Politics Archives

Monday

24 Apr 2017

Nick Boles

Why Matthew Parris is wrong about a Tory lurch to the right

Exaggeration is the political pundits’ stock in trade: nobody built a loyal readership on equivocation. But Matthew Parris’ recent commentary about the Conservative Party’s direction under Theresa May borders on the hysterical. A few weeks ago he used his Times column to hyperventilate about a Conservative Party ‘paralysed in the headlights of a dangerous surge of reckless populism and in thrall to its own right wing’. Last Saturday, he returned to the theme and wrote of a ‘deep, deep shift under way in our party…leaving anyone once attracted to the strong strand of tolerance and moderation we found powerful in the Conservative tradition feeling cowed, discouraged’. You would have thought

James Forsyth

Can Labour become a truly national party again?

The latest polling marmalade dropper comes from Wales. Labour have won a majority of Welsh seats in every general election for the past eighty-odd years. But the latest Welsh Political Barometer, the most respected poll there, has the Tories on 40 per cent and on course to win 21 seats to Labour’s 15. This poll combined with the fact that Labour is now down to one MP in Scotland shows how difficult it will be for the party to win a UK-wide majority again. They will have to do it without the inbuilt advantage that their Celtic strength used to provide them with. If May can succeed in realigning British

Brendan O’Neill

Tony Blair is the messianic Remainer here to save us from ourselves

Here they come, Tony Blair and his tragic chattering-class army. The former PM, whose rictus grin and glottal stops still haunt the nation’s dreams (well, mine anyway), is on the march with his pleb-allergic mates in business and the media. Blair and the Twitterati, linking arms, united in their horror at the incalculable stupidity of northerners and Welsh people and Essex men and women and other Brexiteers, their aim as clear as it is foul. They’re here to save us from ourselves. ‘Tony Blair is trying to save Britain from itself’, as one report put it. Excuse me while I pop an anti-nausea pill. Yes, Blair, the political version of

Katy Balls

Ukip’s focus on the burqa shows the party has little left to offer on Brexit

The launch of Ukip’s new ‘integration agenda’ today was notable for two reasons. Firstly, Paul Nuttall refused to say whether he would seek a parliamentary seat in the snap election — eventually barricading himself in a locked room away from pesky hacks. The second thing to note was Ukip’s focus on the burqa. Overall, the new agenda had a distinctly anti-Islam focus. Nuttall — along with deputy leader Peter Whittle — said a Ukip government would pass a law against the wearing of face coverings in public places, enforce an immediate closure of schools where there is evidence of Islamist ideology being taught, and bring in annual school-based medical checks on girls at risk of suffering

Mathieu Vaillancourt

Meet France’s answer to Nigel Farage

The success of Emmanuel Macron’s ‘En Marche’, a party which is barely a year old, has taken some by surprise. But Macron wasn’t the only alternative party candidate to do well in the first round of voting in the French Presidential elections. Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, or NDA as the French call him, is the leader of Debout La France – probably the closest thing in French politics to Ukip. The mayor of Yeres, a commune which sits in the suburbs of Paris, is firmly eurosceptic and anti-euro. For some, he is France’s answer to Nigel Farage. And yesterday, he picked up 4.7 per cent of the vote – compared to 1.8 per cent in 2012. His

Steerpike

Paul Nuttall’s disappearing act

Today hacks were briefed that Ukip would use a press conference to make a big campaign announcement. This led to some chatter that Paul Nuttall, the Ukip leader, would announce whether he would be seeking a seat in the upcoming election. However, it turned out that this was actually the very last thing Nuttall wished to discuss. So much so that he spent some time locked in a room hiding from hacks: Paul Nuttall is currently locked himself in this room and is refusing to say if he will fight a seat at the election. pic.twitter.com/T439bC0Kzl — Harry Cole (@MrHarryCole) April 24, 2017 And then made a quick getaway by car: Nuttall

Helen Nugent

Hold the front page: energy providers are against plans to cap bills

I am inundated with press releases, emails and phone calls from PRs, all wanting to talk about their clients, the latest piece of ‘ground-breaking’ research or a news story so innovative that not to publish would have disastrous consequences. While some of these communications are useful and thought-provoking, a fair few are, to use the vernacular, total pants. In journalism, we have a number of phrases to describe these releases, from ‘no shit sherlock’ to ‘night follows day’. Decorum prevents me from mentioning the other, swearier, descriptions. It’s safe to say that Scottish Power’s response to Conservative plans to cap energy prices falls into the ‘night follows day’ news category. Wait,

Ross Clark

Corbyn’s bank holiday plan misunderstands modern work

Next Monday, while the village fair is raging outside, I will be inside working as on any other Monday morning. Will I be disappointed to miss out on a day of Mayday fun? Not a bit of it. There are only so many steam rallies one wants to attend, only so many seaside-bound traffic jams one can bear to join. I would far rather work through every bank holiday and take time off when I feel like it, when the roads aren’t full of bikers and there are fewer people out and about trying to force themselves to have fun. I don’t think I am entirely alone in this, which

Steerpike

Exclusive: Zac Goldsmith prepares to crawl back to the Tories in Richmond

Of all the politicians to have a bad 2016, Zac Goldsmith is high on that list. The former Conservative MP for Richmond Park managed to lose not one but two elections. First, the mayoral contest against Sadiq Khan after a tawdry campaign, and later his seat when he called a by-election after the Government approved Heathrow. Remember how principled Goldsmith had said he would quit as a Tory MP if his party approved a third runway at Heathrow? He didn’t say that he’d call a hissy-fit by-election and stand as an independent – a strategy that annoyed his constituents so much that they returned a Lib Dem. Ever since it has

Tom Goodenough

British universities must admit that there are some upsides to Brexit

Britain’s universities are finding it hard to look on the bright side of Brexit. One of their big gripes is that they feel that foreign students could be put off from coming to the UK. This fits into the narrative that Brexit is an exercise in hauling up the drawbridge. But in reality, the result of the referendum isn’t necessarily bad news for universities – especially ones that hope to attract overseas students. What’s more, Brexit might even encourage rather than put off foreign students from applying here, because the fall in the value of sterling is making the cost of a pricey British degree cheaper for them. A report published

Sunday

23 Apr 2017

Gavin Mortimer

‘A great victory for patriots!’ – the Le Pens hail their success in the French presidential election

Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen will face each other in the second round of the presidential election on Sunday May 7th after the two finished neck-and-neck in the first round of voting. With votes still to be counted, there are slight discrepancies in the final percentage, but according to a Harris Interactive exit poll in Le Figaro, Macron and Le Pen both finished on 22 per cent. An Ipsos exit poll for BFMTV had Macron on 23.7 per cent and the National Front leader on 21.7 per cent. ‘We have today clearly turned a page in the French political life!’ declared a jubilant Macron. At first, there was no

David Goodhart

Does Brexit mean England can have Englishness?

Brexit is often said to be driven by English nationalism. In recent decades England has certainly become a less shy country, made aware of itself thanks to the growth of Scottish and Welsh national consciousness and the banal fact that we now talk about the English NHS, English schools, and so on, in a way that we never used to prior to devolution. Yet on today’s English national day I saw not a single flag of St George flying on the train journey from London to Cambridge and back (travelling through Essex, supposedly one of the heartlands of English nationalism). And when I opened my Sunday papers I found no

Matthew Taylor

Sunday political interviews round-up: Labour may scrap Trident, Corbyn says

Corbyn – Labour may scrap Trident nuclear deterrent Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn occupied the prime slot on the Andrew Marr Show this morning, and he told Marr that he wants to see ‘a very different country’. But how different? He was asked what he would say to the captains of the Trident submarines about whether to use their missiles in the event of a nuclear attack on the United Kingdom. ‘What I will be saying is that I want us to achieve a nuclear free world. What I want us to do is adhere to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and take part in negotiations surrounding that, and crucially… immediately promote the

James Forsyth

Theresa May’s election gamble is paying off

Everything you need to know about the current state of the polls is summed up by the fact that one which puts the Tories at 40 per cent, a level that they haven’t hit in a general election for a quarter of a century, and 11 points clear is presented as a blow to them. Now, the reason that the Mail on Sunday has done this is because other polls have the Tories so far ahead that a mere 11 point lead looks rather anaemic. ComRes has the Tories at a jaw-dropping 50 per cent, with Labour on 25 per cent. YouGov puts the Tories on 48 per cent, and

Fraser Nelson

The strange rebirth of Scottish Conservatism

At the time of their 1997 wipeout, the Scottish Tories were at least hated. When I was reporting from the Scottish Parliament some 14 years later, things were even worse: there was curiosity, even pity, for Tory supporters. One Tory MSP told me the party should rename itself “the effing Tories” because that’s what they had become known as. Voting Conservative was no longer seen as a giant evil, more a harmless perversion – like cross-dressing (or cricket). Then Ruth Davidson came along, then Jeremy Corbyn, then the SNP with its obsession with referenda – and now, everything has changed. The above graph shows the latest voting intention in Scotland, with the Tories soaring

Andrew Marr

Theresa May has deftly but brutally carved away the tradition of Tory pro-EU politics

We are all drama queens, really, we political hacks; and so we were all thoroughly delighted by Theresa May’s Tuesday coup. I have long been arguing that we would have an election this year, and I had been beginning to feel lonely. But one big thing I got wrong: it had seemed to me in January that a Brexit election would shatter much party discipline, since the voters would be principally interested in where candidates stood on the Great Issue and both Tories and Labour were deeply divided about it. However, by framing the current contest in the way she has, May has deftly but brutally carved away the long

Saturday

22 Apr 2017

Stephen Daisley

Voting Green is about feeling morally superior to lesser mortals

In this, as in all things, Paul Keating was right. It was the former Aussie Prime Minister, a Beethoven of political invective, who called his country’s Green Party ‘a bunch of opportunists and Trots hiding behind a gum tree trying to pretend they’re the Labor Party’. Keating’s acid scherzo could apply just as readily to our own Greens, self-appointed conservationists of righteousness. Caroline Lucas, their only MP, has been at the forefront of calls for a ‘progressive alliance’ between left-wing parties. On Wednesday, she wrote to Jeremy Corbyn and Tim Farron proposing ‘some form of cooperation in a handful of seats to create the best possible chance of beating the

Jonathan Miller

France’s deplorable election has unified voters in disgust

I popped into the village pharmacy this morning with a prescription for valium. Not for me, I hasten to add, but for my epileptic dog. But I am sorely tempted to divert one or two doses for my personal use, as I prepare to help count the votes on Sunday night in the first round of the French presidential election. I do not think it is exaggerating to wonder if, on the eve of voting, the fifth republic is going to collapse with a bang or a whimper. It may not even be necessary to wait for the second round of voting in a fortnight. There is a scenario in

Katy Balls

What will be in May’s manifesto?

On Tuesday, Theresa May stood outside Downing Street and said that she was calling an early election so that she could get the ‘job done’ and take Britain out of the European Union. The Prime Minister claimed that without a snap vote, opposition parties would try to change Britain’s course because ‘the Government’s majority is so small’. But this doesn’t mean the Tories will stick with the 2015 Conservative manifesto. Both May and Philip Hammond have offered a glimpse of what old election promises they may bin in the 2017 manifesto. In an appearance in Maidenhead, May said that the government’s commitment to spending 0.7pc of national income on foreign

James Forsyth

Theresa May is over her first election hurdle

Theresa May is over the first hurdle of the election campaign, I say in The Sun today. There has been no public backlash to her going back on her word and opting for an early election after all. It has not done the damage to the May brand that I thought it risked. This is testament to how popular she is. In an anti-politics age, where voters are quick to think the worst of politicians, she has been allowed to change her mind. Ministers marvel at how she has got away with such a flagrant u-turn. ‘If I had tried that, I never would have heard the end of it’,