Politics Archives

Sunday

16 Nov 2014

How the Rich Get Richer – my Channel 4 documentary

(Update: you can now watch the documentary online here) Inequality is rising up the political agenda right now, but the debate usually descends into clichés about wealth, bankers and tax. On Monday, I try to look at the subject more broadly in a Dispatches documentary for Channel 4 entitled How the Rich Get Richer (clip above). I write about it in the Sunday Telegraph today. Inequality UK, a documentary presented by Fraser Nelson from Fraser Nelson on Vimeo. First, the problem is not (as Ed Miliband would have you believe) rich people paying zero tax. For the documentary, I submitted a Freedom of Information request asking after the top 0.01

James Forsyth

Why Rochester won’t provide much relief for Labour

Thursday can’t come soon enough for shadow Cabinet loyalists. They believe that the Rochester by-election will provide Ed Miliband with some ‘breathing space’ and turn the spotlight on David Cameron’s troubles with his own side. To be sure, losing another seat to Ukip will be bad for Cameron and the Tories. But based on conversations I’ve had in the past few days, I don’t think it will cause the crisis that many expected just a few weeks ago. Equally, Labour won’t gain any positive momentum out of a by-election in which it comes third. There are, I say in the Mail on Sunday, two reasons why the expected

Saturday

15 Nov 2014

Damian Thompson

A hard-Left anarchist tears into Isis and its liberal apologists. Blimey

Update: He’s called Martin Wright and you can see a clip of him speaking here at a Class War event in 1985. In it he reveals that he used to support the National Front, which isn’t a massive surprise, though he moved away from racism pretty quickly. Click through and you’ll discover just how much anarchists hate Owen Jones. Martin – I’ve yet to discover his surname – is a hard-Left anarchist from the old white working class who hates Britain’s liberal media. But not half as much as he hates Isis and its ‘Gap Year Jihadists’ for whom he won’t shed a tear if they’re wiped out by a drone. This YouTube video

James Forsyth

Hammond tries to thread the needle on EU immigration

Philip Hammond’s interview in The Telegraph this morning is striking for several reasons. First, Hammond admits that Britain isn’t going to regain full control of its borders in the renegotiation. As he puts it, ‘“If your ambition is that we have total unfettered control of our own borders to do what we like, that isn’t compatible with membership of the European Union, it’s as simple as that. And people who advocate that know jolly well it is not compatible with membership of the European Union. So if that’s what you want, you’re essentially talking about leaving the European Union.” But he does seem to think that agreement on something

Friday

14 Nov 2014

Isabel Hardman

The recklessness of CCHQ

The Conservatives have released a rather silly leaflet for the Rochester by-election contrasting Mark Reckless with their candidate Kelly Tolhurst. As if to highlight that it might be a silly leaflet, it features the phrase ‘the straight choice’, which some thought had gone out of fashion in 1983. Then it goes through Tolhurst’s local credentials, followed by Reckless’s Establishment background. You can see what they’re trying to do here, which is to undermine Ukip’s anti-Establishment pitch. That’s why the Conservatives held a postal primary to select their new candidate once Reckless had defected. But what makes all this sudden interest in local candidates for local people, open primaries and so

Steerpike

MI5 mystery at Millbank: has the pig left the building?

Of all the watering holes across the capital, Mr S knows full well that the Pig and Eye club is both the most elusive and exclusive. So Steerpike was curious to hear that the MI5 joint has apparently been forced to change its name in order to err on the right side of political correctness. Originally set up by spies during the Cold War in their then-headquarters on Curzon Street, the Pig and Eye was a place where secret agents could meet over a drink – or five – without risk of being overheard by the wrong people. Peter Wright wrote of frequenting it in his best-selling espionage book Spycatcher. The secret establishment is then

Isabel Hardman

Sir John Major, Cameron’s unofficial EU negotiator

John Major’s speech in Berlin yesterday was aimed at a European audience, but his warning that Britain has a just under 50% chance of quitting the EU still gets plenty of pick-up in the British press this morning. The former Prime Minister hasn’t always helped Downing Street out in his interventions over the past few years, but Number 10 did work with Major on this speech. His arguments are beautifully-written and striking because they come from a pro-European former leader. Major is not someone who European leaders will discount as a raving eurosceptic, and therefore his stark warning about the chances of Britain leaving should be taken seriously. He said:

Thursday

13 Nov 2014

Peter Jones

The lesson of Athens: to make people care about politics, give them real power

Voters explain their apathy about politics on the grounds that the politicians do not understand them. No surprise there, an ancient Greek would say, since the electorate does not actually do politics. It simply elects politicians who do, thereby cutting out the voters almost entirely. But the contrast with 5th and 4th century bc Athens does not simply consist in the fact that all decisions, both political and legal, were made by the Athenian citizen body meeting every week in Assembly. As Pericles’ Funeral Speech (430 bc) famously demonstrates, what is so striking about Athens is that the nature of the world’s first (and last) genuine democracy and the importance

The Spectator

Spectator letters: Richard Ingrams defends Joan Littlewood, and the truth about Napoleon’s poisonous wallpaper

The state of Italy… Sir: Ambassador Terracciano’s letter (Letters, 1 November) about Nicholas Farrell’s article (‘The dying man of Europe’, 25 October) seems to me to be ill-researched and not thought through. Nicholas Farrell is spot on. The Ambassador is not. In another forum the Ambassador, on being asked what Italian nationals contribute to Britain, claimed that: ‘There is no area in which they don’t excel. Not only finance and management but also culture and the scientific and medical world, from professorship at Oxford to the chorus director of the Royal Opera, from the Science Festival at Cambridge to the director of the Tate Gallery in Liverpool.’ Has he ever stopped

The Spectator

John Major: Nearly 50% chance of Britain leaving the EU

This is the text of a speech delivered by Sir John Major in Berlin. Thank you for your kind invitation. I feel privileged to be here to talk about the future relationship of the UK and her European partners. Often, on these occasions, speakers deliver their messages delphically; almost in code. But this evening I wish my message to be clear. I do not wish to be misunderstood or misinterpreted. The issue at stake is too important. And the timing is ironic. Twenty-five years ago this week, the Berlin Wall came down. German was reunited with German – and an arbitrary and brutal division of Europe was, at last, at an

Steerpike

Labour’s war on the media is working, as activists turn on hacks

Labour’s efforts to demonise the hostile anti-Ed media is working. At the Labour leader’s eighth ‘relaunch’ speech on Thursday at Senate House, every single question from journalists was greeted by boos, hisses and tuts. The Labour leader actually dealt with the smattering of questions about his latest leadership woes rather well, yet the crowd were having none of it. Party members even hissed the polite chap from the BBC, much to the acute embarrassment of Mr Miliband, who was forced to calm his crowd with a ‘come on now, it’s a fair question’. When another hack asked if Ed felt he had made any mistakes as leader, one passionate activist

Isabel Hardman

Ed Miliband turns down head-to-head debate with Nigel Farage

Earlier today, Ukip leader Nigel Farage sent what appeared to be a typewritten letter to Ed Miliband challenging him to a head-to-head debate. The Labour leader has now used a more modern form of communication to respond. And, funnily enough, it’s a no: .@Nigel_Farage Bring it on. I look forward to a debate with you, @David_Cameron and @Nick_Clegg in the election campaign. — Ed Miliband (@Ed_Miliband) November 13, 2014 Actually what Miliband would dislike far more than an hour fighting Farage on television (which didn’t work out all that well for Nick Clegg when he did it before the European elections), would be any televised debate involving the Green Party, who

Steerpike

Coffee Shots: Miliband heads for the exit

One of the things that every political team needs is a Liz Sugg. Sugg works in Downing Street and makes sure that every trip the Prime Minister makes anywhere runs with military precision and doesn’t involve him walking through a door with the word EXIT on it when he’s delivering a make or break speech after serious questions about his leadership, for instance. Who does that for Miliband?

Isabel Hardman

Ed Miliband’s make-or-break speech: ‘I’m willing to put up with whatever is thrown at me’

Ed Miliband’s make-or-break speech this morning was fine. That’s fine as in it did the job just fine, rather than that it was a fine speech that his party will reminisce about for many years. The main challenge was for him to not mess up, either by failing to mention the deficit, tripping up on the way to the lectern, or appearing unconvincing. He did mention the deficit, he did deliver the speech from a lectern (albeit in the round, which is a favoured format of his because it looks informal, but that’s not really what he needs at the moment when he’s trying to look formal and prime ministerial),

Alex Massie

Hillary Clinton and the Audacity of Inevitability

Here we go again. We last travelled down this road eight years ago. Then, as now, Hillary Clinton was laying the ground for a run to the White House. Then, as now, she presented herself as the inevitable candidate. So inevitable that it was scarcely worth anyone’s time or effort to oppose her. Hillary was going to win and the Clintons have long memories. We know what happened next. It turned out there was an alternative after all. One, moreover, who had opposed the Iraq War and who enjoyed the only personal characteristics that could plausibly defeat Hillary’s It’s time for a woman candidacy. One who could ask America to move on from the

James Forsyth

Labour’s two biggest problems—and neither of them is Ed Miliband

The knives are out again for Ed Miliband this morning. But the Labour leader is the least of his party’s problems. Labour has still not come up with answers to the two existential questions facing it, what’s the point of it when there’s no money left to spend and how should it respond to globalisation. I argue in this week’s magazine that until it does, the party will be in a death spiral. The Labour party has always believed in spending money for the common good. Even Tony Blair’s new Clause IV declared, ‘by the strength of our common endeavour we achieve more than we achieve alone.’ Public spending was

Lloyd Evans

How The Spectator snared the Fake Sheikh – 15 years ago

In 1999 the News of the World offered Lloyd Evans £5,000 to destroy Boris Johnson’s career. Here’s the story… Now it can be told. A couple of months ago — following the stitch-up by the News of the World of Lawrence Dallaglio and the 10th Earl of Hardwicke (to name but two of the paper’s victims this year) — The Spectator decided to offer the bestselling Sunday tabloid a series of increasingly preposterous stories. The editor, Boris Johnson, called me in to act as stooge. My mission: (1), to examine the claim of the News of the World that it acts only in the public interest, and (2), to tempt it

Sebastian Payne

Podcast: the death of the left, Rochester and Strood and equality in marriage

Has Ed Miliband found himself on the wrong side of history? In this week’s View from 22 podcast, James Forsyth discusses his Spectator cover feature on the plight of progressives with John Harris. With threats from the SNP, Greens and even Russell Brand, Ed Miliband is stuck in a corner, trying to figure out what the Labour Party stands for If he doesn’t, the death spiral will continue. With one week to go until the Rochester and Strood by-election, Isabel Hardman examines how Ukip is trouncing the Conservatives in the campaign, putting them on course to have a second MP. The Tories’ swagger earlier in the campaign appears to be hurting them now. And Fraser Nelson looks

Tanya Gold

There’s only one Alan Johnson (that’s why Labour’s in such trouble)

Labour voters feel hope and despair; hope, because the Tories are doing no better than we, and despair, for that same reason. Left-wing politics are resurgent where it matters least — outside the Labour party. A body without a head is just a corpse, and frightening; no one wants to vote for Russell Brand, who thinks the concept of voting is idiotic, as he is. Left-wing politics wears fancy dress (the Million Mask March), occupies the biscuit aisle at Fortnum & Mason (UK Uncut) or is ‘preaching from a mansion’ to a cardboard box (Johnny Rotten on Russell Brand, again). Ed Miliband is odd, say his critics. He has a

Isabel Hardman

The Tories are paying the price for their swagger over the Rochester by-election

[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_13_Nov_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Isabel Hardman and James Forsyth discuss the Rochester by-election” startat=624] Listen [/audioplayer]In a corner of the Ukip campaign office in Rochester, a light-up orb is spinning, with the words ‘Vote Mark Reckless’ endlessly switching from yellow to purple. It’s hypnotic, if disconcerting, but also unnecessary because voters don’t need to be persuaded to vote for him. The by-election that Ukip thought would be a tricky one is turning out to be easier than anyone predicted. Poll after poll has put Mark Reckless as the winner of next week’s vote, and fewer and fewer Tories privately think that their party will win. Yet the Tories were boasting at their