Politics

There will have been gales of laughter in Downing Street and the In campaign this morning as they read Sam Coates’s account of the attempted coup in the No campaign. This Eurosceptic infighting is a huge gift to David Cameron for three reasons. 1). It will deter serious people from politics and business getting involved with the NO campaign. Few will want to sign up with a campaign that is already riven by infighting. Ministers and Tory MPs who were on the fence about what to do come the referendum, will be that much closer to sticking with the Prime Minister this morning. 2). Campaigns that win aren’t arguing about internal

David Cameron wants to get the European Union referendum over with quickly — and understandably so. Things are still going well for him, and his political opposition is in disarray. The ‘in’ campaign will draw heavily upon his personal authority and the public is not (yet) fed up with him. Ideally, he wants to start campaigning next month — and many of his allies are at it already. Opinion polls show a large number of undecided voters. So this may very well be a campaign where a great many are open to persuasion and hoping for a high-quality debate. They will have been disappointed so far. The ‘in’ campaign has

While Hilary Benn has been called a lot of names in recent months by hard-left activists after he voted in favour of airstrikes in Syria, Mr S suspects that the moniker given to him on tonight’s episode of Newsnight will be a first. Introducing an interview with Benn on the war in Yemen, Newsnight‘s Evan Davis appeared to be feeling creative with regards to the shadow foreign secretary’s name — referring to him as ‘Hilary Big Benn’: ‘And a little earlier I spoke to the shadow foreign secretary Hilary Big Benn and I began by asking him what he wants the British government to do now in light of the criticisms in the report.’ Mr S

Today’s PMQs was an opportunity for Jeremy Corbyn to embarrass the government and align himself with public anger over how little tax some multinationals pay. But he missed this opportunity. By going on HMRC’s deal with Google in isolation, he allowed Cameron to point the finger of blame at the last Labour government. Indeed, Cameron even dragged Corbyn into defending the record of the Blair and Brown governments on corporate taxation. A far more effective tactic would have been to contrast the British deal with the French and Italian ones. Why have these governments managed to get more tax out of Google than our own? Another problem with Corbyn at

Like an old friend you do not actually like very much, the Scottish government’s Offensive Behaviour at Football Act will not go away. It is five years since this offensive piece of legislation was passed and time has done nothing to lessen either its absurdity or its offensiveness. To recap for readers who, for doubtless honourable reasons, have not kept up with one of the more extraordinary speech-curbing measures passed by any UK legislature in recent years, the bill’s premise is that creating new kinds of thought and speech crime can eliminate thoughts and speech deemed offensive. (Some past reflections on this execrable bill can be found here, here and here.)

It’s fair to say that David Cameron’s answer to John Baron at last week’s Prime Minister’s Questions, in which the Tory leader basically confirmed to his backbench colleague that he was ignoring him, hasn’t exactly helped relations with the eurosceptics in the Tory party. The row was splashed across the front page of the Sunday Telegraph this weekend, and I now understand that Baron has secured a Commons debate that will take up the issue he has been trying to raise with the Prime Minister. Baron’s debate will be in a backbench business session on 4 February, and has a rather spiky motion for discussion: ‘That this House believes in the