Politics Archives

Friday

8 Apr 2016

David Cameron is guilty of bad spin – and nothing more

At last! We can now see why David Cameron tried to keep this quiet. He sold his shares in January 2010 – just as the recovery was starting. What a dunce! His £31,500 would be worth a lot more by now if he’d held, and diversified his portfolio. So can you trust him with the nation’s finances? And this, as far as I can make out, is the limit of the scandal. All else is spin and smear. The spin, of course, matters. The Prime Minister has behaved as if he had something to hide when he didn’t. His carefully-worded highly-specific non-denial denials (‘In terms of my own financial affairs,

Isabel Hardman

The government has returned to a period of omnishambles

You can tell a lot about how a party’s press operation thinks things are going from who it sends out to do its dirty work on the airwaves. Yesterday the Conservatives sent Michael Fallon out to defend the Government’s £9m pro-EU leaflet, which suggested that they knew it was going to be controversial and would need defending by someone skilled at sticking to the line, even when the line is totally untenable and difficult to defend. Today, Nick Boles popped up on Radio 4 to defend David Cameron’s eventual admission that he had indeed made money from the offshore fund set up by his father. The Skills Minister had been

Steerpike

Irvine Welsh has a taxing time on Question Time

Last night’s Question Time saw David Dimbleby joined by Anna Soubry, Chris Bryant, Douglas Carswell, economist Ruth Lea and Irvine Welsh. As Soubry, Bryant and Carswell all bickered about the government’s use of £9m of taxpayers’ money for EU leaflets, Welsh — who lives in Chicago — said that even if he had a vote, he probably wouldn’t use it. While the Trainspotting author leans towards Brexit, he says the choice is a ‘spurious’ one as either way the economic system will not work to the advantage of the masses: ‘It’s a spurious choice, life goes on very much in the same way and we’ve seen how the world economy operates. How the global

Tom Goodenough

‘Cameron comes clean’: Newspapers savage PM after offshore tax confession

This morning’s newspapers were never going to make enjoyable reading for the Prime Minister following his admission yesterday that he owned shares in an offshore trust. But David Cameron may still not have been quite prepared for the focus with which the headlines go after him. He has experienced bad newspaper headlines before, of course, but this is the first time the attacks have focused so specifically on him, rather than on a policy introduced by the Government. It’s hard to feel sorry for Cameron, though. By dragging the story out with statements that raised more questions than they answered, he only has himself to blame for whipping this up into

Thursday

7 Apr 2016

Virginia Ironside

Diary – 7 April 2016

It’s clear that Vladimir Putin has had a facelift, which might explain why Wendi Deng would take an interest in him. But a friend who met him was surprised enough to ask his translator why it was so obvious. ‘Surely he has enough money to get a better one done?’ he said. ‘Oh yes,’ she replied. ‘But here in Russia, a facelift is a status symbol so everyone has to be aware that it’s been done.’ I wonder if the reason American women continue to go for the wind-tunnel effect favoured by Joan Rivers isn’t based on the same social pressure. Wealth and power have their own looks. After nearly 50

Pawel Swidlicki

The Dutch EU-Ukraine vote raises some tricky questions for team Brexit

Yesterday’s rejection of the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement by Dutch voters was loudly cheered by Leave campaigners. It will certainly have boosted their morale. It will also have increased the sense that the continent is in chaos and that the EU is becoming less credible. Ultimately, the result is rooted in the EU’s longstanding failure to address its many internal problems, above all its lack of accountability and weak democratic legitimacy. Since the referendum mechanism did not allow for a vote on EU membership itself, Dutch campaigners used the EU-Ukraine deal to express their displeasure with the EU project. However, I doubt it will have significant implications for the UK referendum. From a Dutch perspective, the vote

Isabel Hardman

David Cameron defends £9m spend on EU leaflets

David Cameron has defended the £9m government leaflet promoting the EU as ‘money well spent’ and ‘necessary’, as the Tory party erupts into fury once again. What’s interesting about this new row – over a leaflet sent to all homes which sets out ‘why the Government believes that voting to remain in the European Union is the best decision for the UK’ – is that it has incensed not just those usual suspects who are annoyed that the Remain side already has a natural advantage in the referendum campaign in that it can wheel out the Prime Minister for guaranteed media attention whenever it likes. MPs who are on the

Steerpike

David Cameron claims he watches Glastonbury at home by a warm fire… in June

Today David Cameron is trying to win the youth vote in the upcoming EU referendum. To do this, he has given a speech to students at Exeter University — claiming that young people will be be hit hardest in the event of Brexit. Taking questions from the audience after his speech, one student pointed out that it may be difficult for many youngsters to vote given that the referendum clashes with Glastonbury. Answering the question, Cameron attempted to get the crowd on side by confessing that he too loves the music festival. However, rather than attend the lively festivities, he makes sure he watches it ‘at home in front of a warm fire’. However,

Steerpike

Labour secures the full fruits of Clause IV

During the Labour leadership election, Jeremy Corbyn found himself in hot water after he appeared to claim in an interview with the Independent on Sunday that he wanted to reinstate clause IV of the Labour party constitution. The clause — which Tony Blair scrapped — commits the party to nationalising industry: ‘To secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange, and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service.’ Corbyn’s apparent desire

Steerpike

Boris Johnson blasts government’s £9m EU leaflets: ‘it’s a complete waste of money’

The news today that the government are to spend over £9m of taxpayers’ money on leaflets for the pro-EU campaign has gone down like a lead balloon in the Brexit camp. In an interview with ITV News, Boris Johnson has blasted the leaflets as ‘a complete waste of money’: ‘I think it’s a complete waste of money. It’s crazy to use quite so much taxpayers’ money on stuff that is basically intended to scare people and to stampede people in one direction.’ .@BorisJohnson: Government is 'crazy' to spend £9.3m 'scaring people' with pro-EU campaign https://t.co/5XSonrxEZnhttps://t.co/0g2uYLLM8J — ITV News (@itvnews) April 6, 2016 Another nail in the coffin when it comes to Johnson’s

Steerpike

Green Party MEP accuses BBC of bias over party broadcast

These days the BBC can’t seem to get anything right. On top of regularly riling Brexit-ers with ‘EU bias’, the corporation has been accused by some — including former BBC pol ed Nick Robinson — of showing anti-Corbyn bias. Now they can add a new one to their list; anti-Green Party bias. Yes, Green Party MEP Molly Scott Cato has made the peculiar claim after the BBC failed to publish an article on her party’s new video broadcast: The video features young children pretending to be today’s politicians — arguing that while other parties are childish, the Green Party are not. As amusing as the video may be, Cato appears to barking up the

Isabel Hardman

Do the Tories want to lose London?

The Labour plotters who dream of ousting Jeremy Corbyn had high hopes for the local elections on 5 May. They envisaged a moment of humiliation for their leader in Scotland, Wales and England; a moment that would prove beyond doubt that the party’s leftwards lurch had narrowed its appeal and consigned it to the electoral wilderness. A good time, in other words, to stage a coup. Corbyn’s loyalists, for their part, had been preparing to blame the rebels and their constant sniping. Neither side imagined what now looks likely: that Labour might soon be celebrating a stunning victory in London. The party is expecting a sharp decline in its total

Henry Jeffreys

Downtown Los Angeles

There’s a certain kind of Englishman who falls hard for Los Angeles. Men such as Graham Nash, who swapped the Hollies and rainy Manchester for Joni Mitchell, David Crosby and Laurel Canyon. The LA of beaches, semi-rural hills and freeways can work wonders on an English heart. But the city has another side — a place most Angelenos never venture. Downtown. The old heart of the city is a vision of how LA might have turned out. It has skyscrapers, art deco buildings and even an underground railway. It feels like Chicago, except that even on a Saturday afternoon, many streets are deserted. Some of those gorgeous pre-war buildings are

Daniel Hannan

Bought off by Brussels

A letter appeared in the Independent a few weeks ago signed by various environmentalist grandees — heads of green lobby groups, former chairmen of eco-quangos and the like. It warned against Brexit on the grounds that EU laws had ‘a hugely positive effect’ on the environment. It didn’t explain why a post-EU Britain wouldn’t retain, replicate or even improve these ‘hugely positive’ laws. As usual, it implied that voters needed to have such things dictated to them. The really interesting thing, though, was the list of bodies that followed the signatories’ names: Natural England, the Green Alliance, the RSPB, the Natural Environment Research Council, a couple of universities — you

Martin Vander Weyer

Credit where it’s due to Tata, our greatest inward investor

If asked to pick the UK’s inward investor of the century so far I would, without hesitation, name Ratan Tata, the anglophile former patriarch of the eponymous Indian conglomerate that bought Tetley the tea-maker for £271 million in 2000, Corus the Anglo-Dutch steel-maker for £6.2 billion in 2007, and Jaguar Land Rover — from Ford — for £1.3 billion in 2008. We’ve heard a lot lately about Mr Tata’s hubristic folly in buying Corus in the first place; and about his boardroom successors in Mumbai ‘going through the motions’ of finding a buyer for Corus UK —with its Port Talbot blast furnaces symbolising what’s left of our shrunken industrial heritage

Wednesday

6 Apr 2016

Isabel Hardman

The Tories should have known the taxing questions were coming

Downing Street has spent the past 24 hours trying to clarify David Cameron’s links to an offshore fund set up by his late father, which never paid tax in Britain. Initially, Downing Street said this was a ‘private matter’, Cameron was then asked about the matter, and said ‘I own no shares, no offshore trusts, no offshore funds, nothing like that. And, so that, I think, is a very clear description.’ Then Downing Street issued a statement saying ‘to be clear, the Prime Minister, his wife and their children do not benefit from any offshore funds’. And today Number 10 had to clarify further: ‘There are no offshore funds/trusts which

Toby Young

Will the Guardian now investigate its own tax arrangements?

Something odd happened at the Guardian on Monday as the paper’s editorial staff were basking in the glow of their just-published splash about the Panama papers. They were understandably excited, having sat on the revelations for months, and were about to put flesh on the bones of the stories that had broken on Sunday evening about the elaborate tax-avoidance schemes of assorted Tory bigwigs. The Guardian was one of 107 media organisations that had been secretly going through the cache of 11.5 million documents stolen from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca last August and these were the golden nuggets: disclosures guaranteed to cause the government maximum embarrassment and —

Tuesday

5 Apr 2016

Steerpike

Watch: Zac Goldsmith’s awkward TfL interview – ‘I’m going to stop you there’

Oh dear. With Sadiq Khan leading the polls ahead of the upcoming London mayoral election, Zac Goldsmith has his work cut out when it comes to convincing swing voters to vote blue. As part of this, the Old Etonian needs to show that he has a firm understanding of Londoners’ needs. Alas, his efforts hit a bump in the road today thanks to an awkward BBC interview. The Conservative mayoral candidate was quizzed by Norman Smith in the back of a cab for the Victoria Derbyshire show. Goldsmith was quick to make the point that he — like the majority of Londoners — regularly uses the tube. However, when Smith proceeded to quiz

Isabel Hardman

Jeremy Corbyn is the John Terry of British politics

Jeremy Corbyn has launched Labour’s local election campaign today with the promise that his party will stand up to the government, and the claim that it is being effective in doing so. He said: ‘Now, being in Opposition is never easy, I think we all know that. But Labour in Westminster has proved you can still have influence and you can still make a difference. it was by speaking out and standing up with people with disabilities that we shamed the government into abandoning their disgraceful cuts to personal independence payments. ‘But we’re not done yet. We will continue the campaign to stop the cuts to disabled people’s ESA that

Martin Vander Weyer

In defence of George Osborne’s ‘left-wing’ Living Wage

It was unfashionable of me to write in praise of George Osborne on Budget day. I did so, you may recall, because ‘at least we have a finance minister who’s always on the front foot’: I wanted to make a contrast between our Chancellor’s relentless activism in pursuit of his political goals, and the supine performance of eurozone leaders — who continue failing to offer any strokes at all while hoping for Mario Draghi to knock up a few runs with monetary trick-shots from the other end. Within 48 hours, however, our Chancellor seemed to be very much on the back foot, one hand clutching his protective box, as bouncers