Politics

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

Monday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Liam Fox interview: Tories have to get a free vote on the EU ‘in the end’

Liam Fox started his political life under a majority Conservative government, and finally he’s back under one. He was elected in 1992 after John Major’s surprise election victory, and is enjoying the surprise of his colleagues once again after David Cameron’s surprise win last month. But the former Defence Secretary is not personally enjoying the spoils of majority government: he has not been promoted to a ministerial post, even though there are more spaces free following the exit of the Lib Dems. He was rather stung to have only been offered a lowly minister of state job in the last reshuffle, and turned it down. But while he says rather pointedly

Sebastian Payne

Will Ukip and Tory campaigners for a Brexit manage to co-exist?

Ukip continues to talk up a big role for itself in the Out campaign. As Britain’s most Eurosceptic party, it is eager to dive into a referendum it has been waiting almost a quarter of a century for, but the extent of its involvement is not clear.The kippers believe that their ground operation will be vital to the Out campaign — one Ukip source points out that all of Ukip’s 45,000-odd members are gearing up for the fight of their lifetime and it’ll be hard for Conservatives to match this. Therefore, if the Brexit campaign has any hope of success, Ukip would argue it has to play a prominent role. And

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Number 10 rows back on EU vote threat

So after a few hours of outrage in the Tory party, David Cameron’s aides have announced that he didn’t say ministers would have to support his stance during the EU referendum or leave government. Number 10 has clarified the Prime Minister’s remarks, saying they only apply to ministers’ stances during the renegotiation, not the period of campaigning leading up to the referendum. The Prime Minister’s official spokeswoman said: ‘The PM was clearly talking yesterday about the position on collective responsibility during the renegotiation, a position that the PM has set out previously, including in the House during the Queen’s Speech debate, a position that, I think, has been over-interpreted by

Ed West Ed West

A course in Dangerous Ideas would be the perfect tonic for our dull universities

There have been a number of articles recently by American liberals warning about the intolerance of academia, in particular pointing to the dangers of a generation who’ve never had their views challenged. The latest is by an academic using the pseudonym Edward Schlosser, who writes in Vox last week: Things have changed since I started teaching. The vibe is different. I wish there were a less blunt way to put this, but my students sometimes scare me — particularly the liberal ones. I once saw an adjunct not get his contract renewed after students complained that he exposed them to ‘offensive’ texts written by Edward Said and Mark Twain. His response,

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Even if he wins his EU referendum campaign, David Cameron will be the loser

I suppose David Cameron had little choice but to offer a referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union. How else could he have held his party together? Indeed, it is possible that he owes some part of his small majority to that promise. Nevertheless, it will all end badly. I think there is no plausible scenario in which it can end well for Cameron. Indeed, it is entirely possible that having begun this parliament with a majority he – or, rather, his successor – will end it leading a minority administration. The most important thing to remember is that perhaps a quarter of his backbenchers actually want the Prime

Molly Guinness

There’s nothing ‘normal’ about turning down a pay rise

The MPs grandstanding about how they’ll give any salary increase to charity should all be ashamed of themselves. The entire point of the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority is to take away self-regulation from politicians. It’s frankly none of their business to decide how much they’re paid, and the cries of protest are specious anyway given that IPSA has said the pay rise won’t cost taxpayers anything because it’s basically just a restructuring of how they’re paid. Politics has a terrible image in this country and rather than chorusing ‘we’re not worth it’, it’s about time someone mounted a robust defence of the whole system. The expenses scandal didn’t help, but

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

How David Cameron could still avoid a bitter Tory row on Europe without a free vote

David Cameron’s indication that his ministers will have to follow the position of the government on the EU referendum or leave the government has caused some consternation in his party. David Davis has just warned on the Today programme that the Prime Minister risks ‘turning a decent debate into a bitter argument’, while the newspapers write this up as a very risky move indeed. Cameron told reporters covering the G7 summit in Bavaria that ‘I’ve been very clear. If you want to be part of the government, you have to take the view that we are engaged in an exercise of renegotiation, to have a referendum and that will lead to

Sebastian Payne

Harriet Harman and Tristram Hunt knife Miliband in the front

The fear and loathing within Labour continues with the admission from Harriet Harman that its voters were relieved it didn’t win the election. The party’s interim leader is interviewed in the Independent this morning, claiming that voters were ‘not massively enthusiastic’ about voting Conservative but ‘settled for the devil they knew’: ‘Sometimes after an election, you get a sense that people think ‘Oh my God, that is terrible, what a disaster.’ A lot of people felt that because we got nearly 40,000 new party members who were very disappointed. But there is an even greater number of people, even though they were not enthusiastic about David Cameron or the Tories, who feel relieved that

Steerpike Steerpike

Sol Campbell enters Tory mayoral race: ‘I’m in it to win it’

Sol Campbell has thrown his hat into the ring to represent the Conservative Party in the 2016 London mayoral election. The official announcement comes after the former England footballer voiced his interest in the position earlier this year when he was rumoured to be lined up as a parliamentary candidate for Kensington. This means the Tories now have three candidates who have announced they will stand to be the party’s candidate for Mayor of London, with Ivan Massow Stephen Greenhalgh already having declared. While both Massow and Campbell lack a background in politics, it is expected that more candidates will announce in the coming weeks ahead of the Conservative Way Forward hustings taking place next month. Speaking

Damian Thompson Damian Thompson

Roll of shame: MPs who back homeopathy fan David Tredinnick for chair of Commons Health Committee

David Tredinnick is an Old Etonian Tory MP whom I met when he was a mature student at Oxford. He seemed a nice enough chap but we were all astonished when he was elected to Parliament. He struck us as a bear of very little brain. How unfair to bears that turned out to be. Tredinnick, who – incredibly – sits on the Commons Health Select Committee, believes that astrology works and, according to the Telegraph, that a full moon can cause internal bleeding. And, it goes without saying, he supports the cult of homeopathy, which puts lives at risk with its idiot doctrines. To quote the world-renowned scientist Lord Winston, ‘Let me

Sunday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Why so many senior Tories want Zac Goldsmith to run for mayor

Over the last few weeks, a string of senior Tories have urged Zac Goldsmith to run for Mayor of London. Goldsmith is, as I report in the Mail on Sunday, regarded by the Tory hierarchy as giving the party the best chance of keeping City Hall blue. In a contest that it will be very difficult for the Tories to win, Goldsmith scrambles the race—what other Tory would get Green second preferences? The attraction of Goldsmith is particularly strong as Nick Ferrari, as Daniel Boffey writes in the Observer, is unlikely to throw his hat in the ring. At the top of the Tory party, there is a belief that

Sebastian Payne

Liz Kendall offers tentative support for cutting benefits for EU migrants

Liz Kendall’s turn on the Andrew Marr sofa was slightly shaky and vague on details. She continued on the theme of being the ‘change everything’ candidate but failed on clarify what she would do differently to the Tories and her fellow leadership candidates. When asked by Marr if she was the candidate Yvette Cooper suggested had ‘swallowed’ the Tory manifesto, Kendall noted the level of change Labour needs: ‘The only thing I’ve swallowed is the sheer scale of the defeat that we faced at the election and the huge changes we need to win again. People didn’t trust us with their money or on the economy and we didn’t set out a positive enough vision

Charles Moore Charles Moore

Why has David Cameron appointed his chum Ed Llewellyn to the Privy Council?

After the general election, Edward Llewellyn, the Prime Minister’s chief of staff, was made a Privy Councillor. Any member of the Privy Council is addressed as ‘Right Honourable’ and these words well describe Llewellyn’s character, so there is no problem there. But why should an adviser be given this role? If you study the list (which, be warned, takes a long time), you will see that Privy Councillors are almost all MPs (or ex-MPs), peers or judges. This is because they are supposed to be, in some small way, powers in the land, people in their own right, rather than servants of the powerful. There are a few exceptions —

Saturday

Sebastian Payne

Yvette Cooper and Liz Kendall put in strong performances at Fabian hustings

The Fabian Society hosted a hustings for the Labour leadership this afternoon, featuring all five of the declared candidates: Andy Burnham, Yvette Cooper, Liz Kendall, Mary Creagh and Jeremy Corbyn. Following the Progress event a few weeks ago, this is the second time four of these candidates have appeared onstage together — Corbyn only entered the race a few days ago. Fabian supporters tend to be well disposed towards Ed Miliband so unsurprisingly, the reactions favoured the more left wing sentiments. As the current favourite to win, Andy Burnham has the highest expectations to meet and his turn today suggests he remains the firm favourite — especially if the line for

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Out’s Farage dilemma

Nigel Farage’s latest intervention—declaring that Ukip is ‘going to take the lead making the case for voting to leave the EU in the referendum—neatly sums up the dilemma facing the Out campaign. On the one hand, there’s a danger that if it doesn’t get moving now then the In campaign will have a massive, and possibly insurmountable, advantage by the time the vote is actually called. On the other, if Out is too closely associated with Ukip then it won’t be able to get the 50.1 percent of the vote that it needs to win the referendum. For while Farage might be quite brilliant at motivating the 13 percent who

Charles Moore Charles Moore

Why change Westminster’s voting system? It’s unfair to parties, not to voters.

Listening this week to someone from the Electoral Reform Society droning on about how we have just had the least representative election ever, I suddenly had an aperçu. Until now, I had argued that it was true that ‘first past the post’ was unfair, but this was a small price to pay for the way it usually produced a decisive national result. I now realise that this is to concede too much to the proportional representation case. The present system is unfair only to parties. It is not unfair to voters, unless one can prove that voters expect the system to represent their party preferences mathematically or wish that it

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

George Osborne must implement Charlotte Church tax reforms – and urgently

As the Chancellor prepares his post-election Budget, he faces an obvious opportunity. Throughout the last general election campaign, we heard from a great many people advocating higher taxes. And it’s not all vindictive: many, like the writer Polly Toynbee, would actually be liable for a higher tax on the 1pc. A significant number of wealthy people in Britain do actually want to give the government more of their money and at present, there is no easy way for them to do so. Strikingly the singer, Charlotte Church, recently declared that: “I have paid all my tax since I was 12 years old, and I would certainly be happy if the rate was 60 per

Steerpike Steerpike

Is Zac Goldsmith too posh to run for Mayor of London?

Given that Zac Goldsmith once likened the possibility of himself running for City Hall to ‘a suicide mission‘, it comes as little surprise that not everyone in the Tory camp is ecstatic about the Richmond Park MP’s rumoured London mayoral bid. Mr S understands that there are concerns that after Labour increased its control of the capital in the general election, the Old Etonian, who is currently the odds-on favourite to be the Conservative candidate, may be viewed as too posh to appeal to the more diverse London boroughs. As a result, Steerpike hears that there is growing support in the Conservative camp for Syed Kamall to go for the top job. As the working-class

Friday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Eurosceptics fear the ‘In’ campaign will get off to a head start

As David Cameron predicted, we are hearing all sorts of ‘noises’ on whether or not his European renegotiation will succeed or fail. But under the noise, as James explains in the magazine this week, the ‘Yes’ campaign to stay in the European Union has already begun. The ‘Yes’ side has many advantages, not least because it has the positive word and is defending the status quo, both of which appeal a little more to voters. It can also enjoy the support of both the Whitehall and EU machines, which is not unimportant. Meanwhile, the frustrations in the ‘No’ or ‘Out’ camp largely focus on timing. Ukip are particularly annoyed that

Steerpike Steerpike

Milifan turns the air blue on Daily Politics

Just in case you missed the memo, the reason Ed Miliband lost the election has now been revealed. Labour supporter and founder of the Twitter account @cooledmiliband, Richard Biggs, appeared on the Daily Politics to discuss the future of the Milifandom now their beloved leader has returned to the backbenches. Revealing his disgust at the result of the general election, Biggs declared that Miliband is simply ‘too good for this f—ing country’. An interesting take, but given the fact he turned the air blue, Mr S can’t see the Milifan being invited back by the BBC anytime soon.