Politics

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

Friday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The trick to doing Question Time

While preparing for my first Question Time last night, talking to former panellists, I discovered a strata of politics I didn’t know existed. With five million viewers it’s the most-watched political TV programme and is taken incredibly seriously by all parties. Blair expected his Cabinet to do it, and face the public (although one G. Brown never did). “Clear the whole day for it,” one Shadow Cabinet member advised me. “No lunch, no nothing, just prepare”. Some of the advice was chemical (half a beta blocker to calm the nerves, it turns out, is a trick of the trade). Most MPs advised ignoring the questioners, and saying what you wanted

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Chris Huhne and whose army?

The Lib Dem leadership will be a closer affair than many people expect. Chris Huhne having run before and got a respectable 40 odd percent of vote is going to give Nick Clegg a decent run for his money. Indeed, Mike Smithson points out that today’s YouGov poll shows that Huhne has a slight edge over Clegg among Lib Dem supporters. Add to this the fact that Lib Dem activists tend to be a fairly left-wing lot who might find Clegg a little too right-wing for their tastes and it is not inconceivable that Huhne could pull off a surprise victory. Yet, if Huhne won he’d immediately have a huge

James Forsyth James Forsyth

How liberal is the BBC?

Sam Coates over at Conservative Home has done some great number crunching on how BBC employees identify themselves politically on Facebook. Of the 10,580 BBC workers on the site, 1, 340 say they are liberal while only 120 label themselves as conservative: so there are ten times more out self-identified liberals than conservatives at the corporation. Now, as Sam points out this isn’t a scientific survey—but it does give you a rough guide to political sentiment at the BBC. It is also revealing how comfortable BBC employees feel revealing their ideological standpoint.  My other observation would be to say that you can be a liberal and still vote Conservative. Ideological

Matthew Dancona

The Blair memoirs

Tony Blair has announced the name of the ghost writer for his forthcoming memoirs: Frank But-not-disloyal. Mr Blair and Frank go back a long way, and their laughter could often be heard echoing down the corridors of Number Ten from the Prime Ministerial den. I would imagine that Gordon Brown doesn’t find this announcement entirely reassuring.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Tories 3 points ahead in latest poll

The latest YouGov poll for the Telegraph has the Tories on 41, Labour 38 and the Liberal Democrats languishing on a 11 percent. I suspect that both main parties will be fairly happy with these numbers. Labour will be relieved to still be within striking distance after such an awful few weeks. While the Tories will be delighted to be ahead and over the crucial forty percent mark. Gordon Brown’s personal ratings have taken a battering after the whole debacle of the cancelled election. His net satisfaction rating is now minus 11, a plurality of people see him as indecisive and an absolute majority see the government’s ‘stealing of Conservative

Thursday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Time for Parliament to take a stand

I’m normally slightly sceptical of the value of Early Day Motions; too few of them justify the £627,000 that they cost the taxpayer in 2005/6. But one put down today by Paul Goodman and Michael Gove, two of the most decent men in the House, makes an important statement: “This House, recognising that freedom of speech within the law and freedom from violence and intimidation are indispensable preconditions of a free society, deeply regrets the decision of the Dutch Parliament and Government to withdraw protection abroad from Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the author, film-maker and former politician, and urges both bodies to reverse this decision forthwith.” Personally, I don’t agree with

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Gordon doesn’t get it

Anatole Kaletsky has a cracking column in The Times today about Gordon Brown’s political difficulties. One point is particularly worth noting: Brown doesn’t know how to triangulate. Bill Clinton and Tony Blair were geniuses at triangulating because they knew it wasn’t simply splitting the difference between left and right but finding, cliché alert, a third way to address the problem. Brown, however, either goes for straightforward clothes stealing, as he has over immigration, or tries to split the difference between the Tory and Labour positions, as he did on inheritance tax.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Will Tony wear a blue dress?

Oh, this is going to be fun. Adam Boulton, writing in the New Statesman, says that Tony Blair and David Cameron will indeed be holding a meeting soon. Apparently, Blair wants to brief Cameron on his role in the Middle East. The substance of the meeting might be high-minded and Blair is—as Fraser reports in this week’s issue—trying to keep his supporters on a tight leash, but it is hard to imagine the rather paranoid Brown team taking kindly to any photos of Blair and Cameron together.

Wednesday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Brown is having tent trouble

When Gordon Brown first announced the outsiders he had recruited to his ‘ministry of all the talents’ there was much chuckling in Westminster about whether Digby Jones or Mark Malloch Brown would be the first minister to be sacked. Early on, Malloch Brown moved into pole position with an insufferably pompous interview in the Telegraph that caused Brown all sorts of problems in Washington and led to a public slapping down of the over-mighty junior by his boss David Miliband. But now Comrade Digby must be the bookie’s favourite. Digby’s unhappiness over the changes to capital gains tax announced in the pre-Budget report has not exactly been a state secret.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Time to use the space created by the surge

The military success of the surge in Iraq has been quite astonishing but much remains to be done on the political front. Part of the reason for this is that Iraqi politicians like to go right up to the wire, as they at every stage in the political process since 2003, before reaching an agreement.  Still what Tom Friedman reports this morning is not encouraging: since the Petraeus and Crocker report to Congress in September the four key Iraqi leaders have not been in the same county at the same time. It is time for Iraq’s political leadership to begin the process of capitalising on the space and time created by

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Brown shouldn’t waste his breath on the UN over Burma

In The Guardian, Gordon Brown asks the world to focus itself on Burma today as Aung Sui Kyi’s 12th year under house arrest draws to and end. The Prime Minister’s op-ed is full of noble sentiments and fine words but it inadvertently reveals the gap between words and actions when it comes to Burma. When it comes to describing UN action on Burma this is the best that Brown can come up with: “The UN security council has, for the first time ever, taken formal action on Burma by issuing a strong statement deploring the regime’s actions, calling for an inclusive political process, and expressing strong support for the good

Tuesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

An American, er, Werewolf in London…

I’ve a piece in the new edition of The American Conservative looking at Rudy Giuliani’s trip to London last month – a trip designed to make Rudy seem like an international statesman who can claim, however implausibly, to be the heir to Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher. Hmmm indeed. It was an audacious gambit that a co-operative press corps was only too happy to buy. “His foreign policy pronouncements were certainly Thatcheresque,” gushed the Washington Post’s Dan Balz. MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough was even more enthusiastic, suggesting, “the picture of Rudy Giuliani, America’s Mayor, in front of 10 Downing Street, sends a signal to Republican voters that this guy is ready

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Why is it the money that gets the English so cross?

The constitutional settlement created by New Labour is clearly iniquitous. But what is interesting about the current debate is that it is based around the higher public spending per head in Scotland, which existed before devolution, not the West Lothian question. I always though that the devolution chickens would come home to roost when some controversial piece of legislation which did not apply to Scotland was pushed through using Scottish votes. But that’s already happened and it hardly kicked off a constitutional firestorm. The Barnett formula, though, seems to consistently spark off arguments. Admittedly this is partly because the Scottish Parliament keeps using the extra money in eye catching ways,

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Cash for honours returns

I’m just out of the Public Administration Select Committee meeting with John Yates. No revelations, but a clear clash of cultures – and philosophies. Tony Wright, the PASC chair, said that cash-for-honours has been going on for years. “It’s the way of the world,” he said at one point. So why, they wanted to know, did Yates investigate? One line of his sticks out, in response to Paul Flynn (who had been asking him why he caused an “ordeal” to those interviewed). “Mr Flynn, when I joined this organisation I took an oath as an officer of the crown to work by four guiding principles: fairness, integrity, diligence and impartiality.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The MP who thinks David Kelly was murdered

Norman Baker, the Lib Dem MP, has gained a reputation in Westminster as one of the best ferreters out of information. But his new theories about how David Kelly died appear a little far-fetched. (Anything which involves letters from people who sign themselves ‘Nemesis’ seems a little suspect to me). David Aaronvitch in The Times does a great job of debunking Baker’s thesis and poses a challenge to Baker: “Since the fearless Mr Baker believes it is impossible to die in the way Dr Kelly is supposed to have done, then he should be able to meet the simple challenge of himself taking 29 co-proxamol tablets and then slitting his

Monday

Neil Obrien

Why won’t The Independent print this letter?

On Thursday, when I saw that The Independent had reprinted almost word for word Foreign Office talking points without attribution or any indication to its readers that this is what it was up to, I sent in a letter to the editor. Oddly enough, it hasn’t yet been published. If the Indy is “completely unapologetic” about what it did, why is it so scared of its readers finding out about it?   ——Original Message——   To: letters@independent.co.uk   Sent: 18 Oct 2007 11:19 AM   Subject: For publication.   How amazing that the Independent should simply reproduce a foreign office briefing note on the EU on page three without any

James Campbell

Howard’s end?

Nothing is going right for John Howard at the moment. Following a slight improvement in the polls last week came a poor showing against Kevin Rudd in the only debate of the Australian election campaign.  Now a devastating poll has Labor with a crushing lead of 58-42%.  Most worrying for the government must be the news that Rudd has made big strides on the issues of economic management and national security. These are supposed to be Howard’s strong suits and suggest that having made up their minds to vote for Rudd, voters are now telling themselves that he can be trusted with these issues.  Howard opened his campaign with a

James Forsyth James Forsyth

One of Labour’s worst ideas yet

Even by the high standards of this government the idea that schools should have to give back 5% of any money they save to the government seems particularly half-baked. Whatever happened to Gordon’s love of prudence? Calculations by the Lib Dems indicate that up to 80% of schools in England could be affected.

The Spectator

Melanie Phillips joins Spectator.co.uk

Matthew d’Ancona, editor of The Spectator, writes: I am proud to welcome Melanie Phillips to Spectator.co.uk as one of our regular bloggers. The essence of The Spectator, in print and online, is distinctive voices and great writing. Melanie is one of the best and most fearless columnists in Britain today, constantly forcing us to reconsider our preconceptions and to challenge stodgy orthodoxies. In her writings on politics, education, family policy, the Middle East, Islamism and countless other subjects, she is simply unmissable: she has received acclaim around the world, quite rightly, for her magnificent book, Londonistan, which exposed the extent to which our capital city had become a hub in