Politics Archives

Wednesday

17 Jun 2015

Steerpike

Liz Kendall on safe ground for Newsnight debate

Tonight’s Newsnight debate will see the four Labour leadership hopefuls — Liz Kendall, Andy Burnham, Yvette Cooper and Jeremy Corbyn — head to Nuneaton in a bid to boost their campaigns. Given that this week, Kendall’s supporters have been dubbed the ‘New Labour Taliban‘ by a Labour source, relations are likely to be strained between the four. However, Kendall can at least take heart that she is on safe ground in Nuneaton, a seat which Labour failed to win the election. The party’s candidate in the election, Vicky Fowler is backing Kendall. She says that after the failure of Labour to win the seat became the ‘point at which the scale of Labour’s defeat across

Sebastian Payne

When will the Labour leadership contenders realise it’s the 2020 election they’re fighting?

Tonight’s Newsnight Labour leadership debate is a sink or swim moment for Liz Kendall. So far, there has been a lot of talk about Kendall’s candidacy and her potential to be a reforming leader. But until now, there hasn’t been a lot of proof to back that up. Some have been whispering that she doesn’t perform well under sustained pressure; others have likened her supporters to the Taliban. Either way, tonight’s debate is her opportunity to show that she is credible — as well as hopefully answering the crucial question of what, if anything, she stands for. It’s a mistake to label Kendall as just the Blairite right-wing candidate. Again, she has

Tuesday

16 Jun 2015

Rod Liddle

Forget Jeremy Corbyn, I’m backing Liz Kendall for Labour leader

I daresay some of you lot are amusing yourselves by joining the Labour Party for three quid so as to vote for Jeremy Corbyn in the forthcoming leadership election. Can’t say I blame you – it would be a hoot to watch. That being said, he is not the worst candidate on the list. At least Corbyn has a critique of why Labour lost. A wrong critique, I think – just as it was wrong when Tony Benn said the same stuff after the 1983 disaster. But a critique at least (and Corbyn, when he doesn’t mention the IRA, can be a fairly agreeable chap). No – the thing is,

James Forsyth

‘Purdah’ amendment to EU referendum bill defeated — but only thanks to Labour

The government has defeated Bill Cash’s rebel amendment on the changes to the ‘purdah’ rules during the EU referendum campaign, but only thanks to Labour abstaining. The actual vote was 288 to 97. Now, the SNP voted with the Tory rebels as did Douglas Carswell, a few Labour Euro-scpetics, Plaid and the DUP. This means that around 2o to 30 Tories rebelled, we’re still waiting for the full division list to get the precise number. This is a rebellion that is embarrassing rather than earth shattering. But with Labour support, it would have been enough to overturn the government’s majority, which is a reminder of how hard governing with a

Alex Massie

Adventures in Truthiness: The SNP and Full Fiscal Autonomy

As a general rule I prefer the stupidity theory to the mendacity concept of politics. That is, if a politician says something obviously wrong it is more probably because they are thicker than mince than because they wish to deceive the public. There are some exceptions to this usual rule but, most of the time, dumb beats cunning. Occasionally, however, dumb can also be cunning. Consider this statement from Angus Brendan MacNeil, MP for the Western Isles, as recorded by Hansard: Now Mr MacNeil, bless him, often fumbles his way towards wishful thinking but this will not quite do. The Vow, no matter how ballyhooed it may be these days, said precisely

Sebastian Payne

Yvette Cooper is trying to distance herself both from ‘Taliban New Labour’ and Andy Burnham

Yvette Cooper is attempting to put as much distance as possible between her and the anonymous ‘Taliban New Labour’ comments. In an article for the Huffington Post, Cooper’s campaign chair Shabana Mahmood says there is no place for negative briefing in the Labour leadership contest. Mahmood sets out two promises from the Cooper campaign: ‘If anyone is speaking on behalf of the campaign, they will do so explicitly on the record. There will be no unattributed negative briefings about other candidates because that’s not the kind of politics Yvette has ever wanted to champion ‘If anyone else is speaking to you and claiming to do so on Yvette’s behalf and wants to criticise opponents –

Steerpike

Richard Desmond: I made £5,000 profit from Labour donation

Although Richard Desmond recently pledged his allegiance to Ukip’s Nigel Farage, the media mogul previously backed Tony Blair, with the owner of the Express papers donating £100,000 to Labour in 2001. Now, in his new biography Richard Desmond: The Real Deal, Desmond claims that he made a £5,000 profit from the donation. Desmond writes that the donation came about after he attended a dinner with Lord Alli: ‘Waheed said Tony really liked me. Would I make a contribution to the party? What they didn’t realise was that I had put everything I’d ever had – some £37 million – into the Express, along with £97 million that I had borrowed, my house and

Steerpike

Battle of the pundits: Owen Jones vs ‘the Katie Hopkins of the Blairite right’

Today the BBC invited arch-enemies Dan Hodges and Owen Jones onto Daily Politics to discuss the Labour leadership battle. What began as a civil exchanging of views over Jeremy Corbyn’s inclusion on the ballot, rapidly turned into an all-out spat with Jones calling Hodges ‘the Katie Hopkins of the Blairite right’: DH: You’ve insisted he’s on the ballot, he’s on the ballot. Do you now want him to win? OJ: Yeah, I’ll be supporting and fighting for Jeremy Corbyn DH: So you genuinely think if Jeremy Corbyn is leader of the Labour party, the British people will elect Jeremy Corbyn? OJ: I think the problem that Labour has at the moment is that there

Sebastian Payne

Nigel Farage gets his revenge with the return of Matt Richardson

Matt Richardson has returned to his role as Ukip’s general secretary today. The party told the BBC in a statement, ‘Matt has resumed the role… by law any constituted political party must have a party secretary who is a qualified lawyer.’ This might not seem like big news — Steerpike reported that Richardson would be returning last week — but it does show that Nigel Farage’s authority has been restored within the party. During the Ukip briefing wars following the general election, several senior Ukip figures left their jobs or were sacked: comms chief Paul Lambert, senior advisor Raheem Kassam, economics spokesman Patrick O’Flynn and head of policy Suzanne Evans. Although

Sebastian Payne

Cameron attempts to buy off Eurosceptics with delayed EU referendum date

David Cameron appears to have made two concessions to his Eurosceptic backbenchers over the EU referendum. Firstly, the referendum vote won’t be next year. The decision against holding the vote in May 2016 was taken yesterday, against the will of some Downing Street advisers according to Newsnight’s Allegra Stratton. The signs coming from No.10 have been that the Prime Minister was keen to get the referendum out of the way as soon as possible — hence the desire to hold it on the same day as next year’s elections. Eurosceptics on the other hand have pointed out that rushing the referendum will make it harder for the Prime Minister to achieve substantive reforms,

Monday

15 Jun 2015

Steerpike

Lionel Richie is an unusual ‘Face in the Crowd’ on Parliament visit

You might expect to see Lionel Richie pass outside your door, if you were in the Ivy last night, or in the VIP yurt of this month’s Glastonbury Festival. But hello, which peer was he looking for this afternoon? The global superstar and former Commodores front man was accompanied by Lord Levy, after the two hit it off last week at an anniversary dinner for Jewish Care. Lord Levy appeared to be giving him a tour almost up there on the ceiling: Richie was not up there all night long though, however, and was spotted heading off in the direction of the Speaker’s Office. Mr S understands that he did not meet

Sebastian Payne

Jim Murphy: second independence referendum is inevitable

Jim Murphy is quitting frontline politics with a bang. The outgoing leader of the Scottish Labour party addressed Policy Exchange this afternoon, offering his thoughts on why Labour lost the election and did so badly north of the border. Murphy revealed that he thinks another independence referendum is inevitable: ‘There will be another referendum whenever the SNP can get away with it. Why wouldn’t there? If you were an insurgent nationalist party with unprecedented power and with an absolute majority of parliamentarians in both parliaments, why wouldn’t you try and engineer certain circumstances that get you another referendum? ‘My frustration is that Cameron is so lame-assly dumb on it that he

James Forsyth

Keeping Britain in the EU will be easier than keeping the Tories united on the issue

Privately, senior Tories admit that winning the EU referendum, by which they mean securing a vote to stay in on Cameron’s new terms, is the easy part. The more difficult challenge, they admit, will be keeping the Tory party from splitting over the issue. But this realisation doesn’t seem to be informing how the government is actually approaching the referendum hence the row over the attempt to lift the normal purdah restrictions for the campaign itself. Cameron should be bending over backwards to ensure that the whole process is seen as ‘fair’ and to ensure that everyone on the Tory bench has to accept the result. For as one senior

Steerpike

David Starkey defends his comments comparing the SNP to the Nazis

Over the weekend, David Starkey caused outrage in Scotland when he compared the SNP to the Nazis. While the SNP MP Kirsten Oswald was quick to dismiss Starkey as a ‘serial utterer of bile and bilge’, others called for an apology from the historian. So, how did Starkey feel this morning having had time to reflect on his comments? Turns out, he didn’t feel all that different. Answering a question on Sky News about whether he regretted his comments, Starkey said he did not, explaining that he stood by what he had said: Starkey said the SNP were a ‘virulently nationalist party’ and blamed political correctness for the backlash: ‘It’s time we call things

Julia Hartley-Brewer

Jeremy Corbyn is definitely not what Labour voters want

The clock struck noon and it was if the past 32 years had never happened. Veteran Left-wing MP Jeremy Corbyn had, with seconds to spare, got the necessary 35 nominations to win his place on the Labour leadership ballot. And with that news, it became clear that the Labour party has not just failed to learn the lessons of last month’s election failure; they are still too busy ignoring the lessons of 1983. In that year, one of the party’s most traumatic defeats in its history, the British people voted en masse to reject Michael Foot and his socialist manifesto – famously dubbed ‘the longest suicide note in history’. Today,

Sebastian Payne

Jeremy Corbyn makes Labour leadership ballot paper

Thanks to a last minute rush of nominations, Jeremy Corbyn has made it onto the Labour leadership ballot paper. Corbyn had 30 MPs backing him at 11am this morning and it seems some undecideds and Team Burnham defectors were persuaded it would be a good thing to have Corbyn in the contest, taking him to the 35 names he needed. The MP for Islington North is now the most left-wing candidate to fight a Labour leadership election since Tony Benn ran against Neil Kinnock in 1988. But as you can see from the list of MPs nominating him below, many of those backing Corbyn are not his natural supporters. In fact some, such

Sebastian Payne

Team Burnham: ‘Taliban New Labour’ remarks came from Cooper’s campaign

Who described the folks backing Liz Kendall as the ‘Taliban New Labour’? The Telegraph’s story this morning attributed the vituperative comments to a ‘sources close to Burnham and Cooper,’ but both campaigns are distancing themselves from the remarks. A source on Team Burnham tells Coffee House that the comments came from Yvette’s Team and not from anyone on the Burnham campaign. But Team Cooper on the other hand is quick to say that the comments did not come from them either. A source on Cooper’s campaign says: ‘I don’t think it helps to get into finger pointing. It absolutely wasn’t us. It’s not language we endorse or have even heard. It’s not a very useful contribution

Steerpike

Lesley Garrett: Labour chose the wrong Miliband brother

As a Doncaster resident, Lesley Garrett is well acquainted with her local MP Ed Miliband. However, the soprano was left disappointed by Labour’s effort in the general election. In an interview ahead of her performance in Garsington Opera’s production of Così fan tutte, Garrett — who is a loyal Labour supporter — blamed their election defeat in part on the party choosing the wrong Miliband brother to lead the party: ‘Yes. I think most people do. I think his brother had more experience, and a more authoritative voice. I think Ed was very good at what he did, and I think the two of them together would have been unstoppable. My big sorrow is that they

Dominic Selwood

In praise of charming but pointless laws – like the Magna Carta

If you peer deep into the statute book, you will see that it is still an offence to enter parliament wearing armour. Even more amazing, it has been a crime since 1313. I mention this because the moment has again come for parliament to clear some of the redundant legislative noise off its books. This is a time-honoured process, and one that is becoming increasingly complex thanks to the sheer volume of modern legislation. A cursory wander through a suitable library will reveal that the statutes passed during the reigns of our medieval monarchs are neatly grouped together in a handful of surprisingly slim volumes. Back then, good rule was

Sebastian Payne

The Labour leadership contest is about to get nasty

Today is the last call for nominating candidates in the Labour leadership contest. At noon, the nominations will close and we’ll know then whether it’s going to be a three or four horse race. Andy Burnham, Yvette Cooper and Liz Kendall are on the ballot paper so it’s now a question of whether Jeremy Corbyn can find the extra 17 MPs to meet the 15 per cent threshold. By our calculations, there are 42 MPs still to declare, so it remains very possible that a late surge will push Corbyn towards the 35 nominations needed to make it onto the ballot Once nominations are closed, the leadership race is thrown into the hands of Labour party