Read about the latest UK political news, views and analysis.
When Ukip officials arrived at Facebook HQ for a meet-and-greet, they were surprised to be led to a boardroom that went by the name of ‘sceptical’. However, far from a tense affair, Steerpike‘s mole insists Facebook employees didn’t mean anything by it. ‘They swore it was entirely by chance,’ a Ukip source tells Mr S. ‘It was a fascinating meeting.’
Who are the latest contenders in the Tory leadership battle and how much support do they have? That’s the question that Tory MPs and pundits love to chew over, even though there is no contest. The latest fixation is whether George Osborne has rowed behind the Boris campaign. James looked at this yesterday, revealing that Boris might quite fancy taking over from David Cameron after an EU referendum in 2017. Of course, the funny thing is that there isn’t a leadership contest because David Cameron is currently secure as Prime Minister. And as I explain in today’s Evening Standard, he could be secure for a while longer – where Tory
Chuka Umunna’s fit of pique at the end of his Sky interview was unnecessary. One of the skills of a politician who fancies being a leader is to look calm and reasonable in the face of unreasonable questions. But to be fair to Labour’s Shadow Business Secretary, there is nothing wrong with refusing to comment on something you don’t know enough about. There’s something very off-putting and insincere about a politician who blags their way through an interview or panel session like an English student pontificating their way through a seminar on a book they never bothered to read. He could have read those detailed media briefings that Labour sends
After overtaking Ukip in membership stakes, the Greens are now snapping at its heels in the polls. According to Lord Ashcroft’s latest poll, 11 per cent are now intending to vote Green — up from eight per cent last week. As the chart above shows, this puts them four points behind Ukip. The party has come a long way since the last election, where they gained just 0.9 per cent of the vote. As Natalie Bennett acknowledged this morning, the Green Party is getting more help from David Cameron than it ever imagined. The natural assumption is that the Green vote is primarily coming from Labour — but its vote has remained steady from last week’s poll.
Uh oh, looks like Chuka Umunna hasn’t been doing his homework. The shadow business secretary walked out of a live television interview on Sky News after he was asked his opinion on a letter Eric Pickles sent to Muslim leaders. The Labour MP, who was invited onto the show to talk about the economy, appeared distressed to be questioned on the issue as he had not read the controversial letter in question. His response was to wave his arm around in a fury before walking off air, as Steerpike’s gif helpfully demonstrates. While Mr S is all for playing fair, surely Chuka should be reading his party’s own detailed media briefing that it sends out
James Blunt, the self-deprecating musician who may or may not have stopped World War III, has written an open letter to Chris Bryant calling him a ‘classist gimp’ after the politician named him among the list of unacceptably posh people who dominate the arts. The (privately-educated) Labour MP complained that the arts were too full of Blunt and his ‘ilk’, which the singer criticised as narrow-minded and self-defeating. Before commenting, I should add here that my parents sent me to a state secondary school, but only so I could win ‘prolier-than-thou’ contests on the internet when I’m older. Blunt has a point. Firstly the idea of ‘access’, the idea that
Last week the Green Party announced that their membership has soared to 52,000, thanks to a little help from the free publicity awarded to them by the Prime Minister over the leaders’ debate. However, Steerpike hears that all is not well at Green Party HQ, or their ‘National Office’ as the non-hierarchical collective delicately call it. ‘Our systems have crashed,’ Green peer Jenny Jones was heard loudly proclaiming at their press conference this morning. ‘They can’t cope with the numbers.’ Well that’s certainly one meaning to revolutionary cries of ‘smash the system,’ there was Mr S thinking that you couldn’t go wrong with a carbon free pencil on a bit of recycled
Eric Pickles’s letter to Mosques is pretty anodyne. It is hard to see how it could be objected to. But the Muslim Council of Britain is busy complaining about it. Its deputy secretary general Harun Khan is quoted in The Guardian saying, “Is Mr Pickles seriously suggesting, as do members of the far right, that Muslims and Islam are inherently apart from British society?” Now, if you read the letter it is very hard to argue that this is any way what Pickles is saying. He writes, ‘British values are Muslim values. Like all faiths, Islam and its message of peace and unity makes our country a better and stronger place, and
John Sentamu, the Archbishop of York, has never been shy about courting publicity. He frequently churns out controversial opinion pieces for the red-tops and, just in case they don’t receive enough attention, he’s in the habit of re-issuing them as ‘press releases’. (You can see a list of the most recent here). He has opinions on almost everything, from same-sex marriage (against) to William and Kate’s decision to live together before their wedding (in favour). But with his latest outburst about free schools, the tabloid bishop has jumped the shark. Free schools, according to Sentamu, only benefit the well-off and divert millions of pounds from more deserving neighbouring state schools.
What are you afraid of boys? The Green Party posed this question on Westminster’s College Green this morning as they launched a new poster campaign (driven around on pedal bikes, natch) calling for the Greens to be involved in the TV leaders debates. Leader Natalie Bennett also announced that the party’s membership is up to 44,175 today — 52,000 including Scotland. I asked Bennett how she feels about being used by the Prime Minister for his own political gains. She doesn’t seem to mind too much: ‘Mr Cameron is certainly speaking for his own political advantage – but he’s only able to do that because it’s a fair and responsible thing to
It’s another election Monday and the three parties are still hanging about in their comfort zones, even though they appear to have moved on to other topics. David Cameron is talking about the economy, but with a softer, nicer-sounding edge that has riled some on the Left because it involves him talking about full employment, which is something Beveridge was a fan of, and pay rises, which is something Labour says it wants more (while backing the public sector pay freeze).The Prime Minister will give a speech promising to expand the start-up loans to help 50,000 more entrepreneurs set up business using a £300 million pot. The Prime Minister wants
Nick Clegg always seems oddly upbeat when he’s doing interviews about just how badly his party could do in the General Election. Today when Andrew Marr asked him about Iain Dale’s prediction the Lib Dems will lose at least half their seats, Clegg said ‘I really don’t think thats going to happen’ and that ‘we will do so much better than the pundits are predicting’. The Lib Dems currently have 56 seats (the 57th, Mike Hancock, had the whip withdrawn last year), and this election forecast suggests they’ll end up with 27. The sense in the party is that this will be just about OK, but go much lower than 25 and
According to Ed Miliband, my generation is about to be disenfranchised by the coalition. He’s getting quite worked up about it. On Thursday, he accused David Cameron and Nick Clegg of… “sitting by and watching hundreds and thousands of young people in our country lose their sacred democratic rights.” So what’s going on? By what treachery is my generation being disenfranchised? Well, in an attempt to reduce fraud the government is removing the option to register everyone in a household at once – all voters, young and old, must now add themselves individually to the electoral roll. One of the effects of this is that universities can no longer register students living on campus:
For most of this parliament, Downing Street has been thoroughly paranoid about Boris Johnson and his intentions. Any attempt by the Mayor to reach out to Tory MPs was met with deep suspicion. But now, the Tory leadership is actively pushing Boris to see Tory MPs — he was even invited to join the Whips for a Whips Supper at Boisdale last week. This is all evidence of the unspoken deal between Boris and the Tory leadership. He will be loyal and campaign hard for Cameron. In exchange, it will allow him to cultivate Tory MPs; helping him to rectify his biggest weakness ahead of any Tory leadership contest. These
Downing Street was a happy place after David Cameron and Barack Obama’s joint press conference yesterday. The US President was effusive in his praise for Cameron and his seeming endorsement of Britain’s economic strategy has delighted Number 10. But, I suspect, that in terms of actually influencing how people vote, the success of pensioner bonds might be more important. Osborne announced these pensioner bonds in the last Budget and they pay 2.8 per cent interest on a one year bond and 4 per cent on a 3 year bond. They offer the over 65s a far better deal than anything available on the high street. That 110,000 pensioners have purchased
Ubiquitous Shadow Health Secretary Andy Burnham has had to admit that he ‘spent’ £25,000 in a disastrous and embarrassing threat to sue his counterpart Jeremy Hunt. Burnham has had to declare donations in kind of £16,665 worth of legal services offered by Steel & Shamash, the Labour Party’s solicitors, and £8,250 from Gavin Millar QC, a barrister who specialises in defamation proceedings. Students of North London Labour Kremlinology will be aware that Millar is the brother of Fiona Millar, the left-wing agitator and partner of Alastair Campbell. He was last seen taking down Tory MP Andrew Mitchell in the High Court. In October 2013 Burnham huffed and puffed and whined to
David Cameron and Barack Obama have just finished giving a rather cutesy and extremely verbose press conference following the reinvigorating of their bromance/serious talks on the economy and counter-terrorism. The pair structured their opening statements to mirror one another, with each opening with a little tribute to the other. Obama said Cameron was a ‘great friend’ and ‘one of my closest and trusted partners in the world, while Cameron said Obama was a ‘great friend to Britain and to me personally’. A good friend indeed: Obama is basically doing everything he can to help Cameron be re-elected in this country. One of the most useful quotes is the one from the
We’ve spent plenty time on Coffee House challenging George Osborne’s more dubious claims (‘deficit halved!’, etc) as has much of the media. But happily, there now seems to be a truce. Grant Shapps, Tory chairman, has confirmed that from now on he’ll use clear and honest language when talking about the deficit – a promise made good by the Tory political broadcast on Wednesday. In my Telegraph column today, I express a hope that the party has turned the corner and instead of telling porkies it will restrict itself to the large number of genuinely true boasts. The above chart shows Osborne’s greatest boast: he has overseen more job creation than
On Wednesday the Home Secretary made a statement in the House of Commons about the terrorist attacks last week in Paris. Here is part of the Hansard transcript of the resulting debate: Mr Henry Bellingham (North West Norfolk) (Con): Is the Home Secretary aware that when the Prophet Mohammed moved from Mecca to Medina all those years ago to establish the first Islamic state, he did not set up a sectarian caliphate, such as that demanded by the Paris murderers, but rather, under the charter of Medina, he created a multi-faith society, where Jews and Christians had the right to worship and were able to proclaim their faiths? Mrs May:
Ever since Michael Gove was scolded at Cabinet for bringing his noisy mobile phone into the room, everyone’s been trying to find out what the ringtone is. Cabinet sources various described it to The Times as a ‘female ballad’ and a ‘Jazz FM-style comedown music after a heavy night out’. But the Chief Whip is refusing to reveal what the tune is.Last night Gove spoke at a Westminster dinner, and started his speech by announcing he was putting his mobile phone on silent. He then said that the ringtone would remain secret until someone worked out how to use the Freedom of Information Act to secure its identity. But then
