Politics

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

Sunday

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Students should remember freedom of speech is a terribly precious thing

Freedom of speech is a terribly precious thing, which we should all cherish. So let’s not waste it on people with whom we disagree. That seems to be the considered view of those assorted, privileged genii at Oxford University, whose student’s union banned from its Freshers Week a satirical magazine which it feared might cause offence. The magazine is called No Offence and is produced by students. Some incalculably humourless, self-righteous little berk, said: ‘We at OUSU do not wish to have an event which is intended to welcome new students to Oxford associated with a publication making light of racism, sexual violence, and homophobia in an attempt at satire’.

Steerpike Steerpike

Raheem Kassam is more influential than ever (according to website he edits)

Earlier this year Raheem Kassam stood down as Nigel Farage’s senior aide after he became involved in a dispute within Ukip over his influence on the party leader following a lacklustre election result. Since then, Kassam has returned to the job he had before he joined Ukip, editing the website Breitbart London. So Mr S was surprised to learn that despite losing his job in politics, Kassam has not lost any political sway. In fact according to Iain Dale’s new list of the ‘Top 100 most influential people on the right’ he is more influential than ever, climbing up 14 places from No.96 last year to No.82 this year: Such is Kassam’s power as a blogger

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

David Cameron: Tories won’t alter tax credit cuts

One of the rows that the Tories are starting their conference with is over tax credits. A growing number of MPs, including Boris Johnson, have expressed concern about the changes, which lower the threshold for withdrawing tax credits from £6,420 to £3,850 and speed up the rate of withdrawal as pay rises. But today on the Andrew Marr Show, David Cameron made clear that there wouldn’t be a review of these cuts. He was asked if George Osborne might change the plans in the Autumn Statement: ‘No. We think the changes we put forward are right and they come with higher pay and lower taxes.’ They do come with higher

Sebastian Payne

Conservative conference 2015: Sunday fringe guide

The Tories’ annual conference kicks off in Manchester (aka the Northern Powerhouse) today and it’s going to be a busy one. As well as the usual speeches from most of the Cabinet, the Mayor of London, the Chancellor and the Prime Minister, there is a fringe programme packed out with rebellious MPs, wannabe leaders and enthusiastic backbenchers looking to make their views heard. As ever, we’ll be providing you with our pick of the fringe events each day, so you can ignore the guide and head to the most interesting events. Let me know in the comments if we’ve missed anything out — or message me at @SebastianEPayne on Twitter. Title Key speaker(s) Time Location Is the state

Saturday

The Spectator

In memory of Denis Healey, saviour of the British economy

Denis Healey, who has died at the age of 98, never led the Labour Party – but it still owes as much to him as to any post-war politician. And not just because of his time at the Treasury. The statements released by Labour figures tonight scarcely do him justice. Of course, he was a “towering figure” – but he was much more than that. He saved the Labour Party from itself, and saved Britain from the worst of the Labour Party. And when the crunch came, he rose to the challenge: bringing expenditure reform more radical than any Tory Chancellor has been able to enact. As secretary of Labour’s International Committee, Maj. Healey was the expert who fashioned the arguments that kept

Friday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Two issues will dominate Tory conference: who’ll succeed David Cameron and the EU referendum

As the Tory tribe prepares to gather in Manchester, the chatter is about two things: who will succeed David Cameron and what will happen in the EU referendum. These two issues are, obviously, inextricably linked. If Britain votes Out in the EU referendum, a prospect which while still unlikely has become more likely in recent weeks, Cameron is unlikely to be succeeded by someone who campaigned for In—as Fraser points out in the Telegraph today. But, so far, none of the expected leadership candidates have indicated that they will campaign for Out. George Osborne is one of the lead figures in the renegotiation and has always been clear that he

Steerpike Steerpike

George Galloway: Sadiq Khan is a very boring man

With Zac Goldsmith today announced as the Conservative candidate for the 2015 London mayoral race, the Tory MP will now face Sadiq Khan in the race to succeed Boris Johnson as mayor. However, one man who feels he should not be forgotten as a contender is George Galloway. Galloway — who is running as an independent candidate for mayor — thinks that there is a gap in the market for him in the race, as Labour’s Sadiq Khan is just not up to it. Speaking on the Daily Politics, Galloway said that while he was disappointed that Tessa Jowell is not Labour’s candidate – given that she differs from him more politically than Khan – Khan is still no real

Sebastian Payne

Zac Goldsmith is the Tory candidate for London Mayor. But is he too posh to push?

As expected, Zac Goldsmith has won the Conservative nomination for next year’s Mayor of London race with a sweeping 71 per cent of the vote – but on a distressingly small turnout. Anyone in London could vote by paying £1, so there had been hopes of a high turnout – figures of 60,000 were mentioned. But a pitiful 9,227 turned out to vote, from a city of ten million. Given the excitement caused by Labour’s leadership race, this is hugely disappointing for the Tories — and bodes ill for the race now in prospect. If the turnout was bad for Zac, it was worse for everyone else. Syed Kamall, an MEP for London, was second with

Sebastian Payne

Jeremy Corbyn: the most unpopular new opposition leader in the history of polling

Labour’s conference in Brighton might not have been the disaster some expected but it hasn’t done much for Jeremy Corbyn’s standing with the public. A new YouGov/Sun poll shows the Labour leader’s personal rating is minus eight — the lowest since polls of new opposition leaders began with Hugh Gaitskell in 1955. As the chart below shows, Corbyn is eight points lower than Michael Foot in 1980 and Iain Duncan Smith in 2001. This rating also puts him 34 points behind Ed Miliband in 2010. This poll follows a trend: Ipsos MORI’s first tracker for Corbyn put him on minus three in their net satisfaction ratings — five points behind

Steerpike Steerpike

Charlotte Church feels the heat on Question Time

Last night’s episode of Question Time saw David Dimbleby relocate to Cardiff to join Charlotte Church, Charles Moore, Stephen Crabb, Labour’s Stephen Kinnock and Plaid Cymru’s Leanne Wood for a Welsh debate. While questions were raised about the future of Plaid Cymru after a lacklustre election result, the first topic on the agenda touched on whether Jeremy Corbyn could still be Prime Minister now he has said that he would never, ever use a nuclear weapon. With Kinnock struggling to defend Corbyn’s comments while also sticking to his own views supporting nuclear weapons as a deterrent, it fell to Corbynista Church to praise the Labour leader’s comments as ‘commendable’: ‘I think that it’s commendable. I think that if nuclear warfare

Thursday

Peter Jones

Cicero on Labour taxes

Heidi Alexander, Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow health secretary, has emphasised how important it is ‘to weave into [Labour’s] language, our narrative and our political mission a fundamental respect for taxpayers’ money, something that is clearly missing given our current reputation for profligacy’. Cicero would be cheering her on. Cicero’s de officiis (‘On Duties’) was composed in 44 bc, the year in which he was assassinated on Marc Antony’s orders. The work, the second to be printed in the Gutenberg revolution after the Bible, was immensely influential during the Renaissance and Enlightenment. In it, he envisaged a community bound by partnership (societas) and trust, whose leaders obeyed the law and had the

Piers Morgan

Diary – 1 October 2015

Party conference season is the most pointless waste of money, time and liver quality ever devised. I attended these sweaty, drunken gatherings for ten years during my newspaper-editor days and achieved nothing constructive other than clarity over which is the best way to treat a monstrous hangover. (Answer: my late grandmother’s recipe of vine tomatoes on toast, laden with thick Marmite and gargantuan grinds from a pepper mill.) But they were fun, so long as I adhered to the golden rule: always leave the bar before 2 a.m., thus avoiding the moment when enough alcohol emboldens other delegates, and indeed one’s own staff, to tell you what they really think

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s notes | 1 October 2015

Contrary to the sneers of what he calls the commentariat, Jeremy Corbyn has already acquired brilliant spin doctors. In advance, the media was full of how his party conference speech would be all about his patriotism. Actually, this was barely mentioned. This technique of spinning the speech beforehand is pure Mandelson/Campbell. The emphasis on ‘free debate’ is also spin. In fact, the subtext of the speech was what communists call ‘the leading role of the party’ — control by activists. It was cunningly done, apparently sweet, actually tough. Mr Corbyn also followed the proud tradition of the Bush family. He accidentally read out the instruction, ‘Strong message here.’ President Bush

Steerpike Steerpike

Coffee Shots: Jeremy Corbyn finds his fizz

In Jeremy Corbyn’s conference speech, the Labour leader claimed that it was time young people found their fizz. ‘Young people and older people are fizzing with ideas. Let’s give them the space for that fizz to explode into the joy,’ he said optimistically. So Mr S is glad to say that Corbyn looks like he may have found his own fizz. On his trip to Scotland today, the Labour leader was gifted a bottle of Irn Bru by Kezia Dugdale, the leader of Scottish Labour. The gift of the drink which is popular in Scotland came after Corbyn declined the offer of a can of the drink from a Buzzfeed journalist this morning. Judging

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Will Nicky Morgan be the next Prime Minister?

When David Cameron announced that he wouldn’t serve a third term, he made it inevitable that Westminster would spend much of his second term wondering about who would succeed him. Well, in the new Spectator, Nicky Morgan becomes the first Cabinet Minister to make clear that she is interested in standing when Cameron steps down. She says that ‘A lot of it will depend on family’ but makes clear that she believes there needs to be a female candidate in the race and hopes ‘that, in the not too distant future, there will be another female leader of a main Westminster political party’. What I was most struck about when

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Sleaze, cronyism and the SNP: the New Politics is charmingly familiar

The great thing about the ‘new politics’ – or at least the new politics we have lately been privileged to endure here in Scotland – is that it’s just as fetid and grubby as the old politics it replaced. The band may change but the music remains the same. Consider the twin controversies swirling around the SNP. Neither, on its own, is enough to torpedo Nicola Sturgeon but, combined, they represent the largest challenge to her authority the First Minister has yet encountered. First there is the curious case of Michelle Thompson, the MP for Edinburgh West. Mrs Thomson was previously managing director of the ‘Business for Scotland’ group arguing for

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Owen Paterson interview: My plan to find the next Tory leader

One evening early in this autumn term in Parliament, Tory MPs crowded excitedly into a parliamentary office for drinks and nibbles. It wasn’t a particularly unusual event: there were many more people than could fit in the room, though MPs surged in and out like the tide as the division bell rang. But in between votes, the host gave a speech that marked this out from all the other drinks events that MPs throw for one another. That host was Owen Paterson, and he told the room, which was made up mainly of right-leaning eurosceptic Conservatives, that he would be writing a set of policy papers for a future leadership

Steerpike Steerpike

Don’t kill yourself over Jeremy Corbyn – yet, Austin Mitchell tells Labour members

After Jeremy Corbyn opted to use a speech which dated back to the eighties at this year’s Labour conference, commentariats and party members alike were quick to question whether the left-wing messiah was really offering the ‘straight talking’ politics he promised. Happily Austin Mitchell, the outspoken former Labour MP, has come to Corbyn’s defence. Writing on his personal blog, Mitchell says — with trademark tact — that party members should not ‘commit suicide or take a pick axe to Corbyn’s head’ when it comes to the state of the party. Instead, he says that rather than any leadership issues, the problem lies with the pesky media: ‘Labour Party members wondering if they should commit suicide now

Sebastian Payne

What Nigel Lawson’s new role at Conservatives for Britain means for Eurosceptics

Eurosceptic Tories have a new voice to herald their cause: Nigel Lawson. The former Chancellor and Spectator editor announced in an op-ed he is becoming the president of Conservatives for Britain, a group working with the Matthew Elliott-Dominic Cummings Out campaign. Lawson explains his explains his red lines for Britain remaining in the EU and suggests the government is unlikely to achieve them: ‘I am not party to the negotiations between ministers and the EU but it is clear that now is the time for David Cameron and George Osborne to set out some red lines. My priorities would be fourfold: the end of the automatic supremacy of EU law over UK law; the ability for

Rachel Cunliffe

Uber is useful, convenient and safe. How can TfL justify cracking down on it?

Oh, Transport for London. How could you? That was my reaction when I read the plans to crackdown on Uber in the capital. And it seems over 80,000 people agree with me, judging by a petition that was launched on Tuesday. For a city which is meant to be the centre of global commerce, with Boris Johnson who supposedly loves markets as its mayor, London really isn’t doing too well. First the night tube service, which was meant to start on the 11th of September, got delayed thanks to pressure from the unions, and now Transport for London (TFL) is protecting taxi drivers from innovation and competition. Lest anyone think this is actually about public