Politics

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

Tuesday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The challenge for Clegg

A chastened looking Nick Clegg has just delivered his first speech as Lib Dem leader. It was actually a pretty decent performance, trying to tie both Labour and the Tories to Britain’s ‘broken politics’. It was also refreshing to hear him put social mobility at the top of his agenda. There is, though, no getting away from the fact that this result is the worst possible start to his leadership. Clegg actually received fewer votes than Chris Huhne did in 2006. If Clegg trips up early on in his leadership he could find himself being written off before he’s really got started. The margin of victory means that he is essentially

James Forsyth James Forsyth

A benchmark for Clegg

The Lib Dem leadership result will be announced this afternoon and the general feeling in Westminster is that Nick Clegg has won, although folk aren’t ruling out an upset. The first test for Clegg will be whether he beats Chris Huhne by a more comfortable margin than Ming Campbell did in 2006, when the score in the final round was 57-42. Clegg’s next challenge will be to seize the news agenda, something that he was surprisingly poor at during the leadership contest. As Charlie Kennedy argues in The Guardian today, Vince Cable has been particularly good at this as he did not have to worry about his long term prospects

Monday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Europe: Still Not Dead

Not content with permitting itself to be swamped by Muslim immigration (Quick: man the Viennese barricades!) it seems that poor old Europe is also committing cultural suicide by forgetting to worship god. In fairness, Rod, being smart, doesn’t quite share the apocalyptic vision of Europe’s future that has become oddly popular amongst American conservatives. Nor, also being smart, does James Poulos who weighs in here. In any case, the extent of European “godlessness” is exaggerated. For instance, though only 12% of Scots remain official members of the Kirk, the proportion of church going Scots rises to somewhere between one in five and one in four once all other religions and

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The real winners of the Lib Dem leadership contest…The Tories

When Ming Campbell was hurried into retirement by his Lib Dem colleagues, the general consensus was that it was bad news for the Tories. Before Ming’s departure, senior Tories joked that they were members of the preserve Ming society. There was a real worry among Tory supporters that Nick Clegg could emerge as an attractive alternative to David Cameron and eat into their support both winning back Lib Dem switchers and becoming a stopping off point for disillusioned Labour voters. The good news for the Tories is that even if Clegg does win on Tuesday, he’ll leave the leadership race with little to no momentum. A press that was generally enthusiastic

Sunday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Charlatans everywhere, I tell you

Sure, I’m not persuaded by all of Ron Paul’s policy positions. But, sod it, any candidate who happily uses the word mountebank in a rallying call to the masses has my vote*. How very splendid. Today, incidentally, is the anniversary (alas) of the Boston Tea Party. More happily it’s the occasion for another Ron Paul Moneybomb. The last one raised more than $4m. Here’s the good doctor’s message which is, sound money aside, not half bad at all: Message from Ron (12/15/07) What an amazing mission you and I are on. What great ideas we uphold — the legacy of the most important thinkers of liberty in our country’s history,

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Tories hit 45%

Today’s YouGov poll showing the Tories reaching 45% will send the party into the holidays in high spirits. If they can sustain this rating into the New Year, they’ll vastly increase the chances that Labour will turn in on itself. Gordon Brown, whose approval rating is now -26 compared to +48 in August, will come under even more pressure if things do not improve in the near future. Two numbers from the poll should particularly cheer the Tories. David Cameron and George Osborne now have a 7 point lead over Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling on who would do more for your family’s standard of living. While 77% think that

Saturday

Matthew Dancona

Mandelson enters the fray

Peter Mandelson’s dig at Gordon Brown for his botched, theatrically half-hearted signature of the Lisbon Treaty is more than the latest chapter in the 13-year-old feud between Blairites and Brownites. It is also (yet another) uncanny echo of the John Major era. The Grey One tried his best to plot a middle course on Europe – and ended up pleasing nobody. It is often pointed out that Labour is not split over Europe as the Tories were in the Nineties. That is true. But Mr Brown’s backbenchers are divided no less fiercely over a much more toxic issue: how soon the PM should step down. One Labour Privy Councillor told

John Osullivan

Republicans must heed the voters to beat Hillary

Washington After almost a year of the candidates manoeuvring for position in the national and state polls, one aspect of the 2008 presidential election campaign remains as constant as the North Star: Hillary Clinton is the favourite. She is backed by most party regulars, supported by a national machine, advised by the most brilliant politician of her generation and perched on a consistent lead in the national opinion polls. Almost the only thing that could lose her the election is her personality. Behind their hands, observers compare her to Richard Nixon in 1968. Like Nixon, Clinton has a withdrawn, cool and calculating personality. The comparison does not end there. Both

Christopher Caldwell

An American conservative who loves the Constitution

A Republican debate in Florida in late November marked this electoral season’s debut of Adolf Hitler, that reliable presence in American presidential campaigns. The Arizona senator John McCain, struggling to draw even with the garrulous ex-New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani and the Mormon technocrat (and former Massachusetts governor) Mitt Romney, decided to burnish his pro-war credentials. The problem was, there was almost nobody to burnish them against. Seven of the eight candidates on stage had vied for months to outdo one another in their lock-stock-and-barrel support for George W. Bush’s Iraq policy. That left Ron Paul, the 72-year-old, ten-term congressman from Texas, to bear the brunt of McCain’s wrath. Paul

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

The lord on the board and the gilded rogue

The last Lord Ribblesdale, who died in 1925, is remembered chiefly as the subject of a remarkable portrait, known as ‘The Ancestor’, by John Singer Sargent. For those who enjoy the byways of social history, this tall, unmistakably aristocratic figure in late-Victorian hunting garb is also remembered for other things: he was a celebrated amateur boxer capable, it was said, of knocking out any man in the House of Lords; he was a long-time denizen of Rosa Lewis’s louche Cavendish Hotel in Jermyn Street; George Bernard Shaw is believed to have used him as the model for Professor Higgins in Pygmalion; and he surprised London society in 1919 by marrying

Christopher Fildes

This party’s well and truly over

The old ones are the best, so allow me to remind you of Sibley’s Law. Giving capital to a bank (said that worldly banker, Nicholas Sibley) is like giving a gallon of beer to a drunk. You know what will become of it, but you can’t know which wall he will choose. By now we have some of the answers, and if the inundations are extensive, it was, after all, quite a party. At the head of the world’s biggest banking group, Charles ‘Chuck’ Prince was enjoying himself to the end — when his bank, Citigroup, admitted to losses of $11 billion, not counting the mere $42 million that he

Friday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Gordon turned up late on purpose

Gordon Brown’s decision to turn up in Lisbon yesterday to sign the new EU treaty but only as the other leaders were leaving left him looking more like Mr. Bean than ever. It was typical of how Brown doesn’t quite get triangulation. The excuse the Brownites trotted out was that he had already agreed to talk to the Commons Liaison Committee on Thursday morning and so couldn’t be in two places at once. But as James Kirkup points out over at Three Line whip the timing for this doesn’t add up. Brown claims he agreed to his date with the Liaison Committee on the 5th but the Portuguese had informed

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Cameron’s party

David Cameron’s party last night was buzzing, well-attended and full of gossip. He was being teased about Gordon Brown claiming to have “quietly” erected solar panels in his Fife house. Turns out Cameron had even more quietly had solar panels in North Kensington for a couple of years now, before the windmill. Hence the green wars continue. And good to see Cameron leave his own party to go to Lady Thatcher’s reception – for my money, always the best party of the Christmas season. And not without drama this year. After The Lady left, Hugh Scully from the Antiques Roadshow fell down the outside stairs, was tended to by Dr

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Can Brown’s reputation hold up under the weight of Northern Rock?

It is a strange world where the right are urging nationalisation, but it seems Gordon Brown may bow to that advice. Larry Elliott in The Guardian is impeccably well informed in such matters and today says Brown is drawing up plans for a “new year nationalistion” of Northern Rock. It would show Brown taking the harder, but better, route. Trying to flog it in these market conditions would shaft the taxpayer, nothing surer. In keeping it, Brown is taking a gamble of getting a better deal later on. But while Northern Rock is his ward, it will be a pendant of shame around his neck, reminding everyone that Britain was

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The scars of the Manse

Tom Bower’s column in The Guardian today about how Gordon’s upbringing as a ‘son of the Manse’ might be responsible for his current political difficulties is well worth reading. What stuck out to me, was this: “Gordon Brown’s Scottish friends believe that his father demanded confessions of wrongdoing from his three sons, and that Gordon Brown became an expert in denying his sins. On arriving at Edinburgh University, Brown described himself as an atheist.” Normally, I’m slightly sceptical about psycho-analysing politicians like this. But the emphasis that Brown puts on being a ‘son of the Manse’ and how his father gave him his moral compass makes this subject too important

Thursday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Contradictory Gordon

This morning, Gordon Brown told the Commons liaison committee: “You cannot make decisions and assume that people will simply follow them. Most decisions can only be successful if people are part of the process.” After that, he jetted off to sign the Treaty formerly known as the European constitution having denied people the role in the process that the Labour manifesto had promised them.

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Brown gets lively

Normally, interviewing Gordon Brown is like drawing blood from a stone. In the old days, the interviewer had to rely on someone like Charlie Whelan to call up afterwards and give a real story (like joining the Euro) to compensate for his boss’s reticence. I don’t know what the Times trio slipped into his tea today, but it seems to have worked. And does the headline “Decisive year ahead” mean that 2008 will be the year where he takes a decision? Anyway, here’s what jumped out at me. 1)      On party funding: “I don’t get into the detail of individual donations. That’s for other people.” Is this leadership? He takes

Wednesday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Labour’s next rebellion

Mark Mardell has a fascinating post up about a forthcoming EU directive that would allow people to travel to another member state for medical treatment. Left-wing Labour MPs like Frank Dobson are, in typical levelling down fashion, worried about what this will do to the NHS as patients flee our MRSA-ridden hospitals. Already 33 MPs are objecting to it, worried that people might—heaven forefend—receive treatment from a non-state provider abroad and then claim the money back from their local health authority. Will this be the issue that revives Euro-scepticism on the soft-left?

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Brown’s artful dodger act

This time, Brown came ready for Cameron. If asked about one of the many embarrassing issues dogging him, he’d say “he has missed the opportunity to talk about substance” then indulge in his list of fake economic greatest hits. Cameron thought on his feet, pointing out that the substance is going wrong for the PM too. But Brown responded by again saying that Cameron can’t talk about substance, and produced another boast. So, much for the great exchange. I don’t have time here to Fisk it, but Brown’s list is disingenuous at best and downright lies at worst. It is a confidence trick: people believe that because Brown recites all

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Labour’s thin blue line on pay

At first glance, Labour’s decision to pick a politically damaging fight over police pay when avoiding it would cost £40 million at most is bizarre. But as Michael White explains in The Guardian this morning, police pay is just the first public sector pay battle that Labour will have to fight. With the public finances in a battered shape and inflation rearing its ugly head, the government has to keep a lid on public sector pay.  So, expect a series of rows like this one over the coming year. The problem for Gordon Brown is that these fights are going to alienate Labour from a key part of its voting