Politics Archives

Thursday

26 Nov 2015

Cameron sets out his case for bombing Islamic State in Syria

In the past few minutes, David Cameron has published his response to the Foreign Affairs Select Committee on the case for British action against Islamic State in Syria. You can read the response here. The Prime Minister argues that the threat to Britain is so great that ‘now is the time to scale up British diplomatic, defence and humanitarian efforts to resolve the Syrian conflict and to defeat ISIL’. ‘The threat Isil poses to Britain and to our citizens today is serious and undeniable’, he says, warning that Britain must act before the terrorists succeed in an attack again this country. Cameron’s challenge from MPs was to set out what

Isabel Hardman

John McDonnell hasn’t worked out how to attack the government

John McDonnell is very peeved this morning that a stunt that he pulled in the Commons to get attention has got attention. He’s also relieved that though a guest on Radio 4 whose family experienced the brutality of the Maoist regime said on air that she found his stunt with the Little Red Book ‘chilling’, she told him away from the microphone that she understood what he was doing. But he’s pleased, overall, because at least everyone now is talking about the Tories kow-towing to the Chinese, and definitely not about what on earth he was thinking to produce the red book in the Commons yesterday. It’s a good thing

James Forsyth

The spending cuts Osborne flatly refused to make

[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/thegreatfakewar/media.mp3″ title=”Fraser Nelson, James Forsyth and Isabel Hardman discussing the Autumn Statement and Spending Review” startat=870] Listen [/audioplayer]The Autumn Statement on 25 November had long been circled in Downing Street diaries as the season’s defining political moment. Its importance only grew after the Lords rejected the government’s tax-credit changes and George Osborne announced that he would present his revised proposals in this statement. But now it is not even seen as the defining political moment of this week, pushed down the news agenda by the terrorist threat in Europe and David Cameron’s decision to make the case to the Commons for Britain extending its anti-Islamic State bombing into Syria.

Matthew Parris

Is the Archbishop of Canterbury forsaking God?

The Archbishop of Canterbury, we heard during the BBC’s Songs of Praise broadcast last Sunday, ‘doubted God’ after the Paris attacks. On a walk on Saturday (he told listeners) he said to God, ‘Where are you in all this?’ As we are in confessional mood, here’s an anxiety of my own. The Paris atrocity has not occasioned me any new doubts, but Justin Welby’s remarks have caused me to doubt Archbishop Welby. Speaking on behalf of God, I have to ask the Archbishop: ‘Justin, where are you in all this?’ I’m not a believer, but I try to understand what believers believe. Christian theology has a long and distinguished intellectual

Wednesday

25 Nov 2015

James Forsyth

Why the tax credit cuts had to go

In the peroration of his statement today, George Osborne declared that the Tories were ‘the mainstream representatives of the working people of Britain.’ This is how he wants to position the Tories and it is why the tax credit changes had to go: they were getting in the way of the Tory attempt to rebrand themselves as the workers’ party. By ditching the tax credit changes, the Tories can now return to this theme—and can try and gain maximum political benefit from the national living wage. Osborne believes that with Jeremy Corbyn / John McDonnell leading the Labour party, the Tories have a real opportunity to pick up support from

Dan Hitchens

Revealed: Osborne’s Budget giveaways for Tory marginals

Back in March, the Plymouth Herald was delighted by ‘a Budget with plenty for Plymouth’. As Mark Gettleson noted on Coffee House at the time, Plymouth is a ‘hyper-marginal city’: both its seats are currently held by Tories with small majorities, Oliver Colvile and Johnny Mercer. So the Chancellor’s generosity may not have come out of the blue. Now we have had an Autumn Statement with a bit more for Plymouth – half a million pounds for the 2020 Mayflower anniversary. Some might think it an exaggeration to describe this as pork barrel spending. But it was interesting to see how else Osborne spent the money. Even amid the ‘difficult decisions’,

Sebastian Payne

John McDonnell ‘disappears’ his Maoist stunt

You can see what John McDonnell was trying to do today. ‘I’ll bring along a copy of Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book, wave it at George Osborne and make a joke about kowtowing to China’, he must have thought. It became obvious after his statement that the joke had backfired so McDonnell must have then thought ‘what should I do to show I’m not a Maoist?’. His response was to naturally indulge in some Stalinist censorship. In the video above of McDonnell’s response to the Autumn Statement, released on his YouTube channel, the Mao joke has been erased. At 6:06, the video fades out from the shadow chancellor discussing the sale of public

Isabel Hardman

Straight-talking John McDonnell will not be talking straight to the press

How does an Opposition party make up for the fact that its response to an economic statement is necessarily rather vague and rushed? In previous years Ed Balls would hold a briefing for journalists three or four hours after the announcement so that he could produce analysis involving figures and the small print that it is impossible to conjure up in the two seconds between the Chancellor finishing his statement and the start of your own response. These briefings became a bit of a show, because Balls loved the knockabout and also loved revealing details that he hoped would skewer George Osborne. As interim Shadow Chancellor, Chris Leslie continued this

Fraser Nelson

George Osborne’s retreat on tax credits is genuine – and warmly welcome

Today, George Osborne stepped back from the brink. The Chancellor has reversed his calamitous plan to tear away tax credits from the working poor, and will instead phase in the new system so no one will lose out. And he has also abandoned his reserve plan: to pay for this by raiding Universal Credit. In other words, he has done precisely what The Spectator has been calling for him to do and, in his expensive U-turn, safeguarded the Conservatives’ right to be called the workers’ party. I didn’t quite believe this when he first announced it; over the years a gap has emerged between what the Chancellor says in the chamber and what the small print

Isabel Hardman

George Osborne falls into his own welfare cap trap

The political flourishes in George Osborne’s spending review were impressive. But how is the Chancellor doing when it comes to meeting targets set during previous political performances? Today the Office for Budget responsibility said that the welfare cap, which the Chancellor announced in 2014 as a trap for Labour, would be breached in three successive years. The OBR document reads: ‘Our central forecast shows that the terms of the welfare cap are set to be breached in three successive years from 2016-17 to 2018-19, with the net effect of policy measures raising welfare cap spending in each of those years, and to well above the 2 per cent forecast margin

Steerpike

John McDonnell lectures George Osborne on Chairman Mao (yes, really)

With Diane Abbott recently given the nickname Madame Mao by her colleagues over her behaviour since Jeremy Corbyn was elected as Labour leader, Mr S had thought that Corbyn’s team would be at pains to distance themselves from the Chinese Communist revolutionary. Yet think again, as not only did John McDonnell bring up Chairman Mao today during the today’s Spending Review announcement, he also decided to quote the communist leader at length. McDonnell attempted to make a joke about Mao in response to Osborne’s questionable business relationship with China — the shadow chancellor said that he had brought Osborne a gift of Mao’s Little Red Book: ‘Let’s quote from Mao — rarely done in this

The Spectator

Full text and audio: George Osborne’s 2015 Autumn Statement and Spending Review speech

Mr Speaker, this Spending Review delivers on the commitment we made to the British people that we would put security first. To protect our economic security, by taking the difficult decisions to live within our means and bring down our debt. To protect our national security, by defending our country’s interests abroad and keeping our citizens safe at home. Economic and national security provide the foundations for everything we want to support. Opportunity for all. The aspirations of families. The strong country we want to build. Five years ago, when I presented our first Spending Review, our economy was in crisis and there was no money left. We were borrowing one pound in every four we

Steerpike

Watch: John Bercow tells Corbynista to ‘get a grip’ during Autumn Statement

Last month relations between the Tories and John Bercow hit an all-time low as the Speaker called Sajid Javid ‘incompetent’ for taking too long to an answer a question. Well, David Cameron can at least take heart today that it’s not just the Conservatives who can find themselves on the wrong side of the Speaker. Today Corbynista Clive Lewis was scolded by Bercow for making too much noise during the Chancellor’s Autumn Statement. As George Osborne announced the details of the Spending Review only to be heckled by Lewis, Bercow paused proceedings to address the Labour MP: ‘Mr Lewis, get a grip of yourself man — calm. Take up yoga, you’ll find it beneficial man.’ https://vine.co/v/iz2DOg3iqUr While

The Spectator

Key announcements from the 2015 Autumn Statement and Spending Review

Steerpike

Jon Lansman’s Left Futures turns on Jess Phillips over Diane Abbott clash

Jess Phillips made the news earlier this year after the Labour MP told Diane Abbott to ‘f— off’ during a meeting of the PLP. The comment came after Phillips attempted to take Jeremy Corbyn to task over the lack of women in senior roles in his shadow cabinet, only for Abbott to jump to his defence. While Corbyn failed to intervene when the row between the two women escalated, it appears that some of his comrades are now fighting back. Jon Lansman — who helped manage Corbyn’s campaign before founding the hard-left Momentum group — has tweeted a link this morning to an article published on the Left Futures website he edits.

Sebastian Payne

Autumn Statement and Spending Review 2015: what to expect

George Osborne will take to the Dispatch Box at 12:30pm today to deliver this year’s Autumn Statement — a mini-budget on the Treasury’s latest plans for spending and taxation. The Chancellor will also announce the results of the Spending Review, which will outline the cuts to departmental expenditure required to clear the deficit before 2020. Here’s what we already know about the Chancellor’s big announcements today. ‘The biggest housebuilding programme since the 1970s’: Today’s FT reports that housing will be a key component of the Autumn Statement, with the Chancellor promising to build 400,000 new homes in England and shifting public subsidies from renting to buying. After the debacle over cutting tax credits, Osborne will be

Charles Moore

Robert Halfon is many things, but he is not a cabinet minister

Robert Halfon, a Conservative MP, has been threatened with blackmail about some (hetero)sexual allegation. The press, reporting this story, described Mr Halfon as a cabinet minister. He is not. He is only a minister (in his case without portfolio) in the category invented, I think, by Tony Blair, called ‘attending cabinet’. This is a bad development, because it blurs the line between a cabinet minister’s individual authority and the subordinate role of all other ministers. It turns the word ‘cabinet’ into little more than a badge with a few privileges. It won’t be long now before people idly ask ‘What is this archaic thing known as the cabinet?’, rather as

Tuesday

24 Nov 2015

Camilla Swift

The SNP don’t care about foxes. It was all a pack of lies

So, it turns out that the SNP weren’t that bothered about the plight of foxes after all. Back in July, you might remember, David Cameron was forced to backtrack on his plan for a parliamentary vote on relaxing the hunting ban, after the SNP decided to vote against any changes. This, of course, came after Nicola Sturgeon wrote in February: ‘the SNP have a long-standing position of not voting on matters that purely affect England — such as fox hunting south of the border, for example — and we stand by that.’ But now we hear that just a month after blocking Cameron’s proposed changes, the SNP received a £10,000

Ed West

Oldham is a bad omen for Labour, even without the Corbyn effect

Assuming we haven’t been vaporised by Vlad, the Oldham West and Royton by-election takes place next week, and Labour are seriously worried. Ukip’s odds to take the seat have fallen to 11/4 and as this observation from a campaigner explains, much of this seems down to the Corbyn effect. Labour have huge problems with their working class vote from what I have seen. These results were essentially reflected across the board by the 100 other campaigners over the last 2 weeks. Ukip is more popular than Farage though very few actively dislike him. But Corbyn has completely turned off his vote. Ukip are still going to struggle because near 30%

Isabel Hardman

Len McCluskey turns on Jeremy Corbyn

Either Len McCluskey is, in the Corbynista narrative, a Tory, or things are going badly wrong for the man his union endorsed for the Labour leadership. The York Press reports that the Unite leader told an audience in York that Jeremy Corbyn ‘has to come to terms with his leadership’, that he ‘can’t necessarily say the first thing that comes into his head’ and that his comments about shoot-to-kill were ‘inappropriate’. What this shows – unless Len McCluskey really is a red Tory – is that even those union bosses who have been agitating for years for Labour to move left have been shocked by how disorganised and naive his