Politics

Andrew Gilligan says the new coalition must reformulate our relationship with moderate Muslims — and marginalise the extremists for good One of the unsung heroes of this year’s election campaign was the Labour MP for Poplar and Limehouse, Jim Fitzpatrick. Alone in his party, Mr Fitzpatrick stood up before the election and said something that everyone in east London Labour knew, but no one else had the guts to put on record. To my newspaper, the Sunday Telegraph, and Channel 4’s Dispatches, he blew the whistle on the way that, in his words, the Tower Hamlets Labour party had been infiltrated and ‘corrupted’ by a radical Islamist group, the Islamic

Two groups in the Conservative party that have worried most about Con-Lib government are the social conservatives and the neo-conservatives. The latter have been particularly worried about UK relations with Israel. There is a real concern in parts of the Conservatives Party that three factors would come together to sour Anglo-Israeli relations: what the neo-conservatives see as the Foreign Office’s knee-jerk Arabism, the presence of many supposed Arabists in Cameron-Hague’s teams, and the anti-Israel bias exhibited by many leading Liberal Democrats. Whatever the truth of these allegations, they are held with considerable fervour. But Nick Clegg’s reaction to the conflict shows that the Lib Dem leader is both holding to

The shootings in Cumbria this morning meant that today’s PMQS was always going to be a subdued affair. David Cameron was impressive, though.  You wouldn’t have guessed it was his first time answering questions and he controlled the pace of the session expertly. There were fewer people on the front bench than last week meaning that Nick Clegg was more visible than he had been during the opening of the Queen’s Speech debate. Clegg sat to Cameron’s right while Hague was on his left. Harriet Harman asked some cleverly constructed questions, her ones protesting at plans for those accused of rape to be given anonymity are never going to be

There was a great sense of pathos after the election, when Jack Straw was the only Labour politician who could recall the shadow cabinet room’s location. It must have been surreal for those who knew only government. The loneliness of opposition would have struck at last week’s Queen’s Speech. The party must renew whilst avoiding the internecine struggle that condemned the Tories to 13 years in opposition. Fantasy politics won’t be sufficient. Introspection must yield a coherent and credible agenda, free from the undeliverable abstractions and the oscillation between arrogance and desperation that characterised the Brown government. The leadership campaign will define Labour in opposition; Hopi Sen offers the contenders