Read about the latest UK political news, views and analysis.
Westminster has bent its collective knee in cooing supplication to Larry, Downing Street’s new cat. The slinky feline is already three times more famous than Mrs Bercow – no crude double-entendres please. Meanwhile, Politics Home has been sent a photograph of a van in Smith Square.
Iain Martin is surely right to suppose that unveiling celebrities and luvvies who support changing the voting system is a good way for the Yes to AV campaign to lose support. But it’s not as if the No campaign is playing a blinder either. Today’s Dreadful Argument for Retaining First Past the Post argues that we simply cannot afford to change the voting system. Apparently it will cost “up to £250 million” to do so. Colour me sceptical. In the first place, there are the costs of the referendum itself (£91m it is claimed) and these might also be considered the cost of retaining FPTP. The best that may be
When Ed Miliband won the Labour leadership, there was much speculation that he’d be ‘Kinnocked’ by The Sun. His brother David had been the favoured News International candidate and ‘Red Ed’, as The Sun dubbed him, offered a fair few targets. But the paper has been giving the Labour leader a hearing in recent weeks. Ed Miliband has been to The Sun for dinner and today’s he written for the paper, attacking Cameron for breaking his promises on crime — classic Sun territory. Partly this rapprochement is a product of the fact that Labour are ahead in the polls. No paper can take the risk of writing Miliband off as
Perhaps it’s because it’s a coalition and this novelty is too subtle a thing to be grasped by Fleet Street, but it’s still strange how unpopular this government has become. Not with the public; that was to be expected given the decision to stress nothing but deficits and cuts during the Camerlegg ministry’s first few months in office. But you might have thought its inky friends might have stuck around a little longer. Then again, they can feel the wind shifting too. One consequence of the decision to stress fiscal austerity – perfectly reasonable and even, you may say, necessary – was to confirm, or seem to confirm, one of
I once vowed never again to mock celebrities who endorse political campaigns as if they were advertising two-for-the-price-of-one offers in supermarkets. But today’s announcement that the Yes to AV campaign has recruited Helena Bonham Carter and Colin Firth is testing my resolve. It is not that I believe that celebrities should keep away from politics. They have as much right as journalists to express an opinion – indeed, when they argue for artistic freedom or libel reform they are more committed and more knowledgeable than most reporters are. But the Yes campaigners decision to propel Bonham Carter and Firth forward, along with Tony Robinson, Richard Wilson, Eddie Izzard, Stephen Fry,
Yesterday, the coalition said it would try and overturn all four of the Lords’ amendments to the AV bill. But today it announced that it would accept the one saying that the Isle of Wight should not be combined with anywhere on the mainland. But—and this is where the controversy comes—the Isle of Wight will now be divided into two seats. This is leading to complaints that the Tories are creating an extra seat for themselves as the Isle of Wight is fairly solid Tory territory. The Tories are, reasonably enough, pointing out that these Isle of Wight seats — at about 50,000 each — would be far bigger than
Diplomats are often seen as stuffy characters from a different century, men who often appear lost in today’s chaotic world. Nobody could be further from that caricature than Mark Sedwill, the former British ambassador in Kabul and outgoing NATO Senior Civilian Representative to Afghanistan. For more than a year, Sedwill has been, first, General Stanley McChrystal’s right-hand and, more recently, the civilian counterpart to General David Petraeus. Since he took up his ambassadorial post in Kabul, after a stint as Deputy High Commissioner in Pakistan, few Britons have had as much influence on NATO’s strategy as him. And there are now rumours that, having impressed several Tory ministers, Sedwill could
What a pleasure it was. Last night, I spent forty minutes in Westminster Great Hall – one of London’s few remaining Romanesque buildings, the largest single vaulted wooden ceiling in the world and the judicial setting for the trial of Charles I. Why was I there? Another failure of the big society, of course. I had booked to attend a debate between the think tanks, Res Publica and Progress. Phillip Blond and Francis Maude were talking up the merits of the Big Society or big society (it wasn’t clear which); whilst Tessa Jowell and Stephen Twigg were speaking for the Good Society. I wanted to hear the debate, intrigued to see
It was predictable that Labour would use the outcome of the judicial review last Friday to try and re-heat the Building Schools for the Future row. Andy Burnham was in florid form in the House of Commons on the subject. He demanded that ‘Michael Gove apologise to the communities who suffered from the devastating effects of his disastrous decision making.’ Burnham is now writing to the PM to demand that Gove recuse himself from the judge required review of six BSF projects. In truth, most of Gove’s problems in cancelling BSF projects have been a result of the shambolic and wasteful way in which the programme was run. As Gove
It is odd to think that in just a few months we’ll be having only the second nationwide referendum in our history and no one is particularly excited about it. This is largely because the plebiscite is on AV, an unloved voting system that is a half-way house between first past the post and a proportional system. (Just imagine the level of conversation there would be if the vote was to do with Europe not electoral reform). At the moment, the yes side has a growing lead in the polls http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/blog/archives/3115. But, given the vast number of undecideds, this could change very quickly. The No campaign, though, will have to
Last week’s civil liberties bill was hardly perfect but it’s still a step in the right direction. And, frankly, it’s bonny and startling in equal measure to have a Deputy Prime Minister who says things like this: “I need to say this – you shouldn’t trust any government, actually including this one. You should not trust government – full stop. The natural inclination of government is to hoard power and information; to accrue power to itself in the name of the public good.” I’m quite happy to oblige Mr Clegg. I don’t trust this government either. I think it’s intentions are often fine but I doubt whether it has the
As James has noted, Downing Street has turned its energies to the big society. Op-eds are being written, airtime used and speeches made. This morning saw the centrepiece: a former Labour donor, Sir Ronald Cohen, has joined the campaign and Cameron devoted a speech to what he described as his “political mission”. Cameron was fluent and passionate, determined in shirt-sleeve order. He was not exactly clear, but I don’t think that’s a problem. There is no concrete definition of what the big society is. As I argued yesterday, Cameron has changed tactics and is now using it as a descriptive term of the sort of voluntary and philanthropic instincts his
…here are some of the posts made at Spectator.co.uk over the weekend. Andrew Neil explains why work experience matters more than ever. Fraser Nelson wonders what will happen next in Egypt, and predicts an imminent and lasting spat between Britain and the EU. James Forsyth discloses details of the coalition’s coming bank deal, and charts the big-society fight-back. David Blackburn examines Ken Clarke’s latest controversial outburst, and evaluates where Europe will be affected by the Arab Street revolutions. Martin Bright has reasons to be optimistic about the Middle East. And Rod Liddle reveals an unacceptable double standard in faith schools.
One of the questions that most fascinates Westminster is what would make Vince Cable walk out of the coalition Cabinet. Cable might be a diminished figure and have lost standing on the Lib Dem left by pushing through the tuition fees hike, but his departure would still shift the tectonic plates of politics. As James Kirkup blogs today, banking reform, or the lack thereof, is the most likely cause of Cable going nuclear. Cable is a firm believer that retail and investment banking need to be separated, a view that he pretty much reiterated on Marr this morning. Osborne and the Treasury are far more cautious on this front. Everyone
It did not take David Cameron long to realise that there were three parties in his coalition. A few months into government, the Prime Minister worked out that only half of the policies he was enacting came from the shared agenda drawn up when the Tories and LibDems got together. The other half comes from the EU. Or, more specifically, the Civil Service machine, which is busy implementing various EU Directives, often passed many years ago. Cameron is trying to put the brakes on this process. As I say in my News of the World column, this has led to much frustration in Whitehall. And dismay: the Civil Service remembers
David Cameron’s bold speech in Munich last Saturday has been somewhat misrepresented as a call to British Muslims to drive out their own extremists. David Cameron’s bold speech in Munich last Saturday has been somewhat misrepresented as a call to British Muslims to drive out their own extremists. It was really directed at his own bureaucracy and even (though he did not say this) at some in his own party. He is exasperated that administrative efforts to isolate violent Islamist extremists so often end up empowering non-violent ones, thus creating the mental conditions for the very horrors which they are trying to avert. His speech will need a huge amount
The most interesting question in politics right now is, to my mind, what does David Cameron really think about how his premiership is going? Does he subscribe to the view that the coalition is getting the big things right and that the numerous u-turns that Fraser referred to in his post really don’t matter that much. Or does he worry that the government is failing to communicate a message and that his defining political project—the big society—is coming under rapidly increasing fire. My own view is that the truth rests somewhere between these two statements. But my feeling has been that Cameron is too blasé about how Downing Street is
Ken Clarke’s political career has had the resilience of a cockroach, but even he now seems to be cracking. Tim Montgomerie has shot a vicious broadside at Clarke’s dated politics in today’s Mail. And Clarke, for his part, has given an interview to the Telegraph, where he gives a convincing impression of a man completely out of touch. Clarke concedes (just) that the ECHR needs reform, but he defends its supreme jurisdiction: ‘Some people are very angry [about prisoner voting], but we should be able to resolve that. The jurisdiction of the [European] court remains the fraught issue. I don’t see how we can say that we don’t obey courts if we don’t want to.
Referendums are a very un-British device. Referendums are a very un-British device. They are, as Clement Attlee said, ‘alien to all our traditions’ of parliamentary democracy. Yet in 12 weeks’ time, we are to have the second nationwide plebiscite in our history. Unlike the 1975 vote on whether Britain should stay in the European Economic Community, this one will not exercise the nation. This year’s referendum will be on the alternative vote, a subject that only excites politics lecturers. But the AV vote could have just as profound an effect on our politics as the EEC referendum. If the people chose alternative voting, Britain will be heading for an era
How Rachel Johnson became the voice of Britain’s forests Clueless, aimless, rudderless, directionless. Labour’s disarray has left the task of holding the government to account in the hands of volunteers and publicity-seekers. The result is pop-up opposition, scrutiny by happening. Groups of protestors coalesce around a famous figurehead and raise merry hell until the coalition gives them what they want. Joanna Lumley established the format with her spirited campaign for the Gurkhas. The latest blonde bombshell to enter the lists — it seems to help if you have a flaxen mane — is Rachel Johnson, president of Save England’s Forests. The campaign seeks to amend the Public Bodies Bill (currently