Politics

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

Monday

Sebastian Payne

Conservatives have a three-point lead in latest Ashcroft poll

Have the Tories benefited from Labour’s week of misery? In Lord Ashcroft’s latest national poll, the Conservatives are now three points ahead of Labour — up from 30 per cent in last week’s poll. The Green Party are down to six per cent, the Lib Dems are up slightly to nine per cent and Ukip are down one point to 14 per cent. See the chart above for how the voting preferences have changed in Ashcroft’s polls this year. David Cameron personally continues to do well: nearly 60 per cent would prefer him as Prime Minister to Ed Miliband. When considering why either leader would do a better job, a

Douglas Murray

Freedom of speech is a sacred British value (and those who disagree can hop it)

In the aftermath of last month’s Paris atrocities there was a remarkable piece in one of Denmark’s leading papers signed by more than a dozen prominent Danish Muslims.  It said that France, like Denmark, is a country where there is freedom of speech and freedom of religion and that writers and cartoonists had every right, in such societies, to draw and cartoon whatever they wanted, including Islam’s prophet.  Muslims should get used to it. At the end of translating this article for me the Danish friend who showed it to me said something very important: ‘This has only happened because we’ve been having this argument in Denmark for nine years.’

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Why does the skin colour of London’s next Mayor matter one toss, Margaret Hodge?

Shocking news belatedly reaches me that the Labour MP Margaret Hodge has pulled out of the race to become the next Mayor of London. I am not sure how London will cope without this colossus, but there we are. She said: ‘I actually think the time is right for us to have a non-white mayor.’ Oh, DO you, actually? Is it possible to be more patronising than this? Why does the colour of a candidate’s skin matter one toss, you privately-educated, minted offspring of a multi-millionaire? It may well be that the best Labour candidate for mayor – David Lammy – happens to be black. But to suggest one should

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Why this election campaign makes me fear for the future of the United Kingdom

After the Scottish referendum campaign, the Union could probably have done with a period of calm. But it is not going to get it. Who gets to form a government at Westminster after the next election could turn on what happens in Scotland and how many seats the SNP wins. This fact is making both Labour and the Tories behave in ways that are damaging to the Union. Jim Murphy, the new leader of Scottish Labour, has decided to try and show that he is prepared to pick fights with London too, in the hope that will take some of the wind out of the Nationalists’ sales. Hence his deliberately

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Labour fights back on HSBC leak

After being told by the Tories that he has ‘questions to answer’ on the BBC story about HSBC, Ed Balls has decided to tell the Tories that they have ‘questions to answer’ on the story too. The Speaker has just granted Shabana Mahmood an urgent question in the Commons demanding that the Chancellor answer Labour’s questions about the story. The Shadow Chancellor said that ‘there are very serious questions for George Osborne and David Cameron to answer today’. His questions are why has there only been one prosecution out of 1,100 individual implicated in allegations about tax evasion and why Stephen Green, former Chairman of HSBC, was appointed a minister

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Boris Johnson woos Tory MPs with a ‘rucksack clanking with booze’

Boris Johnson’s campaign to woo Tory MPs is continuing as the General Election approaches. I hear that he held another one of his suppers for colleagues at his home in the last fortnight, and that the MPs who did attend were seriously impressed. One says: ‘It was a really uplifting experience. I feel very conflicted between him and Theresa [May] as potential leaders.’ Another described the evening as ‘great fun, relaxed. He arrived with a rucksack clanking with booze and we had a takeaway curry and shot the breeze. No heavy canvassing.’ Number 10 is allowing these dinners, which involve a mix of MPs loyal to Cameron and rebels, to

Steerpike Steerpike

Will Tristram Hunt’s business-savvy wife be voting Labour?

It was his contempt for nuns that got shadow education secretary Tristram Hunt into trouble on last week’s Question Time, but there was another notable line worth revisiting. A tetchy Hunt hit back at an audience member who accused him of failing to understand the needs of small business owners, struggling to pay their bills: ‘My wife runs a small business, so I know about the challenges facing small business in my family, so don’t give a lecture on that.’ Now that Hunt has brought his wife into the debate, Mr S wondered how tough life has been for Mrs Hunt, the small business owner. Juliet Thornback is a designer of upmarket homeware. Her company,

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

David Gauke: Ed Balls has questions to answer on HSBC leak

The HSBC tax dodge leak is from 2007, and so has nothing to do with the current government, sort of. Ministers have been defending the appointment of Stephen Green as trade minister. Green was boss at HSBC during the period that this leak relates to. But given Labour is trying to increase the political temperature on tax avoidance at the moment, the Tories have also been quite keen this morning to suggest that Ed Balls has questions to answer on this story, to be broadcast on Panorama tonight. Earlier this morning Financial Secretary to the Treasury David Gauke released this statement: ‘It is for HSBC to explain what they did

Sunday

Steerpike Steerpike

Eton vs Harrow: Eddie Redmayne comes out on top at the Baftas

Much has been made of Eddie Redmayne’s education at Eton after Chris Bryant claimed that British culture should not be dominated by public schoolboys like The Theory of Everything actor. Mr Steerpike hopes that the Labour MP gave tonight’s Baftas a miss for his own sake, as alumni from Britain’s two most prestigious private schools battled it out in the Best Actor category. Redmayne was pitted against Benedict Cumberbatch, who attended Harrow. Alas Cumberbatch’s efforts as Alan Turing in The Imitation Game were not enough to clinch him victory. It was the 33-year-old Old Etonian who came up trumps, taking home the Best Actor award for his portrayal of Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything. Hawking was

Rowan Dean

Is Twitter about to claim its first prime ministerial scalp?

Within the next three hours, the seventeen-month reign of Australia’s conservative PM Tony Abbott may come to a crashing close, terminated not by policy differences but by populism and personality. Could Twitter be about to claim its first prime ministerial scalp? The contrasting characters of Tony Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull could not have been more cunningly scripted had Jeffrey Archer invented them: one a staunch monarchist (whose act of awarding an Aussie knighthood to Prince Philip on Australia Day exactly two weeks ago led directly to this morning’s party room spill), the other the former frontman of the (failed) 1999 Republican referendum. One a fervent climate change sceptic (Mr Abbott

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The truth? Savers have been losers under this government, and Osborne knows it

Even the evening BBC bulletins are leading with this morning’s announcement by George Osborne that he will extend his ‘pensioner bonds’ programme – a glorified way of giving pre-election bungs to the over-65s. This is Osborne’s answer to Gordon Brown’s bribe, the ‘winter fuel payment’ (the word ‘fuel’ being redundant). When elections grow near, governments bribe pensioners because the pensioners are most likely to vote. The Chancellor told Andrew Marr today (pdf) that ‘backing savers is part of our long-term plan’. The opposite is true. Screwing savers is part of his long-term economic plan: an unintentional but inevitable consequence of his screwing interest rates as low as he can for as long as possible.

The Spectator

Removing Tony Abbott as Australian Prime Minister is pointless and reckless

In the latest issue of Spectator Australia, the leading article lambasts the Australian Liberal Party for trying to remove Prime Minister Tony Abbott: The determination by many in the media, even among conservatives, to hasten the demise of Tony Abbott’s prime ministership is as pointless as it is reckless. Pointless not because they will or they won’t succeed, but pointless because such an outcome would merely herald the beginning, rather than the end, of a long period of Coalition instability and in-fighting. Make no mistake: it is not Tony Abbott the man who is deeply unpopular (although his poll figures are, at present, nothing to write home about). It is the measures he

Douglas Murray

In defence of Tristram Hunt

I have never had any particularly strong views on Tristram Hunt other (naturally) than finding it bleakly hilarious that he should be the Labour party’s Parliamentary representative for Stoke. But a point needs to be made in his favour. The shadow education secretary was on Andrew Marr’s sofa this morning and found himself asked six times about this thoughts on nuns and education (see clip, above). For several days now, he has been berated for alleged anti-Catholic hatred and a new thought-crime of ‘nun-dismissal’. The precise words which are deemed to have created this great maelstrom were uttered in response to the right-wing Catholic journalist Cristina Odone talking on Question

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Will anyone be able to govern Britain after the next election?

With every week that goes by, the more likely it is that the next election could result in a stalemate with neither Labour nor the Tories able to put together a deal that gives them a majority in the Commons. One Downing Street source, who has crunched the numbers, predicted to me last week that, because of what is going on in Scotland, the Tories will be the largest party on 280-odd seats. But if the Tories have only 280-odd seats, even deals with both the Liberal Democrats and the Democratic Unionists wouldn’t give them a majority. But Labour wouldn’t be able to stich one together either. For, as I

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The unravelling of the left continues as RMT president joins the Greens

Socialism fever is spreading. This time last year, Ed Miliband looked to be on course for 10 Downing St for the simple reason that the right in Britain had been split (by Ukip) while the left stood united for the first time since 1983. Lefty LibDems had returned to Labour and it seemed that Miliband was the bad leader of a massive block of votes. Now, things have changed. The left is unravelling too: Labour is losing votes to the SNP in the north and the Greens in the south. That’s why the Greens’ recruitment of a top trade union official is significant. Peter Pinkney, president of the RMT union, says he’s joining

Saturday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The Burnham message

Andy Burnham’s interview in The Times today lays down several markers. He praises Len McCluskey, declares that trade union funding is best for Labour, slates Alan Milburn, criticises Peter Mandelson for being relaxed about people getting filthy rich and distances himself from the Blairite mantra that ‘what matters is what works.’ It will, to put it mildly, do nothing to discourage speculation that he is preparing to run for the leadership on a left-wing ticket if Labour loses the election. To be fair, Burnham is frank in this interview that he has changed his mind on various subjects. As he puts it, ‘There was a period in the 80s and

Friday

Dennis Sewell

Could this be the solution to the Durham Free School dilemma?

A highly respected academic has stepped forward pointing education ministers towards a potentially face-saving solution to the Durham Free School dilemma. James Tooley, professor of education policy at Newcastle University has written to schools minister Lord Nash with a proposal that he should become a governor of the school, bringing with him the expertise of other colleagues from the university’s education department to beef up DFS’s leadership and governance capacity. Campaigners hope the minister will re-think the decision to close the school if he can be persuaded the school now has the necessary skills and resources on hand to improve its performance. In his letter, Professor Tooley is also critical

Carola Binney Carola Binney

I wouldn’t vote for Marine Le Pen but I can understand why people might

On Thursday evening, I queued outside for almost two hours to see Marine Le Pen, the leader of France’s Front National party, speak at the Oxford Union. Thanks to protestors, who scaled the debating society’s walls and allegedly chased Union officials through the building, I then waited an hour more. About 200 anti-fascist demonstrators gathered outside the Union buildings, holding placards saying ‘Marine Le Pen… Never Again!’ and chanting ‘This is free speech, that is a platform’. Queuing quietly, it felt somewhat ironic to be called ‘Nazi Fascist Scum!’ by angry people in balaclavas. But as well as wanting to hear the views of the woman who may well become

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Exclusive: Nick Clegg complains to Cabinet Secretary about being left out

Nick Clegg has complained to Sir Jeremy Heywood, the Cabinet Secretary, that he was ignored before a government policy was announced, Coffee House has learned. The Deputy Prime Minister was annoyed that he did not get the chance to approve a change to the way Birmingham elects its councillors, from elections by thirds to all-out elections every four years. The change is part of reforms to the struggling local authority announced in a review by Sir Bob Kerslake. But Clegg claims he was never allowed to sign off the policy, which he should have seen because he chairs the government committee that approves most domestic policy – the Home Affairs Cabinet

Sebastian Payne

Mandelson and Campbell reportedly tapped up Alan Johnson to replace Miliband

Is Ed Miliband ready to be Prime Minister? His personal poll ratings suggest not and many in his party remain sceptical. But Labour remains toe-to-toe with the Conservatives in the polls, making a Miliband premiership a real possibility after 7 May. The FT’s George Parker and Jim Pickard have interviewed the Labour leader (£) today to find out why Miliband is still confident he can lead the country, despite the negativity surrounding his leadership. One of the fascinating nuggets in the piece is the claim that two of the most influential figures in New Labour plotted to remove him as leader: ‘Miliband’s Labour critics do not share his confidence. So much so