Politics Archives

Thursday

11 Jul 2013

Ed Miliband now has his Clause 4 moment – whether he wants it or not

Ed Miliband doesn’t take a risk unless he has to. In his first two and a half years in charge of the Labour party, he eschewed a dramatic confrontation with the trade unions. Some in his circle wanted him to take them on, as part of a broader campaign against vested interests, but they were ignored, to the relief of Tory strategists. That has all changed now. Miliband has been pitched into an argument with the unions that will determine whether he has a chance of reaching No. 10. The Labour leader was slow to react to the controversy about the union Unite allegedly trying to fix the selection of

Rod Liddle

Only Tony Blair can unite the Middle East. There, everyone hates him

As if the poor Egyptians didn’t have enough on their plate, into the arena marches the man to sort it all out, the world’s ‘Middle East Envoy’, Tony Blair. Lucky world. Give the man his due, the Middle East is a monumentally fractious, fissiparous, disputatious neck of the woods and they all seem to hate each other. But mention the name ‘Blair’ and suddenly Maronite and Shia, Ashkenazi and Hamas, Druze and Sunni, men with long sideburns and men with long beards are united in an hysterical cackling. It is not often this column seeks an elucidatory comment from the Hamas spokesman Mohammed Shtayyeh, but his succinct verdict on Blair

The Spectator

Why Ed Miliband should stop paying his union dues

Ed Miliband’s relationship with Len McCluskey was defined in a brief camera shot at the Labour party conference in 2010. After praising trade unions, Miliband added that he would have no patience with ‘waves of irresponsible strikes’. Several rows back, McCluskey, who three days earlier had helped Ed defeat his brother David in the leadership election, was filmed shaking his head and shouting ‘Rubbish!’ Given that McCluskey’s Unite union pays most of Labour’s bills, his word was seen as a veto. This was the new deal. McCluskey and his colleagues bestowed their patronage upon Ed not because they thought he would be a strong leader, but for rather the opposite

Sebastian Payne

Another good private school wants to join the state system. Why is Labour trying to stop it?

When my parents came to choose a secondary school, they were naturally keen to send little Sebastian to the best possible place — regardless of whether it was state or independent. Their first choice was Emmanuel College in Gateshead, where we lived — one of Kenneth Baker’s original city technology colleges and inspiration for Labour’s academy programme. The next was the fee-paying King’s School in Tynemouth. Emmanuel declined to offer me a place and King’s turned out to be too expensive. I ended up at a respectable, above-average comprehensive — so I was luckier than most. King’s would have been superb; it’s one of best schools in the north-east. But

James Delingpole

James Delingpole’s letter to the royal baby

Congratulations, Baby Windsor. You have just been born a subject of Her Britannic Majesty (as it used to say on the passports) and have therefore won life’s lottery. Actually, given the state of the nation and the economy, maybe ‘won life’s dog-eared scratchcard’ is more the phrase juste. Still, you’ve done amazingly well. Thanks to the freakiest odds imaginable you have, merely by the accident of being conceived by the right couple, leapfrogged to the covetable position of third in line to the British throne. So that’s the good news. The bad news is that it comes with a certain amount of baggage. Problem one: you’re a constititutional monarch. This

Charles Moore

The Spectator’s notes | 11 July 2013

Andrew Mitchell was forced to resign as the Tory Chief Whip last autumn because he called policemen at the Downing Street gates ‘plebs’. Then it turned out, as this column suggested at the time, that he had not done so. It emerged that there was a conspiracy — quite how deep has not yet been made public — by police and accomplices to attribute to Mr Mitchell words which he did not speak. People pretending to be by-standing members of the public said how shocked they were by Mr Mitchell’s remarks, and then it turned out that no bystanders had been within earshot of whatever it was that Mr Mitchell had

James Forsyth

David Cameron and Nick Clegg move like sharks to keep the coalition going

If a shark stops moving it dies. In the Prime Minister and deputy Prime Minister’s office, they believe that the same applies to the coalition. Their view is that if it is going to make it to 2015, it needs to be doing things right up until parliament is dissolved and the election called. To this end, as I reveal in the column this week, they’ve commissioned Oliver Letwin, David Laws and Jo Johnson to sit down and see what else the coalition can do between now and 2015. One of those involved in the talks says ‘we’re pretty confident we can still do deals on various things.’ The hope

Isabel Hardman

Why Universal Credit delay is a good thing, not a political failure

‘Iain Duncan Smith must now ask himself if he is fit for purpose.’ That’s what Liam Byrne thinks of the Work and Pensions Secretary’s admission that the roll-out of Universal Credit is being delayed. The original plan was for all new claims for out-of-work support to go into the universal credit rather than the current benefits system from October 2013. But a written ministerial statement yesterday said the pilots of the new benefit will be extended to six hub JobCentres instead. Labour says the ‘we have final confirmation that the welfare revolution we were promised has collapsed’. If deep down you don’t want universal credit to succeed, then you must

Sebastian Payne

Five things you need to know about the MPs’ pay rise

Today’s recommendations from IPSA on MPs pay have been with met the condemnation we’ve come to expect regarding our politicians — snouts in troughs, out of touch political class, etc. But it’s not simply MPs giving themselves more money. Here are the key five points of what the independent recommendations are actually proposing: 1. Overall cost of politics will increase Despite the reshuffling of MPs’ remuneration (see point 4 for details), IPSA estimates the overall spend will increase £0.5 million by 2015. The headline figure that the cost of politics is going up is just the sort of story MPs like Conor Burns are keen to avoid. It gives the impression they are out of

Rod Liddle

Ulster’s Orangemen show that Britain can do internecine vindictiveness too

This all looks terribly good fun, don’t you think? Spectacular towers which will make wonderful bonfires: it must have taken them ages. My only caveat is that they are all in Northern Ireland. Is there no enterprising alliance over here which might do something similar to celebrate the glorious military success of King William of Orange? One looks in despair at the Church of England, which would almost certainly cavil at such a celebration – but perhaps some of our more Presbyterian churches might set something up? It is important to remember at a time when there’s all this nastiness going on between the Sonny and Cher Muslims (“I got

Sebastian Payne

The View from 22 — why the Met always gets it wrong, Miliband’s Clause 4 moment and nationalising private schools

Why has the Met Office become so inaccurate at predicting weather in the UK? On the latest View from 22 podcast, author Rupert Darwall explains why out of the last 13 years of weather predictions by the Met, 12 have been incorrect. How does the Met Office go about predicting weather? Are these inaccuracies down to technological or human error? And in what way does the government’s climate change policies feed into their decisions? James Forsyth and Isabel Hardman also discuss Labour’s union manoeuvres and Ed Miliband’s Clause 4 moment he didn’t want but is now stuck with. Has the Labour leader made the right decision to take on the

Wednesday

10 Jul 2013

Conor Burns

The public would find an eye watering £10,000 pay increase for MPs unacceptable

It has often been said that there is no perfect time for an increase in MPs’ pay. If that is true then surely now would be the most imperfect time. All MPs who are doing their job to any percentage of excellence know that our constituents are feeling very concerned for the future. Any spare money they have is going into repairing domestic debt and yet with rising petrol prices, food costs and utility bills not that many have much spare money at all. So this week with the backdrop of Conservative tearing lumps out of Labour on cash and influence and Labour responding by attacking the Conservatives on funding

Steerpike

Boris and the gipsies of Belgium

It’s the peak of the summer party season. Half a dozen events competed for the Westminster crowd last night. The bookies at Ladbrokes made themselves outsiders by holding their booze-up on a boat that cast off a tad too early in the evening. The Adam Smith Institute hosted a bash on the Thames, while a stuffy parliament office saw the Tory Awkward Squad raise a glass to David Davis. Meanwhile, on the other side of the Palace of Westminster, whisky cocktails flowed for the Ladies and Gentlemen of Her Majesty’s Loyal Press Corps, whose summer bash was sponsored by booze kings Diageo. In the quiet surroundings of Dean Yard, a stone’s throw

Isabel Hardman

Jeremy Hunt turns on Labour over union policy influence

One of David Cameron’s better lines at Prime Minister’s Questions was that the trade unions ‘buy the candidates, they buy the policies and they buy the leader’. In his final response to Ed Miliband, he said: ‘What is Labour’s policy on Royal Mail? It is determined by the Communication Workers Union. What is its policy on health? It is determined by Unison. What is its policy on party funding? It is determined by Unite.’ To underline that point, Jeremy Hunt has sent a letter to Andy Burnham this afternoon asking for ‘clarification about union influence over Labour health policy’. The letter, which you can read in full here, says Burnham

Lloyd Evans

PMQs sketch: Wimbledon and trade union scandals

Andy Murray’s joy is now complete. Yes, he won Wimbledon and all that, but his crowning glory came today when he was mentioned at the start of PMQs. Cameron apparently has no idea how goofy and devious he looked last Sunday when he half-opened the door of Downing Street and stepped out to greet Murray with a shifty smirk plastered across his face. In the House, he declared that the first British victory at Wimbledon in 77 years was a historic event. Ed Miliband agreed but appended the triumph of Virginia Wade in 1977 to Cameron’s tribute. This was greeted by a Labour cheer so loud that it registered at

James Forsyth

Miliband shores up his leadership at noisy PMQs

That was as loud as the Prime Minister’s Questions that immediately preceded the last election. The Labour benches were clearly determined to ensure that there was no repeat of last week’s mauling of Ed Miliband. They barracked David Cameron from the off, even chanting ‘weak, weak, weak’ during his answers and almost every Labour question was on the propriety of the Tories’ relations with their donors. This, combined with a far stronger performance from Ed Miliband, ensured that the session ended with Cameron, not Miliband, on the back foot. Cameron’s problem is that Miliband is turning this from a debate about union influence on Labour selections into one about money

James Forsyth

Can Theresa May avoid a Tory row on the European Arrest Warrant?

Walk down a corridor in the Palace of Westminster today and you’ll likely be taken aside by a Tory backbencher who wants to vent their frustration about Britain opting back into the European Arrest Warrant. At the moment, the mood is of concern rather than rebellion — a reflection of the fact that Tory MPs are in a fairly positive frame of mind after a good couple of political weeks for the party. But what should alarm Downing Street is that it isn’t just the usual Eurosceptic crowd expressing concern. Indeed, some of those who are most concerned are those who David Cameron has relied on recently to defend his

Isabel Hardman

Labour MP makes amusing attempt to wreck Tory EU referendum bill

The Conservatives are a happy bunch at the moment. But for how much longer? They might be riding on the crest of a wave after the second reading of James Wharton’s Private Member’s Bill for an EU referendum. But already forces are at work to disrupt the happy harmony. Labour MP Mike Gapes has this week tabled a rather amusing series of amendments to the legislation which are almost certainly an attempt to sow division in the Tory ranks. They call for: – A referendum on the terms of Britain’s membership of the EU rather than just on whether Britain should be a member. – A referendum on a date

Isabel Hardman

Miliband’s challenge is an opportunity for the Tories to reach out to union members

The warm reception to Ed Miliband’s speech yesterday was so eerily positive that it could never have lasted. Today we get the first taste of the real battle to come, with the GMB warning that they’d be ‘lucky if 10% of our current affiliation levels say yes, they want to be members of the Labour party’ and that as a result the union could disaffiliate from the party. This is a challenge for Ed Miliband to show that he is determined to force these changes, even if it means calling a party-wide ballot to overrule the union bosses But this is also an opportunity for the Conservatives. If the unions

Tuesday

9 Jul 2013

Isabel Hardman

What do the Tories think about zero hours contracts? They don’t seem very keen to tell us…

MPs held a debate in Westminster Hall today about zero hours contracts. Actually, to be specific, Labour MPs held a Westminster Hall debate today, which Jo Swinson replied to as the employment minister. Adjournment debates aren’t often that newsworthy, but what made this debate noteworthy was that it marks another example of the Conservatives failing to respond to a social phenomenon, instead leaving a vacuum for Labour to stamp their own argument on it. What do the Conservatives think about these contracts, under which workers are not guaranteed a set number of hours per week? You could probably guess that MPs on the right would say there is a compelling