Politics Archives

Tuesday

19 May 2015

Patrick O’Flynn issues humiliating apology and resigns as economics spokesman

Patrick O’Flynn has apologised for starting last week’s Ukip wars. I understand that O’Flynn met with Farage in Strasbourg this morning — the first time the pair had sat down since his comments in the Times last week. In a slightly bizarre turn of events, the party has released the following statement from O’Flynn: ‘I would like to express to colleagues my sincere regret at going public with my frustrations about the turn of events following polling day. And more than that, I would like to apologise directly to Nigel for the phrase ‘snarling, thin-skinned and aggressive’. This was a fragment of a wider passage about perceptions and is not

Isabel Hardman

The Labour leadership checklist

There seems to be a checklist for Labour leadership hopefuls which all of them are very keen to tick off. When launching a campaign, a candidate must say that their party has just suffered a terrible defeat from which a number of profound lessons must be learned. These lessons all seem to be rather similar, and have led the candidates to say the following things: ‘We didn’t speak enough to aspirational voters’ Mary Creagh: ‘People felt that Labour didn’t understand their aspiration to earn money and provide a better life for their family.’ Chuka Umunna (when he was standing): ‘We need to… focus on what is the new agenda that

Steerpike

Don’t Labour tax advisers pop up in the funniest places?

Remember Jolyon Maugham, the QC who had fifteen minutes of fame during the General Election campaign when he ‘advised Labour on its non-dom tax crackdown’? As the Telegraph reported at the time: ‘Ed Balls, the shadow chancellor, cited Jolyon Maugham as an independent expert who had backed the policy and had forecast that it would raise £1billion. The Telegraph has established that Mr Maugham, a Labour supporter, has been in discussions with Labour about the policy for six weeks and played a role in designing it.’ Well next month Jolyon is off on a jolly to that well-known bastion of progressive taxation: Geneva. He has just been unveiled as a star speaker at

Steerpike

Ed Miliband returns from Ibiza to face the music

Ed Miliband’s last-minute holiday to Ibiza was hardly the way in which the former Labour leader had envisaged spending the week after the election. Still, a week on the party island with his wife Justine is hardly a bad way to commiserate his failure at the polls. Now he is on his way back to the UK to face Labour’s comedown. The Morning Star have published a photo of Miliband on a flight back to the UK. One Jack Forrester spotted Miliband and claims that Ed and Justine had some of the worst seats on the plane: With all the wannabe Labour leaders taking it in turns over the past week to stick

Sebastian Payne

Liz Kendall’s campaign still confident of getting 35 MPs

Despite her early entry, Liz Kendall’s leadership campaign is failing to keep up with rivals when it comes to noise and backers. Yvette Cooper and Andy Burnham have emerged as the early favourites, while some are wondering if Kendall can persuade the necessary 35 MPs to back her — particularly if Tristram Hunt runs and splits the moderate vote. But I understand her campaign remains confident they will make the cut. ‘The current direction of travel is that the final ballot will be Burnham, Kendall and Cooper,’ says a Labour source. ‘But, in the PLP nothing is set in stone — not even Ed stone’. The official nominating process does

Brendan O’Neill

Ireland’s ‘tolerant’ elite now demonise anyone who opposes gay marriage

If you think it’s tough being a Tory voter in 21st-century Britain, try being a ‘No’ voter in this week’s Irish referendum on gay marriage. Sure, Twitterati sneering at all things right-wing might have turned some Conservatives into Shy Tories, hiding their political leanings from pollsters. But in Ireland, to be a naysayer in relation to gay marriage is basically to make yourself a moral leper, unfit for polite society, ripe for exclusion from respectable circles. Irish opponents of gay marriage aren’t only encouraged to feel shy — they’re encouraged to feel shame. On Friday, the Irish electorate will be asked to vote on the redefinition of marriage as a

Sebastian Payne

Does David Cameron have the patience to achieve substantive EU reform?

David Cameron is wisely using his first 100 days to tackle the biggest challenge of this parliament head on: the EU referendum. This morning’s papers report that a new referendum bill will be a core part of next week’s Queen’s Speech and Cameron is keen to accelerate the vote to 2016. The logic behind this is sound: by seizing on his fresh democratic mandate, Cameron can hope to convince Brussels he is serious about achieving substantive reforms and his Cabinet now includes those who would definitely consider voting Out (Philip Hammond, Boris Johnson, Sajid Javid). If they decline to play ball, then it’s goodbye to Blighty. This strategy all hinges on

Monday

18 May 2015

Isabel Hardman

Dan Jarvis backs Andy Burnham in Labour leadership contest

As far as endorsements go, Andy Burnham is winning the Labour leadership contest hands down. He has managed to recruit Dan Jarvis – someone who has gained huge respect and admiration despite the fact no-one knows very much about him – as his latest backer. Jarvis tells the Mirror that Burnham ‘has the strength, experience and character needed to bring our party together and restore Labour’s connection with the British people’. Now, firstly this is a bit of a clue as to where Jarvis’s own politics lie: he’s a little more left wing than someone people who are caught up in his compelling back story may have noted. That’s one

James Forsyth

Ed Miliband’s fate shows that how you win a leadership contest matters almost as much as winning it in the first place

Any new party leader needs legitimacy, an acceptance that they won the contest fair and square. Ed Miliband didn’t have this because he lost in two of three sections of Labour’s electoral-college and that meant he couldn’t act decisively in his first 100 days, that crucial period in which the public tend to decide whether a party leader is much cop or not. The worry for Labour is that the next leader might not be seen by some in the party as legitimate either. There are two reasons for this. First of all there is already unease about the tactics that the frontrunners are using to try and keep challengers

Isabel Hardman

Can Tristram Hunt persuade enough MPs to back him for Labour leader?

The Labour leadership candidates are starting to release lists of names supporting them, with more announcements on the way. So far Yvette Cooper and Andy Burnham, who reckon they have 100 names between them, have been the most vocal about the levels of support, and there is some concern in the party that between them they will make it impossible for a ‘modernising’ candidate like Liz Kendall to accrue the 35 names needed to stand for leader. Other MPs are still considering their position, including Tristram Hunt and Jamie Reed. Hunt is, I understand, still trying to ensure he has enough names. There is an assumption that this is because

Toby Young

You’ll regret not having a Human Rights Act when a left-wing government returns

In today’s Guardian, Matthew D’Ancona warns that David Cameron may face a successful rebellion from the ‘Runnymede Tories’ if he tries to repeal the Human Rights Act, led by David Davis. Not only would that be a major blow to his authority, it would make remaining in the EU a less attractive option in the forthcoming referendum. Human Rights experts insist that the two issues are wholly separate, although that’s open to debate. But there’s no doubt they’re politically linked. In the minds of some sections of the British public, a good argument for withdrawing from the EU will be to escape the jurisdiction of the European Court – they

Steerpike

Political institution introduces new MPs to ancient rituals

While new MPs are sitting through tedious induction classes to teach them the rules of the House of Commons such as never clap in the chamber or call another member ‘you’, down the road another political institution is laying down the law. The Kennington Tandoori has been a home-from-home to politicians for decades, with numerous plots and shenanigans traced back to its darkened doors. Though if the sign that has just gone up in their window is anything to go by, the owners of the curry house are not quite as strict as the men in tights: As for rule no.4, Mr S is unsure how happy the last Scottish Lib Dem MP

Isabel Hardman

The ‘backbenchers’ champion’ is back

John Bercow has just been re-elected unopposed as Speaker of the House of Commons. Those who had been hoping to get rid of Bercow decided not to pursue this to a vote this week, and so he is back in the chair. In his speech, he cracked a joke at the expense of Labour, saying that he would like the words on his own tombstone to be ‘he was the backbenchers’ champion’. He then sat through a welcome speech from David Cameron, wearing a slightly wry smile. That wry smile was Bercow recalling the last hours of the last Parliament, in which the Tories tried to stitch him up by

Steerpike

Lord Ashcroft travels to Russia to research his David Cameron biography

The British government’s relationship with Russia is somewhat frosty since David Cameron ordered 75 British soldiers to Ukraine earlier this year to help the country defend itself against Russia. With diplomatic relations at a low, Cameron may now have new reason for Russian woe. Word reaches Steerpike that Cameron’s unofficial biographers Lord Ashcroft and Isabel Oakeshott recently travelled to Moscow on a research trip. With Ashcroft’s polling services no longer required in the UK, the pair took their quest to discover Cameron’s secrets for their upcoming biography, Call me Dave, to the Duma: With Cameron already suspicious of ‘the Ashcroft book‘, which he has refused to collaborate with the authors on, this new twist may give him fresh reason to sweat. While

Steerpike

Coffee Shots: Friends reunited

What a difference a day makes. Only yesterday it seemed that the Ukip civil war was still rattling on, with Nigel Farage’s former senior advisor Raheem Kassam writing a feisty article for the Telegraph criticising Douglas Carswell, who had in turn criticised Farage. Happily relations between Carswell and Farage seem amiable for now. They were joined by rumoured Ukip leadership hopeful Suzanne Evans for a selfie outside Number 10. The trio met with members of the Green party and Plaid Cymru as they called for David Cameron to organise fairer voting system than first past the post. Not that this cause stopped Carswell from focussing on Ukip matters at the meet. Is this a photo of the future Ukip leadership?

Nick Cohen

Labour must understand that Unite is its enemy

Imagine you are a Labour MP or a trade union official surveying Britain this week. The following points will strike you: Labour has just lost an election it could have won, in part because Unite helped impose a useless leader on it in Ed Miliband and an equally incoherent programme, which failed to convince millions of voters to rid themselves of a mediocre Tory government. Poverty and inequality are everywhere growing in part because of the shocking failure of the trade union movement to come to the aid of the new working class. In the care, hospitality and private security industries and in the shopping, leisure and call centres that

Isabel Hardman

Harriet Harman: Labour needs to let the public in

How does the Labour party recover? Harriet Harman set out how it will try to come back from its latest election defeat in a speech this morning which told the party to listen to the customer because the customer is always right. Her basic pitch was that just like a product or a shop or a magazine, it’s more important to work out what people want to buy, rather than what you want to sell or write because your own tastes might not be particularly representative of the market that’s out there. To that end, she told the audience that ‘as we conduct this debate, as we elect our leader

Sebastian Payne

Len McCluskey and the trade unions need Labour as much as the party needs them

Can Labour’s links with trade unions survive the leadership contest? This morning, Harriet Harman will outline in a speech at Labour HQ how the new party leader will be elected — and she will say the unions won’t be deciding who it is: ‘We will have strict rules to ensure there is a level playing field for each one of the candidates. Last time the unions communicated directly with many of their members, sending them ballot papers with accompanying material only mentioning one candidate. There will be none of that this time. The Electoral Reform Society will send out individual ballot papers to each member of the electorate.’ ‘The winner

The Spectator

The Spectator at war: National Government

From ‘News of the Week‘, The Spectator, 22 May 1915: We have named a Dictator to finish the war. The Dictatorship, it is true, is in commission, but none the less it is a Dictatorship. The new National Government will be all-powerful. Let us hasten to say that this will not make their task or their responsibilities any the easier. On the contrary, the responsibility that will rest on each Minister individually and upon the Cabinet collectively will be very much greater. Neither jointly nor severally will they be able to excuse themselves from doing the right thing by declaring that the Parliamentary situation would not allow it, or that

Sunday

17 May 2015

Steerpike

Picture exclusive: James Bond crew take to the Thames to film for Spectre

Forget the riveting excitement of the Labour leadership contest, Westminster was shut down on Sunday night for a different type of race. As part of filming for the new James Bond film Spectre, an extensive helicopter and speed boat chase took place along the Thames. Bond and a mystery blonde sped along the river from outside MI6 HQ in Vauxhall, with 007 firing his gun at a helicopter as they approached Parliament: With filming set to take place on the river for the next three weekends, expect the scene to be a dramatic part of the the film, which is released in November. Better still, after the previous Bond film was