Politics Archives

Wednesday

22 Jul 2015

Labour will become a ‘pressure group’ if Corbyn wins, says Tristram Hunt

Labour is waking up this morning to the news that Jeremy Corbyn might stand a chance of actually become Labour leader. The question many are asking is how genuine this shift to the left is and will the poll ensure the party autocorrects itself onto a more centrist track. On the Today programme, the Blairite shadow education secretary Tristram Hunt argued that Labour has a ‘desire to return to some old certainties’ following its general election defeat: ‘The danger is that the Labour party, one of the great governing parties of the 20th and early 21st century that did enormously important things for Britain and Britain in the world, would be on a trajectory

Steerpike

Wanted: Christian Lib Dem to aid party interaction

Tim Farron has come under fire this week over concerns that he is prejudiced against gay rights as a result of his evangelical Christian beliefs. His opponents have suggested that he cannot lead a liberal party if he thinks that being gay is a sin. However, those hoping that the new Lib Dem leader will tone down his Christian values need think again. The party is advertising for a director to head up the Liberal Democrat Christian Forum. The chosen candidate will be responsible for ‘interacting at all levels with Liberal Democrat politicians and staff, LDCF members, other Christian and political organisations, and members of the public’ as well as organising ‘prayer

Tuesday

21 Jul 2015

Sebastian Payne

Jeremy Corbyn on track to be next Labour leader, according to new poll

Could Jeremy Corbyn actually win the Labour leadership race? A new poll from The Times/YouGov suggests that he will. The new poll of eligible voters in the leadership contest — party members, registered supporters and affiliated trade unionists — has Corbyn on track to win in the final round of voting with 53 per cent of the vote, with the current bookies’ favourite Andy Burnham trailing six points behind on 47 per cent. The left-wing leadership candidate’s lead on first preferences is even more jaw-dropping. YouGov has Corbyn on 43 per cent, compared to Burnham on 26, Yvette Cooper on 20 and Liz Kendall on 11. Based on this, Kendall would be knocked out in

Fraser Nelson

Why is David Lammy getting beaten up for telling the truth about tax credits?

Poor old David Lammy. At 11pm last night, the Labour mayoral hopeful tweeted that his mum had depended on tax credits so he supports them now. Twitter went wild, saying that they were only invented in 2003 so he must have been fibbing! Even Derek Draper got stuck in. And, oddly, the story has grown since then – in spite of being utter nonsense. Lammy wasn’t quick enough to rebut, and the non-story ends up being followed up in The Guardian. After a child poverty campaign in 1970, tax credits were introduced (as a temporary measure) by Ted Heath in 1971. The aim, then as now, was to precision-bomb welfare upon certain families working

Steerpike

Jeremy Corbyn reunites with his old ‘comrade’ Gerry Adams in Parliament

Jeremy Corbyn just can’t help making friends wherever he goes. He previously described Hamas operatives as ‘friends’ and now he has found time out of his Labour leadership campaign to meet up with his old ‘comrade’ Gerry Adams in Portcullis House. The Sinn Féin president has tweeted a picture of their meet up, which Martin McGuinness also attended: With Jeremy Corbyn & the comrades @ Portcullis House, Westminster. pic.twitter.com/A6Vgmaglsa — Gerry Adams (@GerryAdamsSF) July 21, 2015 Of course the pair go way back. Corbyn, who supported ending British status for Northern Ireland, was heavily crtiticised after he invited Adams — along with other Sinn Féin members — to the House of Commons

Rod Liddle

We’ve always messed up the Middle East. Let’s stay out, for once

I suppose I should cease carping. We got a Blue Labour budget (except for the ludicrous stuff on inheritance tax), and far better than anything we would have got under my party, Labour. And at least the Prime Minister is addressing the issue of Islamic ‘extremism’. Yes, I suppose, I would concur that taking away the passports from juvenile wannabe jihadis is a good idea. Just about. A horrible part of me thinks they should be taken away once they have left the country, though. Certainly that should apply to the adults. Encourage them to go, then nullify their passports. However, to disavow our own role in facilitating the Islamic

Sebastian Payne

Andy Burnham opens fire at Labour’s ‘current leadership’ over the Welfare Bill

Relations between Andy Burnham and Harriet Harman must be disintegrating quickly. After the leadership favourite abstained during last night’s vote on the Welfare Bill, Burnham attempted to his logic on the World at One. Burnham said his mind hadn’t changed and he has always been in favour of a ‘reasoned amendment’ — but he was unhappy with how the vote went: ‘Let me be clear: this was still a compromise position and it wasn’t a strong enough position for me. But I as leader firstly would have opposed this bill outright last night and would do so if elected leader. ‘And number two though, I faced a choice: did I, having made the party move

Steerpike

Coffee Shots: David Miliband bids Britain farewell

Last week David Miliband flew all the way from America to Britain to celebrate his birthday. However, the former New Labour sweetheart made sure not to invite his brother Ed Miliband to the celebrations that just happened to be being held close to where his sibling resided. With the party over and his brotherly snub widely noted by the media, it’s time for David to bid Britain farewell. A snapper has spied Miliband sitting comfortably on a plane out of the country. That seat doesn’t look like economy to Mr S.

Sebastian Payne

The 48 welfare rebels demonstrate the ‘Miliband effect’ on the Labour party

One in five members of the Parliamentary Labour Party voted against the party whip last night. Although the second reading of the government’s Welfare Bill passed, it shows that the party is divided. I’ve been through the list of the 48 rebels are there are two trends amongst the rebels: many nominated Jeremy Corbyn for leader and the majority entered Parliament in the last few years. In the leadership contest, 18 of the rebels backed Corbyn for leader, compared to 15 for Andy Burnham, nine for Yvette Cooper and just one Liz Kendall supporter. Five of the rebels didn’t back anyone. Burnham is clearly spooked by this, judging by a

Steerpike

Revealed: The ‘Blairite’ crime policy that never was

With rumours flying around the Commons that if elected, Labour leadership hopeful Jeremy Corbyn would appoint a Shadow Peace Secretary in the place of a Shadow Defence Secretary, Mr S is also looking forward to hearing Corbyn’s plans to reform judicial punishment. However, Mr S is happy to place a bet on his approach not being as radical as a crime policy Tony Blair heaped praise on while in power. In today’s Times, Blair’s former chief speechwriter Philip Collins reveals what happened when he put forward a paper which suggested Blair take a less liberal approach when it came to dealing with crime: ‘The Blair government was, to my mind, daftly authoritarian

Monday

20 Jul 2015

Isabel Hardman

The Welfare Bill has passed — and revealed a split in Labour

The Welfare Reform and Work Bill has, as expected, passed its second reading in the House of Commons, with 48 Labour MPs defying their party whip and voting against, while Harriet Harman and the rest of the party abstained. We will bring you a full list of rebels as soon as it is available and it will be interesting to see how many new MPs (from a rather left-wing 2015 intake) have joined the rebels. The size of the rebellion is not particularly surprising given the number of MPs who had signed up to Helen Goodman’s rebel reasoned amendment (which was not called, and Harman’s official amendment failed to pass, as

Rod Liddle

Jon Ronson is wrong — Katie Hopkins isn’t insane, damaged or weird

Another conflict of interest and indeed of my mental state. I can think of no journalist I enjoy reading more than Jon Ronson. He is, I think, unequivocally brilliant and my only complaint is that I do not get to read him in the papers more often. His books are very good, too. But this last weekend he turned his attention to Katie Hopkins, a fellow Sun columnist of mine, and he approached his subject as one might approach the inmate of a heavily-guarded lunatic asylum. Some of the stuff in that ludicrous first four hundred words was designed to sell the piece to the (Grauniad) reader, I suppose. But

Douglas Murray

David Cameron has given his best speech yet on tackling Islamic extremism

The Prime Minister’s Birmingham speech on radicalisation and Muslim communities in the UK given earlier today is a rather important one. Regular readers will know that I’m not easy to please in this area, but it seems to me that David Cameron has come to understand the real problem of Islamic extremism and has been developing his attitudes towards that problem. There might be any number of reasons for this, but the most likely one is simple observation. Anybody can see that there is a problem, and a Prime Minister who has oversight on the intelligence and security threats that never come to fruition as well as those that do

Jonathan Russell

David Cameron must ally himself with moderate Muslims

Those who have been involved in counter-extremism in recent years would be forgiven for thinking that there is little new in the Prime Minister’s speech today. However, we need to remember two key things. First, that this government aims to increase the counter-extremism duties of frontline workers like teachers, so the target audience is wider UK civil society. Secondly, and this is evidenced by the Prime Minister speaking at a school in Birmingham, not at a security conference on the continent, we need to engage with the people who may be vulnerable to radicalisation in the first place. The strategy set out today, ahead of its implementation in the autumn, identified the need

Isabel Hardman

Tory MPs congratulate Lynton Crosby on his election success

Tory MPs are currently hearing from Lynton Crosby at a special meeting of the 1922 Committee on his election victory. Many of them are wryly amused that they are having to applaud a campaign that they found restrictive, uninspiring and negative – and which they think relied on Alex Salmond as a bogeyman, not the Tories’ own appeal in order to win the election. But they will be applauding the Wizard of Oz nonetheless today because whether or not he did, as he claims, know all along that the party would win the election outright, he did run a campaign that led to an election win, and there’s not much point

Fraser Nelson

Alistair Darling: why I changed my mind on tax credits

Last autumn, I presented a Ch4 documentary on inequality. I could have made three hours’ worth of that show – or written a book – but it was distilled down to 27 minutes so a lot was chopped. Including my interview with Alistair Darling about the malfunction of tax credits. (Our conversation to QE is above). I later quoted from the unused clip in the Daily Telegraph a while back: he said that tax credits had come to subsidise low wages “in a way that was never intended.” This must have caught the eye of a No10 speechwriter because this quote has ended up quoted by the Prime Minister and the Chancellor (who

Sebastian Payne

Nigel Farage overruled by Ukip NEC on Short money

The row in Ukip over parliamentary Short money has finally been resolved. Guido reports that Douglas Carswell, the party’s sole MP, has been advertising for a £60k per annum speechwriter, funded out of public money. This is the first indication that Ukip is setting itself up as a proper Westminster party through use of Short money. To recap, the disagreement began after the general election, when a divide opened up between Carswell and Ukip HQ over whether to use some or all of the money allotted to it as an opposition party — known as Short money. Some kippers were keen take all of the available £670k, while Carswell was pushing for a more restrained

Dominic Cummings

ICM poll shows public support for a second referendum on the EU

A fortnight ago I wrote a blog on the issue of exit plans and a possible second referendum. According to various media reports, Boris liked the idea and has told people so. I thought it would be interesting to see some numbers so asked ICM to consider it. Attached here are the results. [datawrapper chart=”http://static.spectator.co.uk/NRsOr/index.html”] Unsurprisingly, they show that 1) the public supports a second referendum, and 2) the prospect of one makes the idea of voting No in the first vote less scary and therefore may increase the chances of No winning the first vote. [datawrapper chart=”http://static.spectator.co.uk/mlPHy/index.html”] It is also worth considering that the public has not focused on the

Sebastian Payne

Has Liz Kendall’s campaign run out of momentum?

Liz Kendall’s chances of winning the Labour leadership contest appear to be slipping away. On several measures, she has fallen into fourth place. Kendall has just 12 nominations from constituency Labour parties, compared to 58 for Yvette Cooper, 67 for Andy Burnham and 70 for Jeremy Corbyn. Leaked internal Labour party polling also put her in last place. The bookies concur: Ladbrokes currently have 10/1 odds on Kendall as the next Labour leader, compared to evens for Burnham, 9/4 for Cooper and 4/1 for Corbyn. Part of the problem might be Kendall’s strategy of throwing bucket after bucket of cold water over the Labour party. Take her speech this morning on devolution,

Steerpike

Is the Guardian about to endorse Jeremy Corbyn?

Despite frequent claims from both sides of the political spectrum that Labour leadership hopeful Jeremy Corbyn is ‘unelectable’, he has so far managed to win the endorsement of Unite as well as the highest number of nominations from constituency Labour parties. Could he now be on his way to an endorsement from the Guardian? Steerpike only asks after the Labour leadership hopeful was the guest of honour at today’s news conference at the paper. While it was Andy Burnham’s turn last week to grace the newsroom, Mr S is assured that Corbyn was the more popular of the two guests. In fact, such fan-mania hasn’t been witnessed since Hollywood star Benedict Cumberbatch paid the paper a visit: