Politics

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

Thursday

14 May 2015

The ‘save Nigel Farage’ operation is underway, but is it too late?

It is touch and go whether Nigel Farage can survive as Ukip leader. With key figures such as former leader Roger Knapman, donor Stuart Wheeler and treasurer Hugh Williams saying it’s time for a change, the operation to ‘save’ Farage has begun in haste. Ukip’s deputy leader Paul Nuttall, who is seen as Farage’s anointed successor, has released an ambiguous statement of support, which doesn’t mention Farage by name, nor explicitly endorse him as leader: ‘The general election was a great success delivering 4 millions votes in the bag. The 2020 vision is on course. UKIP have the best communicator in British politics leading this party and who will play a vital

Sebastian Payne

Raheem Kassam un-sacked as Nigel Farage’s senior adviser

Raheem Kassam, senior adviser to Nigel Farage, has not been ‘sacked’ from Ukip after all. It was reported earlier this afternoon that he had left the party today — as Patrick O’Flynn appeared to be asking for. But the party is being careful with its language. The party’s press office are simply saying: ‘Raheem Kassam is no longer working for Ukip’ This is technically correct: he is not ‘working’ for Ukip as he is currently on holiday in New York. Kassam has released his own statement, pointing out that he was only employed for the election campaign and his contract was due to finish at the end of the month: ‘I was GE2015 staff. My

Isabel Hardman

The one thing sadder than an ex-MP

Tonight at midnight, something will change in Parliament. All the MPs who lost their seats in last week’s elections will have their passes cancelled, to be replaced by a pass giving them more limited access to the Parliamentary estate. They’ve been sneaking through Westminster over the past few days to clear out their offices and make their staff redundant. Some look eerily cheery as they do this. Others scuttle along, avoiding conversation. As the new intake of MPs look up excitedly at the ornate ceilings and take pictures of Big Ben on their phones, swelling a little with excitement and pride, the old MPs keep their eyes fixed firmly down on

James Forsyth

The three groups of voters that Labour needs to win back

Labour is in a more difficult position now than it was after its defeat in 1992. In ’92, the electorate had sent Labour a clear message: move to the centre, don’t say you’ll put up taxes and get a better leader. But this time round, the message Labour has been sent is more complicated. There are three groups of voters that Labour failed with at this election, I argue in the magazine this week. Aspirational voters who went Tory, the left behind working class who went Ukip in England and SNP in Scotland and Nationalist-minded ones north of the border. What the Labour leadership candidates have to explain is how

Steerpike

Lib Dem leader hopeful Norman Lamb wins a celebrity backer

Although Labour’s celebrity endorsements from Martin Freeman, Robert Webb and Russell Brand did little to help the party in the election, Norman Lamb will be hoping his new backer will help him win the Liberal Democrats leadership contest. Dappy, the N-Dubz singer, has come out as backing Lamb to be the next leader of the Liberal Democrats: Although Lamb, who helped fund Tinchy Stryder’s music career when the rapper was starting out, appears to have the musician vote, his rival Tim Farron is cleaning up when it comes to his fellow Lib Dems. Farron has pointedly retweeted a tweet pointing out that Lib Dem supporters of Nick Clegg are backing him: Still, no word

Isabel Hardman

How Tory ministers could sneak out policies the House of Lords blocked

Now that we can’t brace ourselves for the SNP ruling over Westminster and the Labour party as we’d been warned (though they still seem to be having a bit of fun), the House of Lords has become the location of potential uprisings against the Tory government. The bulk of Lib Dem and Labour peers, along with a good number of cross benchers, who could work together to defeat a government bill does look rather threatening, though it’s worth remembering that even on a good day, attendance in the Lords isn’t anywhere near 100 per cent, and crossbenchers do tend to pull back rather nervously from anything that they think is

Ian Fleming

If I were prime minister, by Ian Fleming

This article was first published in The Spectator on 9 October, 1959. I am a totally non-political animal. I prefer the name of the Liberal Party to the name of any other and I vote Conservative rather than Labour, mainly because the Conservatives have bigger bottoms and I believe that big bottoms make for better government than scrawny ones. I only once attended a debate in the House of Commons. It was, I think, towards the end of 1938 when we were unattractively trying to cajole Mussolini away from Hitler. I found the hollowness and futility of the speeches degrading and infantile and the well-fed, deep-throated ‘hear, hears’ for each mendacious

Sebastian Payne

Does Patrick O’Flynn actually want a new leader for Ukip?

Patrick O’Flynn has surfaced to explain his remarks about Nigel Farage and the team around him. On Sky News, O’Flynn denied he was gunning for Farage’s position, describing him as ‘my political hero’, but blamed a ‘couple of people in his inner circle’ who he said are ‘wrong ‘uns’: ‘The advisers he’s got around him have got an awful lot to account for… some people around him who would like to take Ukip in the direction of some hard right ultra-aggressive American Tea Party-type movement. ‘Ukip will prosper and has prospered when it positions itself in the common sense centre of British politics, as we did with our excellent election

Isabel Hardman

Tory rebels wait for first chance to pounce

That some Tory MPs wouldn’t like the idea of Michael Gove scrapping the Human Rights Act has been known for some time, but there is something else worth keeping an eye out for in the next few weeks as the Tories draw up their proposals. Some Conservatives, like Dominic Grieve, have long been opposed to this sort of reform. But many others are waiting to see the detail before they react – and are still minded to rebel on the legislation. Depending on what Gove and his team produce, they could find themselves with a group of rebels considerably larger than the majority of 12 the government has, who will

Simon Hart

Pandering to animal rights extremists will get MPs rejected, not elected

The reasons why England and Wales voted so convincingly for a Conservative Government on Thursday will be debated forever, but one of the most obvious is the complete rejection of both Labour and Liberal Democrats in any constituency that has a hint of the countryside about it. This is graphically illustrated by the post-election constituency map. Actually, suggesting that the voters rejected those parties is probably the wrong way round. The truth is that those parties have rejected rural voters. In 2015 Labour’s policy offer to the countryside was little more than a series of threats about everything from gun ownership to badger culling and extraordinarily the Liberal Democrats, despite

Sebastian Payne

Exclusive: Team Farage suggests O’Flynn has had ‘personal problems’

The briefing war inside Ukip continues with the Nigel Farage camp hitting back at Patrick O’Flynn, after his remarks in the Times today. The battle is between two sides: those who are close to and work for Nigel Farage, and others in the party who are concerned about who the Ukip leader is listening to. Team Farage believe the battle is about power and influence with the leader. But the attacks are getting personal: one source close to the Ukip leader suggests that O’Flynn has had ‘personal problems and this may be the manifestation of them’. Although Team Farage failed to deliver a victory in South Thanet, those who worked on his campaign are

Sebastian Payne

Ukip wars, part 389: Patrick O’Flynn declares war on Nigel Farage

Ukip is doing a very good job of convincing voters it is not a serious party. After days of shadowboxing over the use of Short money to fund the party in Westminster, its economic spokesman Patrick O”Flynn has broken cover to attack Nigel Farage — and he certainly isn’t holding back. In today’s Times, O’Flynn says the Ukip leader has become ‘snarling, thin-skinned, aggressive’, instead of a ‘cheerful, ebullient, cheeky, daring’ politician. He goes on to describe the week of turmoil since Farage quit as leader, before withdrawing his resignation four days later: ‘What’s happened since Thursday night, Friday morning has certainly laid us open to the charge that this looks like an

Lara Prendergast

The Stepford Student – The Spectator’s gift to the world

The Stepford Student website is full of interesting articles on current affairs. For instance ‘I couldn’t give a single flying shit about electoral reform’ by Nathan Akehurst and ‘Vote for whoever the fuck you want’ by Edgar Sait-Jones. There’s something for everyone. ‘Tim Lott’s annoying but Rod Liddle is a fuckbadger’ by Ruby Lott-Lavigna, would, I am sure, amuse Rod. Tim Lott might be entertained, too, given that the author is his daughter. She has a gift for understatement: ‘Dear Tory voter: I can call you a cunt if I want’ is her latest offering. You may recognise the name of the website. The term ‘Stepford student’ was coined by Brendan O’Neill in an article published by The Spectator last year: Perhaps Brendan’s article should

Rod Liddle

Labour must estrange its awful voters

And so now we have to suffer the epic delusions, temper tantrums and hissy fits of the metro-left. They simply cannot believe how you scumbags could have got it so wrong last Thursday, you morons. You vindictive, selfish morons. That has been the general response from all of the people, the liberal middle-class lefties, who have cheerfully contributed towards making the once great Labour party effectively unelectable. You lot voted Tory out of fear — because you are stupid, stupid people. The Conservatives ran a ‘negative’ campaign and, because you are either simply horrible human beings, or just thick, you fell for it. That’s been the subtext of most of the

James Forsyth

Making Labour work

[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/thelastdaysofmiliband/media.mp3″ title=”Dan Hodges and Andrew Harrop discuss the final days of Miliband” startat=34] Listen [/audioplayer]The Labour party is in a worse position today than after its defeat in 1992. Then, the electorate sent Labour a clear and simple message: move to the centre, don’t say you’ll put taxes up and select a more prime ministerial leader. This time, the voters have sent the party a series of messages, several of which are contradictory. The reasons Labour failed to win Swindon South are very different from why it lost Morley and Outwood and the reasons for that defeat are different again in Scotland, where almost all seats fell to the

Sebastian Payne

How the polls got it so wrong

Not all the pollsters got it wrong. On the morning of the election, a set of strikingly accurate predictions was slapped on David Cameron’s desk. They had been compiled by Jim Messina and Lynton Crosby, the strategists who had been running a campaign derided as dull and repetitive. But, as their research showed, it was also effective. Messina is now back in his office in Washington DC. ‘We predicted 312 seats that morning to Lynton,’ he says. This was in line with the exit poll (316 Tory seats) that shocked Westminster. Yet, every day of the campaign, the polls had the Tories and Labour neck and neck. Did he ever

Dan Hodges

Miliband’s downfall

Ed Miliband was writing his victory speech on election night when the nation’s broadcasters announced the exit poll. He remained convinced — as he had been all along — that he was destined for No.10. In his defence, most people in Westminster thought the same. But within his ranks, a rebellion had already broken out. At 2 p.m. that afternoon, a member of his shadow cabinet had resigned — fearing not defeat, but the debacle that would follow Miliband’s success. ‘I was being briefed by Ed’s team about their post-election plans,’ the shadow minister told me. ‘It was nuts. They were explaining how there would be “no concessions”, no “tacking

Bruce Anderson

Cameron’s great secret: he’s not a very good politician

This was a vital election. A Tory failure would have been an act of political treason. Five years ago, the UK was grovelling with the PIGS in the fiscal sty. Our public finances were in a deplorable state, the financial system was in crisis and growth had disappeared over the economic horizon. No one has paid enough tribute to Messrs Cameron and Osborne for the sang-froid they displayed in the face of such adversity, and for their success. Not only that: we have two long-term structural problems in this country, both of which Lady Thatcher sidestepped, both of which David Cameron tackled. The first is welfare. In its corrosion of

Matthew Parris

We columnists have never been more useless

It takes some agility to shoot yourself in the foot and saw off the branch you’re sitting on, while hoisting yourself with your own petard, all at the same time; but that is what I shall now attempt. In this analysis of general election commentary I shall argue that over the last two months Britain has been all but choked by a surfeit of comment and analysis on the general election. Can any reader remember when there was an election that produced so much? Or, in the end, produced it to so little useful purpose? If last Christmas Day one had fallen into a coma only to awake on 8 May, thus

Wednesday

13 May 2015

Steerpike

Tory MP teaches SNP MPs Westminster etiquette

On Monday when 56 SNP MPs descended on Westminster, the youngest of the new intake Mhairi Black gushed that everyone had been so nice. Two days in, and cross-party relations have begun to cool. Carol Monaghan, the MP for Glasgow North West, claims that Simon Burns, the Tory MP for Chelmsford, scolded her as well as her fellow SNP politicians for their bad etiquette: However, Burns has clarified the situation to Mr S: ‘I was giving a talk about how to debate in chamber. If you agree you say ‘hear, hear’ and I mentioned that in recent years an unfortunate habit of clapping has occurred and that is deplorable. The talk was to everyone, not just the SNP,