Politics

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

Monday

The Spectator

Just in case you missed them… | 7 November 2011

…here are some of the posts made at Spectator.co.uk over the weekend. Fraser Nelson says Ruth Davidson “could have been designed by a committee of A-lister fantasists”. James Forsyth says the Union needs a champion to take on Alex Salmond. Matt Cavanagh gives his take on the latest immigration revelations. Rod Liddle asks how you lose 124,000 people. Daniel Korski says Labour haven’t figured out a position on the EU either. Alec Ash reports of shocking protests in Tibet. Nigel Jones describes the unique Bonfire celebrations in Lewes. On the Arts Blog, Patrick O’Flynn shares some of The Jam’s hidden gems. And Michael Fallon answers the Book Blog‘s literary questions.

Jonathan Jones

Papandreou to go, but uncertainty remains

The eyes of Europe, which have been focused on Greece all week, will see a slightly brighter picture today – albeit one still engulfed in heavy fog. The good news: a new coalition government will be formed – the government of “national unity” that EU leaders wanted – to approve the bailout package ahead of new elections. Prime Minister George Papandreou will step down, following his aborted call for a referendum on the bailout terms last week. His future had been a major part of the uncertainty surrounding Greece: reports of his resigntion on both Thursday and Friday turned out to be premature, if only by a matter of days.

Sunday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The Union needs a champion

The First Minister of Scotland v the Secretary of State for Scotland on the Politics Show today was a non-contest. Michael Moore was hesitant and failed to fill the screen. Alex Salmond was crisp and confident. This disparity between Salmond and his opponents is one of the biggest problems for the Unionist cause. Polls consistently show that most Scots don’t want independence. But every day Salmond is out there making his eloquent—if factually dubious—case for it. There is a real and growing danger that’ll he end up winning by default because no one of stature is countering him. What’s needed is a big figure, preferably a non-political one, to defend

Daniel Korski

A belaboured EU position

While the Coalition is split over Europe, Labour does not look like they are in a much better position. Ed Miliband told the BBC that he was in favour of the Euro; Ed Balls would presumably tackle anyone to avoid that becoming the party’s policy. Meanwhile Douglas Alexander, Labour’s brainy Shadow Foreign Secretary, has yet to make a game-changing intervention. Their predicament is obvious. Should Labour accept the narrative of renegotiation but opt for different areas to opt out of than those favoured by the Tories? Or should they, like William Borroughs, stand astride history and scream “stop”, arguing for a pro-European position? Seemingly caught between the two views, the

Saturday

Matt Cavanagh

Britannia waives the rules

Today’s immigration headlines have a familiar feel. Twenty four hours after embarrassing revelations about a hundred thousand asylum case files being quietly written off, we now learn that at certain times over the summer, UK Border Agency staff were told not to bother checking people’s passports, or checking them against watch lists for crime and terrorism. The media are understandably dusting off old headlines about our borders being “out of control”, and the Home Office being “not fit for purpose”. The strategy of Conservative ministers in the Home Office is already clear: on the first story, blame the previous government, and on the second, blame the officials, with a number

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Cameron’s attempt to re-moralise the economy

One of the great challenges facing Britain is how to re-moralise society. A country where individuals, or businesses, can’t tell the difference between right and wrong has fundamental problems. The Times reports today that David Cameron is planning to start talking about the need for “moral markets”. There’ll be those on the right who don’t like this, who feel it is pandering to Ed Miliband’s distinctions between predator and producer capitalism. Others will feel that it is impractical. Then there are those who’ll counter that the only responsibility of business is to maximise profits. But this is important territory for Conservatives to be on. Cameron’s “chocolate orange” speech back in

Fleur Macdonald

Bookbenchers: Michael Fallon

This week’s Bookbencher is Michael Fallon, MP for Sevenoaks. What book’s on your bedside table at the moment? David Abulafia The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean (2011) – a magisterial successor to Fernand Braudel’s survey of mare nostrum. What book would you read to your children? Winston Churchill My Early Life (1930) – inspirational. What literary character would you most like to be? George Smiley – public duty over private. What book do you think best sums up ‘now’? Blake Morrison South of the River (2005) – captures the misplaced hopes of the early Blair years. What was the last novel you read? Pascal Mercier Night Train

Daniel Korski

The paradoxes of renegotiation

David Rennie (aka The Economist’s Bagehot) has an excellent column in this week’s issue about the difficulties that Britain will face if she tries to repatriate powers from the EU. His main argument, having spoken to a number of senior German politicians and officials, is that if Britain holds up any treaty revisions in the hope of extracting concessions in return, then the other EU states will organise themselves without the UK. The Economist’s former Brussels correspondent also makes the key point that the 10 countries that are outside of the euro are not natural allies for the UK – some, like Denmark, do not want to join the euro,

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Reviving the Scottish Tories

The Irn Lady pulled through – and the Scottish Conservatives survived. Had Murdo Fraser won, he would have renamed the party and left David Cameron running an England-only Conservative party. Yes, I can also imagine how much that would have upset them. But the day has been saved. The kickboxing Ruth Davidson, committed to reviving rather than abandoning the brand, has triumphed. She already been hailed as the first openly Glaswegian leader of the party, and her supporters argued that Murdo lacked her charisma which is why his proposition was more radical. I haven’t met either, and can’t comment. Except to say that Scotland remains a very large buffer zone

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Papandreou wins no confidence vote, but appears set to stand down

The political situation in Greece remains unclear this morning. George Papandreou’s government survived last night’s confidence vote. But the main opposition party has rejected the idea of a national government and Papandreou’s finance minister appears to be maneuvering to replace him. Papandreou’s victory in the no confidence vote means that there probably won’t be elections in Greece this year. But the huge difficulties involved in implementing the austerity plan remain. The measures continue to command little public support and the opposition will continue to criticise them. The debt deal proposals will also have to win parliamentary approval at some point soon and the French and the Germans are, The Independent

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The euro is killing Europe – can the coalition turn the chaos to its advantage?

Last week’s rebellion by David Cameron’s backbenchers in support of an EU referendum ended eight years of peace in the Tory party on the European question. Now, the offer by the Greek Prime Minister of a referendum on the ­bailout package — designed to appease nervous Greek Socialist party backbenchers — means that the uncertainty surrounding the eurozone will drag on into the New Year. George Osborne regards the confusion surrounding the future of the single currency as the single biggest obstacle to a British economic recovery. The Chancellor and his colleagues have become increasingly convinced that only when the markets have confidence about what is going to happen will

Mark Mason

It’s so annoying

So why do people feel compelled to start every sentence with ‘so’? We live in the Age of So. Dot Wordsworth commented on it in these pages recently, though was lost for an explanation. The phenomenon was illustrated on Radio 5 Live’s Drive programme a while back, when Peter Allen interviewed Steve Robertson of BT OpenReach about the expansion of superfast broadband. Allen: ‘What will actually happen?’ Robertson: ‘So, what will happen is that we’re either going to be taking fibre to their home or to their business…’ Allen: ‘And how expensive is all this?’ Robertson: ‘So, we’ve already committed two and a half billion pounds…’ Within minutes listeners were

Friday

Hamish Macdonell

The Irn Lady

Ruth Davidson was reluctant to say very much when she accepted the Scottish Conservative leadership this afternoon, insisting only that she wants to build up Tory party membership north of the border. But she knows – and all those around her know too – that membership levels are the least of her problems. Ms Davidson faces one of the most intractable puzzles in British politics: how to get Scots to vote Tory again. Everyone involved in Conservative politics north of the border knows the significance of 1955 – that was the year the Tories (and their allies) won a majority of both seats and votes in Scotland. Since then, the

The Spectator

The week that was | 4 November 2011

Here is a selection of a posts made at Spectator.co.uk over the last week. James Forsyth has news of a Cabinet row about the euro and looks at the post-riots political landscape. Fraser Nelson chides Nick Clegg for claiming to create jobs and says the birth of the world’s 7 billionth person should be celebrated, not feared. Peter Hoskin reveals that Ed Balls has a point and says the latest growth figures signal neither Econopocalypse nor Mega Growth. Jonathan Jones reports on the scandal surrounding US presidential candidate Herman Cain and on speculation that war with Iran may not be far away. Daniel Korski asks if Islamist parties will always win

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Cameron leaves Cannes with an IMF headache

The Cannes summit leaves the world no further forward on its quest for some kind of solution to the Eurozone crisis. Strikingly, the Germans still won’t agree — despite huge diplomatic pressure — to the ECB fulfilling the traditional emergency function of a central bank and acting as lender of last resort. This is a blow when you consider that Cameron thought there was a real possibility Merkel would budge on this after last week’s European Council meeting. It also provides Cameron with a domestic political headache. For if the ECB won’t act, the IMF will have to take more of the strain — and increasing Britain’s contributions to the

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Reuters: Papandreou to resign on Friday

Reuters is reporting tonight that the Greek Prime Minister has agreed to resign on Friday. The news agency says that at a meeting Cabinet colleagues told George Papandreou that he had to resign for the good of the Socialist party and he agreed. It quotes one source saying, “He agreed to step down. It was very civilised, with no acrimony.” Now, after Thursday’s experience, I suspect we’re all taking reports about what will, or will not, happen in Greece with a pinch of salt. But it does seem that the referendum is off, stymied in part by Merkel and Sarkozy, who have ridden roughshod over the idea of non-interference in

Thursday

Jonathan Jones

Papandreou stays… for now

Confusion has reigned today in Athens, clouding the first day of the G20 summit in Cannes. Reports at midday that the Greek Prime Minister was to resign turned out to be false. Papandreou’s staying put, for now at least. Instead, it seems there will be no referendum on Greece’s bailout package. In a sharp reversal, Papandreou reportedly told his Cabinet: “The referendum was never an end in itself. We had a dilemma – either true assent or a referendum. I said yesterday, if the assent were there, we would not need a referendum.” It seems he may have gained that assent, in that the opposition New Democracy party will support

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The euro sparks a Cabinet row

Word reaches me of a vigorous exchange of views in Cabinet this week between Chris Huhne and Michael Gove over the European question. Huhne, who has form when it comes to Cabinet scraps, launched into a polemic against Tory Eurosceptics and insisted that the coalition not be “wagged by the Eurospecptic tail”. It has, obviously, escaped Huhne’s notice that there are more Tory Euro-rebels than there are Lib Dem MPs. There then followed an even more incredible moment where Huhne implied that if he had been in power, the single currency would have worked and so it was unfair to suggest that he had been proved wrong. This was all

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The euro is destroying Europe

This week’s issue of The Spectator hits the newsstands today. Here, for CoffeeHousers, is James Forsyth’s Politics column from it: Last week’s rebellion by David Cameron’s backbenchers in support of an EU referendum ended eight years of peace in the Tory party on the European question. Now, the offer by the Greek Prime Minister of a referendum on the bailout package — designed to appease nervous Greek Socialist party backbenchers — means that the uncertainty surrounding the eurozone will drag on into the New Year. George Osborne regards the confusion surrounding the future of the single currency as the single biggest obstacle to a British economic recovery. The Chancellor and

Daniel Korski

Do Muslims vote Islamic?

The electoral success of Tunisia’s Islamist Ennahda party and the likelihood that the Muslim Brotherhood will do well in Egypt’s forthcoming elections has heightened fears in many quarters. Will Islamic parties always dominate such contests in the Middle East? The electoral success of the Islamic Salvation Front in Algeria, the Justice and Development Party in Turkey and Hamas in Palestine suggest the answer is yes. But looking at a broader data set – that is, the entire range of elections in which Islamic parties have taken part – reveals a different picture. Islamic parties have stood for elections in more than 90 elections in more than 20 countries. But as