Politics

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

Sunday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Boris Johnson rejects In/Out referendum call

As on many issues, Boris Johnson has made great efforts to position himself on the side of the Tory grassroots on key issues where the parliamentary leadership takes a different position, particularly when it comes to the European Union. The Mayor signed the People’s Pledge for an In/Out EU referendum in March of this year, but this evening, he appears to have backtracked rather. This is his exchange with John Pienaar on 5Live from a few minutes ago: Pienaar: Would you still want an In/Out referendum? Johnson: Well, I’ve always said… I think we’ve been now, what is it? 75 was the last referendum on the European Union: I certainly think

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Liam Byrne tries to turn David Cameron’s striver language back on him

The Leveson Inquiry will dominate this week. Inside Number 10 they regard it as ‘the most difficult’ of the three big issues dominating their time at the moment – the other two are the autumn statement and the EU Budget. But I suspect that voters will be far less interested in Leveson and the Prime Minister’s response to it than the media and political class are. I’d be surprised if Cameron’s handling of it changed the views of voters—as opposed to those of elites— of him. So, on The Sunday Politics today it was striking to see Liam Byrne, Labour’s welfare spokesman, trying to turn Cameron’s striver rhetoric back on

Saturday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The prejudice on display in Rotherham

There are some stories that become more shocking the more you think about them. The case of the Rotherham foster parents who have had the children they were caring for taken away from them for being members of UKIP is one of these. It is hard to imagine the distress that must have been caused to them by this arrogant, ill-thought out decision. First, UKIP is not a racist party: none of its policy positions could be called racist in any meaningful definition of this term. I’m sure there are some racists who are members of UKIP, just as there are — I suspect — some Labour, Liberal Democrat, Tory

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Nadine Dorries: why I did it.

What on earth was Nadine Dorries thinking? Soon after being liberated from the jungle, she kindly agreed to be interviewed by me for Radio Four’s Week in Westminster and explain her rationale. The show broadcast at 11am and you can listen to the whole thing here, but I thought CoffeeHousers may be interested in Nadine Dorries’ quotes as she raises interesting points about politics in general. Appearing on ITV’s I’m A Celebrity, she says, was the first time she had taken time off from Westminster – while many of her colleagues sneak off the whole time. She singled out the ex-Chief Whip, Andrew Mitchell:-  “What I’ve missed from parliament is three

Clarissa Tan

Boris in Bollywood

So Cameron is making his mark on the EU budget, Gove has caused a stir with his Leveson remarks, and Osborne is prepping for his Autumn Statement. No matter. As usual, Boris is marching to the beat of his own cinematic drummer. He’s going to Bollywood, on an India trip many interpret as an effort to project himself as a future world leader. The Mayor of London is visiting Delhi, Hyderabad and Mumbai, where he will appear on a top TV chat show and visit Bollywood studios. It is couched as a trade mission – ‘London loves India,’ he is quoted in the Hindustan Times as saying – but many

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

118 Tory MPs publicly reject gay marriage plans

David Cameron is planning to fast-track legislation for gay civil marriage through parliament, but today’s Daily Mail underlines that his own MPs are dragging their feet over the legislation. The paper reports that at least 118 Tory MPs have expressed their opposition to the plans in letters to constituents or interviews with journalists, and they’re not just the usual suspects that Nick Clegg might accidentally label ‘bigots’. They include openly gay Conor Burns, who told his local newspaper that ‘I marvel at why we’re bringing this forward. There is no clamour for this at all within the gay community’. Wirral West MP and minister for Disabled People, Esther McVey, holds

Matthew Sinclair

Why do-gooding ‘sin taxes’ always stink of politics

Nutella may have been created by Italians, but it is the French who really love it. The hazelnut spread is a fantastically popular accompaniment for everything from bread for breakfast to crêpes for a delicious dessert. Yet the French Senate, in its infinite wisdom, decided that Nutella should be taxed. The proposal was voted through the Senate, before being stopped by a very unlikely coalition of Communists and conservatives. The plan to impose a ‘sin tax’ on Nutella in France was obviously ludicrous; but it was also full of politics. Sin taxes and green taxes may look like an efficient intervention on an economist’s blackboard; but they never live up

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

David Blunkett warns MPs against regulating the press

David Blunkett, the former Home Secretary, has has his private life in the newspapers often enough to yearn, Hugh Grant-style, for a world where the press is not free but obliged to operate within parameters outlined by the government. But I’ve interviewed him for Radio Four’s Week in Westminster (it airs at 11am this morning) ahead of next week’s Leveson report and he has come out against the idea state-mandated regulation. It was an unusual discussion: the supposedly illiberal Blunkett, himself a compensated victim of hacking was defending press freedom. A Tory, Nadhim Zahawi, was urging David Cameron to act. As a former Home Secretary, Blunkett’s words carry some weight. He

Friday

Jonathan Jones

George Osborne might meet his debt target after all

When George Osborne gives his Autumn Statement on 5 December, the OBR will publish its new forecasts for growth, deficit and debt. For the last few weeks, the consensus has been that the OBR would declare that Osborne will miss the debt target he set himself in 2010: to have the debt-to-GDP ratio falling in 2015-16. The logic behind this, as I set out in September, is pretty straightforward: the OBR will have to lower its growth forecasts, which will in turn mean lower tax revenues, higher deficits and more debt. But it now looks like Osborne might narrowly avoid failure, though not because the outlook for the economy or

James Forsyth James Forsyth

A satisfactory outcome at the EU budget talks for David Cameron

So, the EU budget summit has — as expected — broken up without agreement. We await the date of the next discussion of the matter. But for the moment it means there is nothing that David Cameron will have to try to pilot through parliament. Talking to those close to the Prime Minister, I sense that they are not unhappy with this conclusion. In Downing Street, they feel that their criticisms of the running costs of the EU bureaucracy have struck a chord with other contributor countries. They’re also pleased that Cameron has managed to strike a tough negotiating position without isolating himself. But what is giving them the greatest

David Blackburn

EU budget talks end

The EU Budget discussions have ended with no agreement, as seemed inevitable after yesterday’s struggles and rows. David Cameron has been copping a lot of flak for his intransigence, particularly from Francois Hollande, who has spent much of the time talking of the need for ‘solidarity’ with Europe – by which he means the Common Agricultural Policy. Despite these headlines, it’s worth remembering that plenty of other countries objected to Van Rompuy’s proposals, and for many different reasons. Indeed, far from being isolated, Britain may have forged closer relations with those countries thanks to the experience of these talks. Nicholas Watt reports that blame is being aimed squarely at Herman van Rompuy, which is an interesting development from the

Tim Wigmore

The Lib Dems’ future may not be so bleak

At last week’s Corby by-election, the Liberal Democrat candidate requested two recounts. Once a formidable by-election machine, the Lib Dems were reduced to searching in vain for the 14 extra votes they required to get 5% of the vote, and so get their £500 deposit refunded. In 1935, a famous book described The Strange Death of Liberal England, a theme that has regularly been returned to in the intervening 77 years. In 1951 the Lib Dems’ predecessor, the Liberal Party, won six seats on 2.5 per cent of the national vote; in 1989, a year after the merger between the Liberal and Social Democratic parties, the Lib Dems polled 6

David Blackburn

Europe’s new iron curtain

The last 24 hours have yielded no agreement in Europe, and they have seen David Cameron’s ambitions decline (he appears resigned to the fact that EU spending will not be limited to 886bn euros, his original objective); but they have also demonstrated that Britain is far from alone at the diplomatic table. David Cameron has been able to forge pragmatic alliances and exert diplomatic pressure precisely. For example, his latest tactic at the budget discussions is to appeal to the downtrodden nations of southern Europe by insisting that the EU’s bureaucracy take its own medicine by raising retirement age and cutting jobs and reducing the final salary pension cap. The EU

Thursday

Peter Jones

Athenians on voting fatigue

‘Politics is polarised’ intoned the chatterati after the Obama-Romney race to the White House. ‘Sick of party politics’ said the people after the elections for Police and Crime Commissioners. Ancient Athenians knew why. One of the many virtues of Athens’ direct democracy (508-323 bc) was not just that citizens (male Athenians over 18) meeting every week or so in Assembly made all the decisions about policy; it was the absence of political parties in our sense. As a result, the Athenian people in Assembly were not bound by any of the preconditions or assumptions that for historical reasons have shaped our party system. There were no manifesto promises, special interest

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 22 November 2012

Lynton Crosby will soon be appointed to run the Conservative strategy for the next election, say reports. Unnamed sources accuse him of saying rude things about Muslims; people mutter about the ‘dog whistle’ campaign of 2005. Such stories involve two great subterranean passions — the desire of rival polling groups to make money and the competition among backroom boys to get credit for electoral success. The public should not be unduly concerned about rows in the servants’ hall, so long as the master is in charge. Possibly it is doubt about this which gives the story legs. But what the anti-Crosby stories also reveal is a weird prejudice about Australians.

The Spectator

Hold Brussels to account

After four years of economic crisis some kind of normality has at last been restored to European politics. The EU is at loggerheads with Britain again. After a prolonged period in which it seemed as if the EU would tear apart, its indebted southern members cast adrift from its more solvent northern members, it is almost comforting to see a return to the more traditional faultline in the EU: where the rest of the EU gangs up on Britain and accuses it of being isolationist. Not once during the euro crisis has a country been singled out for such disapproval as Britain has since David Cameron demanded that the EU

James Forsyth James Forsyth

David Cameron’s tricky position on the Leveson Report

Politics is gearing up for the publication of the Leveson Report next Thursday. It was telling that when Boris Johnson picked up politician of the year at The Spectator Parliamentarian of the Year awards, he didn’t use the occasion to list of his achievements in London or to reminisce about the Olympics but rather took the opportunity to decry the possibility of statutory regulation of the press. On the other side is Ed Miliband, whose party is committed to backing whatever Leveson comes up with. It is unclear yet what Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats will do. But there are a large chunk of Tory MPs who appear to

Jonathan Jones

Labour underestimated Osborne’s deficit

As Fraser reported at the time, Labour put up a deficit clock on its website last month, claiming that the government was borrowing £277 million more during Tory conference than in the same four days last year. It based this on the borrowing figures available at the time, which were for the period April to August. In that period, the government had borrowed £802 a second more than in the same five months of 2011, so Labour assumed it would continue to do so in October. But new figures out yesterday show that this was not the case. In fact, looking just at borrowing in October, Labour was lowballing it

Steerpike Steerpike

We ask the questions

The enemies of a free press, also known as the mysteriously funded Hacked Off campaign, are positively salivating at the prospect of new legislation to regulate the press. I hear that their press conference, held after lobbying the three party leaders, at Four Millbank yesterday gave a glimpse of things to come. Professor Brian Cathcart and former Liberal Democrat MP Evan Harris waxed lyrical about their relentless pursuit of justice for their celebrity backers like Hugh Grant, and the lesser known victims of press mistreatment. Despite being promised the chance to quiz the victims, journalists in the room got increasingly irate as the double act hogged the limelight. The tension

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

In defence of the CofE’s House of Laity

Even friends of an Established church like myself – though I’m a Catholic – should think twice about the wisdom of the idea after the naked political interference in the affairs of the CofE in the Commons. The Speaker, who is non-religious/agnostic, was among the most overt in encouraging MPs to overturn the church’s decision not to approve women bishops. Perhaps, he suggested, they might like to refer the matter to the Equalities Minister (Maria Miller)? It was more or less to say that the equalities legislation should be brought to bear on the CofE when it comes to its way of appointing bishops. Ben Bradshaw too was all in