Politics

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

Wednesday

Peter Hoskin

Another non-electoral milestone

A leader in today’s Guardian is another entry for the Cameroons’ list of non-electoral milestones.  Entitled “Progress in Blue”, its case seems to be that the Tories are pushing the kind of progressive agenda that Guardian readers should consider voting for.  Here’s the nub of it: “There have been moments in the postwar history of Britain when people who would naturally be inclined to vote Labour have been driven to ask themselves whether the return of a Conservative government would be the worst possible outcome for the country or for the general cause of progress? For those in Britain who think of themselves as progressives, the answer has usually been

Peter Hoskin

Are these the reasons why Labour could win the next election?

The Autumn issue of the Fabian Review features an article by the YouGov pollster Peter Kellner on why Labour could win the next election.  It’s not out until 15 September, but the Mirror’s Kevin Maguire has seen a copy and writes about it in his column today.  Here – with Maguire’s embellishments – is Kellner’s reasoning: (1) Political geography favours Gordon Brown. If the parties got the same national vote, Labour still wins 80 more seats. Cameron needs two million more votes for the same number of seats. To draw level Cameron needs a six per cent lead, a hefty 10 per cent for an overall majority. (2) Every government from

Peter Hoskin

The energy deal revealed

The Guardian has got its hands on details of the Government’s rescue package for those struggling with rising fuel bills. The centrepiece of it is a £1 billion deal with energy companies, by which those same companies will contribute more to the carbon emissions reduction target scheme – in other words, more money will be available to help people have their homes insulated. It’s all much as Brown prepared us for in his speech last week – no “short term gimmicks and giveaways” and an emphasis on “long term efficiency”. But the same questions remain. Will it actually help all that much? Will it increase support for the Government? Will

Elisabeth Jeffries

Greener than thou: the carbon tax contest

Labour’s climate change levy has led to lower emissions, says Elisabeth Jeffries, but can the Conservative alternative yield better results — or command business support? There are many ways to eat a potato: chopped into chips and deep-fried, baked in the oven or slivered as crisps. Not many consumers care about the dozens of ways to cut down on the energy used to cook, store or produce it, such as buying a super-efficient freezer. But it is a question many retailers and food suppliers have been trying to unpeel. McCain chips installed three new wind turbines and an anaerobic digestion facility (which processes food waste to capture emissions of the

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Brown has exploited immigration to hide from deep problems

The PM’s claim to have created three million British jobs is a grave deceit, says Fraser Nelson. Strip out immigrants from the picture, and Labour has barely dented the problem of British worklessness. Over to you, Mr Cameron If there were to be a British Statue of Liberty, it should be erected at Victoria coach station in London. For it is here that most of the tired, poor, huddled masses of Eastern Europeans have arrived seeking what Michael Howard once called the ‘British dream’. The influx of the last ten years has been the largest in Britain’s history, changing the country for ever. Immigrants now make up a ninth of

Tuesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

New Tories, New Danger?

How will Lbour fight the next election? Stupidly, it seems. According to a briefing paper obtained by the Guardian, Labour “has decided to attack the Conservatives at the next election as an unreconstructed, dangerous rightwing party that is only masking its true instincts behind slick positioning.” Oh dear. Labour argue that: “Occasionally the mask slips and we see the dangerous, old- fashioned Tory rightwing instincts hidden underneath. They believe in unfettered free markets, cuts in public services to fund tax cuts for the richest, and a smaller, less effective government. David Cameron believes Britain would be stronger if we stand alone, rather than come together.” I have no idea what

Peter Hoskin

A sorry tale

Ok, so it turns out that Brown’s article today wasn’t an apology of any sort.  But there’s still some speculation that he’s going to use his conference speech to more or less say “sorry”.  With that in mind, the Tories have just launched ‘Brown’s Big Apology’, a corner of their website where – from now until the speech – there’ll be daily suggestions of what Brown should apologise for.  The first is the 10p tax debacle.  What would CoffeeHousers add to the list? Hat-tip: Jonathan Isaby @ Three Line Whip  

Peter Hoskin

Rethinking the rethink

Could it be? Has Brown admitted that he needs to rethink his approach, that he needs to change?  Has he – in a roundabout way – apologised?  It was starting to look that way earlier today, with the publication of an article by the PM in the Parliamentary Monitor.  The subhead of that article: “The world has changed so much since New Labour came to power that it makes sense at this conference to rethink the way we govern Britain, writes prime minister Gordon Brown.”  And it contains such calls to change as: “I believe that Britain is well placed to withstand the shocks that these transformations bring, but if we

Peter Hoskin

Labour to attack the “same old Tories”

One of the major recent debates within the Labour party has been over how best to attack David Cameron and the Tories.  Well – if a briefing obtained by the Guardian is anything to go by – that debate has pretty much resolved itself.  It suggests that Labour should portray the Tories as a wolf in sheep’s clothing – as a nasty party lurking beneath a veneer of compassionate conservatism.  This passage should give you a taste of what it’s about: “Occasionally the mask slips [from Cameron’s Tories] and we see the dangerous, old- fashioned Tory rightwing instincts hidden underneath. They believe in unfettered free markets, cuts in public services to fund tax cuts for the

Monday

Peter Hoskin

Will the Cameroons accept the gift of British “special status”?

You could say that pragmatism won out at today’s Global Vision / Daily Telegraph conference on the future relationship between Britain and Europe.  On the one hand, you had the pro-Europe voice of Valéry Giscard d’Estaing arguing that Britain should more or less be able to pick ‘n’ mix what parts of the EU agenda it subscribes to. And, on the other, you had a largely (moderate?) Eurosceptic panel arguing that – well – Britain should more or less be able to pick ‘n’ mix what parts of the EU agenda it subscribes to.  Of course, there were differences of emphasis.  Giscard d’Estaing thought that Britain’s “special status” should be enshrined

Daniel Korski

The future of Tory foreign policy  

David Cameron’s recent visit to Afghanistan and Pakistan received relatively little press attention; showing just how exceptional the amount of coverage that Cameron’s statements on Georgia and trip there garnered were. In his address in Pakistan, Cameron once more set out his ‘liberal conservative’ agenda. Here’s the key passage of the speech: “A liberal Conservative approach…recognises that democracy must be built around the institutions, habits and culture of each country. Democracy should be the work of patient craftsmanship and not of a uniform mass production line, if the final product is to be of a quality that endures.” In other words, states are not built; they develop over time. The

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The scale of Brown’s broken economy

Two analyses of the economy today, one fanciful and one spot-on. Gordon Brown says “I am confident that we can get through these difficult times and meet these challenges a stronger, more secure and fairer country then ever before.” Why is he confident? The cure for this will require the precise opposite to his policies – and this is what he shows no sign of beginning to grasp. The UK economy has buckled under the weight of the debt Brown has rung up. The speech of recovery will be dictated by how debt-burdened countries are going into recession. Britain starts – starts – with a 3% deficit, and this may

The Spectator

Just in case you missed them…

…here are some of the posts made over the weekend at spectator.co.uk: Fraser Nelson picks apart the British reaction to VP nominee Sarah Palin and shows how another Brown critic gets struck by lighning. James Forsyth questions whether Nick Clegg’s tax plans will appeal to his party’s supporters and shows that Stephen Carter won’t go without a fight. Peter Hoskin thinks Harriet Harman might have found a better way to quell leadership speculation and wonders whether Labour have any alternative to Brown. Clive Davis maintains that opposition to Palin is not necessarily sexist. And Americano looks at Sarah Palin’s pragmatism and explores Obama’s plans for education.

Sunday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Ivan Lewis pays the price

Poor Ivan Lewis. Previously we only heard from this health minister when he cropped up to criticise Gordon Brown through some coded newspaper article. Now he’s on the front page of the Mail on Sunday, exposed for sending inappropriate texts to a former female aide. So where did this story come from? Strikingly absent from the Mail on Sunday’s story is any detail from the woman’s side. No text message is reproduced, or any basic content alluded to. If she had sold her story (and the Mail on Sunday has the deepest pockets on Fleet Street for this kind of thing) you’d expect some personal detail even if not in

Saturday

Peter Hoskin

A lesson in how not to end leadership speculation

Here are the last few lines of the interview with Harriet Harman in today’s Times: “Is it not time for another woman British leader? Does she want the job if Gordon Brown is ousted? Ms Harman looked flustered and consults her briefing paper. ‘I cannot remember the answer to that.'” Ok, so it’s a probably a joke, a sign that she’s taking all the Westminster chatter with good humour. But I’m sure No.10 would have preferred something a little more unequivocal…

Peter Hoskin

Brown’s sinking, but where are the alternatives?

The story’s familiar by now. A poll comes out; it puts the Tories 20-ish points ahead of Labour; and it contains a whole load of below-the-headline findings which are personally damaging for Gordon Brown. Today’s Independent/ComRes poll certainly follows that pattern. It has the Tories on 44 percent, Labour on 25 percent and the Lib Dems on 17 percent. But the sting for Brown is in findings such as that 20 percent of people like Labour but not him, whilst only 8 percent like him but not his party. And that 34 percent of Labour voters say that they’d vote Labour in spite of Brown, and only 3 percent say

Theodore Dalrymple

In defence of David Southall

One of life’s difficulties, I have found, is that it keeps throwing up questions to which there is no indubitably correct answer. This means that the exercise of judgment is perennially necessary: and there is hardly a moment’s respite from this burdensome imperative. Alas, where there is judgment there is error, or the possibility of error. No one can be right all the time. Of nothing is this truer than the vexed question of child abuse. Not to see it where it exists has terrible consequences for the child; to see it where it does not exist has terrible consequences for the parents or the others accused of it. I

The Spectator

Make your excuses and go

Politicians, like novelists, are obsessed by posterity. Practitioners of the here and now — tomorrow’s headline, the latest poll, the next electoral hurdle — they nurse secret and often vainglorious hopes that their greatest plaudits will come in the future. Before New Labour swept to power in 1997, senior Blairites used to joke about the need to get ‘their betrayals in early’. Now, 11 years later, as the government disintegrates painfully and publicly, Cabinet ministers are rushing to get their side of the story across, to make excuses, and to pass the buck. Few political interviews have been parsed so closely or caused such an instant storm — financial and

Friday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Honour amongst plotters

Meanwhile, back in Blighty, former Home Secretary Charles Clarke says Gordon Brown is toast and the PM should “stand down with honour”. Just what Labour needed as the conference season looms! Iain Martin’s column in the Telegraph today is an entertaining survey of the current, hapless state of the Labour Party: adrift on the high seas, all faith in the skipper lost, but no idea how to organise a mutiny, let alone brave the consequences of such an insurrection: In their plotting, the PM’s internal enemies have adopted one of their target’s worst traits: procrastination. If Brown declines the opportunity to resign with honour, then Clarke promises that “we” –