Politics

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

Thursday

Matthew Lynn

Why Britain’s economy will overtake Germany’s

What’s the most surprising thing that could come out of the current economic upturn? A rapid revival in northern manufacturing? The City really getting behind small British businesses? Ed Balls admitting higher public spending wasn’t always the best way to promote growth? Any of these eventualities would be fairly amazing. But the biggest surprise would perhaps be this: a gradual realisation that the UK is on track to become the largest economy in Europe. In the 19th century, at the height of the industrial revolution, the UK outproduced all of its European competitors. It steadily lost that position, however, ceding industrial leadership to the Germans and the French. In the

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Martin Vander Weyer: Freeze gas bills, freeze fuel duty – and one day we’ll all freeze in the dark

‘We need successful energy companies in Britain, we need them to invest for the future,’ said Ed Miliband in his conference speech, as though channelling my thoughts at the very moment I was writing last week’s item on the lack of a national energy strategy. Then he ruined it: ‘If we win the election, the next Labour government will freeze gas and electricity prices until the start of 2017. That’s what I mean by a government that fights for you.’ And that’s what we all mean by politicians making ill-conceived promises for short-term gain. George Osborne’s response? ‘Any politician would love to tell you that they can wave a magic

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Tory conference 2013: five things we learned

1. Labour set the agenda for this conference. Ed Miliband might be preoccupied by his row with the Daily Mail about his father, but he can take heart that his shift to the left in Brighton last week had a huge influence over this Conservative party conference. This wasn’t just the cost of living agenda, which Tory ministers felt the need to rebut and respond to in their own speeches, but, as James explains in his politics column this week (get a sneak preview on Coffee House here), Ed Miliband has energised the Tories into being more determined than ever to beat Labour. David Cameron’s own speech contained 25 references to Labour, and

Douglas Murray

Why are Marxists and Soviet apologists regarded as harmless jokers?

I rather like Ed Miliband, and for what it’s worth I don’t think he has inherited much, if any, of his father’s rancid political views. Nevertheless the fact that Ed Miliband has often referred to his father’s thought makes Miliband Snr fair game in a way that other politicians’ parents might not be. But in the row over the Daily Mail / Ralph Miliband affair two things remain to be pointed out. The first relates to war service. Contra Emily Maitlis (among others) on last night’s Newsnight, it is perfectly possible to fight for a country in a world war and still hold values (then or subsequently) inimical to the country you fought

Sebastian Payne

View from 22 podcast special: Cameron’s land of hope and Tory

Isabel Hardman thinks David Cameron’s speech was very well delivered but lacking in any actual news, while James Forsyth believes it was given to draw a clear dividing lines between the Tories and Labour. In this special View from 22 podcast, we analyse whether the Prime Minister’s speech achieved what it needed too, struck the right tone and matched up to Labour’s challenge. You can subscribe to our podcast through iTunes and have it delivered to your computer every week, or you can use the embedded player below: listen to ‘View from 22 podcast special: Cameron’s land of hope and Tory’ on Audioboo

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Who’s united the Tories? Ed Miliband and Nigel Farage

The Tory party has been at peace with itself this week. Eurosceptic backbenchers have given Nigel Farage a verbal kicking on the fringe, Cabinet ministers have stuck resolutely to the ‘hard- working’ conference script, and even Boris Johnson has behaved himself. Gay marriage, which so divided the leadership from the grassroots, has barely been mentioned, and you’d never know that just a month ago David Cameron lost a Commons vote on Syria. The new harmonious mood has come about in part because the leadership has moved towards the rest of the party. Tory conference was once decorated with posters extolling the benefits of ‘the big society’. Now, there is a

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Tories shift their plans on benefits for under-25s

Although David Cameron’s speech was deliberately light on policy, it did contain one hint about a manifesto commitment for the 2015 general election. The Prime Minister told the conference that ‘we should give young people a clear, positive choice: go to school. Go to college. Do an apprenticeship. Get a job. But just choose the dole? We’ve got to offer them something better than that.’ The party is clear this afternoon that this will be a fully fleshed-out pledge in the Conservative manifesto, and that it is linked to Cabinet Secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood’s review of training and education for under-25s. The benefits that could be docked for young people

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Cameron’s speech shows he wants a re-run of 1992

David Cameron’s Chequers speech writing session was held hours after Ed Miliband had finished speaking at Labour conference, and it showed today. This was Cameron’s passionate, sometimes angry, response to the Labour leader. He wanted to make the case that Miliband’s move to the left would endanger the British economy. His message was give me the time and I will finish the job. What’s the job, building a ‘land of opportunity’. This seems to mean an enterprise economy with an education system good enough to enable social mobility. It is a very Tory message. But Cameron was keen to show that he’s still a compassionate Conservative. As he discussed his

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Labour set the test for this Conservative conference – but Cameron passed

David Cameron is an essay crisis Prime Minister. He works best when his back is against the wall. And this conference he had a last-minute test set for him which he had to step up to. That test was set by the Labour party last week, with its focus on the cost of living, and Cameron passed it. His speech was written with clever flourishes and turns of phrase – ‘the land of despair was Labour, but the land of hope is Tory’, ‘Abu Qatada had his very own May Day this year’ and ‘I’ve got a gesture of my own for Ed Balls’ – but it was also dominated

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

David Cameron skips conference announcements to boast about Tory record

Normally when a Prime Minister gives a speech to a party conference, the ‘line’ for the next day’s newspapers is pretty clear. A policy announcement means it’s easy to write the introduction to the story, which is supposed to sum up what happened in under 25 words. But David Cameron’s speech today could only really be summed up as ‘Today the Prime Minister gave a speech on all the things he’s done and asked for time to finish the job’. His speech had no policy announcements in it, other than a hint that under-25s could lose their benefits unless they were ‘earning or learning’. This is an impressive bet by

Charles Moore Charles Moore

Why didn’t the Daily Mail stick to the ‘red angle’ when it came to Ralph Miliband?

For those of us of a certain age, Ed Miliband’s speech last week was exhilaratingly nostalgic. His promise to freeze energy prices reminded us of happy times when Labour policies were patently, shamelessly idiotic. At last, after a generation of loss, we began to hope to find reds under the bed again. In its understandable excitement, the Daily Mail made the mistake of finding only a dead red — Mr Miliband’s late father, Ralph. It then compounded its error by saying that Miliband senior ‘hated Britain’, on the basis of some angry remarks he made when aged 17. So the Mail managed to offend against taste and decency on multiple

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

What will Cameron say about the Lib Dems?

The Tories are naturally the most worked up about Ukip – while trying to publicly pretend that it doesn’t exist, of course – but when David Cameron gives his speech to conference shortly, what will he say about the Lib Dems? He faces two yellow challenges: the first is to try to stop the Lib Dems claiming credit as the party of the moral high ground without which the Tories would be a rabidly unfair party unconcerned with the needs of the vulnerable. The second is giving the impression that while the Coalition may conduct itself with greater serenity than anyone could have imagined when it formed in 2010, he

Steerpike Steerpike

Tory take over

No corner of Manchester is safe from the Tories’ attempt to plaster their conference slogan anywhere and everywhere.

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

David Cameron: Don’t be seduced by Labour’s quick fixes, let us finish the job

One of the striking things about the extracts of David Cameron’s speech that have been briefed so far is that the Conservative Prime Minister is having to respond to a number of key themes of Ed Miliband’s conference last week. Labour should be pleased that it has set the agenda for this conference season, not just spooking ministers on the cost of living, but also forcing a defence of business and profit from the Prime Minister. Ed Miliband’s row with the Mail has also overshadowed the conference. The Prime Minister will say: ‘We know that profit, wealth creation, tax cuts, enterprise… these are not dirty, elitist words – they’re not

Tuesday

Sebastian Payne

Eric Pickles pictures the horrors of a Labour government

Eric Pickles has a vivid imagination. He set out to remind the Conservative faithful today the dangers of letting Labour back into office, and why they, not the Tories, are the real nasty party. He painted a picture of where Britain might be if we were living under a Labour coalition: ‘Labour would have quickly lost the confidence of the markets for failing to tackle the deficit. Mortgage rates would have soared, and after that, taxes too. The Chancellor, Ed Balls, would be extending his so-called “mansion tax” to ordinary family homes…the Business Secretary – Unite’s Baron McCluskey of Mersey Docks – would be abolishing Margaret Thatcher’s trade union reforms

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Michael Gove’s evangelical education afternoon

Michael Gove has only just started speaking to his party conference, but already he has made a powerful, emotive case for the moral value of his education reforms. The education section of the afternoon programme has resembled an evangelical Christian outreach event where people give their ‘testimonies’ about how they came to faith. It had a former US teaching union leader, George Parker, explaining how he was ‘born again’ as a reformer, and how he repented of the days he spent time and money defending bad teachers and opposing performance-related pay. He was followed by Mark Lehain from the Bedford Free School, and a parent of a pupil at the

Francis Maude

Tory modernisers can’t rest on their laurels – the job’s never done

Where next for Tory modernisation? The first point is that it never ends. The Conservative party could not have survived and thrived as the longest standing and most successful political party in history without continually updating ourselves. Modernisation is one of our most important traditions. The second point is that modernising is not ideological. Still less is it about making ourselves less conservative or tacking to the left. Indeed, in the 1970s and ’80s modernisation was about detaching ourselves from an outdated corporatist consensus from which particularly younger people felt increasingly alienated. The third point is that it isn’t superficial or about appearances. It is about showing that we understand