while the newspapers write this up as a very risky move indeed. Cameron told reporters covering the G7 summit in Bavaria that ‘I’ve been very clear. If you want to be part of the government, you have to take the view that we are engaged in an exercise of renegotiation, to have a referendum and that will lead to

Sebastian Payne

Harriet Harman and Tristram Hunt knife Miliband in the front

The fear and loathing within Labour continues with the admission from Harriet Harman that its voters were relieved it didn’t win the election. The party’s interim leader is interviewed in the Independent this morning, claiming that voters were ‘not massively enthusiastic’ about voting Conservative but ‘settled for the devil they knew’: ‘Sometimes after an election, you get a sense that people think ‘Oh my God, that is terrible, what a disaster.’ A lot of people felt that because we got nearly 40,000 new party members who were very disappointed. But there is an even greater number of people, even though they were not enthusiastic about David Cameron or the Tories, who feel relieved that

Steerpike

Sol Campbell enters Tory mayoral race: ‘I’m in it to win it’

Sol Campbell has thrown his hat into the ring to represent the Conservative Party in the 2016 London mayoral election. The official announcement comes after the former England footballer voiced his interest in the position earlier this year when he was rumoured to be lined up as a parliamentary candidate for Kensington. This means the Tories now have three candidates who have announced they will stand to be the party’s candidate for Mayor of London, with Ivan Massow Stephen Greenhalgh already having declared. While both Massow and Campbell lack a background in politics, it is expected that more candidates will announce in the coming weeks ahead of the Conservative Way Forward hustings taking place next month. Speaking

Damian Thompson

Roll of shame: MPs who back homeopathy fan David Tredinnick for chair of Commons Health Committee

David Tredinnick is an Old Etonian Tory MP whom I met when he was a mature student at Oxford. He seemed a nice enough chap but we were all astonished when he was elected to Parliament. He struck us as a bear of very little brain. How unfair to bears that turned out to be. Tredinnick, who – incredibly – sits on the Commons Health Select Committee, believes that astrology works and, according to the Telegraph, that a full moon can cause internal bleeding. And, it goes without saying, he supports the cult of homeopathy, which puts lives at risk with its idiot doctrines. To quote the world-renowned scientist Lord Winston, ‘Let me

Sunday

7 Jun 2015

James Forsyth

Why so many senior Tories want Zac Goldsmith to run for mayor

Over the last few weeks, a string of senior Tories have urged Zac Goldsmith to run for Mayor of London. Goldsmith is, as I report in the Mail on Sunday, regarded by the Tory hierarchy as giving the party the best chance of keeping City Hall blue. In a contest that it will be very difficult for the Tories to win, Goldsmith scrambles the race—what other Tory would get Green second preferences? The attraction of Goldsmith is particularly strong as Nick Ferrari, as Daniel Boffey writes in the Observer, is unlikely to throw his hat in the ring. At the top of the Tory party, there is a belief that

Sebastian Payne

Liz Kendall offers tentative support for cutting benefits for EU migrants

Liz Kendall’s turn on the Andrew Marr sofa was slightly shaky and vague on details. She continued on the theme of being the ‘change everything’ candidate but failed on clarify what she would do differently to the Tories and her fellow leadership candidates. When asked by Marr if she was the candidate Yvette Cooper suggested had ‘swallowed’ the Tory manifesto, Kendall noted the level of change Labour needs: ‘The only thing I’ve swallowed is the sheer scale of the defeat that we faced at the election and the huge changes we need to win again. People didn’t trust us with their money or on the economy and we didn’t set out a positive enough vision