Politics Archives

Tuesday

2 May 2017

Want to know what the Tories are thinking? Look at the seats Theresa May is visiting

Over the weekend, Theresa May was accused by Labour of hiding from the public in a remote forest hut on a trip to Aberdeenshire. Today, the Prime Minister faced similar negative jibes on a visit to Cornwall. This time, the local paper complained that its reporters were ‘shut in a room and banned from filming’. So, on the surface, it would seem safe to conclude that May’s tightly-controlled tour of Britain reveals very little. But actually, a look at where she has travelled since calling for the snap vote, tells us a lot about the Conservatives’ election strategy. The party are on the offensive when it comes to taking seats from Labour, and on the

Monday

1 May 2017

Steerpike

John McDonnell makes his own Labour attack ad

Oh dear. With Labour currently trailing the Conservatives in the polls, the party looks set for a disastrous showing come June 8. With that in mind, Labour’s top command need to make the most of the opportunities the election campaign offers. So, it was a curious choice of John McDonnell to speak at today’s May Day rally. The shadow chancellor joined anti-austerity campaigners for the march through central London. However, there were some unfortunate shots of him giving his speech. Rather than a backdrop of Labour posters, communist hammer and sickle flags (along with a Syria flag used by the Assad regime) appeared in the background as he spoke: .@johnmcdonnellMP speaking at a #MayDay

Stephen Daisley

The boring mystery of Theresa May

Theresa May spent the weekend in Scotland and not even the civilised bit. The Prime Minister was posted to the wilds of Aberdeenshire, which are handsome and underpopulated but not exactly a commuter hub. Journalists grumbled about the remoteness of the location, well aware that inaccessibility was the point. May has not been campaigning in this election so much as touring the nation’s emptiest rooms, occasionally bringing along another borough councillor who will be elected to Parliament in five weeks’ time. The punters have been kept far away from the Prime Minister for reasons of security — political security. Party strategists have long memories. They remember the name Sharon Storer.

Nick Hilton

In praise of Jeremy Corbyn’s campaign

Almost two weeks in, and before the short campaign has even started, people are starting to wise up to Theresa May’s conjuring trick. Last week, Philip Collins of the Times tweeted ‘I am usually a strong defender of politics but this empty, choreographed, stale, boring Tory campaign essentially implies we are all idiots’ (which was retweeted four and a half thousand times). This was then followed up by a performance on Marr that Fraser Nelson judged to have ‘perfected the art of saying nothing’. At the same time, people are still picking holes in the Labour effort. On Thursday, a video emerged of Jeremy Corbyn heading to address a crowd,

Sunday

30 Apr 2017

Matthew Taylor

Sunday political interviews round-up: Theresa May says Conservatives will not raise VAT

Theresa May – Conservatives will not raise VAT Touring both the BBC and ITV studios today, Theresa May tried her best to avoid giving specific answers about the Conservatives tax policies after the election. However, during an interview with Robert Peston, the Prime Minister appeared to disown David Cameron’s ‘triple lock’ and make a commitment that a Conservative government would not raise the level of VAT above 20% over the next Parliament: Peston: Given what you say your record as a party is on taxes, do you need to repeat David Cameron’s triple lock – no rise in VAT, no rise in National Insurance, no rise in income tax –

Isabel Hardman

Political activists who behave like zealots will do no good at all

The election debate so far has included a fair bit of to-ing and fro-ing over whether religion has a place in politics and whether religious politicians have to spend significant portions of interviews talking about their views on what other people get up to in bed. But one striking feature of all political debate is how many of its participants behave like religious zealots without even realising it. Media vicar Reverend Richard Coles yesterday tweeted that he’d spoken to a friend who planned to switch from Labour to the Conservative, rather than the Lib Dems, as Coles might have expected. The replies to this message were rather instructive. A number of

Fraser Nelson

Theresa May interpreted: her Sunday morning interviews

Theresa May has perfected the art of saying nothing in interviews. The most any journalist can hope for is a subtle shift in position, or an absence where a position once stood. She seems to think that, if you refuse to give the press anything, the public won’t care. Worse, she seems to be right – for now, at least. So it would have been with a heavy heart that Andrew Marr set off to see if he could try to draw blood out of the Prime Ministerial granite. Same for Robert Peston afterwards. A Theresa May interview means the recital or verbal formulae: ‘strong and stable’ here, ‘working families’

Fraser Nelson

Tim Farron: yes, I’ve held talks with Tony Blair. He’s great at coalitions

What is Tony Blair playing at? Our permatanned former Prime Minister recently declared himself to be closer to the Liberal Democrats than his own party due to his position on Brexit. “Unique circumstances demand a unique response,” he said, so Labour voters in certain seats “should cross party lines” and vote for Liberal Democrats – in the cause of Remain. Might the love be reciprocated? Tim Farron, the Liberal Democrat leader, was on the Andrew Marr show today and he was asked about whether he had met Blair told discuss such an alliance. He fessed up. “Several months ago I met with Tony Blair at his request. I thought it was

Theo Hobson

Corbyn’s views on religion contribute to his lack of popular appeal

This election was won two days before it was announced, on Easter Sunday. Theresa May put out an Easter message in which she suggested that British values had a Christian basis. It was her version of David Cameron’s message two years before, in which he said that Britain is a Christian country. She was rather more convincing. I don’t know whether Cameron is sincerely religious, but he didn’t seem it. He didn’t even seem to try very hard to seem it, as if fearing that his metropolitan support might weaken, and perhaps that George Osborne would make a snarky jibe about it at cabinet. But it still did him good

Saturday

29 Apr 2017

Isabel Hardman

Jeremy Corbyn’s personal speech shows that there are two Labour campaigns underway

Jeremy Corbyn has given a speech today contrasting his more collegiate approach to leadership with that of the ‘bunker mentality’, as he describes it, of Theresa May’s leadership: ‘Barely nine months into Theresa May’s premiership, there are clear warning signs that she and her closest advisers are slipping into that presidential bunker mentality.Whereas it is the job of leadership to hold open the space for dissent, new thinking and fit-for-purpose policy. So while it might not be the stuff of soundbites, I have always believed in standing firm and empowering others to make up their minds and come on board when they are ready.’ The Labour leader’s aides believe that

David Goodhart

Is the Front National the acceptable face of populism?

Is the Front National the acceptable or the unacceptable face of populism? It was one of the few points of contention in an absorbing 90 minutes of discussion about the meaning of the French presidential election, expertly conducted by Andrew Neil. The day before Wednesday’s Spectator debate I had heard the celebrated French intellectual, Bernard Henri-Levy, regretting the fraying of the ‘Republican front’ against the ‘fascist’ Front National. On Wednesday night at The Spectator event, Dominique Moisi used the same term. Fascist? Could more than a third of French voters be about to vote for a fascist party? At least one man in the audience who, daringly, confessed to being

Jonathan Miller

The more voters see of Emmanuel Macron, the less they like

On Wednesday night, the two finalists in the French presidential election will meet for a head to head television debate, which will be watched by almost everyone in France. A choice between plague and cholera. This is going to be a dangerous encounter for Emmanuel Macron, and a moment of opportunity for Marine Le Pen. Her supporters are suddenly imagining they could win and have announced a deal to appoint the veteran sovereignist Nicolas Dupont-Aignan as prime minister, if she does. This remains outside of any scenario I can imagine but even as Macron leads, his legitimacy is in doubt and the more voters see, the less they like. Macron’s

James Forsyth

Why some Tories aren’t thrilled about the prospect of a May landslide

If the polls are anywhere near right, then Theresa May will be queen of all she surveys on June the 9th. As I say in The Sun today, not since Margaret Thatcher in her pomp will a Prime Minister have been so dominant over her Cabinet. She’ll have her own, sizable majority, her own mandate and the right to implement the policies in her manifesto. This prospect, though, isn’t thrilling everyone in the Tory party. Some ministers worry about the fact that May will have such a free hand, and the direction she might take the government in. Concern has been heightened by the fact that the manifesto is being

Martin Vander Weyer

Capping prices to win votes is no substitute for a serious energy strategy | 29 April 2017

Is capping domestic energy prices an equitable way to help the ‘just about managing’, or an electoral gimmick with a whiff of anti-free-market ideology? When it was Ed Miliband’s idea, it was certainly the latter. Now it’s likely to be included in Theresa May’s manifesto, offering a potential £100 saving for millions of homes on ‘standard variable tariffs’, it is defended by the ever-plausible Sir Michael Fallon as a matter of ‘intervening to make markets work better’. And that, after all, is what the Prime Minister said she would do, wherever necessary, in the interests of fairness. In a regulated market, within which the consumer’s ability to choose the most

Charles Moore

Would Le Pen or Macron be better for Brexit?

With Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen through to the final in France, people of a conservative disposition might feel themselves spoilt for choice. You can have either the believer in free markets and open societies or the upholder of sovereignty and national identity. In both cases, the left doesn’t get a look-in. But what if it isn’t like that at all? What if Macron, far from opposing the big state, is just a more technocratic version of the usual dirigiste from ENA? What if Le Pen, far from wanting a nation’s genius expressed in its vigorous parliamentary democracy, is just a spokesman for joyless resentment, looking for handouts for

William Cash

Why the Midlands will matter on June 8th

It is no coincidence that Theresa May chose to hit the campaign trail in Wolverhampton and Dudley last weekend; both are areas where Ukip did especially well in 2015. What is emerging is that the West Midlands – particularly the Labour-held Midlands marginals – will be the key battleground in this coming election. From the creation of the Mercian kingdom by Alfred the Great, to the Battle of Bosworth and Germany’s bombing of Coventry in 1940 – not to mention the 2015 election which led to Brexit – the Midlands has provided the backdrop against which the future of our country has been shaped. The election on 8 June will be no

Friday

28 Apr 2017

James Kirkup

Britain needs Blairite optimism – but it won’t come from Tony Blair

We all have different ways of realising we’re not as young as we were. I still remember the first time England named a cricket captain younger than me: Andrew Strauss (a man I still believe will one day serve as a Conservative parliamentarian incidentally). Passing that milestone didn’t bother me much, but the relative youth of politicians is a bit harder to take. Put it this way: I’m 41 and the best I’ve managed to achieve professionally is to end up running a centrist think-tank. Emmanuel Macron, on course to run France as a centrist president, is 39. Macron gets called a lot of things, but many in Britain

Steerpike

Watch: Ukip deputy leader Peter Whittle chased by protesters at chaotic campaign launch

Poor old Paul Nuttall. Today was supposed to be a fresh start for Ukip as the party launched its election campaign event in the run-up to June 8. Instead, it’s descended into chaos. A group of protesters from ‘Stand up to racism’ have gatecrashed the launch event, waving banners and shouting and screaming moments before Nuttall was due to take to the his feet. The demonstrators were booted out of the room in which the event was taking place. But they refused to leave the building: meaning that a group of journalists were left trapped outside. The show has gone on anyway, with Nuttall doing his best to spell out the

Steerpike

Watch: Giles Fraser’s awkward Corbyn interview

Oh dear. With few MPs in the Labour party keen to take to the airwaves and wax lyrical about the pros of their leader as PM, Jeremy Corbyn must have thought he’d got lucky when Giles Fraser appeared on BBC’s This Week to do exactly this. In an interview with Andrew Neil, the Church of England priest tried to explain why only Corbyn could offer real change. “I think he is the person that can do it…there is not anybody quite like Jeremy Corbyn, I don’t think” @giles_fraser tells @afneil #bbctw pic.twitter.com/6WYtOCPytd — BBC This Week (@bbcthisweek) April 27, 2017 AN: Where has Mr Corbyn’s brand of socialism worked? GF: Err… well

Katy Balls

The SNP have lost momentum on independence – and Nicola Sturgeon knows it

The result of the general election in England might be regarded as inevitable, with even Labour MPs telling constituents it’s safe to vote for them because Jeremy Corbyn is not going to become prime minister. But in Scotland, there’s a fierce contest going on between the SNP and the Tories, and this is where the focus of the election might move in the coming days. With a YouGov survey today reporting a surge in support for the Conservatives in Scotland, there was cause for cautious celebration at CCHQ. The poll says that the Tories are on course to gain seven seats in Scotland, including the constituency currently held by Angus