Politics

Patrick McLoughlin was the obvious choice to confront Ed Miliband as the Labour leader tries to steal the ‘One Nation’ mantle from the Conservative party. The former miner opened his speech by remarking that the last time he had addressed conference was 28 years ago. He then invited delegates to watch a video of this speech, delivered when the Transport Secretary was a young man, telling Margaret Thatcher that he was proud to be a ‘Tory scab’ who crossed picket lines. He then underlined that in the class war that Miliband tried to ignite last week, McLoughlin was the winner: ‘I am the son of a miner. I am the

Ahead of his conference speech this morning, George Osborne was on the Today Programme. Much of the interview revolved around whether or not the Chancellor would have to abandon his aim of having the national debt falling as a percentage of GDOP by 2015/16. Osborne batted away these questions, stressing that he was waiting for the numbers from the Office of Budget Responsibility. Osborne also said that there would be ‘new taxes on rich people’ to accompany the £10 billion of welfare cuts that he wants to see. Osborne stressed that efforts to make the rich pay more were not simply to ‘appease Liberal Democrats’. One of the dilemmas for

George Osborne is due to speak to the Conservative party conference just before lunch today. What he tells the Symphony Hall at the International Convention Centre may well put his Liberal Democrat coalition partners off their food, as his speech will make clear the Chancellor’s determination to cut a further £10 billion from the welfare budget. The Lib Dems appear to have adapted their position somewhat over the summer. In July, I reported senior sources saying that the £10 billion cut was ‘just not going to happen’. A little later, the party started making the connection between this new package of cuts and the wealth tax which Nick Clegg flew

Jeremy Hunt: what a card! A row about abortion is just what the Conservative and Unionist party needs to kick-off its conference week! The MP for South West Surrey is certainly entitled to say he favours outlawing abortion outwith the first trimester; the Secretary of State for Health would have been wiser to have kept quiet. The problem is Hunt’s political judgement, not his moral compass. Nevertheless, some of the reaction to Hunt’s comments has bordered on the hysterical. Talk of a Tory “War on Women” is as ugly as it is absurd and another example of how the witless American brand of partisanship has leaked into our political discourse.

Why has David Cameron made his conference slogan ‘Britain can deliver’? That word ‘deliver’ is revolting. Cameron clearly likes it: ‘Britain delivered’, he said after the Olympics. But if only Dave and his handlers read the Spectator’s Dot Wordsworth more closely, they’d know better. In 2003, Dot wrote: ‘Politicians and managers who use the word deliver should think again . Until recently, the most frequent use of the word deliver was in the phrase ‘deliver us from evil.’ The sense ‘liberate, set free’ had been conveyed by the Latin liberare . But in late Latin this meaning had been taken over by the emphatic deliberare, which in classical Latin meant

Today’s Guardian magazine runs a Michael Gove profile, colouring him blue on the cover as if to alert readers to the threat he poses. “Smoother than Cameron,” it warns. “Funnier than Boris. More right-wing than both. Are you looking at the next leader of the Tory Party?” There is nothing unusual about leadership speculation following a  prominent Tory frontbencher, but there is something unusual about the way Gove has ruled it out in almost any way imaginable. He has combined General Sherman and Estelle Morris, saying he wouldn’t and couldn’t do  the job. It is now being said that Gove is protesting too much, but he has been clear about this