Politics

It’s said that Ken Clarke would cross a motorway to pick a fight with a political opponent. His aggression is one reason why he thrived (eventually) under Mrs Thatcher: ambulance drivers, teaching unions and local government were all given a bunch of fives when Clarke reached Cabinet in the late ‘80s. Chris Patten (in the course of saying that he would go into the jungle with Clarke) told the late Hugo Young that ‘the key to Clarke is that he is anti-establishment – any establishment’. Yet pugilism is but one side of Clarke. He is not, by temperament or conviction, an ideologue. What matters is what works. And it worked

The Met Office is apparently holding a ‘crisis meeting’ today to discuss why Britain’s weather refuses to behave itself these days. No sooner had the camp, pirouetting, forecasters told us that we were in for weeks and weeks of gale force winds and torrential rain, stretching into July, better wear your wellies etc, than the sun came out, the birds began to sing again and the wind became a vague, if pleasant, caressing of the senses. Their meeting is really to ask the rhetorical question, the only question they know – is it global warming or what? – rather than the more immediately relevant question: why are we always completely

Those cracking jokes about bears visiting the woods following Ken Clarke’s latest warning about the dangers of Britain leaving the EU miss the point. The former Chancellor and Minister without Portfolio is firstly echoing the stance of his boss, rather than briefing against him, and is secondly continuing to plug away at the case for ‘In’ which has struggled to gain as much momentum and noise as that for leaving. The Europhile faction of the Conservative party has been very poor at organising itself and going on the attack thus far. Clarke uses yesterday’s official opening of talks on the EU/US bilateral trade deal to warn in today’s Telegraph that

The Treasury is entering its last minute negotiations with recalcitrant departments ahead of next week’s spending review announcement. But for all the talk of ‘difficult decisions’, the settlement doesn’t look as though it will take some of the more difficult decisions about the shape of government itself. In a Free Enterprise Group paper published today, Tory MP Dominic Raab argues that ministers should be looking for savings by scrapping departments altogether, not coming to settlements which merely maintain the current messy setup. Raab argues that Britain has many more government departments than other developed countries such as the US, Germany and Sweden. He seems quite keen to rule himself off

Stephen Twigg is, as he probably expected, coming in for a bit of flak on his U-turn on free schools this morning. Labour’s Shadow Education Secretary has launched his own plan for ‘parent academies’, which Toby Young and James Kirkup have had some fun with here. But he is basically doing what Lord Adonis has long hoped the party would do, accepting that free schools are a variant of the last Labour government’s academies programme anyway. He just needed to find a new brand that wouldn’t send the teaching unions into orbit. But what’s interesting is that Twigg also devoted large sections of his speech to trying to steal the

While the G8 begins today with splits already clear on Syria, David Cameron will be aware, as he sits down for talks with world leaders, that the splits in his own Parliament are becoming increasingly vocal. It’s not just Boris Johnson’s column in today’s Telegraph in which the Mayor of London warns that ‘we won’t get a ceasefire by pressing weapons into the hands of maniacs’. Tory MPs have started openly discussing the lack of support for arming the rebels. Johnson’s intervention could be read by some as yet another attempt to undermine the PM who appears to be considering arming the rebels out of a deep personal conviction, given

There is a terrific piece in today’s Telegraph by Charles Moore which I very much recommend. It is titled ‘Woolwich outrage: we are too weak to face up to the extremism in our midst’. In the piece Moore rightly criticises our societal inability to deal with Islamism. In particular he criticises the switch of attention which took place immediately after the murder of Drummer Rigby thanks to bogus claims of an ‘anti-Muslim backlash’. Moore also addresses the follow-up fib that a threat equal to the jihadis – or even the primary threat to our society – comes from the English Defence League. Incidentally, I saw that, whilst over for the

It is easy to make a case for why all three main parties should do badly at the next election. After five years of austerity, who will vote for the Tories who didn’t in 2010? And how will they stop those dissatisfied with the compromises of coalition from sloping off to Ukip? As for Labour, why would the public want to put them back in charge just five years after booting them out? This question has special force given that the Labour leadership is so identified with that failed belief that boom and bust had been ended. Then, there’s the Liberal Democrats—they’ve alienated their left-leaning supporters and lost their status

Tony Blair has plenty to say on the crisis in Syria in his interview in today’s Times, as you might expect. But he also makes a few points on other aspects of foreign policy that are worth noting, particularly regarding Europe. The former Prime Minister tells Alice Thompson and Rachel Sylvester that David Cameron was wrong to offer a referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union. He says: ‘We should at least pause for thought on this. I can tell you, people around the world now ask about this constantly, with an air of incredulity that Britain should even think of such a thing. Europe will be a lot