Politics

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

Monday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Eurozone leaders prepare for Grexit

On one level, a government minister confirming that their colleagues are discussing the possible break-up of the eurozone is hardly a surprise. It would have been far more controversial had Finland’s foreign minister Erkki Tuomioja pitched up on the World at One this afternoon and told Martha Kearney that eurozone finance ministers were not engaged in contingency planning at some level. But Tuomioja’s comments that a Grexit was ‘something that everybody in every ministry of finance and in central banks, and national central banks, is looking into’ are still significant as they show politicians are less worried by the effect public hints about an exit will have and more by

Sunday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Assange’s balcony scene

Julian Assange appeared in public for the first time in two months this afternoon to make a statement about his continuing resistance to attempts to extradite him. The Wikileaks founder made a number of claims and arguments which it’s useful to have a look at in further detail: 1. ‘If the UK did not throw away the Vienna conventions the other night, it was because the world was watching’. Foreign Secretary William Hague has insisted that there are no plans to ‘storm’ the Ecuadorian embassy to arrest Assange. Either officers will attempt to arrest him when he leaves the building for Ecuador (although there is an interesting theory he may

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Darling: Osborne has given up on growth

‘Unless you do something now it will be years before we recover.’ This morning those words come from former chancellor Alistair Darling in an open letter to George Osborne, but they could just as easily be from a member of his own backbench, or from Boris. Darling’s letter, published in the Sunday People, accuses both Mr Osborne and the Bank of England of having ‘given up on any plan for growth’. ‘Your policies since 2010 simply haven’t worked, you need another plan – call it plan B, call it whatever you like,’ he writes. He’s essentially saying the same thing as Boris Johnson did this week, but using slightly more

Saturday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Ed Miliband, Olympic winner

Before the last election, I had dinner with a Labour minister who told me her number one fear about the Tories getting in would be seeing David Cameron lap up the Olympic limelight. The Olympics, she feared, would hugely benefit whoever happened to be in power – and that was, she feared, going to be Cameron. She needn’t have worried. The Prime Minister was barely visible during the Games (to his credit, he’s not the type to hog limelight). Boris was Boris. But now the games are over, which party leaders have benefited the most? Oddly, all of them – and Ipsos-Mori polling suggests the number one winner was Ed

Douglas Murray

Poetry by heart

In the magazine this week I have a piece on learning poetry by heart. Spectator readers will remember that Michael Gove received some flak from teaching unions earlier this year when he suggested that British schoolchildren should be able to recite a poem by heart. In the piece I try to explain why this is a good idea, both as a mental discipline and a way of accessing the best thought and literature. I was never made to learn poetry by heart at school, but I have been trying to remember what the first poetry I taught myself by heart was. I think it may have been portions of Edward

Hugo Rifkind Hugo Rifkind

Politicians can’t dance, probably because they’re aliens

Let us talk about politicians dancing. Specifically, let us talk about Boris Johnson and David Cameron dancing to the Spice Girls at the Olympic closing ceremony. Graceful, elegant, debonair, all of these things it was not. Cameron clapped, strangled by his tie, like a man whose sober country church has been taken over for a week by some bastard with a guitar. Boris was more relaxed, swinging his belly to the beat as a bountiful chick might swing her boobs. Digging it, like Daddy Pig might dig the DJ at Peppa’s wedding. Did you see? The cameraman held them both for 20 seconds and then moved abruptly on. ‘This isn’t

Friday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Britain: the country of Mohammed

With apologies to his Royal Highness, the most popular boy’s name isn’t Harry –  in spite of what you will have read in the papers this week. It’s Mohammed, under various spellings. The Guardian hasn’t even worked this out, in spite of its pretty data table. Table 6 on the ONS results shows: some 8,018 baby Mohammeds came kicking and screaming into the world last year, well clear of Harry (7,523) and Oliver (7,007) Harry had his turn, and John was the most popular name for decades. We are now living in the age of Mohammed, a name that has been growing (on average) for 5 per cent a year. Here’s the

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

The green belt isn’t as green and pleasant as you’d think

The two best fights to watch in Westminster this autumn will be about land: the shape of constituencies, and where developers will be allowed to build the new homes that ministers are increasingly seeing as the best solution to Britain’s growth problem. Tim Shipman reports in the Daily Mail today that the Quad is ‘thinking the unthinkable’ and considering relaxing rules around building on the green belt as part of those planning reforms that Eric Pickles and colleagues are dreading. Cue outrage and news reports featuring photographs of beautiful rolling green meadows. Sources in the Communities and Local Government say they do not recognise the Mail’s report. But why is the green

Thursday

Douglas Murray

Julian Assange has nowhere left to run

Julian Assange is one of my best enemies.  For my part it was hatred at first sight.  He was only slightly slower on the uptake.  Our relationship was consummated last year when we debated in London, and he fluttered those strange dead eyes at me, and threatened to sue me, and then didn’t, and I wrote about it afterwards and revealed to the world (or Spectator diary readers at least) that his backstage chat is like aural rohypnol. Anyhow – in recent months I have not had the time to keep my hatred active.  Partly because Julian has now even discredited himself with the left.  Indeed, even the poor man

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Hague stands firm on Assange

William Hague took a robust line on Julian Assange at his press conference this evening. He made clear that the British government would not allow the Wikileaks founder safe passage out of the UK, and warned against using diplomatic immunity as a means of ‘escaping regular process of the courts’. Assange is wanted in Sweden on allegations that he raped one woman and sexually assaulted another in August 2010. He denies both charges and has spent the past 56 days hiding in Ecuador’s embassy, where it was today confirmed that he is being granted political asylum. The police still intend to arrest Assange as soon as he leaves the embassy,

Sebastian Payne

Conservative Corby slips away

The first polling on the Corby and East Northamptonshire by-election is out today and not surprisingly, it suggests that Labour will take the seat by a landslide. The poll commissioned by Lord Ashcroft predicts Corby will fall in line with national polling trends — a collapsed Lib Dem vote, reduced Tory presence and a resurgent Labour: If the by-election result follows this pattern, it will represent a 9 per cent swing to Labour since the 2010 general election. If this were replicated at a national level, it would be enough to sweep Ed Miliband back into Downing Street. The poll also gives some reaction to Louise Mensch’s resignation. Over half

Wednesday

Carola Binney Carola Binney

Twigg takes aim at Gove on school playing fields

The Olympics may be over, but the political row over school sports fields is set to rumble on into the autumn. Stephen Twigg today announced that Labour will force a vote on the matter when the Commons returns in September. His motion will demand that the government restore a minimum space requirement for outdoor space in schools. It does take some chutzpah for Twigg to launch this attack, given Labour managed to approve the sale of 42 playing fields in just one year, which is twice the number sold off since the coalition came to power. The Education department insists that of the 21 that have been signed off for

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Who will rid us of this turbulent Treasury? – Spectator Blogs

In Michael Lewis’s The Big Short, one of the few Wall Street analysts to bet against the US housing market explains his decision to short Merrill Lynch: We have a simple thesis. There is going to be a calamity, and whenever there is a calamity, Merrill is there. Sure enough, Merrill was there when the housing market crashed. Merrill was so there, in fact, that it ceased to exist as an independent company. The smart guys weren’t as smart as they thought they were. I think of that anecdote every time it becomes clear that HM Treasury has been interfering in affairs that are, properly speaking, none of its business.

Rick Muir

The ideological row over profit-making schools

Earlier this week IPPR published a paper which made the case against for-profit schools. Two of the leading proponents of such schools, Toby Young and Gabriel Sahlgren, have since responded. Young accuses me of being ‘an evangelical believer in an ‘evidence-based’ approach to public policy’. He implies at the start of his piece that empirical evidence should play little part in policy development. Confusingly he goes on to set out which types of empirical analysis he values and which he doesn’t. It is unclear from this what role he thinks evidence should play in policymaking. Young is particularly scathing about the use of cross-national evidence. He is right that we should

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Boris accuses Cameron of ‘pussyfooting’ on growth

Last week Boris Johnson was in jellyfish mode, drifting along and delivering the occasional sly sting to the coalition. Now that the Olympics are over, the Mayor has launched something of a shark attack on his Westminster colleagues. In an interview with the Evening Standard, Boris accuses ministers of ‘pussyfooting’ and calls for the government to ‘make a very powerful statement of ambition for London’ involving new infrastructure and even a new airport: ‘The government needs to stop pussyfooting around. I don’t think you can rely on Heathrow. Even if the government was so mad and wrong to try to do the third runway or mixed-mode, those solutions would rapidly

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

A nice new row for the coalition

When Nick Clegg announced he was giving up the struggle on House of Lords reform, he named a number of policy areas that could fill the huge legislative void left by the collapse of the plans to overhaul the upper chamber. One of them was banking, and the Deputy Prime Minister told journalists it might be worth examining whether it was possible to go further than the Vickers proposals on this area. Today’s Financial Times fleshes out what going further might entail. Vickers had originally proposed banning the retail operation of a bank from selling interest rate and currency swaps, but this was dropped in the white paper on banking

Tuesday

Sebastian Payne

Pressure on Cameron for reshuffle red meat on Europe minister

As he relaxes on a Majorcan beach, David Cameron might find his mind wandering to his plans for next month’s reshuffle. The latest demand from ‘influential figures’ is, according to Tim Shipman in the Daily Mail, that he replace Europe Minister David Lidington with a more Eurosceptic minister. Supporting those influential figures from the sidelines is a hefty group of Conservative backbenchers who want to see a bit more welly on the European issue. Some of the names mooted by the Mail – Graham Brady and Mark Francois – would certainly do that but they are no friends of the current leadership. Shipman’s story does not say whether Cameron will

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Bercow calls ‘no-hopers’ to order

John Bercow’s interview with the World at One was guaranteed to raise a few hackles across Westminster, and he certainly delivered on that by attacking ‘totally low-grade, substandard’ ‘no-hopers’ in the media. But well as revealing that he told his mother to stop reading the Daily Mail after reading something unpleasant about him in the newspaper, the Speaker also made some other interesting comments about his own role. He defended his decision to allow Chris Bryant to brand Jeremy Hunt a ‘liar’ during an Opposition Day debate on whether the Culture Secretary’s dealings with News Corp should be investigated, saying ‘it was uncomfortable and unpopular, but correct’ because the clerk

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Fares rise brings fresh cost of living woe to Tories

This morning’s announcement that the retail prices index rose to 3.2 per cent in July, up from 2.4 per cent in June, means commuters will see a 6.2 per cent rise in their train fares in January. Fares rises are currently calculated using RPI + 3 per cent. Analysts had predicted RPI would be 2.8 per cent, which means tickets will be even more expensive than originally expected. Don’t forget rail fares already saw an average 8 per cent rise at the start of this year. Some tickets will rise by a further five percentage points if other fares on a network are kept lower as a balance. Before he

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Herbert’s ‘boring waffle’ betrays unease on police commissioners

‘That’s just boring waffle!’ shouted Evan Davis on Radio 4 this morning when policing minister Nick Herbert refused to give direct answers to his questions on the turnout expected in the police and crime commissioner elections. Herbert repeatedly argued that ‘any turnout will confer greater legitimacy’ than the current system of unelected police authorities. But his repeated refusal to pin down any figure for the percentage of voters who will trudge out of their homes on a cold and possibly rainy November evening to vote for the commissioners betrayed an unease about how well these elections are going to work out in practice. Herbert and his colleagues will know that a