Politics

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

Thursday

16 Jul 2015

Ipsa confirms MPs will get a 10% pay rise and there’s nothing they can do about it

In the past few minutes, Ipsa has confirmed that it will give MPs a 10 per cent pay rise that means they’ll get £74,000 a year, backdated to 8 May 2015. This, for those who are shouting at their individual MP for giving himself or herself a pay rise, is a decision that MPs cannot resist, although a number of them spoke out in favour of or against the move. David Cameron had pleaded with the independent body to drop plans for the pay hike, but today Ipsa Chair Sir Ian Kennedy said: ‘Parliament gave IPSA the power to deal with the vexed issue of MPs’ pay – independent of

Steerpike

First James Naughtie, now John Humphrys slips up over Jeremy Hunt

When James Naughtie steps down from the Today programme this autumn, his Jeremy Hunt gaffe will stand out as one of his more memorable moments. The Scottish presenter accidentally introduced him by the wrong surname in 2010: ‘First up after the news, we’re going to be talking to Jeremy C–t.’ The health secretary continues to cause problems for the staff of Radio 4. This morning, Naughtie’s colleague John Humphrys also got Hunt’s name wrong. Reading the news bulletin at 7am, Humphrys said the ‘health secretary James Hunt’ is setting out plans for NHS consultants to work at weekends. While the slip wasn’t an expletive this time around, given that the BBC are currently

Sebastian Payne

Were ‘Lazy Labour’ voters, not ‘Shy Tories’, responsible for the election result?

The British Election Study is continuing to dig into why the pollsters called the general election incorrectly. Its latest batch of research suggests that the theories of a late swing to the Tories, a shift in the ‘don’t knows’ or ‘Shy Tories’ emerging on polling day may not hold the answer. Instead, the BES’s evidence suggests that ‘lazy Labour’ voters were a significant factor — i.e. those who said they would vote Labour in surveys, but didn’t turn out on polling day. The BES explains: ‘Labour lead among unlikely voters grew hugely between 2010 and 2015, suggesting that differential turnout is an important factor in explaining the polling miss: considerably fewer of those saying

Isabel Hardman

Labour MPs push for an amendment to the welfare bill

The Labour welfare rebellion advances further, with Helen Goodman tabling a ‘reasoned amendment’ to the Welfare Reform and Work Bill. She says she has the support of 40 Labour MPs for the amendment, which reads as follows: ‘That this House declines to give a Second Reading to the Welfare Reform and Work Bill, notwithstanding its potentially useful provisions on apprenticeships, because the Bill would have the effect of ignoring the plight of children in low income working households, removing the concept of child poverty from the statute book, increasing the number of children, especially those from large families, living in poverty, worsening work incentives for people whose incomes are below

Steerpike

Labour’s new donor: #ToriesForCorbyn

Oh dear. According to a recent poll Jeremy Corbyn could win the Labour leadership. This news has brought joy to left-wing activists and Tories alike, though granted this is for two very different reasons. A lot of the swing towards Corbyn has been attributed to the #ToriesForCorbyn campaign, which has seen Conservatives sign up as supporters of the Labour party in an attempt to sabotage the party’s leadership election. With more than two thirds of Labour’s new recruits reportedly supporting Corbyn, the Telegraph have tried to boost the leader hopeful’s chances even further by publishing a step-by-step guide on how to sign up and ‘condemn Labour to years in the political wilderness’. Although

Sam Williams

Britain has a productivity problem. Could email be to blame?

It is an oddity that while the UK economy surges ahead as the fastest growing in Europe, its productivity has sagged to an inauspicious 6th in the G7: below that of unimpressive France and Italy, and only fractionally ahead of near-vegetative Japan. The Government isn’t happy about it: the Chancellor and the Business Secretary have outlined a plan – revolving around ‘moving’, ‘building’ and ‘learning’ – to do something about it. Platitudinous plans aside, one reaction to the quandary is to doubt the stats. After all, the standard method for calculating productivity (dividing the value of goods and services produced in a given time by the number of labour-hours used to produce

Mark Mason

Political memorabilia

My first reaction on hearing of Margaret Thatcher’s death in 2013 was: ‘Great — now my autograph from her will go up in value.’ This wasn’t callous. It was a simple application of demand and supply. As a child of the 1980s I had learned my lesson well. The Lady wouldn’t have objected to me viewing her signature as a pension plan. Indeed, it’s what she would have wanted. How many Caribbean villas, then, should I be thinking of buying? Because this is no ordinary autograph. I asked Mrs T. (as she then still was) to write out ‘There is no such thing as society’ and sign it. She embellished

James Forsyth

Jeremy Corbyn’s extraordinary success is a coup for the Tories

[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/workingwithal-qa-eda/media.mp3″ title=”James Forsyth and George Eaton discuss the rise of Jeremy Corbyn” startat=754] Listen [/audioplayer]It wasn’t meant to work out this way. A month ago, Westminster watched to see if Jeremy Corbyn could get the support of the 35 MPs he needed to enter the Labour leadership race. At the time, it seemed a sort of joke. After all, the people who were lending him their backing weren’t doing so for any great love of Corbyn. As a rule, they either wanted a ‘broad debate’ or thought that the ritual slaughter of the left-wing candidate would make it easier for the new leader to move the party to the

Isabel Hardman

Blue is the collar

Blue collars are all the rage in the Tory party these days, which makes Stephen Crabb a very fashionable cabinet minister. He was brought up in a Welsh council house by his mother, a single parent. His political views were shaped by seeing the way in which Thatcher’s reforms transformed his neighbourhood. He still believes Conservative values give the best hope for working-class and Welsh voters. As George Osborne leads an ever-deeper raid on Labour territory, we can expect to see and hear a lot more from people like Stephen Crabb. For the last year this confident 42-year-old has been Secretary of State for his native Wales, and his approach

Toby Sculthorp

Africa’s most wanted

It’s Saturday morning in the courtyard of the Al-Zawiyah detention centre on the outskirts of Tripoli and Colonel Nourdeen Mishaal of Libya’s Ministry of Interior’s Department for Combating Illegal Immigration is about to have his weekend ruined. The Colonel has delivered an impassioned speech praising his own government and exhorting the West to do more to help in the battle against the people smugglers responsible for the thousands of migrants arriving in Europe every week. He dismisses his regime’s pariah status (the Islamist government has no international recognition). If there is a problem with migrants, he states with the full authority of his office, then the blame lies with western

Wednesday

15 Jul 2015

Sebastian Payne

Government signs up Labour’s Andrew Adonis to oversee HS2 delivery

In an impressive cross-party signing, the government has appointed Lord Adonis, the former Labour transport secretary, to oversee delivery of the HS2 railway. Lord Adonis gave birth to the idea of HS2 prior to the 2010 election and has remained a vocal advocate for the project ever since. The transport secretary Patrick McLoughlin said in a statement he was ‘extremely pleased’ that Adonis is joining the board of HS2 Ltd as a non-executive director. Adonis himself described HS2 as a project of ‘national significance’: ‘Patrick McLoughlin has been a powerful advocate for the project and the government has risen to the challenge of thinking about the long-term by putting in place a

Isabel Hardman

Labour in chaos: what are the party’s options?

Labour is in an almighty mess at the moment. Those involved in the leadership campaigns are surprised by how the mood in the party has changed from quite open acceptance of a need to change in the days after the election defeat to angry dissent when change is suggested, as evidenced by the reaction to Harriet Harman’s welfare policies this week. The party isn’t quite having a row about what it should stand for at the next election, preferring instead to argue about how it does opposition for the next eight weeks, most of which are in Parliamentary recess. Here are the various options for what Labour does, both in

Isabel Hardman

Grant Shapps gets second ministerial job as his rehabilitation begins

Grant Shapps has been given a second ministerial post at the Foreign Office this afternoon in which I understand is part of a rather apologetic rehabilitation process for the minister, who was brutally demoted in the reshuffle. Shapps lost his Cabinet post after allegations that he edited his own Wikipedia page and that of his rivals, and after he ‘over-firmly denied’ that he had continued to do a second job while working as an MP. The first problem has now been cleared up after an internal Wikipedia investigation found against the editor who had accused Shapps of the ‘sock puppet’ edits to his profile. He was demoted to minister of

James Forsyth

Jeremy Corbyn’s extraordinary success is a coup for the Tories | 15 July 2015

It wasn’t meant to work out this way. A month ago, Westminster watched to see if Jeremy Corbyn could get the support of the 35 MPs he needed to enter the Labour leadership race. At the time, it seemed a sort of joke. After all, the people who were lending him their backing weren’t doing so for any great love of Corbyn. As a rule, they either wanted a ‘broad debate’ or thought that the ritual slaughter of the left-wing candidate would make it easier for the new leader to move the party to the centre. A month on, things look very different. Corbyn now has the endorsement of Unite,

Fraser Nelson

Britain would be the loser if Jeremy Corbyn is elected Labour’s leader

It’s hit Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber and the New York Mets and now the Labour Party has become the victim of vote hijacking: people voting for an unlikely candidate for a joke, just because they can. The impeccably informed Stephen Bush reveals that: ‘”More than two thirds” of new recruits since the election are supporters of Jeremy Corbyn, a finding mirrored by the leadership campaigns’ experience of phoning new members’ This won’t come as a surprise to the Tory supporters who have been busy joining Labour to vote for the unelectable Corbyn. In an attempt to copy the SNP’s membership surge, Labour is offering the chance to become a ‘registered supporter’ for

Lloyd Evans

PMQs Sketch: Cameron’s lurches to the left

‘Put that on your leaflets,’ snarled Cameron at PMQs. Inwardly he was gloating. Labour voted against Tory welfare reforms last night so the PM was able to boast that Labour is fighting the new living wage. Some say Cameron is lurching to the left with his Five Year Plans and his state-controlled pay rises. The same applies to law and order. He’s getting a pinkish tinge. Philip Davies asked him to review the regulations governing early release for serious offenders. Cameron said he’d give it a go. It’s not good enough, he seemed to imply, having murderers murdering people shortly after gaining their freedom by promising to become pillars of

Isabel Hardman

Theresa May humiliates Boris Johnson with water cannon announcement

In case the Labour leadership fracas has distracted you, there is still a Tory leadership contest going on, albeit with a slightly longer timetable. George Osborne has had a good week or so in terms of his chances of succeeding David Cameron when he stands down, and today his main contender Boris Johnson had a bad day. Boris was sitting behind Theresa May in the House of Commons as the Home Secretary announced that she would not be giving permission for the Metropolitan Police to deploy three second-hand water cannons in London. The Mayor bought these cannons for £218,000. He pulled a range of unhappy faces as May announced that

James Forsyth

PMQs: the Tories are set for a happy summer holiday

This was the last PMQs before the recess, and the Tory side of the House was in an end of term mood. When Harriet Harman stood up, the Tory benches enthusiastically beckoned her over — a reference to the anger in Labour circles at her openness to Tory plans to limit child tax credits to two children for new claimants. But Harman turned in a decent performance in her penultimate PMQs outing. She asked Cameron about the Greek crisis and drew some rather loose-lipped talk from him about how if Greece left the Euro, the UK would be prepared to assist with humanitarian aid. I suspect this answer won’t have

Steerpike

Andy Burnham: how Arthur Scargill inspires me

When Martin Freeman endorsed Labour ahead of the election, his credentials were called into question after Steerpike reported that Freeman was a former supporter of Arthur Scargill’s far-left Socialist party. So Mr S was curious to hear Burnham last night reveal his own admiration for Scargill – who formed the Socialist party because he was so angry that Labour had ‘abandoned any pretence of being a socialist party’. As the Tories raised a glass to Lynton Crosby at the election strategist’s bash in Kensington, the Labour leadership hopeful was across town setting out his brand of self-titled ‘aspirational socialism’ over at Soho House, the £1400 private members’ club. During the talk, Burnham – who has

Nick Cohen

Keep the cops away from the radical clerics, be they Christian or Muslim

If you want to see our grievance-ridden, huckster-driven future, looks to Northern Ireland, which has always been a world leader in the fevered politics of religious victimhood and aggression. Just as the Tories and much of the politically-correct liberal centre think they can force us to be nice by allowing the cops to arrest those who ‘spread hate but do not break laws’ (in George Osborne’s sinister words) so Northern Ireland has all kinds of restrictions of ‘hate speech’ to police its rich and diverse tradition of religious bigotry. I suppose it was inevitable that they would catch 78-year-old Pastor James McConnell of the Whitewell Metropolitan Tabernacle in North Belfast.