Politics Archives

Friday

4 May 2012

The Boris factor

Boris Johnson’s victory in London is a remarkable achievement. He has won re-election in a Labour-inclined city against the backdrop of a Tory-led government making cuts and a country in recession. He has defied the national trend and, indeed, the trend in the capital itself given the results in the assembly elections. This triumph proves his vote-winning credentials in a way that his victory four years ago, secured in very favourable circumstances (Labour was in a poor state as Gordon Brown stumbled from disaster to disaster), did not. In Downing Street, there’s relief that Boris made it over the line; a Labour victory in London would have made this undeniably

Fraser Nelson

What Cameron can learn from Boris

It looks like Conservatism will tonight be affirmed in the greatest city in the world — but thanks to Boris Johnson, who has been able to sell it to Londoners far better than David Cameron managed in the general election campaign. The number to watch out for tonight is the Boris factor, the gulf between those voting for him as Mayor and those voting Conservative for the Greater London Authority. As I say in my Telegraph column today, the clown prince is getting something badly right. Until recently, we had been told that there are two choices for Conservatism: the ‘modernising’ faction of it, or the old voter-repelling model

The Spectator

The week that was | 4 May 2012

Here is a selection of articles and discussions from this week on Spectator.co.uk… Fraser Nelson thinks Gus O’Donnell isn’t good enough for Threadneadle Street and looks at an emerging tricolour Britain. James Forsyth reports that Leveson is narrowing Cameron’s fightback window and looks at the political effects of the hacking talk. Peter Hoskin looks at Obama’s political theatre and says that Parliament’s drinks are still on us. Jonathan Jones highlights 15 cities to watch and examines what Labour would count as a success today. Sebastian Payne reports on the two Ed’s electioneering and looks at the virtues of British men and northern Tories in this week’s View from 22. Andrew Gilligan says Labour supporters should

Hamish Macdonell

Labour succeeds in slowing Salmond’s advance

This was the election which was supposed to establish the SNP as Scotland’s new national party, replacing Labour as the default party of choice for Scottish voters. This was also the election which was expected show that last year’s extraordinary Scottish Parliament result was not a one-off and that the SNP could push on and defeat Labour in its town hall heartlands too. But none of this has happened. Not all the results are in from Scotland’s councils yet but the overall picture is already clear. Labour has recovered from last year’s Scottish Parliament shocker and halted the SNP momentum — at least in its core key urban areas of

Tim Bale

Why Boris will struggle to become PM

‘Just three months ago’, writes Tim Montgomerie in today’s Times (£), ‘it was almost fanciful to imagine Boris as a future leader.’ Notwithstanding today’s news, it still is. The idea that, unless David Cameron ‘finds an election game-changer, the party might very reluctantly reach for the blond-coloured nuclear button,’ is a great story. But, even if the rumours that the Mayor is planning to stand for Parliament again are true, securing the leadership of the Conservative Party is going to be very difficult indeed. Here’s why. Now, I love Boris as much as the next floating voter: it’s not just that there’s something about him; it’s also because he seems

Peter Hoskin

The Lib Dems are having a bad day too

We’ve heard about those disgruntled Tories, but what about the Lib Dems? After all, the local elections always used to be their psychic salve: they may have struggled to make much progress in general elections, but their fierce local activism could always be counted on to yield council seats. But now that’s less reliable a tonic. After today the party is going to have fewer than 3,000 councillors for the first time since the it was formed in 1988, losing overall control of Cambridge in the process There’s even talk that Brian Paddick will slump to fourth place, or possibly fifth, in the London Mayoral race. Of course, all this

James Forsyth

The Tories air their grievances

In my unscientific canvass of Tory opinion this morning, there have been a couple of consistent themes. There’s a lot of criticism that the government lacks a narrative, that voters don’t understand why it is doing what it is doing. Another regular demand is for a shake-up of Number 10. Now, undoubtedly some of this is just the acceptable way of criticising the leader. But reinforcements arriving in Downing Street — especially ones with deep roots in the Tory party — would reassure quite a few people, as well as broadening Number 10’s support base in the party. Sayeeda Warsi is also coming in for a lot of stick. There’s

Alex Massie

Cameron’s Municipal Failure: All Hat and No Cattle

The first-time visitor to Manchester cannot fail to be struck by the grandeur of its Victorian civic buildings. The Town Hall, pictured above, is a mighty declaration of municipal pride and confidence. It is proudly provincial but there is nothing pejoratively provincial about it. Nor is Manchester alone: Newcastle and Leeds and the other great English cities built their own sandstone monuments to themselves. Hold up your heads, citizens, you come from nothing small. Never mind the wins and losses in yesterday’s council elections. These are no more than the usual spins on the political merrygoround. Much more significant and much more depressing is the apparent rejection of locally-elected mayors

Peter Hoskin

A dreadful turnout

There are two major stories behind the headline results this morning: the rejection of elected mayors and the low voter turnout. Of these, I think the second is the most significant. You can apportion some of the blame to the dreary weather, if you like. But, still, a predicted turnout figure of 32 per cent? That’s hardly encouraging. First, though, we shouldn’t exaggerate the situation. This wouldn’t be the lowest turnout figure for any local election in history — but the lowest since 2000, when the figure was less than 30 per cent. And it’s also true that turnout has risen for the past three general elections, even if we’re

James Forsyth

Where we stand this morning

The results so far have been good but not spectacular for Labour. The BBC’s national vote share projection has them on 39 percent, the Tories on 31, and the Lib Dems on 16. These numbers would deliver a comfortable Labour majority on both the old and new boundaries. Strikingly, UKIP is averaging 14 percent in the wards it is standing in. This is an impressive result given that UKIP traditionally doesn’t do that well in local elections where Europe is less of an issue. I suspect that the result is a combination of the fact that the party’s agenda has widened beyond Europe in recent years, that the coalition has

James Forsyth

The early signs from the local elections

Tonight, there seems to be a general acceptance that Boris has won London. The talk is of a four points plus victory. But it is worth, of course, remembering that no votes have been counted and there’s been no exit poll. But, sadly, it appears that there will be few other mayoralties created this evening. The opposition of the local political establishment appears to have triumphed in nearly all the cities holding referendums on whether or not to have a mayor. Their loss is Liverpool’s gain which will benefit considerably if it is the largest city outside London with a mayor. In terms of the council results, the very early

Thursday

3 May 2012

Clarissa Tan

Mervyn’s mini mea culpa

The newspapers and internet today are full of headlines about Mervyn King admitting the Bank of England was ‘late to the game’, and that central bankers should have ‘shouted from the rooftops’ regarding the financial blow-up. It’s true, the BoE governor did make these ‘mea culpa’ remarks — but they came rather half-heartedly, and couched within a radio lecture that seemed to point even more fingers at other parties. King was giving the Today Programme Lecture 2012, which he addressed to a Radio 4 theatre audience yesterday evening. Early in the half-hour speech, he gave an anecdote from 1997, in which then-governor Eddie George and him, Merv, celebrated Gordon

James Forsyth

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,