Politics

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

Thursday

8 Apr 2010

The strange case of Charlie Whelan’s Commons pass

Well, now we know. Charlie Whelan enjoys the liberty of Westminster at the invitation of the parliamentary Labour party. Guido points out that it’s highly unlikely Whelan isn’t officially connected to Labour’s campaign. Labour tried to keep all this quiet, attempting to avert an ‘affluence for influence’ story that might undermine Brown’s attempt to turn the election into a referendum on Lord Ashcroft. However, though this should prove bad news for Labour, these stories have little impact outside Westminster. Neither the Ashcroft scandal nor previous Whelan sagas moved the polls.

Peter Hoskin

Labour firing blanks

Labour’s press conference this morning was a classic example of a party struggling to both have its cake and eat it. Not only did we get Gordon Brown, as expected – but he was introduced, and joined, by Alistair Darling and Peter Mandelson. Three heavy hitters to bash out one message: that the Tories’ national insurance plans are a “threat to the recovery”. Or make that one-and-a-half messages, if you include the claim that the Tories couldn’t realistically expect to make the efficiency savings to fund their NI cut this year. There is, claimed the Labour triumverate, a “black hole” where the Tories’ tax and spending proposals should be.

Peter Hoskin

What a difference the start of a campaign makes

In last week’s Chancellor’s debate, Vince Cable refused to rule out raising VAT to help fix the public finances. Now, only a few days later, the Lib Dems are pledging not to do that. What’s more, they’re saying that the Tories’ plans require a raise in VAT. And they’ve even got a ‘VAT bombshell‘ poster to drive the message home. There’s more than a dash of Brownite politics about this – the same seasoning I detected in the Tories’ Death Tax poster. Sure, there have been rumblings that the Tories will raise VAT. But Osborne & Co. have denied that this is necessarily the case in recent days, and it’s

Peter Hoskin

Brown comes under heavy fire on Today

Woah. I doubt Brown will endure many tougher twenty-minute spells during this election campaign than his interview with on the Today Programme this morning. You could practically hear the crunching of his teeth, as John Humphrys took him on over Labour’s economic record; practically smell the sweat and fear dripping down his brow. It was compulsive, and compelling, stuff. Humphrys started by putting a grim story to Brown: that his “handling of the economy was not prudent … your record suggests that the economy is not safe in your hands.” The PM’s mission was to deny all this, and he did so with his usual stubborness and disingenuity. His pitch

Wednesday

7 Apr 2010

Martin Bright

What the Party Leaders Are Saying

I really enjoyed Anne McElvoy’s Standard column today. She is absolutely right to identify the false notes of day one of the election campaign. Gordon Brown really was talking nonsense about his ordinary middle-class background and David Cameron should certainly drop the glottal stop. She is right to say that neither has any clarity of vision yet. For what it’s worth I agree with Kevin Maguire agreeing me that Labour looked more confident on day one and that the Tories seemed nervous. On day two, Cameron was beginning to get into his stride and Brown’s interview with NIck Robinson was awful. The wall-to-wall media coverage is almost all completely absorbing,

Peter Hoskin

A heckle which might reverberate across the campaign

Mark the date: the first major heckle of the election campaign happened today, and Gordon Brown was the victim. The perp was one Ben Butterworth, and he was angry at how his children can’t get into their choice of state school – a frustration which will be shared by thousands of parents across the country. I wonder what they’ll think when they see that Brown ignored the man. The Tories will seize on this with considerable joy. Their plans for widening school choice are – as the leader says in tomorrow’s magazine – the best reason for voting Conservative. Mr Butterworth might just have made himself the poster boy for

Alex Massie

The Daily Mash Election

Unsurprisingly the lads at the Daily Mash are enjoying themselves: GORDON Brown’s claim to be an ordinary, middle class Briton backfired last night as millions of ordinary middle class Britons stressed just how much they hate themselves. The prime minister kicked-off Labour’s campaign by contrasting his spite-filled ordinariness with the rich and happy background of Tory leader David Cameron. Reminding voters of the way David Cameron swaggers around with his riding crop while deciding which scullery maid to impregnate, Mr Brown said: “He’s all smiles and fancy boots, while I, on the other hand, am chronically self-conscious, scared of French food and have horrible furniture. “I have half a dozen

Peter Hoskin

Is this how Brown hopes to defuse the Tories’ national insurance cut?

Well, the manifesto pledges sure are spilling out of Brown today. After his proposals for cleaning up politics earlier, he’s now told Channel 4’s Gary Gibbon that Labour will pledge to keep the main rate of income tax at 20 pence in the forthcoming Parliament. Whether that will satisfy those who would see their national insurance contributions rise over the same period, or placate those who were moved from a 10p tax rate to the 20p rate as a result of Brown’s politicking a few years ago, remains to be seen. Here’s the video:

David Blackburn

Bolton’s nobody’s backyard

Fresh from a turbulent plane journey, David Cameron is stalking around Bolton. As Pete notes, Warburtons is Bolton’s family owned bakery and its endorsement may prove significant in a region of marginals. The party that wins Bolton North East wins the election – that has been the case in every election since 1950 except in 1979. Ruth Kelly’s old haunt, Bolton West, is no Labour stronghold either: her replacement, Julie Hilling, is defending a nominal majority of 2,064. These two seats come 115 and 114 respectively on the Tories’ target list. To the north lies Rossendale and Darwen, where boundary changes have benefitted the Tories for once; it is 77th

Peter Hoskin

A picture of innocence?

Gordon Brown’s visit to the Innocent smoothie HQ in London today is the subject of a great post from Paul Waugh, who reveals how close the PM came to a photo-opp nightmare. But it also reminded me of this insight from Jonathan Freedland a few months ago, which I blogged at the time: “[The Labour campaign team have] taken a look at the branding of Innocent smoothies, hoping the authentic, unspun look might fit their own ‘unairbrushable’ product, G Brown.” I wonder whether Innocent picked up any branding tips from Brown earlier, in return…

Peter Hoskin

The context defeats Brown

So, mending our broken politics has been shoved to the forefront of the election campaign – at least for the time being. Brown has just given a speech on the issue, which – if you divorce it from all context – was actually fairly effective. Sure, things like reducing the voting age to 16, or a referendum on the alternative voting system, may not be your – or many people’s – cup of chai. But there were several proposals which, taken in isolation, will probably be as popular as they are sensible: banning MPs from working for lobbying comapanies, for instance. Or giving the voters the ability to recall MPs

Alex Massie

Gordon Reinvents Himself as Captain Change

Give Gordon Brown credit for chutzpah at least. Then again, what else if left to the poor man? It’s tough to be the incumbent and run a campaign based on the promise of Change. But this seems to be what El Gordo is attempting. Good luck with that. Labour appear to have accepted that they’ve lost the Change vs Experience battle and so they’ve opted, rather brazenly you might say, to present themselves and their platform as “Real Change”. The Tories, on the other hand, presumably offer phoney Change. It’s a risky business, this Change stuff and you have to be very careful you don’t buy the wrong type of

Lloyd Evans

Last orders | 7 April 2010

The choppers, and the whoppers, were flying at Westminster today. David Cameron invited the prime minister to try a spot of accountability at PMQs. Would he admit that he scrimped on transport aircraft in Helmand? Brown, with breathtaking cheek and not a little rhetorical dexterity, flipped the question upside down. ‘I do not accept that our commanding officers gave the wrong advice,’ he said and insisted that he never sent underequipped troops into battle. He clarified this with a smokescreen. ‘I take full responsibilitiy but I also take the advice of our commanding officers.’ Here was the morality of the restaurant freeloader, accepting the food but passing the bill down

Peter Hoskin

Europe as a campaign message … for Labour

As I said earlier, today’s PMQs was all about giving the various parties’ campaign messages a walk around the block. Cameron’s questions reduced down to “They’ve failed – give us a go”. Clegg pushed the Lib Dem’s Labservative prospectus. And Brown droned on about “£6bn being taken out of the economy,” as well as about Lord Ashcroft and “securing the recovery”. In which case, it’s striking that Denis MacShane used a question to denounce the Tories’ alliances in Europe. Indeed, Peter Mandelson did exactly the same in a speech this morning. Here’s how he put it: “David Cameron chooses to sit alongside the xenophobes and homophobes in the European Parliament.

James Forsyth

Straight out of the Brown textbook

What was probably Brown’s last PMQs performance as Prime Minister was classic Brown. He answered questions that hadn’t been asked, dodged ones that had, rattled off list after list of tractor production figures and mentioned Lord Ashcroft at every opportunity. But, as he has in recent months, he had some one liners to get off including the jab that Cameron ‘was the future once’, an echo of Cameron’s put down of Blair. But that line couldn’t disguise the fact that Cameron got the better of Brown. Cameron’s speed on his feet just makes him better in this setting. His response to the heckle that the business leader he was

Peter Hoskin

PMQs live blog | 7 April 2010

Stay tuned for live coverage of PMQs. 1200: We’re about to start. Brown is flanked by Harriet Harman and Jim Murphy. Douglas Alexander, Alistair Darling and Alan Johnson are also on the front bench. The heavy hitters are out in force… 1201: And here we go, for what could be Brown’s last ever PMQs as Prime Minister. He starts, as usual, with condolences for fallen soldiers. 1202: The first question is as plantlike as they come: will Brown take £6 billion “out of the economy”? Brown spins the usual dividing line about investing in frontline services, adding that the Tories would risk a “double dip” recession. Hm. 1204: Massive cheer

Daniel Korski

Goodbye world, see you in a few weeks (for a proper EU dust-up)

With plenty of domestic issues to debate, the election campaign promises to see little intrusion from the outside world – barring Russia invading a small neighbouring country, a terrorist attack or another financial meltdown. Nor will Britain say much to the world in the next couple of weeks; ministers will be be represented at international meetings, for example in NATO, by senior officials, and Britain’s diplomats have been told to keep quiet. As soon as the election is over, however, there will be plenty of action. The Cabinet Office is busy planning a quick update of the National Security Strategy, and then will come a slightly longer Security and Defence

David Blackburn

Clegg blows a golden opportunity

Nick Clegg won’t get many opportunities to sell himself to voters and he has just been demolished on the Today programme. All things to all men, Clegg was all over the place. He couldn’t give an exact answer when questioned about the size of the deficit, and the Lib Dems’ shifting position on the depth of cuts was exposed once again, recalling his autumn wobble on ‘savage cuts’. He also refused to rule out a VAT rise. Similarly, he could not expand on his plans for parliamentary reform beyond labels such as ‘radicalism’, ‘renewal’ and ‘the old politics’. Caught between defending himself from the Tories and attacking Labour, Clegg panicked.

Rod Liddle

Nail A Cretin And Win A Bottle of Bubbly

You will be hearing a good deal of mind-numbingly stupid, meaningless or plainly inaccurate quotes from politicians over the next four weeks. So instead of buying a pump action rifle and crouching in combat gear at the end of your local high street out of frustration and fury, send the worst ones to me here: On May 7 I’ll select the most truly fucking egregious and bung the sender a bottle of bubbly. I’ll monitor your submissions every day and add a few of my own. Thinking about it, maybe we should also present the author of the most banal, vapid and insulting political quote with a suitable prize, such

Alex Massie

No-one is Talking About Immigration

Well, on Day One of the Great Campaign no-one seemed to be talking about immigration. This is understandable given that it’s a subject that discomfits most of the parties and, for that matter, many voters. This is to say nowt about the potential it offers for demagoguery and cheap and easy populism. But while one understands why the subject arouses fierce passions it remains the case that we probably ought to talk about it at some point over the next month. Because we’re going to need more immigrants. Yup, we are. Or, at any rate, we’re going to need more people over the course of the next few decades. For