Politics Archives

Thursday

3 May 2012

Leveson narrows Cameron’s fightback window

During the government’s recent troubles, Cameroons have talked about the ‘window’ for action that David Cameron will have if Boris does win the mayoralty. But that window got a lot smaller with the news that Andy Coulson and Rebekah Brooks are appearing at the Leveson Inquiry on Thursday and Friday next week. Their appearances means that, next week, the media won’t be dominated by discussion of the Queen’s speech but by one of Cameron’s biggest misjudgments: his decision to get so close to News International. If there are anywhere near as many text messages between Cameron and Brooks as Peter Oborne alleges then it will be, at best, horribly embarrassing

Jonathan Jones

Boris wins the popularity contest

So, after all that, it looks like today’s London Mayoral will be just a little bit of history repeating. YouGov’s final poll predicts that Boris will defeat Ken in the second round by 53 to 47 — exactly the same result we saw four years ago. The third place finisher will probably be the same too: the poll has Brian Paddick getting 7 per cent in the first round, ahead of Siobhan Benita and UKIP’s Lawrence Webb on 4 and Green Jenny Jones on 3. If Boris does overcome Labour’s partisan advantage in London, it won’t be mainly down to his achievements in office. In fact, voters are split 39-38

James Forsyth

The contests that really matter today

For the long-term future of Britain, perhaps, the most important contests today are the mayoral referendums in 11 of Britain’s biggest cities. For elected mayors offer the best chance of urban renewal. As recently as the ‘70s people described Birmingham as the city of the future. No one would say that now. But a mayor might just be able to give Britain’s sclerotic second city the leadership it needs. Indeed, it is hard to imagine how a mayor could be worse than the Tory-Lib Dem council that currently runs the city which opposed education reform for far too long. Liverpool has already decided to have a mayor and is electing

Jonathan Jones

What would count as a success for Labour?

In today’s English council elections, there’s no doubt that Labour will do better than in 2008 — the last time most of these seats were contested. Experts Colin Rallings and Michael Thrasher predict that they’ll improve their ‘national equivalent vote share’ by 13 points compared to four years ago. But how many seats can they pick up of the back of that improvement? Rallings and Thrasher say a figure of 700 would justify a five-point lead in the polls. LSE’s Tony Travers expects Labour’s gains to be around 700-800, and says that: ‘If Labour only manage to put on a further 500 seats, that would be seen as seriously underperforming

Sebastian Payne

The View from 22 — 3 May 2012

Here, CoffeeHousers, is this week’s episode of The View from 22 podcast. In this episode, Leah McLaren returns to the Spectator a decade on from her infamous cover story attacking British men to explain how she’s now fallen in love with one (0:30). James Forsyth and Neil O’Brien from Policy Exchange examine the Tories’ lack of progress in the North (6:48) and how elected Mayors will help. Fraser joins in for a discussion of today’s local elections and why Labour has the most at stake (16:10). You can listen below with the embedded player or subscribe through iTunes. As ever, we’d love to hear what you think, good or bad.

James Forsyth

Politics: It’s grim up North for Tories

It is perhaps inevitable that, after two years in government, the Tories settled on a local election strategy of holding on to as much as they can. It is rare for a governing party to try to expand its political reach in mid-term elections. But this defensive approach means that Conservatives are no closer to tackling one of the biggest obstacles to a majority: their absence from England’s northern cities. Take Newcastle. There are — at the time of writing and, almost certainly, of reading — no Tories on Newcastle City Council. The Newcastle Conservative Federation website is reduced to holding up its chairman, a parish councillor in the village

Wednesday

2 May 2012

James Forsyth

Just in case you need another reason not to vote Benita, she’s now being backed by Jonathan Ross

I doubt that many CoffeeHousers are planning on voting for the independent candidate for Mayor of London, Siobhan Benita. As Leo McKinstry said in this magazine recently, she’s really the civil service, establishment candidate. But fair play to her for standing for election unlike her mentor Gus O’Donnell, Jeremy Heywood or any other members of the permanent governing class. But if any Spectator reader was contemplating voting for Benita, another reminder of why you shouldn’t comes today from Jonathan Ross who has endorsed her on Twitter. Given that Benita has the endorsement of both Ross — whose onetime BBC chat show was a demonstration of nearly everything that is wrong with

Camilla Swift

How to get around the EU (and weed smokers)

The Dutch government has just banned foreigners from the country’s ‘coffee-shops’ — aka, cannabis cafés. Given how often we’re told that you can’t ban EU members from doing anything, how did they manage it? Basically, it all comes down to residency. If you live there, then you can apply for what’s being called a ‘weed pass’. If you don’t live there, then no dice. But is it legal for the Dutch government to ban entry to EU citizens in this way? A group of 19 coffee-shop owners decided to go to court over the matter, worried about this potential loss of custom. But a Dutch judge threw out their case,

Jonathan Jones

Boris has won already, says bookie

We may still be 19 hours away from the polls opening — and more than 48 away from hearing the result — but bookmaker Paddy Power has already paid out £20,000 to punters who bet on Boris. It’s a publicity stunt by the company, but one that’s unlikely to backfire, with the pollsters agreeing that Boris is set for re-election — the only question seems to be how much he’ll win by. YouGov show him 4 points ahead of Ken in the second round, ComRes have him up by 8, Survation 10 and Populus 12. Paddy Power says that 94 per cent of the bets they took on the race

Tuesday

1 May 2012

James Forsyth

The political effects of all this hacking talk

I doubt that many votes will be moved by the split report on hacking of the Culture, Media and Sport select committee. This is not a subject that sets the public’s pulse racing. But all this hacking talk does create political problems for David Cameron. First, it obscures his attempt to talk about other things that matter more to the electorate. This was rather summed up yesterday when the News at Ten led on him facing questions in parliament about Jeremy Hunt rather than the speech he had had to cancel about the economy. This is a particular problem given that the next six weeks at least are going to

Peter Hoskin

Their drinks are still on us

It has been a busy day for Commons committees, and I don’t just mean the education and media select committees either. The John Bercow-chaired House of Commons Commission has released a briefing note outlining some of its recent decisions relating to the running of the House. It covers three areas: ‘Mobile devices for members’ (aka, iPads for MPs); ‘Trees in Portcullis House’ (let’s keep ‘em, so long as we can make ‘em cheaper); and ‘Alcohol policy’ (more on which below). It’s the last of these that will probably get the most attention, not least because of Eric Joyce’s recent misadventures. So what does Team Bercow recommend? Nothing much, in truth,

Peter Hoskin

The Lib Dems jostle for airtime

Yep, they’re inescapable, those Lib Dems. Even when the airwaves are dominated by Rupert Murdoch and Tom Watson, they’re there in the background, quietly adding to the day’s pile of political news. We’ve got Ken Livingstone making a pitch for their votes in the London Mayor’s contest, for instance. And we’ve also got Nick Clegg on what seems like every radio show on air, giving his account of why folk should be Lib Dem voters in the first place. There have been two more significant scraps of LibDemmery than those, though. The first came in one of Clegg’s radio appearances, when he said that he isn’t ‘hung up’ on who

Alex Massie

Waiting for Growth

With apologies to the Beckett Estate… Two tramps appear on stage. They are dressed in white tie and tails and wearing top hats. Their clothes are dirty and shabby; their hats gleam. The stage is bare, apart from a mound of earth and a tree. Which appears to be dead. ACT ONE: David: [gloomy] It’s too much for one man. On the other hand what’s the good of losing heart now, that’s what I say. We should have thought of it a million years ago, in the nineties. George: What do you expect, you always wait till the last moment. David: [Ponders this] The last moment… Hope deferred maketh the

Peter Hoskin

MPs squabble over their own phone hacking report

The education select committee reported earlier, but it is the report of another select committee that will get all the attention today. The culture, media and sport select committee has just delivered its verdict on the phone hacking scandal, naming names and apportioning blame — or at least in theory it has. In practice, ‘its verdict’ may be stretching it a bit. During the press conference just now, the individual members of the committee could barely put up a united front at all. There are the parts of the report that they all agree upon: that the former News International employees Les Hinton, Tom Crone and Colin Myler misled the

Rod Liddle

Barry and the bacon bap

And now — the rather wonderful story of the bacon bap which bit Barry Sheerman. The veteran Labour MP bought one at London Victoria station and he did not like it, he was sorely vexed. Using that conduit for the self-obsessed and insane, Twitter, he pronounced it the worst he had ever eaten. And he added: ‘Why can’t Camden Food Co employ English staff?’ Well, Barry mate, I wonder. Perhaps it is because during the time your party was in office the country welcomed more than three million immigrants, a lot of them from eastern Europe, who were prepared to work for much less money than the indigenous English workers.

Martin Bright

It’s hard to find a minister who hasn’t messed up

Over the weekend I had some interesting responses to my rather flippant tweet asking if there was a government minister not under pressure at the moment. The consensus seemed to be that William Hague was still looking pretty good, with Michael Gove a close second. No one mentioned Eric Pickles, but it was interesting to see the substantial figure of the Communities Secretary sitting at the Prime Minister’s side during his appearance in parliament yesterday. It would probably be too chippy, even for me, to point to the class origins of the government’s best performers. But the posh boys are certainly not at peak performance at the moment. One by

Monday

30 Apr 2012

Fraser Nelson

Tricolour Britain

With unionists getting grubbed in Scotland and Labour being driven to near-extinction in vast swathes of the south, a new map of political Britain is emerging. In my latest Telegraph column, I called it ‘Tricolour Britain’ — the SNP at the top, Tories at the bottom and Labour stuck in the middle (with Wales). Policy Exchange has today released research which throws more light on this slow-mo political segregation. I thought CoffeeHousers may be interested in what strike me as the top points. 1. Scottish Tory Syndrome is when a once-dominant party loses and doesn’t recover. The party has failed to capture the imagination of voters, so when its apparatus

Jonathan Jones

Boris extends his lead

As we enter the final stretch of the campaign for London Mayor, YouGov have a new poll putting Boris four points ahead of Ken. It’s a touch better for the blue team than the 2 point lead YouGov found last week, but not as comfortable as the 8- and 10-point leads shown by ComRes and Survation respectively. Despite dropping a bit further behind Boris, Ken does not seem to be suffering from Labour supporters turning their backs on him. Indeed, he now gets 92 per cent of those Labour general election voters who express a preference between him and Boris — the highest level of party loyalty YouGov have found

James Forsyth

Cameron goes on the attack to defend Hunt

I don’t think I’ve ever seen David Cameron as angry as he was for that urgent question on Jeremy Hunt. He had clearly decided that attack was the best form of defence and went for his Labour critics in the most aggressive manner possible. But he did make one important concession in his opening answer when he said that if there is evidence of wrongdoing by the Culture Secretary, ‘I will not wait until the end of the Leveson inquiry to act’. In other words, Hunt’s appearance before Leveson will decide his fate. The dynamic in the Cameron-Miliband exchanges was genuinely personal. Cameron told the House that ‘we’ve learned something

Jonathan Jones

Boris drops the f-bomb (again)

More ‘colourful language’ from Boris Johnson today. Interviewed by the BBC about his reported attempts to secure sponsorship from News International while they were being investigated for phone hacking, he dismissed the claims as ‘f***ing b****cks’. Here, courtesy of Political Scrapbook, is the (censored) video: