Politics Archives

Saturday

26 Sep 2009

A Bargain Ringside Seat to History

Apparently the Labour Party is selling tickets to sit behind Gordon Brown during his leader’s speech for a bargain £130 a pop. At the same time they are struggling to fill the seats for their gala fundraising dinner in Brighton. Things are getting desperate. Already, last year in Manchester, the exhibitors’ hall was dominated by Labour associated organisations and unions. The corporate world abandoned the party long ago. The interviews in this morning’s papers show a new change in the political weather. Ed Balls continues his charm offensive and even borrows the rhetoric of Peter Mandelson’s “fighter not a quitter” speech as a rallying call for the party. (I’m not

Rod Liddle

Let’s give this family a degree of privacy and peace to heal the wounds

We need to guard against childish gloating when we read about the arrest of Patricia Hewitt’s son for possessing cocaine, says Rod Liddle. But first, a quick recap of her record There is something rotten with this country when people can take such base, spiteful pleasure from the arrest of a young lad simply because his mum was a former government minister and architect of New Labour. The sins of the father should not be visited upon the child; the sins of the child should not be used as a whip with which to beat the parents simply because, unaccountably, some people don’t like them. I find it terribly saddening

Friday

25 Sep 2009

The Spectator

The week that was | 25 September 2009

Here are some of the posts made at Spectator.co.uk over the past week Fraser Nelson argues that the BBC and mainstream political parties need to think very carefully about how they will handle Nick Griffin on Question Time. James Forsyth sees the Lib Dems’ incoherence embodied in Nick Clegg, and says that the Tories are cockahoop about the Lib Dem disarray. Peter Hoskin thinks that the Tories must ready themselves to talk about tax, and believes that the Tories are preparing for the post-election period. David Blackburn describes Brown’s submarine announcement as clever diplomacy, and urges Nick Clegg to accept David Cameron’s overtures. Lloyd Evans reviews Nick Clegg’s conference. Daniel

Fraser Nelson

Question Time conundrum

I was a panelist on Question Time last night, and it started me thinking about how they will handle the BNP episode – which I expect fairly soon. Make no mistake, a Question Time slot is as big for the BNP as winning seats in Europe. When I was on the campaign trail with them for a cover story in June, I noticed how they would refer to Question Time as a goal – almost as much as getting to Brussels. It represents one thing: the political mainstream. With two MEPs and almost a million voters the BNP have a legitimate claim to that Question Time panel. For them, it

Peter Hoskin

Ben Bradshaw’s advice for Brown

It’s the question that won’t go away for Gordon Brown: should he – will he – take part in a televised leaders’ debate? On this weekend’s Straight Talk, Andrew Neil takes the opportunity to quiz Ben Bradshaw about his views on the matter. Here’s how the Culture Secretary responds: “I don’t think [Brown]’s got anything to lose by doing that …. My advice to him would say, I think you’ve got the arguments, you’ve made the right decisions, you could demolish that guy.” Like Mandelson’s interventions before now, Bradshaw’s advice will slightly raise the pressure on Brown to take part in a debate. But the first half of it also

Peter Hoskin

Brown ignores the small issues which precede the “big choices”

James has already highlighted the New Statesman’s interview with Gordon Brown, but it’s worth flagging up this passage as well: “Again and again, throughout our interview, Brown refers to the next election as being about ‘big choices’, not the small issues, which he says the Conservatives would prefer. ‘What was the latest thing? The cost of food in the House of Commons?’ he asks, referring to David Cameron’s recent gimmicky pledge to cut public spending by reducing subsidies on MPs’ food. This theme of ‘big choices’, say Brown’s aides, is one he is likely to pursue in his conference speech and beyond.” To my mind, this exemplifies one of the

David Blackburn

Eureka!

Brown’s pursuit of Obama through the UN canteen has finally paid dividends: PoliticsHome is reporting that Barack Obama will hold bilateral talks with Gordon Brown later today. After yesterday’s negative headlines, Obama was always going to make a gesture that indicated how much he valued Brown; but from the Prime Minister’s point of view, the damage has already been done.

Thursday

24 Sep 2009

James Forsyth

A number that shows what a drag on Labour’s prospects Brown is

The news that Max Clifford is now involved in publicising the story of Baroness Scotland and the illegal cleaner is another blow to an already bruised Labour party. One of the last things that it needs is the beginning of its conference being overshadowed by a story that combines the two toxic issues of political hypocrisy and immigration violations. (There’s also talk that the Telegraph has more expenses revelations and that they will publish them in the next day or so) But I suspect that the bigger problem for Labour, and why it won’t recover from its current dire position, is summed up by these sentences in Mehdi Hasan and

Alex Massie

Does Obama Like Tyrants More Than He Hates America?

Let us accept that Barack Obama is going to disappoint many of us in many different ways. Let us further accept that this is only to be expected and that, yup, one of the awkward things about democracy is that sometimes the other mob wins. There is, however, no need to lose your mind when that happens. This must be what has happened to Michael Ledeen. There’s no other charitable explanation for his latest outburst: I think that he rather likes tyrants and dislikes America. I think he’d like to be more powerful, I think he is trying to get control over as much of our lives as he can,

David Blackburn

Bercow wants Lords Mandelson and Adonis to be questioned by MPs

Speaker Bercow has suggested that prominent cabinet ministers who sit in the House of Lords should be brought before the backbenchers for scrutiny. The Telegraph’s James Kirkup has the details: ‘Mr Bercow said: “I find the fact that backbenchers have no means of directly questioning prominent Ministers of the Crown because they happen to sit in the House of Lords to be less than satisfactory,” Mr Bercow said. “That is even more true at a time when the Cabinet contains the esteemed Lord Mandelson, whose empire is of a scale not seen since the death of Alexander the Great.” He also highlighted the role of Lord Adonis. “I suspect that

David Blackburn

Will he stay or will he go now?

Over at his WSJ blog, Iain Martin reckons that Baroness Vadera’s resignation might be an indication that Gordon Brown is considering standing down. Martin writes: ‘Throughout his troubled premiership I have been of the view that Gordon Brown will fight the looming general election. If he ducks out then history will surely judge him accordingly as a PM who was feart to face the voters, having called off the election in 2007 after turning his move to Number 10 into a coronation with no other candidates. But the resignation of Baroness Vadera makes me wonder if that view holds. Perhaps he really is considering standing down. Of course, there

David Blackburn

Can things get any worse for Brown?

Yesterday was bad enough, but today’s turning into an utter catastrophe for Brown. First, it emerged that the Tories enjoy a 4 point lead in Labour’s traditional northern strongholds, then Baroness Vadera leaves the government to work for the G20, and now another former GOAT, Lord Malloch Brown, tells the World at One that Brown was too “desperate” in his pursuit of a meeting with President Obama. Malloch Brown said: “I don’t know whether they were frantic or not, they shouldn’t have been frankly so desperate.” When handpicked former ministers make such statements it’s clear that the writing’s been on the wall for so long it’s started to fade. President

Martin Vander Weyer

Is Vadera about to resign?

If, as the Westminster rumour mill suggests, business minister Baroness Shriti Vadera is about to resign from the Government, it is a far greater blow to the beleaguered prime minister than the loss of a PPS no one’s ever heard of over the Baroness Scotland affair, the potential loss of Lady Scotland herself, or even the refusal of Barack Obama to grant him a private audience ahead of the G20 summit. Vadera has been one of Brown’s most loyal sidekicks for more than a decade, and unlike anyone else who fits that description, she is the very opposite of a spin doctor or political hack. A City financier by background,

David Blackburn

The Tories lead in the north

Financial Times research has revealed that Labour has lost its traditional northern strongholds under Gordon Brown. Here are the details: ‘The Tories have built a narrow four-point lead in the north, eradicating the 19-point Labour lead in the region that underpinned Tony Blair’s last general election victory, the research shows. The 11.5 percentage point swing from Labour to the Tories in the north since the May 2005 poll is the largest for any region of Britain. The FT analysis suggests Mr Cameron has yet to win over fully pivotal “Middle England” voters. He has built a convincing lead among the well-off AB upper and upper-middle socio-economic groups. The Tories have

Wednesday

23 Sep 2009

Rod Liddle

What the hell’s happened to Loloahi?

So, where the hell is Loloahi Tapui, the Tongan maid hired illegally by our Attorney General? She seems to have gone to ground – perhaps she has found alternative employment with one of the Milibands, or is secreted away in one of Jacqui Smith s homes, maybe with her feet up watching a porno dvd. Either way, the immigration people can’t find her in order to corroborate Baroness Scotland’s account of her terms of employment – and yet Mrs Scotland hangs on to her job, even as ministerial aides around her resign in disgust at her continued employment, cabinet ministers whisper dark asides to the press and, for once, the

James Forsyth

Clegg embodies his party’s incoherence

Nick Clegg started the Lib Dem conference with an interview calling for ‘savage cuts’ in public spending and ended it with a speech trying to position the Lib Dems as the main party of the left in Britain. That pretty much sums up the strategic incoherence of this conference which has left the Lib Dems worse off than they were before. The Lib Dems have had an awful week for several reasons. First, they haven’t done the basics well—putting Clegg up against Obama was hardly clever programming and not informing every spokesperson of policy announcements before the media was told was bound to cause trouble. (How no one thought

Lloyd Evans

Nick Clegg at the LibDem conference

What a week for the LibDems. The conference began, as always, with the sound newspapers being arranged across sleeping faces as the mass snore-in started. A few hopeful souls wondered if the LibDems might finally tell us exactly what their party is for. And LibDems went about their usual business of behaving like some cuddly cult for Terribly Nice People. Then everything changed. Out came their true colours and they started scrapping in the sand-pit like a pack of ruthless cockerels. It began with Nick Clegg’s misuse of the word ‘savage’ in reference to cuts. It got worse when Vince ‘Capability’ Cable announced a muddled new levy on million-pound houses.

The Spectator

Last week’s magazine is now available across the site

Last week’s magazine is now available across the website and can be viewed without a subscription. There is a selection of articles below to get you started. If you would like immediate access to tomorrow’s magazine and have yet to subscribe, you can do so here. Alasdair Murray reviews the week in politics. Boris Johnson opens his diary. Fraser Nelson reports on how a revamp of the benefits system could finally end the scourge of Britain’s mass and hidden unemployment. Rod Liddle says that celebrity adoption has become an unsavoury game of Top Trumps. James Delingpole asks if Daphne du Maurier was responsible for the attempt to cross the ‘bridge

Alex Massie

PoliticsHome & Westminster Wisdom

The kerfuffle over Lord Ashcroft’s purchase* of a majority stake in PoliticsHome is not something, I suspect, that mch interests anyone beyond the Westminster village. That said, I think Hopi Sen has the best take on this midget-brouhaha: The result of these expert polls was usually a story like “Westminster insiders think Clegg needs to up his game” a day after something bad happened to Nick Clegg, or “Westminster insiders think Cameron is struggling to convince” a day after a poll comes out showing Cameron struggling to convince. Well great. Now we know MPs and journalists read the newspapers and watch TV. Now, you might think this is all just

The Spectator

LIVE BLOG: Clegg’s speech

15:00: Clegg opens up by praising the tenacity of British soldiers’ in Afghanistan and damns the government’s record on defence. 15:17: “I want to be PM because I have spent half a lifetime imaging what a better society would look like and I want to spend the next half making it happen” – listing prejudice, civil liberties and inequality among his targets. 15:21: Clegg attacks the “old politics”, connecting the financial crisis with the expenses scandal. “Labour betrayed the hopes of a generation”. 15:25: Now the attacks on the Tories begin. Clegg claims that he chose the Lib Dems because it was what he believed in; Tories, by contrast, chose