Politics

It is sometimes easy to forget that Boris is more than just a personality, that he has policy views too. In interviews with The Mail and The Times this morning, Boris sets out his own philosophy. It is, as you would expect from someone who voted for Ken Clarke in the 2001 leadership contest, a broadly one nation platform. Johnson argues that the Tories should not ‘simply shrug their shoulders’ about inequality and backs Iain Duncan Smith’s plan to extend the right to buy to housing association properties. He also talks about immigration far more positively than Cameron does, saying that ‘Politicians need to point out that immigration is a

Are CCHQ already planning how to push through their next coalition? Mr S only asks as word reaches Steerpike that Conservative backbenchers have been urged to return to London immediately after the General Election in the potential event of a snap vote. The pressure is on for any future coalition to be put to the parliamentary party after this failed to happen in 2010. ‘There is a lot of soreness about how the party was bounced last time around into accepting the last deal, and we shall not be bounced this time around,’ a 1922 Committee source recently told the BBC. An email from the Government Chief Whip which suggests plans are afoot has been passed to Mr S: ‘Please

Last year Russia Today launched a poster campaign with a fanciful strapline: ‘This is what happens when there is no second opinion’. The extraordinary implication is that the conflict could have been avoided, if only we had listened to Putin. This is such an obvious fallacy that it’s hardly worth dwelling on. But RT (as it now likes to be known, as if people don’t know what the ‘R’ stands for) is producing lightly disguised state propaganda. The viewers know it and so do the mercenaries that make it. In contrast, Scotland’s new pro-independence daily newspaper – ‘The National’– is written with earnest conviction. Its contributors are devout believers, and

Only a third of the public think Parliament is effective in holding government to account: two thirds want improvement of our democratic institutions. We struggle to get more than two in three adults to cast a vote at a general election. It is widely held that anti-politics is the prevailing mood of our times. With depressing regularity though, discussions involving politicians and the media focus not on how to improve our democracy, but rather on how we can better communicate the brilliance of our achievements to those too cynical or ill-informed to see them. My eighteen years in the Commons have led me to a different conclusion: I think Parliament is weak, ineffective and in need of