Politics

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

Wednesday

Peter Hoskin

Harman holds her own at PMQs

A bit of a damp squib, really.  Harman held her own against those PMQs titans that are Hague and Cable. And all my anticipatory drooling was for nought.   Hague opened by congratulating Harman on being the first female Labour MP to lead the House at PMQs.  An invite for Harman’s only cringeworthy moment, as she inquired why Theresa May wasn’t opposing her. She suddenly came over all Oprah-esque – handing out “sisterly advice” and asking whether Tory women are to be “seen but not heard”.   The patented Hague Joke soon followed, and it was a good one. If Harman dons the appropriate attire for all occasions – a stab-vest when touring

Peter Hoskin

Ken Livingstone has no shame

Ok, so Political Betting covered this yesterday – among others – but the words “Magpie Mayor” emblazoned across the front of last night’s Evening Standard reminded me to give it a Coffee House mention.  Basically – as this Standard article details – Ken Livingstone is planning to steal Boris’s policy ideas, including that of the “Payback London” scheme.  Worse still, Ken unabashedly admits to this.  Here’s what he had to say in a debate the other night: “I’m stealing your policies. What sort of idiot, when they hear a good idea, wouldn’t take it on board?” Does Ken really think this will ingratiate him with Londoners?

Peter Hoskin

By design, not by accident

Simon Heffer serves up a bracing cup of invective in the Telegraph this morning. His message is that we shouldn’t be too quick to label the Government “incompetent”, as doing so suggests they’ve reached this point by accident rather than by design: “The element of deliberation and deliberateness in what Labour has done makes an accusation of incompetence, or carelessness, seem wide of the mark. Things were meant to be this way. Labour has pursued policies, be they social or economic, for ideological reasons: and when they fail, as so many have, it has not been because of slipshod administration. It is because that was how things were always going to

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Politicians boasting about the women they’ve slept with is not candour: it’s spin

Another terrible night spent tossing and turning, racked with worry over whether or not I have ever had sex with Nick Clegg, the leader of the Liberal Democratic party. It is not something I remember doing and on the face of it, both of us being heterosexual, it seems highly unlikely. But one can never be too sure. Given Mr Clegg’s singularly ectoplasmic tenure as leader of his party it seems to me possible that we may have had some desultory form of intercourse without my even knowing about it. He might have slithered in and then out again, wraith-like, while I was oiling the garden shears in the shed,

Daniel Hannan

A chance for the Lords to justify their existence

Like, I suspect, most Spectator readers, I saw no need for Lords reform in the first place. The old chamber functioned perfectly well, as even Labour was forced to admit. But the party took the view that, while it might work in practice, it didn’t work in theory. The hereditary principle, Tony Blair declared, had no place in modern politics: a strange argument, striking as it does directly against the monarchy and indirectly against all property. And so, with no very clear idea of what they wanted, ministers blundered into the current settlement: an appointments system which disproportionately elevates toadies, public-sector groupies and quangocrats. From Labour’s point of view, fair

Tuesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Department of the Wrong End of the Stick

Setting aside the issue of whether or not a House of Lords committee can accurately be considered “influential”… Record levels of immigration have had “little or no impact” on the economic well-being of Britons, an influential House of Lords committee has said. Well, that’s not the point. Or at least it’s not the point as far as I’m concerned. What about the immigrants themselves? Couldn’t we rejoice in their economic advancement and, one supposes (via remissions from immigrant workers), that of their home countries too? Couldn’t that be be something to be celebrated? The world doesn’t stop at the water’s edge after all and in an age in which we

Peter Hoskin

More misery for Clegg

Nick Clegg’s in line for more misery over Europe.  Today, Lord McNally announced that Lib Dem peers would go against Clegg’s orders by not abstaining from the upcoming referendum vote.  Instead, they’re set to vote against a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty.   Many of the pro-referendum brigade had pinned their dwindling hopes on the Lords.  But McNally’s revelation makes it extremely unlikely that the UK will get the say it was promised.  In a way, then, Clegg will get the outcome he wanted.  Although his grip on the Lib Dems has been shattered in the process.

Peter Hoskin

Cameron & friends

A perennial problem for Opposition leaders – and particularly those that have never been in Government – is how they put forward their party’s defence credentials.  They haven’t been in the high-level security meetings; they don’t have access to all the confidential data; and they haven’t made any of the key decisions.  Why in a time of crisis should the public depart from the status quo? On the surface, Cameron’s speech today was about how NATO should evolve for the 21st Century.  But he also used it to reassure voters about the Tories’ security nous.  His method for doing that?  Name-dropping.  Here’s one passage that jumped out at me: “The blunt truth is

Peter Hoskin

The failure of Brown’s third way

Steve Richards has a typically excellent piece in today’s Independent. In it, he paints Brown’s effort to push through longer detention times for terror suspects as another instance of Blairite grandstanding. Unfortunately for Brown, though, it’s left no-one happy: “Last summer, when he was successfully portraying himself as the apolitical father of the nation, the debate over detaining suspects without charge must have seemed politically attractive. Probably, Mr Brown calculated that he could succeed where Mr Blair had failed, reinforcing another part of his pre-election strategy of appearing more Blairite than Mr Blair. Right-wing newspapers would support him. The move was popular with voters. The Tories would look “soft” on

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

April Fools?

The hallmark of this ridiculous government is the difficulty one always has on 1 April trying to discern which newspaper stories are April Fools. The Guardian tickles our ribs in suggesting that Carla Bruni is being recruited in Brown’s Government Of All the Talents as some kind of fashion tsar. Is that so much more incredible than the real-life attempt to recruit Fiona Phillips, the GMTV presenter, and offer her a peerage and place in the Department of Health? We had a story last week saying that only 34% people believe official statistics, according to official statistics. This is the only tool one has to spot the real stories. They

Peter Hoskin

A present from Harriet to Boris

Will the gaffes ever stop coming?  Just a matter of weeks after Jacqui Smith admitted she has police protection when walking around London, the Daily Mail have caught out Harriet Harman for wearing a “stab-proof” vest whilst touring Peckham, in her own constituency.  The image is gold for Boris, particularly as he majored on violent crime at his campaign launch yesterday. Meanwhile, Harman did further damage with her agitated performance on Today this morning. 

Peter Hoskin

Immigration nation

A Lords’ committee today claims that record levels of immigration have had no economic benefit for the UK. But what about that £6 billion figure the Government likes to wheel out? According to the committee report (pdf. here), it’s misleading. What should really concern us is how immigration affects the living standards of the existing population. By that measure, there’s been hardly any improvement.  Things may even have got worse. In response, the report suggests a cap on immigrant numbers. Just like Tory policy. The Immigration Minister Liam Bryne swatted the accusations and proposals away on the Today programme this morning. But this report is the third in recent weeks to lambast

Monday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Trimming government

Was Alan Milburn on to something? When he proposed slashing Whitehall by a quarter in his interview with me for this week’s magazine – on the grounds that you can only take bureaucrats’ power away if you send them away – I imagined he was just stirring things to be mischievous. But now Matthew Taylor, former No10 policy chief, has proposed slashing the number of ministers by a quarter and, as Three Line Whip reports, No10 has slapped him down: “The Prime Minister is quite happy with the number of ministers he has got in his Government”.   I’m with Milburn and Taylor. A Conservative government should ask itself searching

Peter Hoskin

Harman vs. Cable

As James reported last week, Harriet Harman will be standing in for Brown at Wednesday’s PMQs.  Her Tory opponent will most likely be William Hague.  And now Red Box confirm that she’ll also be faced by Vince Cable.   Harman against a Hague ‘n’ Cable tag-team?  One shudders to think…

Peter Hoskin

Another considerable lead

More encouraging news for Boris, on the day that he formally launched his mayoral campaign. The latest YouGov / Evening Standard poll puts the Spectator’s candidate 10 percentage points clear of Ken Livingstone. He also leads Ken on second preference votes.   Admittedly, it’s a bit down on his 12-point lead of two weeks ago. But at least it proves that wasn’t a freak result. The tide is certainly in Boris’s favour. UPDATE: Over at Red Box, Sam Coates wonders whether Boris might scrap the congestion charge.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Come and get me

Charles Clarke’s interview in The Independent is good value. He lets rip with his now trademark straight talk, declaring that he’s “frustrated that Labour does not seem to be doing enough to offer real solutions to the major problems of the future, nor be convincing about our capacity to overcome the challenges we face” and criticising Gordon Brown for “allowing a sense of indecision to develop.” But, interestingly, he issues a ‘come and get me’ call about returning to government in response to a question from one reader: “Would you ever take a Cabinet position under Gordon Brown? Richard Collins by email Yes, certainly but any such appointment is a

The Spectator

Just in case you missed them… | 31 March 2008

Here are some of the posts made over the weekend: James Forsyth reports on how divisions in Team Brown are working against Douglas Alexander. Fraser Nelson decodes Ivan Lewis’ ideas on where the Labour Party should head next. And Peter Hoskin suggests that “Cycle-gate” hasn’t harmed David Cameron, and attacks Michael Martin’s life of luxury.

Sunday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Decoding Lewis

It’s always a pleasure when a Labour MP – panicked about impending defeat – ruminates about the future for their party strategy. It’s rarer for a minister to do so – which is why Ivan Lewis’s piece in Progress (picked up in today’s News of the World) is worth reading. Here’s my decoder: 1) “We must show we’re on the side of ordinary people if Labour is to win again.” (People don’t think we’re on their side, and we’re heading for defeat.) 2) “The New Labour coalition which has delivered our unprecedented three terms is now under severe strain.” (Now Blair’s gone, the aspirational C1s and C2s are deserting us.)

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Someone really doesn’t like Douglas Alexander

Last Sunday, The Observer suggested that Douglas Alexander’s political career was effectively over after a falling out with the Prime Minister. This Sunday brings another anti-Alexander briefing with The News of the World reporting that he’s been dubbed ‘worst minister ever’ at DFID and that when the cabinet split up into break out groups, a Stephen carter innovation, Alexander was the last to be picked. The string of stories in recent days about divisions within the Brown camp shows that the tensions between the old Brownites and the new Carter-recruited team are a potentially lethal threat to Brown’s premiership. But the briefing against Alexander seems more likely to be a

Peter Hoskin

Is the curtain falling on Mugabe?

The results of yesterday’s elections in Zimbabwe aren’t due out for few more days.  But the opposition MDC party is already claiming victory.  According to their own counts at polling stations, they’ve “massacred” Robert Mugabe’s ruling Zanu-PF party.  Says the MDC secretary general: “We’ve won this election.  The results coming in show that in our traditional strongholds we are massacring them.  In Mugabe’s traditional strongholds they are doing very badly.  There is no way Mugabe can claim victory unless it is through fraud.  He has lost this election.” It’s a risky move.  On the one hand, it takes the fight squarely to Mugabe – almost daring him to fiddle the